Glenn Loury: Race, Racism, Identity Politics, and Cancel Culture

Lex Fridman (01:18.600)

And ask you a question about this dream.

Glenn Loury (01:21.160)

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up

Lex Fridman (01:26.280)

and live out the true meaning of its creed.

Glenn Loury (01:28.980)

We hold these truths to be self evident,

Lex Fridman (01:31.640)

that all men are created equal.

Glenn Loury (01:34.640)

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia,

Lex Fridman (01:38.920)

the sons of former slaves and the sons of former

Glenn Loury (01:41.800)

slave owners will be able to sit down together

Lex Fridman (01:44.600)

at the table of brotherhood.

Glenn Loury (01:47.040)

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi,

Lex Fridman (01:50.840)

a state sweltering with the heat of injustice,

Glenn Loury (01:54.160)

sweltering with the heat of oppression,

Lex Fridman (01:56.600)

will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

Glenn Loury (02:00.840)

I have a dream that my four little children

Lex Fridman (02:04.320)

will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged

Glenn Loury (02:08.000)

by the color of their skin,

Lex Fridman (02:09.800)

but by the content of their character.

Glenn Loury (02:12.540)

I have a dream today.

Lex Fridman (02:14.720)

First of all, damn.

Glenn Loury (02:16.360)

I mentioned to you offline I immigrated to America

Lex Fridman (02:19.560)

and this is why I love this country.

Glenn Loury (02:20.920)

This is one of the great speeches that represents

Lex Fridman (02:23.160)

what this country is about.

Lex Fridman (02:25.040)

So what is this ideal of equality

Lex Fridman (02:29.260)

that we should strive for as a nation,

Lex Fridman (02:31.360)

that all men are created equal?

Lex Fridman (02:33.440)

What does that mean to you, this equality?

Glenn Loury (02:37.400)

Well, if we put this in historical context,

Lex Fridman (02:43.080)

King is speaking in 1963 when he gives that speech.

Glenn Loury (02:47.280)

It's exactly 100 years after Abraham Lincoln signs

Lex Fridman (02:53.060)

the Emancipation Proclamation

Glenn Loury (02:55.600)

declaring the enslaved people to be free.

Lex Fridman (03:02.000)

They're not yet citizens in 1863,

Lex Fridman (03:07.040)

but the end of slavery has become the position

Lex Fridman (03:10.500)

of the federal government when Lincoln issues

Glenn Loury (03:13.400)

that Emancipation Proclamation.

Lex Fridman (03:17.320)

So putting it in context, enslaved people,

Glenn Loury (03:22.000)

four million or so African descended enslaved people,

Lex Fridman (03:28.280)

how do they become citizens?

Lex Fridman (03:31.120)

How do they become in this status of subjugation

Lex Fridman (03:38.280)

and domination and stigma and exclusion?

Lex Fridman (03:42.240)

How do they become citizens?

Lex Fridman (03:44.320)

It seems to me that that's the heart of it.

Glenn Loury (03:48.840)

The equality that King is talking about

Lex Fridman (03:53.120)

is an equality of status as members of the nation

Glenn Loury (03:59.220)

as free and equal citizens within the republic.

Lex Fridman (04:04.660)

Now, I think it's really important to understand

Glenn Loury (04:07.500)

that slavery was not merely a legal order,

Lex Fridman (04:13.880)

but it was also a social system

Glenn Loury (04:18.320)

that had the symbolism attached to it.

Lex Fridman (04:22.840)

They had a big journey to make

Glenn Loury (04:25.640)

from their subjugated status as serfs, as landless people,

Lex Fridman (04:30.840)

as uneducated, unfit for citizenship really

Glenn Loury (04:33.820)

in the minds of many.

Lex Fridman (04:35.680)

So I think that's what in 1963, 100 years later,

Glenn Loury (04:42.160)

that King is appealing to this idea

Lex Fridman (04:45.040)

that when Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence

Glenn Loury (04:50.840)

writes these words, all men are created equal

Lex Fridman (04:54.480)

and endowed by their creator

Glenn Loury (04:56.040)

with certain inalienable rights,

Lex Fridman (04:59.000)

Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, didn't have in mind

Glenn Loury (05:05.680)

when he wrote those words, the people who were slaves.

Lex Fridman (05:10.200)

But by the time you get to 1963,

Glenn Loury (05:13.400)

King is invoking this idea, all men,

Lex Fridman (05:19.120)

and of course he means all persons.

Glenn Loury (05:20.560)

He doesn't only mean men.

Lex Fridman (05:23.240)

He means men and women are created equal.

Glenn Loury (05:25.520)

He wants this idea to be embraced by the country

Lex Fridman (05:30.840)

in reference to the descendants of the African slaves.

Glenn Loury (05:35.040)

That's his dream.

Lex Fridman (05:35.880)

That's his idea.

Glenn Loury (05:37.160)

The legacy of slavery would be erased,

Lex Fridman (05:41.160)

that the position of African Americans would be equalized

Glenn Loury (05:46.480)

within the political community,

Lex Fridman (05:48.980)

which is the United States of America.

Glenn Loury (05:51.760)

That's my sense of it in any case.

Lex Fridman (05:53.680)

So on a very basic level, the worth of a human being

Glenn Loury (05:58.320)

is equal.

Lex Fridman (05:59.160)

It's just literally the worth of a human being.

Lex Fridman (06:02.640)

So I mentioned to you offline

Lex Fridman (06:03.920)

that I came from the Soviet Union.

Glenn Loury (06:06.840)

My grandfather fought in World War II,

Lex Fridman (06:10.920)

and for Hitler, the worth of a Slavic person

Glenn Loury (06:17.640)

as they were captured, there's different numbers,

Lex Fridman (06:21.100)

but it's in the hundreds to one German

Glenn Loury (06:24.000)

in terms of the value of the person to the great Germany.

Lex Fridman (06:30.080)

So he wanted Germany to expand

Lex Fridman (06:32.040)

and conquer a large part of the world.

Lex Fridman (06:34.400)

And within that future world, that Third Reich,

Glenn Loury (06:37.680)

the worth of a Russian or a Slavic person

Lex Fridman (06:41.880)

is one hundredth or one thousandth of a German person,

Glenn Loury (06:45.920)

of a pure German person.

Lex Fridman (06:47.680)

So that has to do with not some kind of public policy

Glenn Loury (06:51.140)

or politics or all that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (06:53.400)

It has to do with the basic worth of a human being.

Lex Fridman (06:56.440)

And that's what Dr. King is speaking to,

Lex Fridman (06:58.760)

that all people on some kind of deep level

Glenn Loury (07:03.560)

are worth the same.

Lex Fridman (07:07.040)

If you're somehow weighing the value of a person,

Glenn Loury (07:10.800)

we're equal in that basic fundamental worth.

Lex Fridman (07:14.760)

Yeah, I think that's correct.

Glenn Loury (07:16.480)

I think that's very well said.

Lex Fridman (07:18.480)

I don't know that he had in mind

Glenn Loury (07:20.000)

the position of Slavic people in Central Europe

Lex Fridman (07:23.600)

in the middle of the 20th century,

Glenn Loury (07:25.280)

or the first part of the 20th century, King.

Lex Fridman (07:27.880)

I don't know that he had that in mind.

Glenn Loury (07:29.400)

He might well have done.

Lex Fridman (07:31.440)

But certainly that's the idea.

Lex Fridman (07:34.120)

So you don't think he was really thinking

Lex Fridman (07:35.960)

about this particular civil rights struggle

Lex Fridman (07:40.480)

and the particular struggle

Lex Fridman (07:42.800)

against the backdrop of the history of slavery in America

Lex Fridman (07:47.880)

and thinking about African Americans.

Lex Fridman (07:49.600)

He wasn't thinking about the basic,

Glenn Loury (07:52.160)

he wasn't speaking to the basic worth of all human beings.

Lex Fridman (07:55.160)

No, I don't mean to say that.

Glenn Loury (07:56.860)

The speech in Washington.

Lex Fridman (08:00.320)

The dream.

Glenn Loury (08:01.160)

In 1963 at that march was within the context

Lex Fridman (08:07.320)

of the United States.

Lex Fridman (08:08.400)

And it was within the context of the civil rights movement.

Lex Fridman (08:12.360)

There was a movement that was going on.

Glenn Loury (08:15.760)

He was an actor in a political drama that was American

Lex Fridman (08:21.640)

that had to do with the fight over equal rights

Glenn Loury (08:26.400)

for voting, for housing, for employment,

Lex Fridman (08:30.960)

for citizenship of blacks in America.

Lex Fridman (08:34.720)

But King was informed, I think,

Lex Fridman (08:37.680)

by a much broader Christian ethic of the equality

Glenn Loury (08:43.120)

of all persons.

Lex Fridman (08:44.480)

I mean, he gets killed in 1968.

Glenn Loury (08:48.120)

The five years after that speech in Washington,

Lex Fridman (08:51.560)

he spends developing his worldview

Lex Fridman (08:57.280)

and the things that he had to say, for example,

Lex Fridman (09:01.200)

about the war in Southeast Asia that was going on

Glenn Loury (09:03.980)

at that time made appeals to universal principles

Lex Fridman (09:10.600)

of equality.

Glenn Loury (09:11.440)

He was a pacifist to some degree.

Lex Fridman (09:13.760)

He was against war.

Glenn Loury (09:15.640)

He was a socialist to some degree.

Lex Fridman (09:18.680)

He might not have worn that label publicly,

Lex Fridman (09:22.000)

but he believed in a decent society

Lex Fridman (09:25.060)

where the poor would not go untended,

Glenn Loury (09:27.760)

where healthcare would be available to people who needed it

Lex Fridman (09:30.860)

and this kind of thing.

Glenn Loury (09:32.640)

A humanitarian who saw that the value of a life

Lex Fridman (09:37.040)

was not dependent upon the color of the skin,

Glenn Loury (09:40.300)

upon the native mother tongue that might be spoken,

Lex Fridman (09:44.760)

upon whether male or female.

Glenn Loury (09:48.360)

All persons are created equal.

Lex Fridman (09:50.040)

This is very much the ethic of Martin Luther King,

Glenn Loury (09:55.240)

on my understanding.

Lex Fridman (09:56.860)

Broadly speaking, what do you learn about human nature

Lex Fridman (10:01.440)

by looking at the history of slavery in America?

Lex Fridman (10:07.560)

Oh my.

Lex Fridman (10:08.400)

So what does that tell you about people?

Lex Fridman (10:10.640)

Well, I think of two things right off the top of my head.

Glenn Loury (10:15.080)

One is about the capacity of people

Lex Fridman (10:22.480)

for looking the other way in the face of

Glenn Loury (10:27.480)

unethical and morally profoundly problematic practice.

Lex Fridman (10:38.040)

So, I mean, slavery was controversial.

Glenn Loury (10:40.000)

It was controversial going all the way back

Lex Fridman (10:42.680)

to the founding of the United States of America.

Glenn Loury (10:44.720)

The country was founded on a compromise

Lex Fridman (10:47.840)

where half of the country thought that slavery was abhorrent

Lex Fridman (10:52.840)

and would not have had it countenanced in the Constitution.

Lex Fridman (10:59.280)

The other half of the country were steeped

Glenn Loury (11:02.120)

in the dependence on the labor of these African captives

Lex Fridman (11:07.160)

and their descendants.

Glenn Loury (11:08.740)

The economy depended upon it.

Lex Fridman (11:10.440)

They owned them as property.

Glenn Loury (11:11.760)

That was their wealth.

Lex Fridman (11:12.760)

Their wealth was invested to some degree

Glenn Loury (11:14.660)

in the value of these human beings.

Lex Fridman (11:17.680)

And in order for the United States to come together

Glenn Loury (11:20.440)

as a confederation of the several colonies,

Lex Fridman (11:24.220)

there had to be a compromise made.

Lex Fridman (11:25.940)

And it was made where slavery was allowed to persist

Lex Fridman (11:31.480)

and the people who were against it

Glenn Loury (11:35.500)

or who thought it morally problematic

Lex Fridman (11:38.880)

were able to countenance the practice

Glenn Loury (11:42.120)

in the Southern states where slavery flourished.

Lex Fridman (11:45.540)

And that went on for 75 years

Glenn Loury (11:47.500)

after the founding of the country

Lex Fridman (11:49.640)

until the crisis of the late 1850s

Glenn Loury (11:53.320)

that led to the Civil War

Lex Fridman (11:55.240)

and ultimately to the emancipation.

Lex Fridman (11:56.920)

So one thing I think about human nature

Lex Fridman (12:00.200)

from the fact of slavery is that the ability of people

Glenn Loury (12:05.680)

to live with terrible, morally questionable practices

Lex Fridman (12:11.440)

and have that as a part of their institutions.

Glenn Loury (12:14.360)

It took a movement, a massive movement of abolitionists

Lex Fridman (12:20.360)

struggling against slavery for the better part of a century

Glenn Loury (12:24.880)

before that practice could be eradicated.

Lex Fridman (12:29.880)

But the other thing about human nature that I see

Glenn Loury (12:34.400)

is the ability of people to sustain their humanity

Lex Fridman (12:39.280)

under the most awful, oppressive conditions.

Glenn Loury (12:44.880)

The enslaved persons, the slaves and their children,

Lex Fridman (12:49.800)

I mean, they were chattel,

Glenn Loury (12:51.480)

they were bought and sold like horses or cattle.

Lex Fridman (12:56.320)

And yet their humanity was not destroyed by that.

Lex Fridman (13:01.920)

And they were able to sustain their dignity to some degree

Lex Fridman (13:06.920)

in such a manner that once emancipation finally did arrive,

Glenn Loury (13:11.160)

the freedmen and women, the persons who had been enslaved

Lex Fridman (13:16.160)

and who were set free were able to over the following decades

Glenn Loury (13:25.800)

build a foundation for the development of African Americans

Lex Fridman (13:30.800)

within the context of American society

Glenn Loury (13:34.040)

that eventually culminated in the civil rights movement

Lex Fridman (13:39.400)

of the middle of the 20th century

Lex Fridman (13:41.900)

and has led us into the present day.

