Mark Zuckerberg on the Lex Fridman Podcast [video]

Sure, and that's why I said I think Zuck would be a good guest for Rogan. What I'm objecting to is the idea that the entirety of Fridman's guest list would be better interviewed by Rogan. Some, perhaps. All? I am very skeptical of that position. That's all I'm saying.

It felt enlightening: here's a concealed underlying pattern that I have now unconcealed for you.

Then after that, and after starting his own podcast, and after coming out with his own Theory of Everything ("Geometric Unity"), things shifted: Eric refused to publish a paper or proofs that could be scrutinized, what he did publish was labeled by professionals as "not even wrong" (i.e. not cogent enough to dispute), he insisted he taught himself guitar during lockdown (when he had been playing for years before), etc.

It felt like two different versions of someone: one you could trust was forthright (whether right or wrong about something), and another who would say things he knows aren't true out of ego/vanity or... out of something? But something to benefit Eric, not something to benefit the audience.

This felt like a shift to me.

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Mark: I mean, well, how would you handle this if you were in my position?

Lex: It's very, very, very, very difficult. I would more speak about how difficult the choices are and be transparent about what the hell do you do with this? Ask the exact question you just asked me, but to the broader public. Like okay, yeah, you guys tell me what to do. So crowdsource it.

And then the other aspect is when you spoke really eloquently about the fact that there's this going back and forth, and now there's a feeling like you're censoring a little bit too much. I would try to be ahead of that feeling. I would now lean towards freedom of speech and say "we are not the ones that are going to define misinformation." Let it be a public debate.

Let the ideas stand. And I actually place the responsibility on the poor communication skills of scientists. They should be in the battlefield of ideas, and everybody who is spreading information against the vaccine - they should not be censored. They should be talked with, and you should show the data. You should have open discussion, as opposed to rolling your eyes and saying "I'm the expert. I know what I'm talking about." No, you need to convince people. It's a battle of ideas. So that's the whole point of freedom of speech. It's the way to defeat ideas - is with good ideas, with speech.

So the responsibility here falls on the poor communication skills of scientists. Thanks to social media (scientists are not communicators), they have the power to communicate. Some of the best stuff I've seen about COVID from doctors is on social media. It's a way to learn, to respond really quickly, to go faster than the peer review process. And so they just need to get way better at that communication. And also by better, I don't mean just convincing. I also mean speak with humility. Don't talk down to people. All those kinds of things.

And as a platform, I would step back a little bit, not all the way of course, because there's a lot of stuff that can cause real harm as we talked about, but you lean more towards freedom speech, because then people - from a brand perspective - wouldn't be blaming you for the other ills of society, which there are many. The institutions have flaws. The political divide, obviously - politicians have flaws, that's news. The media has flaws that they're all trying to work with. And because of the central place of Facebook in the world, all of those flaws somehow kind of propagate to Facebook, and you're sitting there, as Plato the philosopher, have to answer to some of the most difficult questions being asked of human civilization.

So I don't know, maybe this is an American answer though, to lean towards freedom of speech.