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Lex Fridman Podcast / episode intelligence

#397 – Greg Lukianoff: Cancel Culture, Deplatforming, Censorship & Free Speech

25 Sept 2023 36 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Greg LukianoffLex Fridman

Claim mix

belief 17recommendation 4evaluation 4preference 4prediction 3observation 2uncertainty 2

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Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

36 published records

01 / observation

We talk a lot about cancel culture on campus as well because even though most of the attempts that come from on campus to get people canceled are still from the left, there are a lot of attacks that come from the right, that come from attempts by different organizations.

“We talk a lot about cancel culture on campus as well because even though most of the attempts that come from on campus to get people canceled are still from the left, there are a lot of attacks that come from the right, that come from attempts by different organizations.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

05 / recommendation

Recommends Poison Ivy.

“I talk a lot about class, again, and there’s a great book called Poison Ivy by Evan Mandery, which I recommend to everybody, it’s outrageous, it sounds like me on a rant at Stanford, which was, and I think the stat is elite higher education has more kids from the top 1% than they have from the bottom 50 or 60% depending on the school.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

07 / belief

” You can agree with… It’s not hostile to the other kinds by the way, but the idea that we need more people from the bottom of three quarters of American society in higher education, I think, should be something we could all get around, that the only one that really succeeded was the one that sprouted back exactly the kind of ideology that they thought the readers would like, which is like, okay, there’s no way this couldn’t be a political litmus test.

“” You can agree with… It’s not hostile to the other kinds by the way, but the idea that we need more people from the bottom of three quarters of American society in higher education, I think, should be something we could all get around, that the only one that really succeeded was the one that sprouted back exactly the kind of ideology that they thought the readers would like, which is like, okay, there’s no way this couldn’t be a political litmus test.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

08 / belief

” I have to actually live up to what I believe on this stuff because it’s ridiculous that we have this primitive idea that you can dismiss someone as soon as you claim rightly or wrongly that they’re on the right.

“” I have to actually live up to what I believe on this stuff because it’s ridiculous that we have this primitive idea that you can dismiss someone as soon as you claim rightly or wrongly that they’re on the right.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

10 / belief

Oh, Harvard. And there are a couple people who have actually been really, I think making a mistake by getting very Harvard sounding, by being like, I’ve had statisticians look at this, and they think your methodology is a joke.

“Oh, Harvard. And there are a couple people who have actually been really, I think making a mistake by getting very Harvard sounding, by being like, I’ve had statisticians look at this, and they think your methodology is a joke.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

11 / belief

I think that the person that I always think of that wasn’t a right-winger that would be like, “Go to hell,” if you made him fill one of these things out, it’s Feynman.

“I think that the person that I always think of that wasn’t a right-winger that would be like, “Go to hell,” if you made him fill one of these things out, it’s Feynman.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

14 / belief

Did they do anything to stop it? Because I think a lot of what’s really going on here is the hyper bureaucratization of universities with a lot more ideological people who think of their primary job as basically policing speech, more or less.

“Did they do anything to stop it? Because I think a lot of what’s really going on here is the hyper bureaucratization of universities with a lot more ideological people who think of their primary job as basically policing speech, more or less.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

15 / uncertainty

I mean, it’s already all protected, I guess, to protect against administrators from fiddling too much with the curriculum like stabilizing the curriculum. I don’t know what the machinery of the K-12 public school.

“I mean, it’s already all protected, I guess, to protect against administrators from fiddling too much with the curriculum like stabilizing the curriculum. I don’t know what the machinery of the K-12 public school.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

16 / belief

When this got in front of a judge, he was exactly as skeptical of it as we thought he’d be. I think he called this dystopian and it wasn’t a close call.

“When this got in front of a judge, he was exactly as skeptical of it as we thought he’d be. I think he called this dystopian and it wasn’t a close call.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

17 / belief

I do think that departments take on momentum when they become a place where you’re like, “Wow, it’d be really unpleasant for me to work in this department if I’m the token conservative,” and I think that takes on a life of its own.

“I do think that departments take on momentum when they become a place where you’re like, “Wow, it’d be really unpleasant for me to work in this department if I’m the token conservative,” and I think that takes on a life of its own.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

20 / belief

I think the first quality you should be cultivating in your children if you want to have a free speech culture is curiosity and an awareness of the vastness that will always be unknown.

“I think the first quality you should be cultivating in your children if you want to have a free speech culture is curiosity and an awareness of the vastness that will always be unknown.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

21 / belief

We point out sometimes how cancel culture can interfere with faith and expertise, so we get kind of being a little suspicious of experts, but at the same time, if you follow that and you follow it mechanically, and I definitely… I think everybody in the US probably has some older uncle who exercises some of these.

“We point out sometimes how cancel culture can interfere with faith and expertise, so we get kind of being a little suspicious of experts, but at the same time, if you follow that and you follow it mechanically, and I definitely… I think everybody in the US probably has some older uncle who exercises some of these.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

22 / belief

There were a couple of schools, I think Penn included, where every single attempt, every time a student group objected to that speaker coming, they canceled the speech.

“There were a couple of schools, I think Penn included, where every single attempt, every time a student group objected to that speaker coming, they canceled the speech.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

23 / belief

I actually, when I was thinking about ways that X could be used to argue towards truth, I wouldn’t want to have it so that everybody would be bound to that. But I think, imagine almost being a stream within X that was truth focused, that agrees to some additional rules on how they would argue.

“I actually, when I was thinking about ways that X could be used to argue towards truth, I wouldn’t want to have it so that everybody would be bound to that. But I think, imagine almost being a stream within X that was truth focused, that agrees to some additional rules on how they would argue.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

25 / belief

I think Wikipedia will often lean, they really try to be self-reflective and try to stop this, but they will lean into the drama if it matches the bias. But again, the world, I believe, is much better because Wikipedia exists.