Lex Fridman (13:45.720)

So, you know, human nature can countenance awful evil

Lex Fridman (13:53.340)

but human nature can also survive

Lex Fridman (13:55.560)

in the face of terrible evil.

Glenn Loury (13:58.240)

That's what I take from slavery.

Lex Fridman (14:00.320)

That survival, that flame can burn even when the world

Glenn Loury (14:05.960)

around it tries to put it out.

Lex Fridman (14:07.960)

There's still a little flame of human consciousness,

Glenn Loury (14:11.640)

of spirit, of culture, of whatever the hell that is

Lex Fridman (14:16.560)

that makes humans flourish and makes humans beautiful

Glenn Loury (14:19.640)

that lives on.

Lex Fridman (14:21.080)

That's very well said.

Glenn Loury (14:22.000)

Yeah, I think you put it very well.

Lex Fridman (14:23.980)

There's gotta be some poetic way of expressing that.

Glenn Loury (14:28.060)

Oh.

Lex Fridman (14:29.740)

Leave it to the poets.

Lex Fridman (14:31.820)

What about the people that look the other way?

Lex Fridman (14:34.420)

How many people do you think, just regular people,

Lex Fridman (14:37.980)

knew that something is, this is wrong?

Lex Fridman (14:40.740)

Or do people through generations convince themselves,

Glenn Loury (14:44.700)

most people, most regular people,

Lex Fridman (14:46.820)

convince themselves that there's nothing wrong?

Glenn Loury (14:52.540)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (14:53.620)

I ask this question because I wonder

Lex Fridman (14:55.700)

what we're looking the other way on today also.

Lex Fridman (14:59.780)

Because you have to ask yourself these difficult questions

Glenn Loury (15:05.260)

of assuming we're the same people we were back then

Lex Fridman (15:10.860)

then we can be flawed in that same kind of way.

Glenn Loury (15:14.180)

We can look the other way just as others have in history.

Lex Fridman (15:20.100)

Yeah, you spoke of the European context

Lex Fridman (15:24.060)

and of the Nazis and certainly a lot of people

Lex Fridman (15:28.820)

had to be looking the other way when the massive crimes

Glenn Loury (15:33.020)

that were committed by that regime were being undertaken.

Lex Fridman (15:36.060)

I mean, railroad cars full of human beings

Glenn Loury (15:39.940)

being taken off to be slaughtered or to be worked to death

Lex Fridman (15:43.620)

in labor camps or to be gassed, et cetera.

Glenn Loury (15:48.180)

A lot of people had to know about what was going on

Lex Fridman (15:50.760)

and look the other way or enthusiastically supported

Glenn Loury (15:55.900)

the persecution of the Jews and the gypsies and so on.

Lex Fridman (16:01.900)

And I don't know, I wasn't around in 1840.

Glenn Loury (16:05.860)

My sense of the matter is that like many practices

Lex Fridman (16:09.980)

that are unjust, most people thought

Glenn Loury (16:12.660)

that's just the way it is.

Lex Fridman (16:14.060)

I mean, that's the world that they inherited.

Glenn Loury (16:16.580)

They were not moralists, they were not revolutionaries.

Lex Fridman (16:20.260)

They just wanted to go along.

Glenn Loury (16:22.980)

Some people might've been troubled by it

Lex Fridman (16:24.680)

but thought there's nothing that can be done.

Glenn Loury (16:26.460)

Some people might've thought, well,

Lex Fridman (16:28.340)

they're these black Africans, they're not really like us

Lex Fridman (16:32.780)

and they are lucky to be here.

Lex Fridman (16:35.160)

If they were in Africa, they'd be worse off still.

Glenn Loury (16:38.460)

Some people might've thought that.

Lex Fridman (16:40.820)

Some people might've been disturbed

Lex Fridman (16:42.220)

but not been able to see what it is

Lex Fridman (16:44.940)

that they could do about it.

Glenn Loury (16:46.380)

They might've thought, oh, this is disgusting.

Lex Fridman (16:51.460)

This is not something I would wanna have anything to do with

Lex Fridman (16:56.180)

but not knowing whether there's any practical way

Lex Fridman (17:01.540)

of opposing it, that's why you need a movement.

Glenn Loury (17:05.540)

You need for the people who are troubled by the practice

Lex Fridman (17:10.620)

to know that there are others like themselves

Glenn Loury (17:12.980)

equally troubled and as they gather together,

Lex Fridman (17:16.820)

collectively, they can exert their influence.

Glenn Loury (17:20.740)

I mean, debates about the wrongness of slavery,

Lex Fridman (17:24.580)

as I say, go all the way back to the founding of the country.

Glenn Loury (17:28.580)

There were abolitionists and there were people

Lex Fridman (17:30.740)

who opposed the compromise that led to the framing documents

Lex Fridman (17:36.940)

and institutions that created the United States of America,

Lex Fridman (17:40.780)

opposed the countenancing of slavery in that situation.

Lex Fridman (17:47.540)

But it took a while before that could come to a head

Lex Fridman (17:52.260)

and produce the crisis which ultimately led

Glenn Loury (17:56.660)

to the eradication of slavery.

Lex Fridman (17:59.480)

I would note that slavery is not unique to the United States.

Glenn Loury (18:05.380)

It's not unique to the Western Hemisphere.

Lex Fridman (18:08.560)

The enslavement of people, the trafficking in human chattel

Glenn Loury (18:14.380)

is something that one sees on a global basis,

Lex Fridman (18:18.100)

one sees it going all the way back to antiquity.

Lex Fridman (18:22.200)

So we might ask, how is it that people finally came

Lex Fridman (18:26.860)

to turn their backs and eradicate the practice?

Glenn Loury (18:30.260)

That might be the thing worth really trying to understand

Lex Fridman (18:33.860)

because the practice itself is,

Glenn Loury (18:36.060)

there's a wonderful book by the sociologist

Lex Fridman (18:40.540)

Orlando Patterson called Slavery and Social Death

Glenn Loury (18:46.100)

that was published in 1982, which is a comprehensive history

Lex Fridman (18:51.940)

and social analysis of the institution of slavery

Glenn Loury (18:55.700)

over 2,500 years, going back to the classical Greek

Lex Fridman (19:00.700)

and Roman civilizations, finding slavery in Africa

Glenn Loury (19:06.500)

amongst Africans, finding slavery in the Middle East,

Lex Fridman (19:09.980)

finding slavery in the Far East,

Glenn Loury (19:11.800)

finding slavery in South Asia, the enslavement of people,

Lex Fridman (19:16.580)

the practice of taking someone as a captive in war

Lex Fridman (19:19.640)

and then instead of killing them, which you could do,

Lex Fridman (19:22.500)

making them into your property was very, very widespread

Glenn Loury (19:27.500)

in human culture.

Lex Fridman (19:30.580)

So I mean, I'd like to make this point sometimes

Glenn Loury (19:33.340)

when people are talking about how wrong slavery was

Lex Fridman (19:36.420)

and I agree without any question

Glenn Loury (19:40.020)

that the practice was profoundly morally problematic,

Lex Fridman (19:46.380)

but I'd like to make the point that given how wrong it was,

Glenn Loury (19:50.400)

think about how impressive was the accomplishment

Lex Fridman (19:55.400)

of the eradication of slavery.

Glenn Loury (19:58.080)

Now, that was something, I mean, there were 600,000 dead

Lex Fridman (1:00:03.360)

of a kind of pre modern society

Glenn Loury (1:00:06.900)

where we built real structure

Lex Fridman (1:00:11.360)

on the basis of such superficial difference.

Glenn Loury (1:00:14.880)

A person could say that.

Lex Fridman (1:00:17.160)

On the other hand, I am a black American.

Glenn Loury (1:00:20.640)

I mean, that's part of my identity,

Lex Fridman (1:00:22.960)

that's part of my heritage,

Glenn Loury (1:00:25.580)

it's part of the stories that I tell myself

Lex Fridman (1:00:29.460)

about who my people are.

Lex Fridman (1:00:33.000)

Why do I need a people?

Lex Fridman (1:00:34.320)

Why do I need a narrative of descent

Lex Fridman (1:00:37.400)

in which I affiliate with a racially defined people?

Lex Fridman (1:00:44.240)

Do I really need that?

Glenn Loury (1:00:45.760)

I mean, I think that's an important question.

Lex Fridman (1:00:48.120)

In fact, this is a confession, think of myself as black.

Glenn Loury (1:00:52.440)

I could think of myself as simply human.

Lex Fridman (1:00:55.080)

I could not identify specifically as black.

Lex Fridman (1:00:59.000)

I could say, my eyes are brown too, so what?

Lex Fridman (1:01:03.200)

I'm a brown eye?

Glenn Loury (1:01:04.480)

I mean, I'm gonna invent a group based on my eye color.

Lex Fridman (1:01:08.280)

I weigh 290 pounds.

Glenn Loury (1:01:10.400)

I'm gonna have a body size group.

Lex Fridman (1:01:12.520)

I'm a plus 200 and that's quote, who I am, close quote.

Glenn Loury (1:01:17.440)

I don't do that.

Lex Fridman (1:01:18.840)

I came from Chicago.

Glenn Loury (1:01:20.040)

Yes, I do have a certain sense of affinity with my hometown.

Lex Fridman (1:01:23.760)

I'm a Chicago born person,

Lex Fridman (1:01:26.320)

but frankly, I haven't lived in Chicago since 1979.

Lex Fridman (1:01:30.720)

That's a long time.

Glenn Loury (1:01:33.240)

I wear my Chicago origins very, very lightly.

Lex Fridman (1:01:37.640)

I would not go to war with someone from Cleveland

Glenn Loury (1:01:40.160)

or St. Louis and fight to the death

Lex Fridman (1:01:43.000)

with that St. Louis person or that Cleveland person

Glenn Loury (1:01:46.860)

based upon the fact that we come from different cities.

Lex Fridman (1:01:49.720)

And you have even abandoned in your heart

Glenn Loury (1:01:52.120)

the Chicago Bulls.

Lex Fridman (1:01:53.600)

There's some Chicago that's still in me, I suppose,

Lex Fridman (1:01:56.000)

but it's not very deep.

Lex Fridman (1:01:57.600)

It's not quote, who I am anymore.

Lex Fridman (1:02:00.400)

And I'm wondering, here I'm trying to pose the question,

Lex Fridman (1:02:02.880)

why is it that being a descendant of African slaves

Lex Fridman (1:02:06.080)

should be who I am?

Lex Fridman (1:02:06.920)

So there's some answers.

Glenn Loury (1:02:09.040)

One answer is people will look at me

Lex Fridman (1:02:12.880)

and deal with me differently based upon what they see.

Glenn Loury (1:02:17.000)

I don't have control over that.

Lex Fridman (1:02:19.120)

I'm going to be perceived as a member of a group,

Glenn Loury (1:02:22.400)

whether or not I elect to affiliate myself

Lex Fridman (1:02:24.960)

with that group or not.

Glenn Loury (1:02:27.840)

Therefore, I need to be mindful of the fact

Lex Fridman (1:02:31.620)

that regardless of what my internal orientation is,

Glenn Loury (1:02:37.200)

the world will perceive me in a particular way

Lex Fridman (1:02:40.400)

and will perceive me differently

Glenn Loury (1:02:42.480)

based upon the color of my skin.

Lex Fridman (1:02:44.120)

So a police officer who stops me at two o clock

Glenn Loury (1:02:46.960)

in the morning because my tail light is out

Lex Fridman (1:02:50.440)

and ask me for my automobile registration

Lex Fridman (1:02:54.120)

and I reach quickly to the glove compartment

Lex Fridman (1:02:57.040)

to get my registration.

Lex Fridman (1:02:59.120)

And the police officer says, show me your hands.

Lex Fridman (1:03:01.760)

And I don't quite hear what he says

Glenn Loury (1:03:03.880)

or I ignore what he says as I'm getting my document

Lex Fridman (1:03:07.640)

out of my glove compartment.

Lex Fridman (1:03:08.760)

But the police officer thinks because I have not responded

Lex Fridman (1:03:11.880)

to his demand to show my hands

Glenn Loury (1:03:13.440)

that I might be reaching for a weapon.

Lex Fridman (1:03:15.600)

And the police officer sees that I'm black

Lex Fridman (1:03:18.400)

and fears that the likelihood that I might have a weapon

Lex Fridman (1:03:22.040)

is higher because in that town at that time,

Glenn Loury (1:03:25.020)

a lot of the people who get stopped with weapons in their car

Lex Fridman (1:03:28.320)

happen to be black and male and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:03:32.700)

And he pulls his weapon and he discharges it

Lex Fridman (1:03:34.960)

and I'm bleeding out there and I'm dead now.

Lex Fridman (1:03:37.560)

And all of that is a possibility that's very real

Lex Fridman (1:03:40.200)

and it's based upon the color of my skin.

Lex Fridman (1:03:42.440)

And therefore, when he stops me,

Lex Fridman (1:03:44.960)

I keep my hands on the steering wheel

Lex Fridman (1:03:46.920)

and I don't go to the glove compartment.

Lex Fridman (1:03:49.000)

And I'm fearful of the fact that he might mistake me

Glenn Loury (1:03:52.640)

for a criminal, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:03:54.800)

Or I walk into a high end store, clothing store.

Glenn Loury (1:03:58.200)

I see you're nicely dressed there, Lex.

Lex Fridman (1:04:00.520)

I'm not, but that's okay.

Glenn Loury (1:04:02.960)

I do have some good clothes at home.

Lex Fridman (1:04:04.920)

I just didn't wear them here today.

Lex Fridman (1:04:07.060)

But you know what I mean.

