YouSaid · the spoken record

Tim Urban

lines on the record: 230
first: 2023-02-20
most recent: 2023-02-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I mean, look, the optimist in me and maybe the stupid kind of 2023 person in me says, yeah, of course we'll make it. We'll figure it out. But, you know, I mean, we are going into, you know, I have a friend who knows as much about the future as anyone I know. I mean, he's really, he's a big investor and future tech and he's really on the pulse of things. And he just says future's going to be weird. That's what he says. Future's going to be weird. But it's going to be weird. Don't look at the last few decades of your life and apply that for it and say, that's just what life is like. No, no, no. It's going to be weird and different”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out of that Stockcomb syndrome and realize that death is just the machine, the human physical machine failing and that there's no law of nature that says you can't with enough technology repair the machine and keep it going until I don't think anyone wants to live forever. People think they do. No one does. But until people are ready. And I think when we hit a world where we can have enough tech that we can continue to keep the human machine alive until the person says, I'm done. I'm ready. I think we will look back and we will think that anything before that time, that'll be the real AD BC. You know, we'll look back at BC before the big advancement and it'll seem so sad and so heartbreaking, barbaric. And people will say, I can't believe that humans like us had to live with that when they lost loved ones and they died before they were ready. I think that's the ultimate achievement, but we need to stop criticizing.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm most excited about, have you read the Fable of the Dragon? No. Okay. Well, it's an allegory for death and it's Nick Bostrom and he talks about the, he compares death to a dragon that eats 60 million people or whatever the number is every year. And every year we shepherd those people up and they feed him to the dragon and that there's a Stockholm syndrome when we say But someone who tries to, someone who does chemo, no one calls them bane or narcissistic. They say they're good, good for you, right? You're a hero. You're fighting the good fight. So I think there's some disconnect here. And I think that if we can.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, the first and most important thing is because people who don't procrastinate. It's like you will, the instinct is to judge it as like, uh, Either just think they're just being like a loser or they're taking it, they'll take it personally. And instead to see this as like, this is some form of addiction or some form of ailment. They're not just being a dick, right? Like they have a problem. And so some compassion, but then also maybe finding that line where you can maybe apply some tough love, some middle ground. On the other hand, you might say that you don't want the significant other relationship where it's like they're into one nagging. You maybe that's, you don't want them even being part of that. And I think maybe it's better to have a live do it instead.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right. They just deliver things. Now, I think there's an even bigger group of people, so there's these people that Adam Grants, there's people like me, and then there's people who have a healthy relationship with deadlines, but they're still part of a bigger group of people that actually a deadline there to do something. So they actually still are motivated by a deadline. And as soon as you have all the things in life that don't have a deadline, like working out and like working on that album, you wanted to write, they don't do anything either. So there's actually like, that's why procrastination is a much bigger problem than people realize because it's not just the funny last second people. It's anyone who actually can't get things done that don't have a deadline.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He will go home and do it until it's done and handed it, which is also not necessarily good. You know, it's like you're rushing it either way, but it's better. But some people have the opposite thing where they will. The looming deadline makes them so anxious that they go and fix it, right? And the procrastinator, I think, has a similar anxiety, but they solve it in a totally different way.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not everyone's like that. You know, people self defeat in different ways. Some people don't have this particular problem. Adam Grant is a, he calls himself a precrastinator where he gets an assignment.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bad. So you're just having a bad time and you're getting less work done and less work out. It's not like you're enjoying your personal life. It's bad for your relationships. It's bad for your own.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because then you'll actually do it. And it's not the thing is the time in between. It's like if you could take three weeks on a video and instead you take 10 weeks, it's not like, oh, well, I'm having more fun in those 10 weeks. The whole 10 weeks are bad.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know, and it almost killed me. Okay, so that's the first one. But secondly, yeah, like basically there's two ways to fix procrastination. One is you fix, it's like a picture you have a boat that's leaking and it's not working very well. You can fix it in two ways. You can get your hammer and nails out and your boards and actually fix the boat. Or you can duct tape it for now to get yourself across the river, but it's not naturally fixed. Ideally down the road, I have repaired whatever kind of bizarre mental illness that I have that makes me procrastinate in a very like, I just don't self-defeat in this way anymore. But in the meantime, I can duct tape the boat by bringing what I call the panic monster into the situation via things like this and this scary person and having external pressure to have external pressure of some kind is critical for me. I don't have the muscle to do the work I need to do without external pressure.