Is this the kind of guy that us rationalists should be lifting up? He is cited approvingly here on the forum a lot. Where do we draw the line with people just because they align with our interests? We have to think about how the public perceives us – and an primary influence on that is the type of thinkers we venerate. How are statements like the following received by EAs?
“If you’re into flat Earth and you feel very good about it, that you believe that Earth is flat, the idea that you should censor that is ridiculous,” Fridman said on the neuroscientist Andrew Huberman’s podcast. “If it makes you feel good and you’re becoming the best version of yourself, I think you should be getting as much flat Earth as possible.”
“If you talk to Hitler in 1941, do you empathize with him, or do you push back?” he asked on a recent episode. “Because most journalists would push, because they’re trying to signal to a fellow journalist and to people back home that this, me, the journalist, is on the right side. But if you actually want to understand the person, you should empathize. If you want to be the kind of person that actually understands in the full arc of history, you need to empathize.”
I ran a search for “Lex Fridman” and read through all the times people have referenced him on the Forum. There aren’t many references, so anyone could quickly check my work if they wanted.
I saw exactly one instance of someone saying something nice about him, on a post with three total votes. Almost every reference was just a link to an interview he did with someone, and was clearly about the interviewee rather than Fridman.