Lex Fridman (1:04:07.900)

And the salesman in the clothing store

Glenn Loury (1:04:11.560)

either treats me like an old friend

Lex Fridman (1:04:15.920)

and is warm and welcoming.

Lex Fridman (1:04:17.880)

And what can I do for you, sir?

Lex Fridman (1:04:19.480)

And let me show you this and that.

Lex Fridman (1:04:20.960)

And what are you looking for?

Lex Fridman (1:04:22.320)

Because he thinks I'm gonna spend $1,000 there that day

Lex Fridman (1:04:24.640)

and he's gonna get a 5% commission or whatever it is.

Lex Fridman (1:04:27.480)

And he either does that or he ignores me

Lex Fridman (1:04:31.200)

and looks at me with suspicion

Lex Fridman (1:04:32.520)

and thinks I might be trying to shoplift something

Glenn Loury (1:04:34.480)

or thinks I'm only gonna spend $50 and not $500

Lex Fridman (1:04:38.360)

and therefore I'm not worth his time.

Lex Fridman (1:04:40.440)

And I'm aware of the fact

Lex Fridman (1:04:42.240)

that when I go into the clothing store,

Glenn Loury (1:04:44.680)

especially the high end places where I can buy a good suit

Lex Fridman (1:04:47.960)

or buy some really good dress shirts or slacks

Glenn Loury (1:04:51.760)

that fit me well and so on,

Lex Fridman (1:04:54.200)

I'm aware of the fact that I may not be taken seriously

Glenn Loury (1:04:57.460)

by the salesman based upon the fact

Lex Fridman (1:05:00.200)

that he's looking at me and he sees a black person.

Lex Fridman (1:05:03.120)

And therefore I dress up

Lex Fridman (1:05:06.080)

before I go out to buy clothes to get,

Glenn Loury (1:05:09.200)

cause I wanna present myself

Lex Fridman (1:05:10.520)

as not someone who just walked in off the street,

Lex Fridman (1:05:13.200)

but as one of those black people

Lex Fridman (1:05:14.580)

who is really prepared to spend some money in the store

Lex Fridman (1:05:17.380)

so that I can be treated with respect.

Lex Fridman (1:05:18.880)

And I have to carry the burden such as it is

Glenn Loury (1:05:23.780)

of knowing that I need to earn the being taken seriously

Lex Fridman (1:05:28.780)

being taken seriously by overcoming the suppositions

Glenn Loury (1:05:33.000)

that people may have about me

Lex Fridman (1:05:34.720)

based upon the color of my skin, something like that.

Glenn Loury (1:05:39.400)

Or I ask myself, what am I gonna teach my children

Lex Fridman (1:05:43.800)

about who they are and where they come from?

Lex Fridman (1:05:46.440)

What stories am I gonna tell them about their ancestors?

Lex Fridman (1:05:50.520)

Who are their ancestors?

Glenn Loury (1:05:52.360)

Every African American has European ancestors.

Lex Fridman (1:05:55.900)

Every black person in the United States of America,

Glenn Loury (1:05:59.520)

I think that I can say that almost without exception.

Lex Fridman (1:06:02.660)

We could go to 23andMe and look at the DNA.

Glenn Loury (1:06:05.920)

They have European ancestors, they're not purely African.

Lex Fridman (1:06:10.080)

That's a fact and that's a consequence

Glenn Loury (1:06:12.280)

of the experience of African descended people

Lex Fridman (1:06:16.160)

because it's a mixed population.

Glenn Loury (1:06:18.800)

My name is Lowry, spelled L O U R Y

Lex Fridman (1:06:21.880)

but pronounced as if it were L O W E R Y.

Lex Fridman (1:06:25.320)

And I gather if you trace the history of that name

Lex Fridman (1:06:29.000)

that it's Scottish.

Lex Fridman (1:06:32.560)

So somewhere back then.

Lex Fridman (1:06:33.400)

So you could identify as a Scot.

Glenn Loury (1:06:35.880)

Well, or I could claim some Scottish descent, but I don't.

Lex Fridman (1:06:40.400)

I don't know who those ancestors are.

Lex Fridman (1:06:42.160)

And frankly, I don't know who my enslaved ancestors are.

Lex Fridman (1:06:47.080)

I can't trace my family history back very far

Glenn Loury (1:06:51.080)

into the 19th century.

Lex Fridman (1:06:53.160)

So what stories do I tell my children about who we are,

Lex Fridman (1:06:57.960)

about who their ancestors are?

Lex Fridman (1:06:59.360)

I mean, I wanna tell my children some story

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.920)

and that story is gonna be colored, quote unquote,

Lex Fridman (1:07:05.320)

by my race.

Lex Fridman (1:07:08.120)

So even though it is superficial

Lex Fridman (1:07:11.800)

and in an ideal world, you might think,

Lex Fridman (1:07:14.280)

why would human beings, I mean, I read science fiction.

Lex Fridman (1:07:17.980)

So there's this Chinese writer, Chixin Liu is his name.

Glenn Loury (1:07:21.480)

I might not pronounce it exactly right, C I X I N L I U.

Lex Fridman (1:07:26.320)

Chixin Liu, he has a trilogy of The Three Body Problem,

Glenn Loury (1:07:31.600)

The Dark Forest, and Death's End.

Lex Fridman (1:07:35.840)

Those are the three books of Chixin Liu's trilogy

Glenn Loury (1:07:38.800)

about how Trisolaris, which is another star system

Lex Fridman (1:07:42.920)

within a few light years of the solar system,

Lex Fridman (1:07:46.560)

and Earth get into a conflict.

Lex Fridman (1:07:49.500)

And when the Trisolaris come down to dominate Earth,

Glenn Loury (1:07:55.480)

suddenly all of these differences between the Chinese

Lex Fridman (1:07:59.420)

and the North Americans and the Europeans

Lex Fridman (1:08:02.440)

and the Africans and the South Asians

Lex Fridman (1:08:05.720)

become kind of insignificant because after all,

Glenn Loury (1:08:08.160)

the Trisolaris with their advanced civilization

Lex Fridman (1:08:11.320)

whose star system is dying,

Glenn Loury (1:08:14.120)

have their eyes on the solar system,

Lex Fridman (1:08:15.940)

which has a planet, the third rock from the sun

Glenn Loury (1:08:18.040)

that is pretty habitable and the difference between us

Lex Fridman (1:08:21.560)

become pretty insignificant.

Lex Fridman (1:08:24.600)

So we shouldn't need for an invasion

Lex Fridman (1:08:29.140)

by extraterrestrial beings to have to happen

Glenn Loury (1:08:34.580)

before we would recognize the common humanity

Lex Fridman (1:08:38.160)

that we all share that is profound and is deep.

Glenn Loury (1:08:43.120)

We all descend in effect from the same ancestral population

Lex Fridman (1:08:47.360)

of Homo sapiens who walked out of East Africa eons ago

Lex Fridman (1:08:52.200)

and have survived amongst all of the different possible

Lex Fridman (1:08:56.880)

variations of species and whatnot,

Glenn Loury (1:08:58.960)

of humanoid population, the Homo sapiens have flourished,

Lex Fridman (1:09:02.680)

the others have died out and here we are

Lex Fridman (1:09:05.720)

and we can just look at the genetic endowments

Lex Fridman (1:09:09.160)

that characterize our biological essence

Lex Fridman (1:09:12.580)

and we can see that we are quote unquote

Lex Fridman (1:09:15.600)

the same beneath the skin

Lex Fridman (1:09:16.800)

and yet we end up freighting so much weight

Lex Fridman (1:09:21.680)

onto these superficial differences.

Lex Fridman (1:09:23.560)

So I can see both sides of the issue is what I'm saying.

Lex Fridman (1:09:27.660)

I can see the argument race is an irrelevancy

Glenn Loury (1:09:31.440)

because at the end of the day, deep down it is.

Lex Fridman (1:09:35.560)

But I can also see the argument

Glenn Loury (1:09:37.440)

that I hold on to racial identity because A,

Lex Fridman (1:09:41.580)

my racial presentation colors how other people deal with me

Lex Fridman (1:09:46.460)

but B, because everybody needs a story.

Lex Fridman (1:09:51.560)

Everybody needs an account.

Glenn Loury (1:09:52.600)

You tell me you're Jewish.

Lex Fridman (1:09:53.640)

I mean, I don't know how deep that is.

Glenn Loury (1:09:55.440)

I don't know how genetically profound that is.

Lex Fridman (1:09:57.800)

I do know that it's a culturally profound identity

Glenn Loury (1:10:03.600)

for a lot of people based upon maybe some of the same

Lex Fridman (1:10:08.160)

kind of forces that I'm talking about.

Glenn Loury (1:10:09.700)

A, they won't let you not be Jewish.

Lex Fridman (1:10:12.880)

You could say you're not Jewish

Lex Fridman (1:10:14.320)

but when Hitler is rounding people up,

Lex Fridman (1:10:16.840)

what you say doesn't have a whole lot to do

Glenn Loury (1:10:18.680)

with what the Gestapo was about.

Lex Fridman (1:10:22.120)

And B, you need to tell your children a story.

Glenn Loury (1:10:25.760)

That's the fascinating thing about this tribalism

Lex Fridman (1:10:28.360)

that you spoke about that we form tribes as humans

Glenn Loury (1:10:35.600)

throughout human history, form tribes

Lex Fridman (1:10:37.520)

and have directed hate toward other tribes

Lex Fridman (1:10:41.480)

and sometimes violence and destruction.

Lex Fridman (1:10:43.960)

And yet tribalism allows you to tell a story

Glenn Loury (1:10:47.920)

to your children, allows you to grow a culture.

Lex Fridman (1:10:51.400)

There's something about defining yourself

Glenn Loury (1:10:53.080)

within a particular tribe that allows you

Lex Fridman (1:10:55.680)

to have a tradition.

Glenn Loury (1:10:59.080)

You have an article that you wrote

Lex Fridman (1:11:02.240)

called The Case for Black Patriotism.

Glenn Loury (1:11:05.440)

Oh yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:11:08.060)

So I should also say it's so interesting

Glenn Loury (1:11:10.780)

because for me personally, I feel, identify as,

Lex Fridman (1:11:18.640)

believe I am an American.

Lex Fridman (1:11:21.000)

And yet within the American umbrella,

Lex Fridman (1:11:24.160)

it feels that there's a longing for other tribes.

Glenn Loury (1:11:27.120)

You mentioned Jewish but what I honestly feel is,

Lex Fridman (1:11:31.560)

I mean a lot of it is humor and culture and so on

Glenn Loury (1:11:34.440)

is Russian and Ukrainian because that's where I come from.

Lex Fridman (1:11:38.960)

That's where my family is from.

Glenn Loury (1:11:40.600)

You know, there's like stereotypical things

Lex Fridman (1:11:43.280)

that are funny, humorous type of thing about Russians

Glenn Loury (1:11:48.360)

that's showing no emotion, good at chess and math,

Lex Fridman (1:11:53.720)

into wrestling, drinking vodka.

Glenn Loury (1:11:57.040)

I mean, there's literally every single stereotype.

Lex Fridman (1:11:59.640)

I'm in the embodiment of that.

Lex Fridman (1:12:01.400)

So there's a, you celebrate that in certain kinds of ways.

Lex Fridman (1:12:04.200)

There's a tradition there within the American umbrella

Lex Fridman (1:12:07.240)

and some of it is humor, some of it is little quirks

Lex Fridman (1:12:12.560)

of culture but now with the war in Russia and Ukraine,

Glenn Loury (1:12:15.120)

interestingly enough, even that little thing,

Lex Fridman (1:12:18.560)

it becomes also a source of negative tribalism.

Lex Fridman (1:12:22.960)

But anyway, that context aside, what is black patriotism

Lex Fridman (1:12:29.760)

and why do you feel?

Glenn Loury (1:12:31.760)

I mean, I'm speaking in an article called

Lex Fridman (1:12:35.120)

The Case for Black Patriotism in a Particular Context

Lex Fridman (1:12:40.940)

and what I'm saying basically is very simple.

Lex Fridman (1:12:45.440)

I'm saying we are African Americans

Lex Fridman (1:12:49.240)

and the emphasis should be on the American.

Lex Fridman (1:12:54.080)

I actually don't even much care

Glenn Loury (1:12:56.280)

for the framing African American

Lex Fridman (1:13:00.560)

but I'm not gonna fight with people about it.

Glenn Loury (1:13:02.900)

It's, I don't think it's worth fighting about.

Lex Fridman (1:13:05.880)

That's not how, I would just say we're Americans

Glenn Loury (1:13:08.440)

or if you want, we're black Americans.

Lex Fridman (1:13:11.080)

We're certainly not African.

Glenn Loury (1:13:13.720)

That is the African American population

Lex Fridman (1:13:16.400)

is a population of people who come into existence

Glenn Loury (1:13:20.700)

here in North America through the cauldron of slavery.

Lex Fridman (1:13:26.040)

There are also immigrants, immigrants from East Africa,

Glenn Loury (1:13:28.880)

immigrants from West Africa, immigrants from Southern Africa,

Lex Fridman (1:13:33.040)

immigrants from the Caribbean who descend

Glenn Loury (1:13:35.760)

from an ancestral population which is African.

Lex Fridman (1:13:40.800)

The history of the world since 1500 is a history

Glenn Loury (1:13:43.760)

in which people of African descent are scattered

Lex Fridman (1:13:48.040)

because of slavery throughout the Western hemisphere.

Lex Fridman (1:13:53.360)

And so here we are.

Lex Fridman (1:13:55.400)

But the institution of slavery ended in 1863

Glenn Loury (1:14:02.880)

in the United States.

Lex Fridman (1:14:06.460)

The struggle that we started out talking about

Glenn Loury (1:14:10.360)

which gave rise to Martin Luther King giving that speech

Lex Fridman (1:14:14.420)

that you say is the greatest speech in American history

Lex Fridman (1:14:16.880)

and I'm not gonna argue with you about that,

Lex Fridman (1:14:19.520)

happened right here in the United States.