“I think Wikipedia will often lean, they really try to be self-reflective and try to stop this, but they will lean into the drama if it matches the bias. But again, the world, I believe, is much better because Wikipedia exists.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

26 / belief

We’ve been giving LA Times some heat on this because it’s like, “Yeah, if you said, in my opinion, they’re right wing,” we would’ve argued back saying, “Well, here’s the following 50,000 examples of us not being,” but when you actually make the factual claim that we only defend opinions we agree with, first of all, there’s no way for us to agree with opinions because we actually have a politically diverse staff who won’t even agree on which opinions are good and what opinions we have.

“We’ve been giving LA Times some heat on this because it’s like, “Yeah, if you said, in my opinion, they’re right wing,” we would’ve argued back saying, “Well, here’s the following 50,000 examples of us not being,” but when you actually make the factual claim that we only defend opinions we agree with, first of all, there’s no way for us to agree with opinions because we actually have a politically diverse staff who won’t even agree on which opinions are good and what opinions we have.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

27 / preference

I think that for those of us who really have devoted our lives to freedom of speech, one thing that we are into, whether we know it or not, is epistemology, the study and philosophy of knowledge.

“I think that for those of us who really have devoted our lives to freedom of speech, one thing that we are into, whether we know it or not, is epistemology, the study and philosophy of knowledge.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

28 / preference

My natural inclination before I started the podcast was I would talk to anyone and including people which I’m still interested in who are the current members of the KKK. And to me, there’s a responsibility to do that with skill and that responsibility has been weighing heavier and heavier on me because you realize how much skill it actually takes because you have to know to understand so much.

“My natural inclination before I started the podcast was I would talk to anyone and including people which I’m still interested in who are the current members of the KKK. And to me, there’s a responsibility to do that with skill and that responsibility has been weighing heavier and heavier on me because you realize how much skill it actually takes because you have to know to understand so much.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

29 / prediction

Censorship doesn’t actually change people’s minds and it pushes them in directions that actually, by very solid research, will actually make them more radicalized. So yeah, I think that the attempt to ban hate speech, it doesn’t really protect us from it but it gives the government such a vast weapon to use against us that we will regret giving them.

“Censorship doesn’t actually change people’s minds and it pushes them in directions that actually, by very solid research, will actually make them more radicalized. So yeah, I think that the attempt to ban hate speech, it doesn’t really protect us from it but it gives the government such a vast weapon to use against us that we will regret giving them.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

30 / evaluation

I even mentioned in the book there was a time when a gay activist friend, who I think decided to lean to my left, but nonetheless had that pragmatic experience of actually being an activist, said something like, “Well, just because someone’s conservative doesn’t mean they’re wrong,” and I remember feeling scandalized at some level of just being like, “Well, no, it’s not the whole thing.

“I even mentioned in the book there was a time when a gay activist friend, who I think decided to lean to my left, but nonetheless had that pragmatic experience of actually being an activist, said something like, “Well, just because someone’s conservative doesn’t mean they’re wrong,” and I remember feeling scandalized at some level of just being like, “Well, no, it’s not the whole thing.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

31 / prediction

I don’t know what you think about that but I personally think that freedom of speech in cases like that like KKK and Campus can do more harm in the short term but much more benefit in the long term.

“I don’t know what you think about that but I personally think that freedom of speech in cases like that like KKK and Campus can do more harm in the short term but much more benefit in the long term.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

32 / preference

Well, because you can also do the absolutest free speech, I like leaning into it where I hope for a future where a lot of our insecurities, flaws, everything’s out there and to be raw, honest with it.

“Well, because you can also do the absolutest free speech, I like leaning into it where I hope for a future where a lot of our insecurities, flaws, everything’s out there and to be raw, honest with it.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

33 / evaluation

America is exceptional in a number of ways, but some of our dynamics are incredibly typical. It’s one of the reasons why when people start reading Thomas Sowell for example, they start getting hooked, because one of the things he does is he does comparative analysis of country’s problems and points out that some of these things that we think are just unique to the United States exist in 75% of the rest of the countries in the world.

“America is exceptional in a number of ways, but some of our dynamics are incredibly typical. It’s one of the reasons why when people start reading Thomas Sowell for example, they start getting hooked, because one of the things he does is he does comparative analysis of country’s problems and points out that some of these things that we think are just unique to the United States exist in 75% of the rest of the countries in the world.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

35 / preference

I mean, people find it a different thing if someone loses their job simply for their political opinion, even if that employer has every right in the world to fire you, I think Americans should still be like, “Well, it’s true.

“I mean, people find it a different thing if someone loses their job simply for their political opinion, even if that employer has every right in the world to fire you, I think Americans should still be like, “Well, it’s true.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

36 / prediction

I thought it was just something that right-wingers complained about. But I really started to get what happens when you have a community with low viewpoint diversity, and actually, a lot of the research that I got most interested in was done in conjunction with the great Cass Sunstein who writes a lot about group polarization because as… The research on this is very strong that essentially, when you have groups with political diversity, and you can see this actually in judges, for example, it tends to produce reliably more moderate outcomes, whereas groups that have low political diversity tend to sort of spiral off in their own direction.

“I thought it was just something that right-wingers complained about. But I really started to get what happens when you have a community with low viewpoint diversity, and actually, a lot of the research that I got most interested in was done in conjunction with the great Cass Sunstein who writes a lot about group polarization because as… The research on this is very strong that essentially, when you have groups with political diversity, and you can see this actually in judges, for example, it tends to produce reliably more moderate outcomes, whereas groups that have low political diversity tend to sort of spiral off in their own direction.”
Speaker
Greg Lukianoff
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast
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