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did it once. I don't want to do it again. Oh, the book. So the book is a giant mistake. Yes, don't do another one. Look, some people should. It's just not for me. You just.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Well, I've learned a lot of things. I mean, like, first, don't write like a dissertation about proving some grand theory of society because that's really procrastinating. Like I would have been an awful PhD student for that reason. And so I'm going to do another book and it's going to be like a bunch of short chapters that are one-offs because that's like it's just doesn't feed into”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I knew the hard, hard deadline. I knew that there was no way she was going to actually send that money because it was 4 a.m. So I knew I actually had the whole night. So yeah.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like the next morning. And they were both like, that doesn't count. I'm like, it does. It's still, for me, it's the same day still. It's okay to”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, it was funny because it was like supposed to be by the summer solstice or whatever it was. It was like a certain date. It was like four hours. I got it in at four. No, I got it in at 4 a.m.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she was like, and as your friend, because I'm your friend, I will send it. I will send the money. I mean, like, you know, like. And I got the draft in. I know. Well, I was”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Forgetting the kicker The kicker was that because you know procrastinators, they self defeat. That's what they do. And then Liv says, I'm going to sweeten the deal. And I am going to basically match you. And I'm going to put in, I'm going to send a huge amount of my own money there if you don't do it. And I can't, that would be really bad.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But also what Liv witnessed a few times, and my wife has witnessed like 30 of these, is like these 180 epiphanies where I'll be like, I'll have a moment when I'm, and I don't know what, you know, sometimes it's that there's a really good idea. Sometimes it's like I'm just dreading having to finish this the way it is. And so this epiphanies where it's like, you know what, I need to start over from the beginning and just make this like a short like 20 little blog post list and then I'll do that and then I'll say no. I have like a new epiphany. I have to And it's these and yeah it's kind of like the crazy person a little bit”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The irony isn't lost on me. I mean, it's like, I just like how much cred I have for that TED talk. I'm like, I am legit procrastinator. I'm not just saying it.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that was March of 2016, and I started this book three months later. It fell to the biggest procrastination hole that I've ever fallen into.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was going to be on like this feeling I had that we were our tech was just growing and growing and we were becoming less wise. What's up? What's up with that? And I just wanted to write like just like a little thousand word essay on like something I think we should pay attention to and that was the beginning of this six year nightmare”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not even, yeah, it was just supposed to be a mini post. I was like, oh, I'm so looking at all these future tech things. And I feel this uneasiness. Like, ah, we're going to mess up all these things. Why? There's like some cloud over our society. Let me just write a mini post. And I opened it up to WordPress to write a one day little essay. Things went”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, it's true. Liv is she's mean what you want. I did not know mean live. She's like, she's like a bully. She's like scary. I have to have that screenshot. So Liv was FaceTiming me and she was like being intimidating. I took a screenshot and I made it my phone background. So every time I opened it, I was like, nah.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then courage, I mean, starts, you know, yes, brave students. There's been some very brave students who have started big think clubs and stuff like that where it's like, we're going to have present both sides of a debate here. And that takes courage, but also courage and leadership, like if you look at these colleges, it's specifically the leaders who show strength who get the best results. Remember, the cudgel is soft. So if a leader of one of these places says the college presidents who have shown some strength, they actually don't get as much trouble. It's the ones who pander, the ones who... In that, you know, in that moment of truth, they shrink away, then. Get a lot more trouble. The mob smells blood.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a bait and switch. It's still saying here you're coming here for a wide intellectual. Basically, they're advertising this as an idea lab and you get there and it's like, actually, it's an echo chamber that you're paying money for. So if people realize that they start to get mad, hopefully.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's awareness and courage. It's the same thing. So, first of all, just get when that awareness is people need to see what's happening here, that kids are losing the, they're not going to college and becoming better, tougher, more robust thinkers. They're actually going to college and becoming zealots. They're getting taught to be zealots. And the website still advertises a wide variety of eye views. The website is a bait and switch.