Lex Fridman (1:14:21.520)

We are, what is the United States?

Lex Fridman (1:14:24.440)

The United States is a nation of immigrants.

Glenn Loury (1:14:27.480)

The population of the North American continent

Lex Fridman (1:14:30.080)

was sparsely populated by an indigenous population

Glenn Loury (1:14:32.840)

which was destroyed in conquest by a European population

Lex Fridman (1:14:40.120)

that settled here in North America and appropriated the land

Lex Fridman (1:14:45.120)

and have built a civilization here

Lex Fridman (1:14:47.560)

which has been peopled by a large influx of immigrants

Glenn Loury (1:14:51.440)

of individuals from Europe, Irish and Italian

Lex Fridman (1:14:56.520)

and Greek and Slavic and Jewish, Russian Jews

Glenn Loury (1:15:02.040)

coming in large numbers and so on

Lex Fridman (1:15:04.240)

and wave after wave after wave of immigration,

Glenn Loury (1:15:07.560)

Asian, Latin American population of people

Lex Fridman (1:15:11.000)

who have come to reside here in the United States

Lex Fridman (1:15:13.840)

and we black Americans who descend from slaves.

Lex Fridman (1:15:17.400)

We African Americans who descend from slaves.

Lex Fridman (1:15:20.040)

So here we are.

Lex Fridman (1:15:21.560)

This is a great nation.

Glenn Loury (1:15:23.460)

I mean, this is a monumentally significant political force

Lex Fridman (1:15:30.360)

which is the United States of America founded in 1776, 1787

Glenn Loury (1:15:37.640)

fought a war of independence from the British,

Lex Fridman (1:15:41.020)

established a republic which is a confederation

Glenn Loury (1:15:46.760)

of these independent colonies

Lex Fridman (1:15:48.360)

which has grown into now the 50 states

Glenn Loury (1:15:50.680)

of the United States of America, continental nation.

Lex Fridman (1:15:54.040)

The richest and most powerful nation on the planet

Glenn Loury (1:15:59.680)

with massive influence throughout the world

Lex Fridman (1:16:02.520)

for good and for ill.

Glenn Loury (1:16:04.880)

That's who we are, I wanna say to black people.

Lex Fridman (1:16:08.840)

There is no other home for us.

Glenn Loury (1:16:11.680)

This fantasy of we being a people apart

Lex Fridman (1:16:15.440)

back in the day when I was coming along in the 1960s,

Glenn Loury (1:16:20.080)

there was something called

Lex Fridman (1:16:20.920)

the Republic of New Africa Movement

Lex Fridman (1:16:23.800)

and they wanted some states in the South

Lex Fridman (1:16:26.320)

given over to black people

Lex Fridman (1:16:27.520)

and we were gonna have our own country.

Lex Fridman (1:16:31.240)

And that's a joke, it's a fantasy.

Glenn Loury (1:16:33.400)

It's a mythic, unbalanced,

Lex Fridman (1:16:37.360)

the unrealistic fanciful politics.

Glenn Loury (1:16:46.840)

It's not a serious politics.

Lex Fridman (1:16:48.200)

We're Americans, we're not going anywhere here.

Glenn Loury (1:16:51.880)

The idea that, and I wanna say this

Lex Fridman (1:16:54.560)

in a number of different registers,

Glenn Loury (1:16:56.860)

I wanna say first of all,

Lex Fridman (1:16:58.800)

we need to make peace with the fact

Glenn Loury (1:17:00.560)

that that's who we are and that's where we are.

Lex Fridman (1:17:03.300)

So nobody is coming, the world court

Glenn Loury (1:17:07.760)

is not gonna litigate our disputes.

Lex Fridman (1:17:10.160)

The United Nations is not gonna set up a desk

Glenn Loury (1:17:13.120)

for people of African descent who reside in North America.

Lex Fridman (1:17:17.300)

We have to work out whatever our concerns are

Glenn Loury (1:17:20.240)

with our fellow Americans right here

Lex Fridman (1:17:22.260)

within the context of American politics.

Glenn Loury (1:17:25.280)

That means compromise.

Lex Fridman (1:17:27.380)

That means looking for a framework for political expression

Glenn Loury (1:17:32.380)

which is broader than our racial identity, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:17:36.420)

So I wanna say that.

Lex Fridman (1:17:38.260)

But I also wanna say there's no reason

Lex Fridman (1:17:39.660)

to apologize for this.

Glenn Loury (1:17:40.860)

There's something positive to affirm.

Lex Fridman (1:17:42.980)

I take on this question about slavery in brief,

Glenn Loury (1:17:47.500)

because in fact, slavery was awful and it was wrong

Lex Fridman (1:17:50.620)

and it was on the backs of the enslaved Africans

Lex Fridman (1:17:53.900)

and it had consequences that have endured

Lex Fridman (1:17:58.140)

long after the termination of the thing.

Lex Fridman (1:18:00.060)

But I also wanna say, look at what has happened

Lex Fridman (1:18:03.020)

in the last 150 years for African Americans.

Lex Fridman (1:18:07.040)

And I wanna say, look at the vitality

Lex Fridman (1:18:10.660)

of the institutions here in the United States of America,

Glenn Loury (1:18:13.900)

of the Democratic Republic of the United States of America.

Lex Fridman (1:18:18.740)

Again, not perfect, which are malleable enough,

Glenn Loury (1:18:22.580)

these institutions to allow for the transformation

Lex Fridman (1:18:26.860)

of the status of African Americans

Glenn Loury (1:18:28.420)

such as has occurred since the end of slavery.

Lex Fridman (1:18:33.140)

And I wanna say there's a lot to celebrate in that.

Lex Fridman (1:18:35.980)

So this is our country.

Lex Fridman (1:18:39.180)

We are full members of the polity.

Glenn Loury (1:18:44.340)

We have burdens and responsibilities

Lex Fridman (1:18:48.460)

as well as privileges that are associated

Glenn Loury (1:18:50.780)

with our membership in this Republic.

Lex Fridman (1:18:52.880)

That does not mean that we should not fight

Glenn Loury (1:18:55.860)

for what we believe to be right,

Lex Fridman (1:18:57.480)

although we are not one voice here, we black Americans.

Glenn Loury (1:19:01.740)

It does not mean that we should not protest things

Lex Fridman (1:19:04.340)

that we think are deserving of protest.

Lex Fridman (1:19:07.260)

But I wanna say, it does mean that we should not reject

Lex Fridman (1:19:11.500)

the framework that we're operating in

Glenn Loury (1:19:14.620)

because we basically don't have any alternative.

Lex Fridman (1:19:17.340)

And because when viewed in full context,

Glenn Loury (1:19:20.720)

a noble and profoundly significant achievement,

Lex Fridman (1:19:25.060)

the United States of America and a beacon

Glenn Loury (1:19:28.300)

to the rest of the world, I don't wanna go off

Lex Fridman (1:19:30.740)

in some starry eyed kind of jingoistic celebration

Glenn Loury (1:19:34.700)

of America as the greatest civilization, et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:19:38.180)

But this great nation is our nation.

Lex Fridman (1:19:44.900)

And I think we do best by beginning,

Lex Fridman (1:19:47.740)

we black Americans do best by beginning,

Glenn Loury (1:19:49.780)

this is my argument in the piece,

Lex Fridman (1:19:51.520)

by beginning from a framework which accepts that fact

Lex Fridman (1:19:56.900)

and then builds on it.

Lex Fridman (1:20:00.260)

So black patriotism is, if not exactly the same,

Glenn Loury (1:20:07.300)

rhymes, echoes American patriotism.

Lex Fridman (1:20:12.180)

So a black American is first and foremost an American.

Glenn Loury (1:20:16.020)

Yeah, a black American is first and foremost an American

Lex Fridman (1:20:20.180)

and it's a good thing too.

Glenn Loury (1:20:24.500)

Let me return to the question of Dr. King

Lex Fridman (1:20:30.180)

and another powerful, impactful individual, Malcolm X,

Glenn Loury (1:20:35.820)

to ask you the question.

Lex Fridman (1:20:37.820)

Well, first, people often perhaps inaccurately portray them

Glenn Loury (1:20:43.540)

as representing two different ideals, approaches

Lex Fridman (1:20:48.540)

to the fight for civil rights.

Lex Fridman (1:20:52.020)

So Martin Luther King for the nonviolent approach,

Lex Fridman (1:20:56.320)

the peacemaker, and Malcolm X is the by any means necessary.

Lex Fridman (1:21:03.480)

What do you think about this distinction?

Lex Fridman (1:21:05.300)

And broadly speaking, in black patriotism,

Glenn Loury (1:21:08.420)

in the future of black Americans in the 21st century,

Lex Fridman (1:21:12.560)

what is the role of anger?

Lex Fridman (1:21:15.060)

What is the role of protest?

Lex Fridman (1:21:18.260)

Even violence encompasses a lot of things,

Lex Fridman (1:21:22.140)

but just aggression and the fuck the man,

Lex Fridman (1:21:26.740)

we're going to have to make change, force change.

Glenn Loury (1:21:31.720)

Okay, I think you put your finger on something

Lex Fridman (1:21:33.880)

really important in the context of,

Glenn Loury (1:21:35.740)

we were just discussing my black patriotism essay.

Lex Fridman (1:21:41.380)

It's not the only story.

Glenn Loury (1:21:44.720)

There is another story and Malcolm X is someone

Lex Fridman (1:21:47.940)

you identify and his memory lives on

Lex Fridman (1:21:52.580)

and is powerfully influential.

Lex Fridman (1:21:55.620)

And I think you see it in Black Lives Matter,

Lex Fridman (1:21:58.460)

and I think you see it in the protest and rioting

Lex Fridman (1:22:01.960)

and so forth that has broken out periodically

Glenn Loury (1:22:04.900)

going all the way back to the 1960s and before,

Lex Fridman (1:22:07.020)

but especially since the 1960s.

Glenn Loury (1:22:11.860)

You saw it in Los Angeles in 1992,

Lex Fridman (1:22:14.600)

the Rodney King civil disturbances

Glenn Loury (1:22:16.580)

that broke out there and the balled up fist,

Lex Fridman (1:22:21.400)

the radical afrocentric rejection

Glenn Loury (1:22:27.660)

of the American story that Martin Luther King,

Lex Fridman (1:22:31.700)

he believed in.

Glenn Loury (1:22:32.540)

He believed in a magnificent promissory note.

Lex Fridman (1:22:35.300)

And a lot of people are rolling their eyes

Lex Fridman (1:22:37.900)

and saying, as you say,

Lex Fridman (1:22:39.620)

fuck the man, magnificent promissory note.

Glenn Loury (1:22:43.180)

I mean, just get your knee off my neck.

Lex Fridman (1:22:46.100)

That's what you can do for me.

Glenn Loury (1:22:47.220)

Don't ask me to believe in your BS

Lex Fridman (1:22:49.260)

about some magnificent promissory note,

Glenn Loury (1:22:51.220)

some founding fathers who were all slave owners anyway.

Lex Fridman (1:22:54.660)

I mean, just get your knee off my neck.

Glenn Loury (1:22:57.780)

Now, I can relate to that.

Lex Fridman (1:23:00.700)

As I mentioned, I grew up in Chicago in the 1950s

Lex Fridman (1:23:05.060)

and the 1960s.

Lex Fridman (1:23:06.220)

I remember Malcolm X, I mean, literally in real time.

Glenn Loury (1:23:10.160)

I remember when he was murdered in 1965

Lex Fridman (1:23:14.300)

in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem,

Glenn Loury (1:23:18.100)

in Manhattan, in New York City.

Lex Fridman (1:23:23.220)

I remember my uncle, I was raised in a house

Glenn Loury (1:23:26.300)

where my aunt and uncle were the master of the house.

Lex Fridman (1:23:29.820)

And my mother and my sister and I lived

Glenn Loury (1:23:31.660)

in a small apartment upstairs in the back

Lex Fridman (1:23:35.240)

of this big house that my successful aunt and uncle owned.

Lex Fridman (1:23:40.960)

And my uncle was a small businessman,

Lex Fridman (1:23:42.660)

a barber and a tradesman.

Glenn Loury (1:23:46.020)

He was a hustler.

Lex Fridman (1:23:47.580)

I mean, legally, he did what he had to do to make money.

Glenn Loury (1:23:50.500)

He was a very enterprising, not especially well educated,

Lex Fridman (1:23:53.840)

but a very intelligent and disciplined

Lex Fridman (1:23:58.540)

and resourceful provider for his family,

Lex Fridman (1:24:01.640)

which included myself, my sister,

Lex Fridman (1:24:04.500)

and my mother in their household.

Lex Fridman (1:24:07.060)

And we called him Uncle Mooney

Glenn Loury (1:24:08.500)

because he had moon shaped eyes

Lex Fridman (1:24:10.940)

that protruded and were round.

Glenn Loury (1:24:12.380)

Uncle Mooney, James Ellis was his name.

Lex Fridman (1:24:16.980)

Uncle Mooney, James Ellis Lee was my Uncle Mooney.

Lex Fridman (1:24:21.720)

But I'm saying all that to say this.

Lex Fridman (1:24:24.380)

He admired the nation of Islam.

Glenn Loury (1:24:27.060)

I mean, King and Malcolm X,

Lex Fridman (1:24:29.900)

Martin King and Malcolm X differed

Glenn Loury (1:24:31.660)

along a number of different dimensions.

Lex Fridman (1:24:33.040)

Malcolm X was a Muslim.

Lex Fridman (1:24:35.380)

And Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian minister.

Lex Fridman (1:24:39.340)

My Uncle Mooney didn't have any time

Glenn Loury (1:24:41.940)

for these Christian ministers.

Lex Fridman (1:24:44.140)

He thought that was the white man's religion.

Lex Fridman (1:24:47.780)

And back in that day, you'd go into a black church

Lex Fridman (1:24:50.700)

and you'd see a portrait of Jesus

Lex Fridman (1:24:53.340)

and he'd be blonde hair, blue eyed.

