Excerpt from a YouTube interview (Lex Fridman with Judea Pearl) in which Pearl gives advice to students: follow your own questions, pursue them your own way, don\'t accept authority uncritically, and persist despite academic inertia. Pearl frames his book The Book of Why as an effort to democratize common sense and encourage rebellious, independent thinking among students. The tone is conversational and exhortatory.
Do you have advice for young minds today dreaming about creating as you have dreamt creating intelligent systems. What is the best way to arrive at new breakthrough ideas and carry them through the fire of criticism and past conventional ideas?
Ask your questions, really your questions are never dumb. And solve them your own way. And don't take no for an answer. Look, if they are really dumb, you will find up quickly by trying an arrow to see that they're not leading any place. But follow them. And try to understand things your way. That is my advice. I don't know if it's going to help anyone.
No, that's brilliantly put.
There is a lot of inertia in science, in academia, it is slowing down science.
Yeah. Those two words, your way, that's a powerful thing. It's against inertia, potentially. Against the flow.
Against your professor.
Against your professor.
I wrote the Book of why? In order to democratize common sense. In order to instill rebellious spirits in students so they wouldn't wait until the professor gets things right.
So you wrote the manifesto of the rebellion against the professor?
Against the professor, yes.