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That Child's Hills, that you know it's nailing people's feet to Child's Hill. It's teaching people that these are right, this user right, and like you don't have any, nothing you should feel complete conviction about them.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of those speakers I went who disagreed with me. A lot of them were conservative. So many of those speakers would not be allowed on campuses today. And so many of the discussions I had were in big groups or classrooms. And this is still, you know, this was liberal campus. So many of those disagreements, they're not happening today. And I've interviewed a ton of college students. It's chilly. It is people keep to themselves. So what's happening is not only are people losing that push off Child's Hill, which was so valuable to me, so valuable to me as a thinker. It kind of started my life as a better thinker. They're losing that, but actually what college, a lot of the college classes and the vibe in colleges, a lot of what it is now is saying that there is one right set of views. And it's this kind of woke ideology. And it's right. And anyone who disagrees with it is bad. And don't speak up unless you're going to agree with it. It's teaching people.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm like, no, I won't. I don't, I just, I'm going to just be spouting out the opinion of the person I just read. So I have to remind myself, but it's useful. Now, the reason my problem with colleges today is that I graduated in 2004. This is a recent change, is that”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shoved me down the humble tumble here at number three. It shoved me down where I started to, and then I and then I went the other way, where I realized that I had been, a lot of my identity had been based on this faux feeling of knowledge, this idea that thought I knew everything. Now that I don't have that, I was like, I felt really like dumb and I felt really almost like embarrassed of what I knew. And so that's where I call this insecure canyon. I think it's sometimes when you're so used to thinking you know everything and then you realize you don't, it's like it's, and then you start to realize that actually really awesome thinkers, they respect they don't judge me for this. They totally respect if I say, I don't know anything about this. They say, oh, cool, you should read this and this and this. They don't say you don't know anything. They don't say that, right? And so not that I'm, by the way, this. This is not to say I'm now on grown-up mountain and you should all draw me. I am often find myself drifting up with like a helium balloon. Oh, I think I read about a new thing and suddenly I think I have, I think, I read three things about, you know, a new AI thing. And I'm like, I'll go do a talk on this.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so you're quickly, in again, Idea Lab culture. It was an ideal lab. And also, I also went to, I started getting in the habit. I started loving listening to people who disagreed with me because it was so exhilarating, listening to a smart person. When I thought there was no... No credence to this other argument, right? This side of this debate is obviously wrong. I wanted to see an intelligence squared on that debate in particular. I wanted to go see, I actually got into intelligence squared in college. I wanted to see a smart person who disagrees with me talking. It became so fascinating to me, right? It was the most interesting thing. That was a new thing. I didn't think I liked that. And so what did that do?”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're based on other people's conviction. Everyone else thinks that's true, so now I think it's true. I'm actually like, I'm transferring someone else's conviction to me. And who knows why they have conviction? They might have conviction because they're transferring from someone else. And I'm a smart dude, I thought. Why am I? Why am I like giving away my own independent learning abilities here and just adopting other views? So anyway, it was this humbling experience. And it wasn't just about politics, by the way. It was that I had strong views about a lot of stuff. And I just got lucky, not lucky. I sought out the kind of people I sought out were the type that loved to disagree and they were, man, they knew stuff.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, for me, this is a very, you know, I think of myself with this because I went to college, like a lot of 18-year-olds, and I was very cocky. I just thought I knew a lot, you know, and when it came to politics, I was like bright blue just because I grew up in a bright blue suburb and I wasn't thinking that hard about it. And I thought that, you know, and what I did when I went to college is met a lot of smart conservatives and a lot of smart progressives. But I've met a lot of people who weren't just going down a checklist and they knew stuff. And suddenly I realized that a lot of these views I have are not based on knowledge.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, when I post this, everyone's like, Dunning Kruger, and it's what everyone thinks Dunning Kruger is. Dunning Kruger is a little different. It's you have a diagonal line like this one, right? Which is the place you are, it's the I call it like the humility tightrope, but the humility sweet spot. It's exactly the right level of humility based on what you know. If you're below it, you're insecure. You actually have too much humility. You don't have enough confidence because you know more than you're giving yourself credit for. And when you're above the line, you're in the arrogant zone, right? You need a dose of humility, right? You think you know more than you do. So we all want to stay on that tightrope. And Dunning Kruger is basically a straight line that's just has a lower slope. So you start off, you still are getting more confident as you go along, but you start off above that line. And as you learn more, you end up below the line later.