Lex Fridman (1:24:57.300)

He didn't even look like a Mediterranean.

Glenn Loury (1:25:00.620)

I mean, he didn't look like somebody who came from Palestine.

Lex Fridman (1:25:03.620)

I mean, he looked like somebody who came

Glenn Loury (1:25:05.660)

from Northern Europe or something like that,

Lex Fridman (1:25:07.180)

the picture of Jesus.

Lex Fridman (1:25:08.020)

And my Uncle Mooney rejected that whole thing.

Lex Fridman (1:25:11.020)

He would be damned if he was gonna bend his knee

Glenn Loury (1:25:13.980)

to some white Jesus.

Lex Fridman (1:25:17.700)

But he was not a Muslim either.

Lex Fridman (1:25:19.640)

But he respected the Muslims.

Lex Fridman (1:25:22.060)

He brought home their newspaper.

Glenn Loury (1:25:24.060)

It was called Muhammad Speaks.

Lex Fridman (1:25:25.500)

This is the nation of Islam,

Glenn Loury (1:25:28.100)

which is the black Muslim movement

Lex Fridman (1:25:30.720)

founded in American cities in Detroit and then Chicago,

Glenn Loury (1:25:36.320)

going back to the early middle 20th century

Lex Fridman (1:25:40.380)

and growing into a very significant movement

Glenn Loury (1:25:43.800)

that had a lot of influence,

Lex Fridman (1:25:44.980)

Louis Farrakhan and controversial figure

Glenn Loury (1:25:48.700)

descends from this movement.

Lex Fridman (1:25:50.020)

It has fractured now

Lex Fridman (1:25:53.180)

and has the major part of the legacy of the black Muslims

Lex Fridman (1:25:59.940)

has assimilated itself into Islam proper.

Glenn Loury (1:26:04.220)

Malcolm X made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina

Lex Fridman (1:26:08.780)

and came back with a very different vision

Glenn Loury (1:26:11.220)

about what it meant to be a Muslim

Lex Fridman (1:26:12.880)

and understood himself to be a part of the large tradition

Lex Fridman (1:26:16.700)

and religious culture of Islam that has a global reach.

Lex Fridman (1:26:20.600)

And he had a different vision when he came back from that.

Glenn Loury (1:26:23.940)

Some people say that's why he was killed and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:26:27.300)

I don't know.

Glenn Loury (1:26:28.500)

I certainly find that to be plausible

Lex Fridman (1:26:30.340)

that he became the constituted threat to the sect,

Glenn Loury (1:26:34.220)

which was the black Muslims

Lex Fridman (1:26:36.740)

and had to be dealt with.

Glenn Loury (1:26:40.420)

I don't know if we'll ever know the full story on that.

Lex Fridman (1:26:43.300)

But anyway, what I'm trying to say is

Glenn Loury (1:26:45.620)

the black Muslims were there, Malcolm X was there.

Lex Fridman (1:26:47.780)

And in my experience,

Glenn Loury (1:26:51.140)

they constituted a counterpoint to the position of king,

Lex Fridman (1:26:55.780)

which depended on a kind of respect

Glenn Loury (1:26:59.660)

for the best of the tradition of American democracy,

Lex Fridman (1:27:04.660)

appealing to the better nature of our oppressors,

Glenn Loury (1:27:09.100)

live up to the full meaning of our creed.

Lex Fridman (1:27:12.420)

I mean, these are words that he would use.

Glenn Loury (1:27:14.660)

A magnificent promissory note is what he would think of

Lex Fridman (1:27:18.220)

as the declaration of independence

Lex Fridman (1:27:20.020)

and the legacy of Abraham Lincoln,

Lex Fridman (1:27:23.220)

a unfulfilled ideal.

Lex Fridman (1:27:25.660)

And the black Muslims were like, fuck that.

Lex Fridman (1:27:30.660)

We're gonna take care of our own.

Glenn Loury (1:27:32.460)

We're gonna build our own schools.

Lex Fridman (1:27:35.780)

We're gonna build our own businesses.

Glenn Loury (1:27:37.860)

We're not waiting for the white man to do anything.

Lex Fridman (1:27:41.140)

Get your knee off my neck and get out of my way

Lex Fridman (1:27:43.140)

and let me take care of my own.

Lex Fridman (1:27:44.980)

And my uncle respected that.

Glenn Loury (1:27:46.300)

He respected the straight back,

Lex Fridman (1:27:48.740)

the stand up straight with your shoulders back.

Glenn Loury (1:27:51.220)

That's a Jordan Peterson.

Lex Fridman (1:27:52.060)

But I mean, that was way before Jordan Peterson,

Lex Fridman (1:27:54.820)

but that was his philosophy.

Lex Fridman (1:27:56.140)

Stand up straight, but just raise your children.

Glenn Loury (1:27:58.980)

Don't be depending upon welfare.

Lex Fridman (1:28:01.060)

You're taking welfare from the white man.

Glenn Loury (1:28:03.740)

You need to get busy.

Lex Fridman (1:28:04.740)

You need to educate yourself.

Glenn Loury (1:28:06.380)

You need to clean up your act.

Lex Fridman (1:28:07.500)

Put down the fried chicken because it's gonna kill you.

Glenn Loury (1:28:11.180)

My uncle Mooney loved this book that Elijah Muhammad,

Lex Fridman (1:28:16.180)

they called him the honorable Elijah Muhammad,

Glenn Loury (1:28:19.100)

who was the founder and the leader of the nation of Islam.

Lex Fridman (1:28:22.220)

He had a book and all the book said was,

Glenn Loury (1:28:25.660)

be smart, eat green vegetables, don't eat fried food.

Lex Fridman (1:28:29.620)

Don't eat pork.

Glenn Loury (1:28:32.620)

They're Muslims.

Lex Fridman (1:28:33.780)

Don't eat pork and take responsibility for your diet

Lex Fridman (1:28:38.380)

and be healthy.

Lex Fridman (1:28:39.820)

And don't be putting a whole lot of pills into your body.

Glenn Loury (1:28:43.420)

You don't need to do that

Lex Fridman (1:28:44.300)

if you just get control of your diet

Lex Fridman (1:28:45.940)

and you eat properly.

Lex Fridman (1:28:47.820)

My uncle loves this idea of responsibility for self

Lex Fridman (1:28:53.660)

and a determination to build.

Lex Fridman (1:28:56.500)

He respected that in the Muslims,

Glenn Loury (1:29:00.060)

even if he didn't buy the religious part of it.

Lex Fridman (1:29:03.740)

And so, and by the way, when my uncle died in 1983,

Glenn Loury (1:29:13.220)

he left me a bequest.

Lex Fridman (1:29:16.180)

It wasn't money, unfortunately.

Glenn Loury (1:29:18.940)

It was his complete collection

Lex Fridman (1:29:21.700)

of the recorded speeches of Malcolm X.

Lex Fridman (1:29:26.700)

And I have these albums.

Lex Fridman (1:29:28.220)

These are 33 and a third LPs.

Glenn Loury (1:29:30.180)

There's six of them.

Lex Fridman (1:29:32.580)

And I have a complete collection,

Glenn Loury (1:29:34.700)

as best as my uncle could assemble,

Lex Fridman (1:29:36.140)

of the recorded speeches of Malcolm X.

Lex Fridman (1:29:37.580)

Now, why did he do that?

Lex Fridman (1:29:39.220)

He did that because he did not want me to forget.

Glenn Loury (1:29:42.300)

Don't be dependent upon the white man.

Lex Fridman (1:29:43.940)

Build your own.

Glenn Loury (1:29:45.580)

Stand up straight with your shoulders back.

Lex Fridman (1:29:48.060)

Proud black man, take care of your business.

Glenn Loury (1:29:51.540)

Take care of your children.

Lex Fridman (1:29:53.540)

Pick up the trash in front of your house.

Glenn Loury (1:29:56.380)

Get busy.

Lex Fridman (1:29:58.860)

This was this philosophy.

Lex Fridman (1:30:02.260)

So violence now, that's another story.

Lex Fridman (1:30:05.620)

I mean, Malcolm X would say,

Glenn Loury (1:30:08.500)

we're gonna defend ourselves.

Lex Fridman (1:30:09.820)

You're gonna mess with us,

Glenn Loury (1:30:11.380)

you racist Ku Klux Klan or whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:30:14.300)

We're gonna arm ourselves and we're gonna fight you back.

Glenn Loury (1:30:17.500)

You racist police who are oppressing

Lex Fridman (1:30:22.020)

and persecuting and abusing our people,

Glenn Loury (1:30:24.620)

well, you better be ready

Lex Fridman (1:30:27.060)

because we're gonna fight you back.

Lex Fridman (1:30:29.820)

And that too was the spirit that my uncle,

Lex Fridman (1:30:33.380)

that was a kind of attitude, a kind of posture.

Glenn Loury (1:30:36.140)

My uncle was not a radical.

Lex Fridman (1:30:37.300)

He was a businessman, but he respected this idea.

Glenn Loury (1:30:41.820)

You take your life in your own hands when you mess with us

Lex Fridman (1:30:45.940)

because we're prepared to defend ourselves.

Lex Fridman (1:30:48.500)

So that blood runs in you too.

Lex Fridman (1:30:50.300)

That thread is, when you write about black patriotism,

Glenn Loury (1:30:53.500)

that thread is there too.

Lex Fridman (1:30:55.420)

It's like you embody both the ideal that we're all American,

Lex Fridman (1:31:00.900)

but also that there is this oppressive history.

Lex Fridman (1:31:05.420)

There is the powerful that are manipulating you,

Glenn Loury (1:31:10.420)

that are oppressing you, and you can't just wait around

Lex Fridman (1:31:16.300)

for things to fix themselves.

Glenn Loury (1:31:18.420)

You have to take action.

Lex Fridman (1:31:20.940)

You have to take things into your own hands.

Lex Fridman (1:31:22.820)

And sometimes that means being angry.

Lex Fridman (1:31:24.660)

Sometimes that means being violent.

Glenn Loury (1:31:26.820)

That's there too.

Lex Fridman (1:31:28.940)

Yeah, it's there, but here, and the but is,

Glenn Loury (1:31:34.260)

I don't, me today, Glenn Loury in 2022,

Lex Fridman (1:31:37.580)

think that that is the answer.

Glenn Loury (1:31:40.460)

I don't think that violent rebellion gets us anywhere

Lex Fridman (1:31:45.260)

at the end of the day.

Glenn Loury (1:31:46.700)

I think we're past that.

Lex Fridman (1:31:49.900)

There aren't Knight Rider, Ku Klux Klan,

Glenn Loury (1:31:52.860)

people breaking down your door and dragging you away.

Lex Fridman (1:31:55.740)

There are not nooses thrown over a tree limb

Glenn Loury (1:32:01.980)

where you hang somebody from the tree

Lex Fridman (1:32:03.580)

because they whistled at a white woman

Glenn Loury (1:32:05.420)

or they got too much property in your community

Lex Fridman (1:32:07.980)

and you became, they were uppity Negroes

Lex Fridman (1:32:10.260)

and whatnot like that.

Lex Fridman (1:32:11.100)

That is a thing of the past in America

Glenn Loury (1:32:14.860)

that the situation is no longer the one

Lex Fridman (1:32:19.380)

that requires that kind of violent reaction

Lex Fridman (1:32:23.140)

and that there is, if we look at the net effect

Lex Fridman (1:32:27.660)

of the so called rebellions in American cities,

Glenn Loury (1:32:33.220)

they're negative.

Lex Fridman (1:32:34.860)

The George Floyd protests, which became violent

Lex Fridman (1:32:40.620)

and arsonists in the aftermath of civil disturbance

Lex Fridman (1:32:44.180)

and whatnot in the summer of 2020,

Glenn Loury (1:32:47.100)

I think set back the program for African Americans.

Lex Fridman (1:32:50.940)

I don't think it advanced it.

Glenn Loury (1:32:53.700)

I think there are things to be concerned about,

Lex Fridman (1:32:56.980)

schools that are not working,

Glenn Loury (1:32:59.180)

police that are not respecting citizens and so forth.

Lex Fridman (1:33:02.620)

But I think that those are things

Glenn Loury (1:33:04.980)

that affect white Americans as well

Lex Fridman (1:33:07.660)

and that the way to ultimately correct those things

Glenn Loury (1:33:13.700)

is to make alliance and associate oneself

Lex Fridman (1:33:19.860)

with Americans who are concerned to change these things.

Lex Fridman (1:33:23.300)

And I don't think it's properly framed

Lex Fridman (1:33:25.820)

as a racial problem.

Glenn Loury (1:33:29.020)

I certainly don't think that violent rebellion

Lex Fridman (1:33:36.780)

gets us anywhere.

Glenn Loury (1:33:39.260)

I get the historical salience of that posture

Lex Fridman (1:33:45.060)

and it made a lot of sense

Glenn Loury (1:33:47.180)

in the early and the mid 20th century.

Lex Fridman (1:33:49.980)

I don't think it makes very much sense at all

Glenn Loury (1:33:51.780)

in the early 21st century.

Lex Fridman (1:33:55.100)

Well, thank you for allowing me for a brief moment

Glenn Loury (1:33:57.620)

to try to channel your Uncle Mooney

Lex Fridman (1:33:59.860)

and maybe Malcolm X in this conversation

Glenn Loury (1:34:02.300)

as we look forward to the 21st century.

Lex Fridman (1:34:05.300)

You mentioned that in part,

Glenn Loury (1:34:09.380)

you're troubled by the term African American.

Lex Fridman (1:34:13.020)

So words are funny things until they're not.

Lex Fridman (1:34:18.020)

So let me ask you about what I think

Lex Fridman (1:34:20.860)

is one of the most powerful and controversial words

Glenn Loury (1:34:22.900)

in the English language, the N word.

