Dealing with Negative Comments | AMA #3 - Ask Me Anything with Lex Fridman

Amy asks, what's your strategy to navigate openness to comments and criticism while also handling negative and destructive feedback appropriately? There's so much to say about this, and my opinion and thinking about it, I think will change throughout my life as. As it does for a lot of people as we learn how to navigate the Internet and how to have as cheesy it is to say, but healthy conversation, civil discourse on the Internet, because there's several models of this. There's a Joe Rogan model. Again, I look up to Joe in many ways in the openness and genuineness and the purity of the way he does communication, conversation with people, the way just he is, no matter how much money he makes. But his idea is that you shouldn't read any of the comments. And for the most part he actually sticks to that here. Really does not read many comments except to get a certain large aggregate sense of where the community is. Now, for me, I tend to still. First of all, I'm not famous, so it's not like I have a huge amount of inflow of comments. But there's still so much to learn from the conversations. And I've been fortunate and blessed for the most part to be surrounded by people who are kind and thoughtful and just everything the compassionate, empathetic, brilliant in ways. I'm not even in disagreement, especially in disagreement. I love disagreement. That's one of the tragic things to me about the Internet, about certain types of discourse, especially political discourse, is how little artful disagreement there is. I believe disagreement is an art. It requires care, it requires skill, it requires compassion and respect. One of the key underlying things to me behind passionate disagreement is respect, even a love for the other person. And to me, there's a line between disagreement with intent that doesn't deeply respect the other person, with an intent that almost. It's somewhere between apathy and derision and not even hatred, because it's a jealousy, it's a dismissal, it's a motivation that does not respect the other person in some way and almost dismisses the value of their significance in this universe. And that kind of disagreement is something I dislike very much and I'm not open to. And I would like to move on the Internet, move away from but at the same time, disagreement and criticism and comments that are tense, that create turmoil, but have underlying deep respect and love, those are beautiful. Those aren't as often seen on the Internet, unfortunately, they're more often seen in person. And I think that's what I love. That's sort of the most heated. Again, I Say this over and over, but I think it comes from the Russian culture. There's this heated debates, heated conversations where sometimes you take in a viewpoint in person that you don't even believe. Like I play devil's advocate all the time, especially in political discussions. Somebody says they're Bernie Sanders fan, I will immediately become an anti democratic socialist. Or if you're an Andrew Yang fan, I will immediately become an anti UBI person in that conversation. Just to see, just to bounce ideas, you know, to sort of take a certain on viewpoint to try it on for size and see. And when there's underlying respect, you get to play. There's humor, there's wit, there's ultimately, you arrive at something profound as a result. Now that's a dream for me. And I've been trying to cultivate a community of that kind of discourse of underlying respect and love, whether you agree or disagree. And that's my openness is grounded in the optimism that that's possible. And the few criticisms or negativity that doesn't have that, that's really grounded in mockery and a complete lack of respect. That's just part of it. Sometimes you walk on a sidewalk and you step in dog poop. There's got to be a better example than that. But anyway, that's just life. Like Forrest Gump says, shit happens, or hit the smile, whatever. There's other forms, like, I don't know what's the right term for it, but busting each other's chops, I mean, that could be just a guy thing, it could be an everybody thing, but I love it. You sort of make fun of each other, you tease each other. Some of my closest friends make fun of me all the time. Some of the closest people I know that that's how we show love. I don't know is you make fun of each other, but a lot of people get confused. You have to earn that. Again, it's that love and respect. If you just busting chops without having respect or friendship or love, then it turns into mockery. And one of the fundamental problems of the Internet is the mechanisms of social media reward you for mockery whether you have the respect or not. It's interesting because. Because there's a humor to it that everybody can, as an observer, can appreciate, but the people in the arena don't appreciate it when there's not an underlying respect. And so I very much see that line. If respect is missing, then you busting my chops or you disagreeing is something that I have no patience for. If there is an underlying respect and love and appreciation for each other as human beings, then disagreement and busting chops is a beautiful thing. So in general, when I take criticism, whether it's the harsh kind, the disrespectful kind, or the one that is grounded in respect, I kind of take it as any kind of pain in this world. So I can give a stupid analogy, I guess, of just touching a hot stove. I've recently did that. That's why it pops to mind. And you kind of what I do is I observe it, observe the criticism, observe the moment of me touching the hot stove and I take a step outside of myself as like a third person observer. Just sort of breathe and take it in and really just kind of take in the full richness of that experience. The then once sort of the pain of it settles, the sort of the shock of it, and it can be shocking when somebody criticizes you is you see, what is the lesson I can learn from this? That's fundamentally strip away the meanness, the mockery, whatever that might be there, or if it's respectful disagreement, the biting fact that somebody disagrees, and just see what's the insight here that I can take away? What's the lesson I can learn that I can grow from? So in touching the hot stove, the reason I got burnt is I was checking if it's hot, if it's working, because it didn't look like it was working. And so I guess the lesson I can learn from that is that you don't have to actually touch the stove to figure out that it's working. You can just hover your hand above it and you can sense the heat. Right. Okay, perhaps a stupid analogy, but it's a lesson I can learn moving forward. I can do better next time. I can grow from criticism the same thing. I mean, there's a lot of people that criticize little things about the way I communicate. I really put myself out there. I make myself fragile, I make myself vulnerable to