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a very clear difference. And so when people criticize the cancel culture and then someone says, oh, see, you're so sensitive now. Look, you're doing the cancel culture yourself. You're trying to punish this person for critics. Like, no, no, no, no. Every good liberal, and I mean that in the lowercase, which is that anyone who believes in liberal democracies, regardless of what they believe, should stand up and say no to cancel culture and say this is not okay, regardless of what the actual topic is. And that makes them a good liberal versus if they're trying to cancel someone who's just criticizing, they're doing the opposite. Now they're shutting. So it's the opposite things, but it's very easy to get confused. You can see people take advantage of the, and sometimes they just don't know it themselves. The lines here can be very confusing. The wording can be very confusing without that wording. Suddenly it looks like someone who's criticizing cancel culture is canceling, but they're not.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cancel culture attacks the person. Very different. Criticism culture says here's why this idea is so bad. Let me tell you. Cancel culture says here's why this person is bad and no one should talk to them and they should be fired. And what does that do? It doesn't enliven the discussion. It makes everyone scared to talk and it's the opposite. It shuts down discussion. So you still have your first amendment, but First”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're putting your ideas out and you're getting criticized and your precious marketplace of ideas, there it is, right? And I've gotten this a lot. And this is not making a critical distinction between cancel culture and criticism culture. Criticism culture is a little bit of this kind of high-rung ideal lab stuff we talked about. Criticism culture attacks the idea and encourages further discussion, right? It enlivens discussion. It makes everyone smarter.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, and it works. It reminds people that we're all friends here, right? laugh at ourselves, laugh at the whole laugh at the fact that we're like in a culture war a little bit and now we can talk about it as opposed to like getting like religious about it but basically like King Mustache had no First Amendment. He said we the government is censoring right, which is very common around the world, right? Governments censor all them. The US, you know, again, there's some, you can argue there's some controversial things recently, but basically the US The First Amendment isn't the problem, right? No one is being arrested for saying the wrong thing. But this graph is still happening. And so freedom of speech, when people, what people like to say is if someone's complaining about cancel culture and saying, you know, this is an anti-free speech, people like to point out, no, it's not. The government's not arresting you for anything. This is called the free market, buddy. Like this is called...”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's true, put the silly stick figure in your thing, and it lightens, it does, it lightens the mood, it gets people's guard down a little bit.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to criticize anyone who goes on your podcast. So it's not just you. It's now suddenly if Lex becomes tarnished enough. Now I go on the podcast and people are saying, oh, I'm not buying his book. You went on Lex Friedman? No, no thanks, right? And now I get a smear web. Like you've been smeared and it's so, we're in such a bad time that it smeared travels to me. And now meanwhile, someone buys my book and tries to share it. Someone said, you're buying that guy's book. You know, he goes on Lex Freeman. You see how this happens, right? So that hasn't happened in this case, but that so. We are so wired. A, that is kind of bad, right? Like that is actually bad for you, but we're wired to care about it so much because it meant life or death back in the day.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, no, no, it's not. If it were easy, there wouldn't be all of these failings. And by the way, that's the immune system failing. That's the liberal immune system of that company failing, but also then it's an example, which means that a lot of other kind of to the country, it's not easy. Of course it's not because we have primitive minds that are wired to care so much about what people think of us. And even if we're not going to, first of all, we're scared that it's going to start a, because what do mobs do? They don't just say, I'm going to criticize you. I'm going to criticize anyone who still buys your product.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone's thinking, but no one's saying. And then you have this other region, which is the approved ideas of this now cultural kind of dictator. And those are being spoken from the largest platforms, and they're being repeated by the president, and they're being repeated all over the place, you know, even though people don't believe it. And that's this distortion. And what happens is the society becomes really stupid because active communal thinking is the region where we can actually think together. And now no one can think together. And it gets siloed into small private conversations.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People are thinking and saying. You now have three regions. Have a little active communal thinking, but mostly you now have this dormant thought pile, which is all these opinions that suddenly everyone's scared to say out loud.