Lex Fridman (1:34:25.580)

So this is a word that I can't say

Glenn Loury (1:34:31.780)

that only certain people have the right to say.

Lex Fridman (1:34:34.860)

I have a friend, Joe Rogan, who has,

Lex Fridman (1:34:40.900)

what would you say, there was mass pushback

Lex Fridman (1:34:43.980)

or highlighting of the fact that he didn't just say N word

Lex Fridman (1:34:48.180)

but said the full word many times

Lex Fridman (1:34:51.980)

throughout his conversations

Glenn Loury (1:34:53.740)

when referring to, in a meta way,

Lex Fridman (1:34:58.340)

about the power of words,

Glenn Loury (1:35:00.540)

especially when related to certain comedians

Lex Fridman (1:35:03.460)

using those words.

Glenn Loury (1:35:06.420)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:35:07.260)

What do you think about this word?

Lex Fridman (1:35:10.380)

Is it empowering?

Lex Fridman (1:35:12.700)

Is it destructive?

Lex Fridman (1:35:16.660)

What is it?

Lex Fridman (1:35:17.580)

What does it mean for race in America?

Lex Fridman (1:35:20.700)

What does it mean that people like Joe Rogan

Lex Fridman (1:35:24.500)

were essentially, there's an attack to cancel him

Lex Fridman (1:35:29.740)

for using the word?

Lex Fridman (1:35:31.180)

Just as a scholar of human nature,

Lex Fridman (1:35:33.820)

what do you think about this whole thing?

Lex Fridman (1:35:36.140)

This is a phenomenon that interests me.

Glenn Loury (1:35:39.140)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:35:40.580)

The N word, nigger, I can say it because I'm black.

Lex Fridman (1:35:44.860)

But I mean, I can also say it because I like hip hop.

Lex Fridman (1:35:48.060)

And when I listen to hip hop, I hear the word all the time.

Glenn Loury (1:35:50.540)

These niggas ain't, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:35:52.420)

you better watch out for these, et cetera.

Glenn Loury (1:35:55.620)

I heard the word constantly as I was growing up

Lex Fridman (1:35:59.020)

as a boy and a young man in Chicago.

Glenn Loury (1:36:01.700)

Niggas ain't shit.

Lex Fridman (1:36:03.340)

That was said.

Glenn Loury (1:36:04.780)

That was, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:36:06.420)

and that could be a reflection of some kind of pathology

Glenn Loury (1:36:10.380)

within the African American community of self hatred

Lex Fridman (1:36:13.060)

and so forth.

Glenn Loury (1:36:14.140)

It could be, or it could just be a colloquial linguistic way.

Lex Fridman (1:36:18.340)

I mean, I assume other groups also have their various,

Glenn Loury (1:36:23.220)

I don't know how the Irish talk about their Irish brothers

Lex Fridman (1:36:26.500)

and, you know, whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:36:27.740)

And I don't know how the Jews talk about

Lex Fridman (1:36:30.660)

the Jewish brothers and whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:36:33.260)

But black people, when talking about other black people

Lex Fridman (1:36:35.820)

use the N word all the time.

Glenn Loury (1:36:40.420)

My nigger, N I G G A, you know, my nigger.

Lex Fridman (1:36:45.220)

That is a term of endearment.

Glenn Loury (1:36:49.220)

My friend, Randall Kennedy,

Lex Fridman (1:36:52.740)

the law professor at Harvard University

Glenn Loury (1:36:55.220)

has a book called Nigger.

Lex Fridman (1:36:57.460)

And he uses the word in the title of the book,

Glenn Loury (1:37:00.260)

the history of a strange history of a provocative word.

Lex Fridman (1:37:04.860)

At some point there's a subtitle,

Lex Fridman (1:37:06.060)

but the title of the book is N I G G E R colon.

Lex Fridman (1:37:11.060)

And then he has a subtitle.

Glenn Loury (1:37:15.460)

I think, of course, the use of the word as a slur

Lex Fridman (1:37:20.380)

and an insult, which is a part of the history

Glenn Loury (1:37:26.100)

of black people in the United States,

Lex Fridman (1:37:27.860)

the use of the word by the Southern racist segregationist,

Glenn Loury (1:37:31.820)

we don't want no niggers up in here.

Lex Fridman (1:37:33.340)

Yall, you know, niggers have no place in my restaurant,

Glenn Loury (1:37:36.100)

in my store, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:37:37.940)

That's meant to be an insult.

Glenn Loury (1:37:40.140)

It's an insult to people.

Lex Fridman (1:37:41.260)

It's a fighting word.

Glenn Loury (1:37:42.180)

It's a way that you say that to somebody.

Lex Fridman (1:37:44.940)

It's a invitation for conflict.

Glenn Loury (1:37:49.020)

That said, what is it that about this particular word

Lex Fridman (1:37:52.820)

and also the asymmetry of it,

Glenn Loury (1:37:55.180)

that do you think it's empowering

Lex Fridman (1:37:57.500)

to the black community to own a word?

Glenn Loury (1:38:04.060)

My honest answer to you is I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:38:06.020)

I don't fully understand it.

Glenn Loury (1:38:08.180)

It has become symbolic in a way.

Lex Fridman (1:38:10.860)

And the policing of the use of the word,

Glenn Loury (1:38:13.300)

I can say it, but white people can't say it.

Lex Fridman (1:38:15.380)

I can say it.

Glenn Loury (1:38:16.220)

I'm not a racist.

Lex Fridman (1:38:17.060)

I'm not a self hating black.

Glenn Loury (1:38:19.020)

I'm just speaking the language of colloquial English

Lex Fridman (1:38:24.300)

that has emerged amongst African Americans

Glenn Loury (1:38:26.660)

in which that word plays a big role.

Lex Fridman (1:38:29.140)

But the prohibition on its use by others.

Lex Fridman (1:38:32.060)

And of course, in the Joe Rogan case,

Lex Fridman (1:38:34.660)

it wasn't as if he was calling anybody an N word.

Glenn Loury (1:38:38.620)

He was simply pointing out that people had said stuff

Lex Fridman (1:38:42.100)

in which the N word was a part of what they said.

Glenn Loury (1:38:44.860)

Now, he did make the statement about,

Lex Fridman (1:38:47.820)

how did he put it?

Glenn Loury (1:38:48.660)

The planet of the apes,

Lex Fridman (1:38:49.500)

that one of the offensive things that he said,

Glenn Loury (1:38:52.980)

he walked into a room,

Lex Fridman (1:38:53.820)

there's a bunch of black guys standing around.

Glenn Loury (1:38:55.220)

He says, like planet of the apes.

Lex Fridman (1:38:57.100)

He said it's like Africa, planet of the apes.

Glenn Loury (1:38:59.580)

Yeah, he should have been a little bit more careful.

Lex Fridman (1:39:03.060)

That was an insult.

Glenn Loury (1:39:05.260)

That was something that if you say that

Lex Fridman (1:39:11.260)

and people are offended,

Glenn Loury (1:39:12.100)

they have a right to be offended.

Lex Fridman (1:39:13.180)

And if you didn't mean to offend them,

Glenn Loury (1:39:14.580)

you can apologize.

Lex Fridman (1:39:15.420)

And he did apologize.

Glenn Loury (1:39:16.380)

I accept his apology.

Lex Fridman (1:39:17.940)

Joe's okay with me as far as that goes.

Glenn Loury (1:39:21.500)

In fact, John McWhorter and I at the podcast that I do,

Lex Fridman (1:39:25.380)

The Glenn Show, had a conversation,

Glenn Loury (1:39:26.940)

part of which touched on the Joe Rogan phenomenon.

Lex Fridman (1:39:29.300)

And we concluded he didn't really do anything wrong.

Glenn Loury (1:39:31.580)

I mean, you can like or you can hate him or whatever,

Lex Fridman (1:39:34.740)

but the idea that he's a racist is kind of ridiculous.

Lex Fridman (1:39:37.980)

So frankly, I mean, if that's your test

Lex Fridman (1:39:43.140)

of what constitutes a racist, the utterance of the word,

Glenn Loury (1:39:47.780)

then it's kind of silly as far as I'm concerned.

Lex Fridman (1:39:53.180)

What do you think about the rigorous testing of people

Lex Fridman (1:39:58.340)

to the degree they're racist or not?

Lex Fridman (1:40:00.900)

The accusation of racism being a way to attack,

Glenn Loury (1:40:06.500)

to bully, to divide.

Lex Fridman (1:40:10.740)

So what are the pros and cons of that once again?

Glenn Loury (1:40:13.180)

Because it does reveal the assholes and the racists,

Lex Fridman (1:40:16.060)

but it can hurt people who are not.

Glenn Loury (1:40:20.420)

Well, I think we have a history here in the United States

Lex Fridman (1:40:26.020)

of blatant racism that goes back a long way.

Lex Fridman (1:40:30.660)

And that has present day echoes.

Lex Fridman (1:40:33.980)

So there are racists.

Glenn Loury (1:40:35.860)

I mean, there are people who will look and see,

Lex Fridman (1:40:38.340)

oh, those are black people.

Glenn Loury (1:40:39.540)

They're patronizing this business.

Lex Fridman (1:40:40.820)

I don't wanna patronize this business anymore.

Glenn Loury (1:40:42.860)

Who if their daughter or their son is dating somebody

Lex Fridman (1:40:45.700)

that is black, they will say,

Glenn Loury (1:40:47.660)

I really wish you wouldn't do that.

Lex Fridman (1:40:48.980)

I mean, why are you hanging out with those people?

Lex Fridman (1:40:50.620)

Don't you know who they are?

Lex Fridman (1:40:52.460)

There are people, there are racists, okay?

Glenn Loury (1:40:54.780)

There are black racists.

Lex Fridman (1:40:56.420)

That is black people who see somebody who's white

Lex Fridman (1:40:59.580)

and who then invoke a whole lot of stereotypes or whatever,

Lex Fridman (1:41:03.260)

or have a visceral dislike based upon nothing

Glenn Loury (1:41:09.420)

other than the color of the person's skin.

Lex Fridman (1:41:11.060)

Such people exist.

Glenn Loury (1:41:12.180)

Racism is a real thing, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (1:41:15.020)

On the other hand, I think this,

Glenn Loury (1:41:18.780)

throwing around the accusation of racism,

Lex Fridman (1:41:22.820)

a college professor is teaching a course.

Glenn Loury (1:41:25.740)

He says in the context of teaching the course

Lex Fridman (1:41:29.060)

that the underrepresentation of blacks

Glenn Loury (1:41:33.860)

in physics program at this university

Lex Fridman (1:41:38.060)

is because they score lower on the test than other groups

Lex Fridman (1:41:41.900)

and they're not qualified.

Lex Fridman (1:41:44.340)

So say the professor gives a lecture and he says,

Glenn Loury (1:41:48.740)

we don't have more blacks in the physics department

Lex Fridman (1:41:50.660)

at this university because there are not enough

Glenn Loury (1:41:52.340)

qualified blacks.

Lex Fridman (1:41:54.180)

Somebody in the classroom who hears that,

Glenn Loury (1:41:57.140)

a black student, objects.

Lex Fridman (1:41:59.300)

He's a racist, okay?

Glenn Loury (1:42:03.100)

That's a power move.

Lex Fridman (1:42:05.460)

It's a move to try to control the conversation.

Glenn Loury (1:42:10.020)

It's not an argument, it's an epithet.

Lex Fridman (1:42:13.740)

You've said that a person who has a particular idea

Glenn Loury (1:42:16.540)

that you don't like, maybe that idea is,

Lex Fridman (1:42:18.460)

I'm against affirmative action, I think it's unfair.

Glenn Loury (1:42:21.220)

I was just with Dorian Abbott.

Lex Fridman (1:42:24.620)

Dorian Abbott is a scientist at the University of Chicago

Glenn Loury (1:42:30.060)

who published a piece in Newsweek magazine

Lex Fridman (1:42:33.860)

in which he said that he thought affirmative action

Lex Fridman (1:42:36.620)

and racial balancing was unethical.

Lex Fridman (1:42:42.540)

He was invited to give a lecture at MIT,

Glenn Loury (1:42:44.660)

a very distinguished lecture in his field

Lex Fridman (1:42:46.420)

based on planetary science.

Glenn Loury (1:42:49.180)

I don't know exactly what it is.

Lex Fridman (1:42:51.340)

I'm not a scientist.

Lex Fridman (1:42:53.580)

But in any case, because he had said

Lex Fridman (1:42:58.220)

that he didn't like affirmative action

Lex Fridman (1:42:59.820)

and he thought affirmative action was racist,

Lex Fridman (1:43:01.620)

that's basically what he said.

Lex Fridman (1:43:02.740)

Why are we looking at people based upon their race

Lex Fridman (1:43:05.140)

and decide we should just do it on the merit?

Glenn Loury (1:43:07.260)

That was his position.

Lex Fridman (1:43:08.980)

Now, people protesting at the university

Glenn Loury (1:43:12.220)

where he was invited, MIT, saying that he's a racist

Lex Fridman (1:43:15.940)

because he had that opinion.

Glenn Loury (1:43:17.500)

He gets disinvited.

Lex Fridman (1:43:19.020)

Charles Murray is a popular social science writer

Glenn Loury (1:43:24.980)

who is famous for his book about IQ, The Bell Curve,

Lex Fridman (1:43:29.700)

one chapter of which chronicles the racial differences

Glenn Loury (1:43:34.380)

between black and white in performance

Lex Fridman (1:43:37.180)

on mental ability tests and speculates about the extent

Glenn Loury (1:43:41.500)

to which such differences may be connected

Lex Fridman (1:43:43.900)

with the genetic inheritance of these racially diverse people.

Glenn Loury (1:43:48.180)

Now, he could be wrong about everything that he's saying.

Lex Fridman (1:43:52.420)

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls him a white supremacist

Glenn Loury (1:43:57.060)

because he observes that there are racial differences

Lex Fridman (1:44:02.060)

in measured intellectual ability amongst Americans

Glenn Loury (1:44:07.060)

of different racial descent.

