Lex Friedman Podcast

Mark Zuckerberg

The power of innovation and engineering coupled with the freedom of speech in the form of its highest ideal, i believe, can solve any problem in the world. Both are necessary, the engineer and the critic.

I believe that criticism is essential, but cynicism is not. And I worry that in our public discourse, cynicism too easily masquerades as wisdom, as truth, becomes viral and takes over.. and worse, suffocates the dreams of young minds who want to build solutions to the problems of the world.

We need to inspire those young minds, they give us hope.

I’m sure I will fail often, and I count on the critic to point it out when I do.

But I ask for one thing, and that is to fuel the fire of optimism.. especially those who dream to build solutions, because without that we don’t have a chance.. on this too fragile and tiny planet of ours.

Can you circle all the traffic lights please…?

… So this could be somebody else using the Mark Zuckerberg avatar who can do the Max and the Lex conversation replay from four decades ago..

– I mean, it’s not going to be 4 decades when we have photo realistic avatars like this.. I think we are much closer to that.

So I do this podcasts in person, I’m a stickler for that because there’s a magic to the in-person conversation. How long do you think it will be until you have the same kind of magic in the Metaverse?

How difficult is it.. and how long until we have it on the Metaverse?

The thing that’s different about virtual and , hopefully, augmented reality compared to all other forms of digital platfroms before, is this feeling of presencie. The feeling that you are right there in an experience, the feeling that you are right there with other people in another place. That is different from all of the other screens that we have today: phones, tv, etc they are trying to, in some cases, deliver experiences that feel “high fidelity” but in no point it actually feels that you are “in it”.

At some level your content is trying to sort of convince you that this is a realistic thing that’s happenning but all of that kind of subtle signals that no, you are looking at a screen. So the question about how you develop these systems is like.. What are all of the things that make the physical world? All of teh different cues. So I think on visual presence and spatial audio.. we are making reasonable progress. Spatial audio makes a huge deal.

Video Timestamps

OUTLINE:

0:00 – Introduction 5:36 – Metaverse 25:36 – Identity in Metaverse 37:45 – Security 42:10 – Social Dilemma 1:04:16 – Instagram whistleblower 1:09:01 – Social media and mental health 1:14:26 – Censorship 1:31:35 – Translation 1:39:10 – Advice for young people 1:44:58 – Daughters 1:47:46 – Mortality 1:52:19 – Question for God 1:55:25 – Meaning of life

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