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Few years is what's happened again and again is the leader gets scared and they get scared of the tournament when they fire them. Boom, that fence has electricity. And now, actually, if you cross that, it's not just a threat. Like you will have, you'll be out of a job. Like, it's really bad. Like, you'll have a huge penalty. You might not be able to feed your kids. So that's an electric fence that goes up. Now, what happens when an electric fence goes up and it's proven to actually be electrified, the speech curve morphs into a totally different position. And now these new people say, instead of having the kind of marketplace of ideas that turns into a kind of a natural bell curve, they say, no, no, no. These ideas are okay to say, not just okay. You'll be socially rewarded. And these ones don't. That's the rules of their own echo chamber that they're now applying to everyone and it's working. And so the speech curve distorts. And so you end up with now, instead of one region, which is a region of kind of active communal thinking.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But now, when we look at the US, what you're seeing right now is a lot of pressure, which is very similar. An electric fence is being laid down saying no one can criticize these ideas. And if you do, you won't be executed, you'll be cancelled. You'll be fired. Now, is that fence electrified from there? No, they're not working the company. They can't fire you. But they can start a Twitter mob when someone violates that speech curve. When someone violates that speech rule and then the leadership at the company has the moment of truth. And what the leaders should do is stand up for their company's values, which is almost always in favor of the employee and say, look, you know, even if they made a mistake, they make people make mistakes. We're not going to fire them. Or maybe that person actually said something that's reasonable and we should discuss it. But either way, we're not going to fire them. And if they said no, what happens is the Twitter mom actually doesn't have, they can't execute you. They go away and the fence has proven to have no electricity. What's been the problem with the past?”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did the King's Guards stand with the principles of the kingdom and say, yeah, King Mustache, that's not what we do, in which case he would kind of have to, he's nothing he can do. Or are they going to execute? So in this case, it's if he laid down an electric fence over a part of the thought pile and said, no one's allowed to speak over here. The speech curve, maybe people will think these things, but the speech curve cannot go over here. But the electric fence wasn't actually electrified until the king's guards. In a moment of truth, get scared and say, okay, and they hang the five people who spoke out. So in that moment, that fence just became electric.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What censorship does, and censorship can be from the government. So I use the Tale of King Mustache. And King Mustache, he's a little tiny tyrant, and he's very sensitive, and people are making fun of his mustache, and they're saying he's not a good king, and he does not like that. So what does he do? He enacts a policy. And he says, anyone who has heard criticizing me or my mustache or my rule will be put to death Immediately at the town because his father was a very liberal, it was always free speech in his kingdom. But now King Mustach has taken over and he's saying this is a new rules now. And so a few people yell out and say, that's not how we do things here. And that moment is what I call a moment of truth.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, and then when the speech occurs lower, it means it's being said either whispered in small groups or it's just not very many people are talking about it. Now, a healthy, when a free speech democracy is healthy on a certain topic, Got the speech curve sitting right on top of the thought pile. They mirror each other, which is naturally what would happen. More people think something, it's going to be said more often and from higher platforms.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so first of all, I like to think of, I think it's a useful tool as this thing called a thought pile, which is if you have a, on any given issue, you have a horizontal spectrum. And just say I could take your brain out of your head and I put it on the thought pile right where you happen to believe about that issue. Now, I did that for everyone in the community or in the society. And you're going to end up with a big mushy pile that I think will often form a bell curve. If it's really politicized, it might form like a camel with two humps because it's like concentrated here. But for a typical issue, it'll just form, you know, a fear of AI. You're going to have a bell curve, right? You know, things like this. That's the thought pile. Now, the second thing is a line that I call the speech curve, which is what people are saying. So the speech curve is high when not just a lot of people are saying it, but it's being said from the biggest platforms, being said in the, you know, on the, you know, in the New York Times and it's being said by the president in the State of the Union. Those things are the top of the speech curve.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As if they would, right? And it's like, what are you going to get criticized? Or are you going to get a bunch of people, you know, angry Twitter people will criticize you? Yeah, it's not pleasant, but actually that's a little bit like our primitive mind's fear that really back when it was programmed, that kind of ostracism or criticism will leave you out of the tribe and you'll die today. It's kind of a delusional fear. It's not actually that scary. And the people who have realized that can exercise incredible leadership right now.”
2023-02-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #360 – Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source