Lex Fridman (1:44:10.660)

He could be wrong.

Glenn Loury (1:44:12.060)

Let me stipulate that he is wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:44:13.500)

I mean, I don't wanna argue about whether he's right

Glenn Loury (1:44:15.980)

or wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:44:16.820)

I don't wanna argue about whether he's right

Glenn Loury (1:44:18.540)

or about whether he's wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:44:20.460)

He's addressing himself to a factual issue.

Lex Fridman (1:44:24.660)

And now the issue becomes instead of grappling

Lex Fridman (1:44:27.780)

with the factual questions at hand

Lex Fridman (1:44:29.900)

and demonstrating his rightness or wrongness

Lex Fridman (1:44:32.140)

about those questions, the issue becomes his character.

Glenn Loury (1:44:35.740)

He's a racist.

Lex Fridman (1:44:39.260)

That's, in my mind, a lot like calling him a witch.

Lex Fridman (1:44:43.140)

And the use of that word now, I think,

Lex Fridman (1:44:48.140)

has parallels to accusing people of witchcraft

Glenn Loury (1:44:53.940)

because they have views about substantive questions

Lex Fridman (1:44:56.980)

that bear on racial inequality or racial difference

Glenn Loury (1:45:01.220)

that a person finds unacceptable

Lex Fridman (1:45:04.180)

or that a person disagrees with.

Lex Fridman (1:45:05.500)

And you think you can shut somebody up.

Lex Fridman (1:45:07.620)

Crime in the cities of Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore,

Glenn Loury (1:45:14.540)

Philadelphia, Washington, DC is out of control,

Lex Fridman (1:45:18.300)

some person might say.

Glenn Loury (1:45:20.020)

Murder rate is high.

Lex Fridman (1:45:21.620)

Who's committing those crimes?

Glenn Loury (1:45:22.980)

They're mostly black young men who are doing the carjackings

Lex Fridman (1:45:27.300)

and who are doing the shootings.

Glenn Loury (1:45:28.460)

They're killing each other.

Lex Fridman (1:45:29.740)

They're making our city unlivable.

Glenn Loury (1:45:32.260)

Now, that's a hypothetical statement that I offer.

Lex Fridman (1:45:35.940)

It might be correct, it might be incorrect.

Glenn Loury (1:45:39.260)

It might be appropriate, it might be inappropriate.

Lex Fridman (1:45:42.060)

It may be true, but something that we would be better off

Glenn Loury (1:45:45.540)

if people didn't focus on, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:45:49.420)

Responding to someone making that statement,

Lex Fridman (1:45:52.060)

have you seen what has happened to my city?

Lex Fridman (1:45:55.060)

It used to be that you could go to North Michigan Avenue

Lex Fridman (1:45:57.860)

and you could find one after another

Lex Fridman (1:45:59.700)

after another high end shop.

Glenn Loury (1:46:01.100)

This is in Chicago, my hometown.

Lex Fridman (1:46:03.420)

And tourists would come and they'd go to the theater

Lex Fridman (1:46:07.140)

and there were restaurants and they'd go out.

Lex Fridman (1:46:08.940)

They don't do it anymore.

Lex Fridman (1:46:10.180)

You know what?

Lex Fridman (1:46:11.020)

Half of those stores are boarded up now.

Lex Fridman (1:46:12.180)

You know why?

Lex Fridman (1:46:13.380)

Because when George Floyd was killed,

Glenn Loury (1:46:15.540)

black people mobbed in the city and they burnt

Lex Fridman (1:46:19.540)

and they rioted and they looted

Lex Fridman (1:46:21.180)

and it hasn't been the same ever since.

Lex Fridman (1:46:22.980)

And I'm moving to the suburbs.

Glenn Loury (1:46:24.820)

I'll be damned if I'm gonna send my children

Lex Fridman (1:46:26.860)

to those schools.

Glenn Loury (1:46:27.700)

A person could say that.

Lex Fridman (1:46:29.300)

They might be right, they might be wrong to say it.

Glenn Loury (1:46:31.380)

They might be right, they might be wrong to say it.

Lex Fridman (1:46:33.420)

Calling them a racist is exactly not

Glenn Loury (1:46:37.020)

a rebuttal of what they said.

Lex Fridman (1:46:38.940)

It's a move.

Glenn Loury (1:46:39.860)

It's a move to try to take control of the conversation

Lex Fridman (1:46:43.460)

by accusing someone of having bad character

Glenn Loury (1:46:45.700)

because they said something that made you uncomfortable,

Lex Fridman (1:46:48.180)

which you can't deal with.

Lex Fridman (1:46:49.540)

So you think you can shut them up by calling them a racist.

Lex Fridman (1:46:52.740)

You might as well be calling them a witch.

Glenn Loury (1:46:55.020)

You might as well be calling for their head on a platter

Lex Fridman (1:46:57.060)

because they believe that Satan is Lord

Glenn Loury (1:47:00.100)

because that's the kind of quote argument, close quote,

Lex Fridman (1:47:04.420)

which is precisely not an argument

Glenn Loury (1:47:07.380)

that people who invoke that term are using.

Lex Fridman (1:47:09.780)

And here's what I have to say about that.

Glenn Loury (1:47:12.140)

It's a fool's errand to try to refute somebody

Lex Fridman (1:47:17.140)

by calling them a witch.

Glenn Loury (1:47:18.540)

Likewise, it's a fool's errand to try to rebut

Lex Fridman (1:47:23.140)

the contrary forces in American politics

Glenn Loury (1:47:26.220)

that are a reaction often to real things

Lex Fridman (1:47:29.340)

that are going on on the ground in black communities

Glenn Loury (1:47:31.500)

in the cities across this country

Lex Fridman (1:47:33.420)

by calling people a racist.

Glenn Loury (1:47:35.380)

You may shut them up, but you won't change their minds.

Lex Fridman (1:47:39.180)

And you know what?

Glenn Loury (1:47:40.020)

At the end of the day, they're gonna go to the ballot box

Lex Fridman (1:47:41.740)

and they're gonna vote.

Glenn Loury (1:47:43.060)

They're gonna pick up their store

Lex Fridman (1:47:45.420)

and they're gonna move it to the other side of town

Glenn Loury (1:47:47.580)

or to another town altogether.

Lex Fridman (1:47:49.700)

They're gonna keep their children away

Glenn Loury (1:47:51.940)

from places where they think the influences

Lex Fridman (1:47:53.820)

are harmful to those children.

Glenn Loury (1:47:55.940)

They may not even talk about it in public.

Lex Fridman (1:47:58.580)

You can believe that in private

Glenn Loury (1:48:00.100)

that they're talking about it with each other.

Lex Fridman (1:48:02.460)

You had better find a more effective way

Glenn Loury (1:48:05.340)

of dealing with the conflicts in this country

Lex Fridman (1:48:07.540)

that fall along racial fault lines

Glenn Loury (1:48:09.780)

than calling people witches,

Lex Fridman (1:48:11.620)

which is what this, you know, anti racist,

Glenn Loury (1:48:15.940)

you're a racist because you think

Lex Fridman (1:48:17.340)

that the out of wedlock birth rate amongst black Americans

Glenn Loury (1:48:20.220)

is seven babies out of 10 are born

Lex Fridman (1:48:21.900)

to a woman without a husband.

Glenn Loury (1:48:23.620)

Their families are falling apart.

Lex Fridman (1:48:25.180)

Now, no one says that in public

Glenn Loury (1:48:26.380)

because they'd be called a racist

Lex Fridman (1:48:27.740)

if they said it in public.

Lex Fridman (1:48:29.020)

But as a matter of fact, the families are falling apart.

Lex Fridman (1:48:32.380)

You didn't change that in the least

Glenn Loury (1:48:33.820)

by telling people to shut up about it.

Lex Fridman (1:48:35.900)

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is called a racist

Glenn Loury (1:48:38.220)

in the 1960s, the late Senator,

Lex Fridman (1:48:40.660)

the New York Senator who was a federal employee

Lex Fridman (1:48:43.900)

and an intellectual writing reports

Lex Fridman (1:48:45.580)

and he writes a report about the Negro family,

Glenn Loury (1:48:47.500)

he called it in those years.

Lex Fridman (1:48:48.980)

If I use the word Negro,

Glenn Loury (1:48:50.100)

now they're gonna call me a racist if I'm a white person.

Lex Fridman (1:48:52.220)

I can't even use the word Negro,

Glenn Loury (1:48:54.180)

which is a historically legitimate reference

Lex Fridman (1:48:57.580)

to the descendants of the enslaved people,

Glenn Loury (1:49:01.740)

which we were as black Americans proud to use until yesterday.

Lex Fridman (1:49:06.580)

So all of this linguistic policing is a sign of weakness.

Glenn Loury (1:49:12.060)

It's false black power.

Lex Fridman (1:49:15.500)

People will seed you the ground.

Lex Fridman (1:49:17.140)

Okay, you don't want me to use that word?

Lex Fridman (1:49:18.380)

I won't use that word anymore.

Lex Fridman (1:49:19.380)

Okay, you don't want me to talk about that in public?

Lex Fridman (1:49:21.260)

All right, I won't talk about it in public anymore.

Lex Fridman (1:49:23.580)

I don't wanna be called a racist, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:49:25.020)

So I won't express my opinion.

Glenn Loury (1:49:26.780)

You haven't changed anybody's mind.

Lex Fridman (1:49:31.100)

And you've also mentioned that for that,

Glenn Loury (1:49:34.460)

you haven't changed anybody's mind,

Lex Fridman (1:49:35.940)

but also for things like in universities and institutions,

Glenn Loury (1:49:40.180)

there's a diversity inclusion

Lex Fridman (1:49:42.900)

and equity kind of meetings and education and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:49:46.660)

And I believe I read somewhere,

Lex Fridman (1:49:48.460)

I've been, like I mentioned to you offline,

Glenn Loury (1:49:50.940)

big fan of your Glenn show, people should listen to it.

Lex Fridman (1:49:55.020)

It's amazing.

Glenn Loury (1:49:56.820)

There's also just interviews of you that I've listened to.

Lex Fridman (1:49:59.620)

I believe you mentioned somewhere

Glenn Loury (1:50:00.660)

that even those kinds of meetings,

Lex Fridman (1:50:02.580)

people might sit through and nod along,

Lex Fridman (1:50:05.780)

but that doesn't necessarily mean that's making progress,

Lex Fridman (1:50:09.620)

that they may actually be bottling up a frustration.

Glenn Loury (1:50:15.460)

The fear is that that's going to result

Lex Fridman (1:50:17.540)

in a pendulum sort of push back towards this idea

Glenn Loury (1:50:22.540)

of forced appreciations, like forced anti racism kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:50:31.020)

I talk about this often in my podcast,

Glenn Loury (1:50:32.780)

that's the Glenn show, you can find the Glenn show

Lex Fridman (1:50:36.100)

on my YouTube channel and also at Substack.

Glenn Loury (1:50:39.860)

Yeah, you have a great Substack.

Lex Fridman (1:50:41.540)

You and your friend do Q and As

Lex Fridman (1:50:43.660)

and all that kind of stuff on Patreon.

Lex Fridman (1:50:45.700)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:50:46.540)

So yeah, so people should definitely follow you.

Lex Fridman (1:50:48.300)

It's a brilliant conversation.

Glenn Loury (1:50:49.540)

Check us out.

Lex Fridman (1:50:50.380)

But yeah, I mean, one concern is that the policing,

Glenn Loury (1:50:56.780)

the superficial policing,

Lex Fridman (1:50:58.340)

this is a part of political correctness,

Glenn Loury (1:51:00.140)

the insistence that you only use certain words,

Lex Fridman (1:51:02.260)

that you only talk in a certain way,

Glenn Loury (1:51:03.940)

is a phony kind of power

Lex Fridman (1:51:06.460)

because it doesn't actually persuade people

Glenn Loury (1:51:08.220)

about the issues that are at hand.

Lex Fridman (1:51:10.300)

Instead, it forces them underground

Glenn Loury (1:51:12.900)

in their talk about these issues,

Lex Fridman (1:51:15.020)

and that's problematic.

Glenn Loury (1:51:18.740)

Much better that we have overt and explicit

Lex Fridman (1:51:22.980)

and honest disagreement

Glenn Loury (1:51:25.420)

to the extent that there are disagreement

Lex Fridman (1:51:27.820)

about things that are going on

Glenn Loury (1:51:29.700)

than that we have a superficial kind of conversation

Lex Fridman (1:51:37.900)

that is purged of any real biting,

Glenn Loury (1:51:44.660)

discomforting confrontation with the realities

Lex Fridman (1:51:48.220)

of the situation at hand.

Lex Fridman (1:51:49.500)

And for black Americans,

Lex Fridman (1:51:50.540)

I think one big part of the reality

Glenn Loury (1:51:52.340)

of the situation at hand is violent crime, violent crime.

Lex Fridman (1:51:57.980)

A police officer is afraid when he stops the car

Glenn Loury (1:52:00.780)

because it's an 18 year old driver in the vehicle.

Lex Fridman (1:52:03.780)

He's got dreadlocks.

Glenn Loury (1:52:05.100)

He's a black person.

Lex Fridman (1:52:06.380)

The car doesn't have the right license plate.

Glenn Loury (1:52:08.900)

He's afraid to deal with that person.

Lex Fridman (1:52:11.900)

And one of the reasons he's afraid to deal with them

Glenn Loury (1:52:13.500)

is because a few who look like him are behaving violently.

Lex Fridman (1:52:17.860)

Their violence is usually perpetrated

Glenn Loury (1:52:20.020)

against others who look like themselves, but not always.

Lex Fridman (1:52:23.540)

And that reality doesn't get changed

Glenn Loury (1:52:27.460)

by telling a newspaper writer who writes about it

Lex Fridman (1:52:32.540)

that they are racist or enforcing within a newsroom.