criticism. And you say things like I'm too philosophical or I get too in the weeds about something without covering some other fundamental part. If we're having a conversation or I have a monotone voice, not enough emotion, not enough personality. All those kinds of things that have an inkling of truth to them. Some things I can't really help, some things I can work on. It might be a long term thing people say I mumble, I need to articulate better. That's something I'm cognizant of. And I try to work on some people say I don't make enough eye contact, all those kinds of things. I mean, there's truth in them, even if they come with meanness. Some people say I ask too many stupid questions, you know, and like, you take charisma like that, you think about that. Is there some deep insight there? There is useful. And like the stupid question one, I can now the. The process is I empathize. Where did that person's criticism come from? What is the worldview from which they come to that criticism? Because for me, when in conversation, for example, when somebody says that I came off, I asked a stupid question, I came off as stupider or I got outclassed in conversation. To me that means that was a success because my role in these conversations, my goal is to be. Is to have no ego, to let the other person shine. And asking the simplest possible question, almost naive kinds of questions, get to the fundamental core of ideas that I think could potentially be beautiful. If the other person comes there and is willing to accept the dance of the sort of the silly Russian asking the silly question, accept the chance to answer that silly question with something beautiful and profound. I think that's the goal. And yeah, from your perspective, that might come off if not done well or if the other person doesn't accept the dance. It can come off as. As I'm asking really dumb questions that have no useful, no, no use in conversation. If it's really successful and done beautifully and you know, some of that is lucky, then it works out and nobody notices it. And then it's, it's. Nobody notices how dumb the question was. And in terms of being outclassed, I got so many comments that, like Jim Keller, for example, somebody I deeply admire and a brilliant guy, totally outclassed me in conversation. To me, that's a success. I, it. This isn't a competition to me, to me it's. It's a way to let Jim's ideas shine. I did want to push back enough, but that's the beauty of it. I want to push back and disagree so that it leads to something productive and ultimately they can shine with something profound. I don't want to articulate my disagreement to a point where it becomes awkward and too tense and so on. Just like in dancing. I love, for example, I get so much shit for saying Sentinel Woman is a good movie. But I do like Tatango. I, I do like certain types of dances. Tango is probably my favorite. And you know, there's a lead and there's a follow and that's in that's true in dance. That's, I think, true in conversation. Those can switch, of course, in conversation, but there's an art to it. And the people that criticize certain aspects of that have a lot of kernels of truth that I pick on and I pick from and learn from. And so it's a gift. I see it as a beautiful gift, but it burns. So especially if it lacks the respect, if it has those elements of mockery and derision, like I mentioned, one of the things I do sort of next, after I think about the lesson, is I kind of imagine them in my head and I send sort of love to them. I forgive them. It sounds silly. Not that they ask for my forgiveness, but in my mind I kind of. I forgive the roughness of their message. And I also like to imagine meeting them in person and shaking their hand and sort of having a laugh about something silly because I think I kind of imagine, or I have an optimistic view of it, that a lot of it is just miscommunication or perhaps my misinterpretation of where they were coming from. But in person, a lot of those things fade away and you just focus, you know, you don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff, right? You just kind of laugh at the. You become quick friends. I think that's the optimism that I have about most interactions on the Internet, is that if you actually met in person, you get along just great. And on social media, if there is disrespect, I do, at least at this time, if I see that there's not an underlying respect and love and appreciation for each other, I reach my hand out, I try to patch it up. But if that doesn't work, I usually sort of. Whatever the mechanism social media provides of blocking, of muting, of limiting, somehow I do it. And it's again, not because of some kind of anger and any kind of negative ill feeling. It's just about that I don't see the mech. That medium doesn't seem to be one where we would be able to find a mutual respect or one of us wouldn't be able to find a respect. So I'll reach out my hand, but if he gets slapped down, I'll block, mute, whatever the mechanism allows, and then just wait until we meet in person and maybe then instead of a handshake, I'll go straight in for the hug. So I think even with the roughest interactions, if we met in person, it would go along great. And I just then don't see social media as a great place for it. But again, I first take in whatever the commentary they make and try to find the insight in it. And after that, it can burn, it can burn, and I just forget it, put it behind me, and they go on with a smile again, Forgive them, send love them their way, and then move on after the lesson has been learned. That's my approach to critique. That's my general approach to criticism. And overall, I've been so fortunate to have so much positive feedback and interesting, profound conversations. I was challenged in a lot of interesting ways. I've been shown to be wrong in a lot of interesting ways from people that, you know, sandwich that all in a lot of respect and admiration and mutual admiration. So I've been really fortunate. So for the most part, it's been a lot of positive energy and I appreciate that. And I think. I mean, I sometimes I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world. So all I can do is read comments and read a little bit of criticism. There is, learn from it, grow from it, and continue being part of this community. So this is kind of a new AMA thing. I tried to do a longer response. I'm trying to see if the 5 minutes is better, 1 minute is better, if 20 minutes is better, or if it's better, then I just shut up and don't do these. So I don't know. But again, Amy, thank you so much. That was a great question. I think, like all of us, I will continue to evolve in the way I take in the feedback. It's possible eventually I'll converge towards the Joe Rogan model. But for now, my heart, my mind, my eyes are open to criticism on the Internet, not just in person. Thanks for the great question, Sam.