Glenn Loury (1:52:36.340)

You can't cover that story in that way

Lex Fridman (1:52:38.380)

because to do so would be racist.

Glenn Loury (1:52:41.460)

I think it's a monumental mistake

Lex Fridman (1:52:45.820)

to enforce a closure on public discussion

Glenn Loury (1:52:52.060)

based upon a calculation that if we allow people,

Lex Fridman (1:52:55.940)

if Twitter allows this kind of post,

Glenn Loury (1:52:58.780)

if the Washington Post runs this kind of story, et cetera,

Lex Fridman (1:53:03.740)

you end up with a superficial politeness,

Glenn Loury (1:53:08.740)

a superficial politeness,

Lex Fridman (1:53:12.700)

but a subterranean seething resentment

Glenn Loury (1:53:17.420)

that only makes matters worse.

Lex Fridman (1:53:21.220)

If I can get your comment, maybe you have ideas

Glenn Loury (1:53:24.500)

because it does seem that this kind of attack works

Lex Fridman (1:53:28.500)

of being called a racist, being called, maybe not sexist,

Lex Fridman (1:53:38.980)

but somebody, like we're going through a Johnny Depp trial

Lex Fridman (1:53:42.860)

now, right?

Glenn Loury (1:53:44.260)

It's a defamation trial, and the reason it's a defamation

Lex Fridman (1:53:47.420)

trial is because all it took is a single accusation

Glenn Loury (1:53:50.740)

of Johnny Depp being somebody who sexually

Lex Fridman (1:53:54.340)

and physically abused Amber Heard.

Lex Fridman (1:53:56.660)

And all it took is just a single article.

Lex Fridman (1:53:59.500)

No proof was given except the accusation itself,

Lex Fridman (1:54:04.780)

and the world believed it.

Lex Fridman (1:54:06.780)

So it's effective.

Lex Fridman (1:54:09.580)

So how do you fight back if it's so damn effective

Lex Fridman (1:54:13.180)

that you can just call anybody racist?

Lex Fridman (1:54:15.380)

And it works.

Lex Fridman (1:54:16.980)

It's hard to wash off.

Glenn Loury (1:54:18.300)

It's, you're not proven in the court of law

Lex Fridman (1:54:27.660)

or anything like that, but we get those articles,

Glenn Loury (1:54:32.060)

we get that label, and then the world moves on

Lex Fridman (1:54:35.020)

and just assumes that person is racist.

Lex Fridman (1:54:37.340)

So how do you, do you have any ideas how to fight back?

Lex Fridman (1:54:41.060)

No, I don't, frankly.

Glenn Loury (1:54:43.820)

Just highlighting the fact.

Lex Fridman (1:54:44.660)

Listen, Roseanne Barr, who made this statement

Glenn Loury (1:54:46.780)

about Valerie Jarrett, she made some kind of ape

Lex Fridman (1:54:49.500)

like reference to the whatever, and her show

Glenn Loury (1:54:51.660)

got canceled, and she's a racist.

Lex Fridman (1:54:54.780)

So first of all, pointing it out, I suppose,

Glenn Loury (1:54:56.940)

is one of the most powerful things that this,

Lex Fridman (1:54:59.460)

the hypocrisy of it, the.

Glenn Loury (1:55:04.220)

You say it works, I guess you're right.

Lex Fridman (1:55:06.780)

It used to be that calling someone a communist worked.

Glenn Loury (1:55:09.980)

I mean, going back to the late 40s, early 50s,

Lex Fridman (1:55:13.900)

Red Scare, McCarthyism, and whatnot,

Lex Fridman (1:55:18.060)

and the person might've belonged to a club

Lex Fridman (1:55:21.900)

that was pro Soviet Union in the 1930s

Glenn Loury (1:55:24.780)

when they were in college.

Lex Fridman (1:55:25.940)

They might've voted for the socialist candidate,

Glenn Loury (1:55:28.180)

Henry Wallace, in the presidential election of 1948.

Lex Fridman (1:55:31.980)

They might belong to the Communist Party.

Glenn Loury (1:55:33.940)

They might think Karl Marx was right about a whole lot

Lex Fridman (1:55:37.300)

of stuff about capitalism and whatnot,

Lex Fridman (1:55:39.580)

and they got called a communist or a Marxist,

Lex Fridman (1:55:42.380)

and it could've ruined their career,

Glenn Loury (1:55:43.940)

could've ruined their lives.

Lex Fridman (1:55:47.580)

And a lot of people shut up about it,

Lex Fridman (1:55:49.620)

and it took, and it went on for a long time.

Lex Fridman (1:55:53.220)

And in a way, it kind of still is going on.

Glenn Loury (1:55:56.900)

I mean, you call somebody a Marxist,

Lex Fridman (1:55:58.700)

if you can make that stick, they're certainly not gonna

Glenn Loury (1:56:01.340)

get elected president of the United States.

Lex Fridman (1:56:04.900)

But I don't know about this.

Glenn Loury (1:56:07.180)

I think, you know, I once read this book

Lex Fridman (1:56:10.700)

by a German political scientist

Glenn Loury (1:56:13.780)

called Elisabeth Neula Neumann.

Lex Fridman (1:56:16.780)

That was the writer's name, Elisabeth Neula Neumann.

Glenn Loury (1:56:21.940)

The book was called The Spiral of Silence.

Lex Fridman (1:56:25.900)

And the argument was there can be some views,

Glenn Loury (1:56:30.020)

some issues in society that get defined

Lex Fridman (1:56:34.100)

in such a way that it's inappropriate to hold those views.

Lex Fridman (1:56:37.300)

And as a result, people who don't want to be shamed,

Lex Fridman (1:56:39.900)

who don't want to be ostracized don't express those views.

Lex Fridman (1:56:45.100)

And when they don't express them,

Lex Fridman (1:56:46.460)

anybody holding the view because they don't hear it

Glenn Loury (1:56:48.980)

said by others think that they're the only one

Lex Fridman (1:56:50.860)

and one of the few who hold the view,

Lex Fridman (1:56:53.220)

and so they don't want to be the only one

Lex Fridman (1:56:55.300)

out there saying something, so they keep it to themselves.

Lex Fridman (1:56:58.140)

So now this view, this attitude in society

Lex Fridman (1:57:02.780)

could be held by a large number of people,

Lex Fridman (1:57:05.540)

but because of the fear that if they were to express it,

Lex Fridman (1:57:12.420)

they'd be ostracized, no one says it.

Lex Fridman (1:57:15.020)

And since no one is saying it,

Lex Fridman (1:57:16.820)

the others who hold the view don't know

Glenn Loury (1:57:18.980)

that they're not alone,

Lex Fridman (1:57:21.140)

that they are not the only ones who hold the view.

Lex Fridman (1:57:24.420)

And hence they keep silent.

Lex Fridman (1:57:25.700)

That could be an equilibrium.

Glenn Loury (1:57:26.740)

It could be a relatively stable situation

Lex Fridman (1:57:29.540)

in which the emperor has no clothes.

Lex Fridman (1:57:32.020)

Everybody can see that this dude is naked, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:57:36.660)

But everybody thinks that, you know,

Glenn Loury (1:57:39.220)

I don't want to be the only one to say it.

Lex Fridman (1:57:41.100)

And so we all kind of collaborate in this charade

Glenn Loury (1:57:45.620)

of keeping the view to ourselves.

Lex Fridman (1:57:48.580)

Then along comes an event that somebody decides

Glenn Loury (1:57:54.700)

to defy the consensus and to speak out.

Lex Fridman (1:57:59.700)

It could be a little kid who in the story

Glenn Loury (1:58:01.980)

about the emperor has no clothes,

Lex Fridman (1:58:03.180)

doesn't realize that he's not supposed to say

Glenn Loury (1:58:05.860)

that the emperor is naked.

Lex Fridman (1:58:07.860)

The thing about the kid in the story

Glenn Loury (1:58:09.900)

who says that the emperor is naked,

Lex Fridman (1:58:11.220)

it's not that he's saying it.

Glenn Loury (1:58:14.180)

It's not even that other people hear him saying it.

Lex Fridman (1:58:17.420)

It's that everybody knows

Lex Fridman (1:58:19.100)

that everybody else heard him say it, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:58:22.940)

The kid who speaks out and says the emperor has no clothes

Glenn Loury (1:58:27.020)

creates a circumstance in which it's common knowledge

Lex Fridman (1:58:30.020)

that the emperor has no clothes.

Glenn Loury (1:58:31.260)

Now common knowledge does not just mean knowledge.

Lex Fridman (1:58:33.940)

It does not even mean widespread knowledge.

Glenn Loury (1:58:36.420)

It means comprehensive knowledge

Lex Fridman (1:58:38.420)

of other person's knowledge of the thing, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:58:42.460)

So the spiral of silence is a equilibrium

Lex Fridman (1:58:45.940)

that is susceptible to being undermined

Glenn Loury (1:58:49.740)

by a process of a kind of cumulative process,

Lex Fridman (1:58:53.740)

a snowballing process of revelation

Lex Fridman (1:58:56.220)

that you're not the only one who thinks this way, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:59:00.220)

It's fascinating to think that there's an ocean

Glenn Loury (1:59:02.220)

of common knowledge that we're waiting for the little kid

Lex Fridman (1:59:05.540)

to wake us up to, different little parts of it.

Glenn Loury (1:59:08.940)

That's correct.

Lex Fridman (1:59:09.780)

And the little kid, by the way,

Glenn Loury (1:59:10.700)

could be somebody like Donald Trump,

Lex Fridman (1:59:12.540)

only more effective than Donald Trump,

Glenn Loury (1:59:15.180)

somebody who is smarter than Donald Trump,

Lex Fridman (1:59:17.260)

somebody who is shrewder than Donald Trump,

Glenn Loury (1:59:20.900)

somebody who figures out that when Colin Kaepernick

Lex Fridman (1:59:25.620)

takes a knee at a football game and says,

Glenn Loury (1:59:29.100)

I'm not gonna stand for this president allegiance,

Lex Fridman (1:59:31.340)

that a vast number of people are very unhappy about that.

Glenn Loury (1:59:38.820)

Somebody who understands

Lex Fridman (1:59:39.780)

that when a Black Lives Matter activist

Glenn Loury (1:59:43.180)

stands up with his ball of fists and says,

Lex Fridman (1:59:44.980)

burn this bitch down about a city

Glenn Loury (1:59:47.380)

in the United States of America,

Lex Fridman (1:59:49.660)

that a lot of people are upset about that, a lot of them.

Glenn Loury (1:59:52.540)

A person, a shrewd politician,

Lex Fridman (1:59:54.820)

a shrewd manager of a public image

Glenn Loury (1:59:59.740)

could build on and create a circumstance

Lex Fridman (20:01.520)

in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865

Glenn Loury (20:06.180)

in a country of 30 million people.

Lex Fridman (20:08.300)

That's a lot of dead people who gave their lives

Glenn Loury (20:13.920)

not to eradicate slavery in every instance,

Lex Fridman (20:16.760)

probably most of them were just fighting for,

Glenn Loury (20:21.360)

they enlisted or were conscripted into the forces

Lex Fridman (20:25.280)

and they fought and they died,

Lex Fridman (20:27.160)

but the net effect of their having fought and died

Lex Fridman (20:30.520)

was to push along a process

Glenn Loury (20:32.960)

that led to the eradication of slavery.

Lex Fridman (20:34.880)

That's an amazing achievement.

Glenn Loury (20:37.840)

The slaves themselves were largely uneducated

Lex Fridman (20:43.840)

and backward in their,

Lex Fridman (20:47.080)

of course, what else could they have been?

Lex Fridman (20:48.800)

They were kept in captivity,

Glenn Loury (20:50.780)

they were prevented from developing their human potential

Lex Fridman (20:55.040)

and yet after the end of slavery,

Glenn Loury (20:58.720)

that population, that 4 million plus African descended people

Lex Fridman (21:04.440)

became the foundation for what a century later

Glenn Loury (21:08.120)

leads to Martin Luther King standing in the Washington Mall

Lex Fridman (21:12.600)

and giving that great speech

Lex Fridman (21:14.440)

and now here we are 150 years down the road

Lex Fridman (21:18.280)

and Barack Obama is president of the United States.

Glenn Loury (21:21.600)

Now, he did not descend from slaves,

Lex Fridman (21:23.260)

I think we must not lose track of that,

Lex Fridman (21:25.640)

but he identified as an African American

Lex Fridman (21:29.280)

and was a part of the population

Glenn Loury (21:32.560)

that consisted largely of people who descended from slaves

Lex Fridman (21:36.880)

and we are, we African Americans are

Glenn Loury (21:40.880)

for all practical purposes,

Lex Fridman (21:42.960)

fully equal citizens of this great republic.

Glenn Loury (21:46.720)

That has happened within a century and a half

Lex Fridman (21:49.400)

and I don't know that you can find any parallel

Glenn Loury (21:52.200)

to that kind of transformation in the status of people

Lex Fridman (21:56.800)

from human chattel to full citizens of the republic.

Glenn Loury (22:01.800)

Anywhere in human history,

Lex Fridman (22:02.920)

it's certainly worth celebrating the achievement

Glenn Loury (22:07.240)

of the eradication of slavery, I would say.

Lex Fridman (22:10.160)

And it probably started with a few people

Glenn Loury (22:14.560)

that inside their mind dared to rebel.

Lex Fridman (22:18.880)

You know, it's interesting to think about how it all started,

Lex Fridman (22:23.320)

how in the state of injustice,

Lex Fridman (22:26.920)

the revolution percolates, like where it starts.

Glenn Loury (22:32.820)

You said people that see something is wrong find each other.

Lex Fridman (22:39.200)

It's in the ideas of charismatic individuals

Glenn Loury (22:43.000)

that not only know that something is wrong,

Lex Fridman (22:44.920)

but are able to tell others about it and be convincing

Lex Fridman (22:51.680)

and then together gather and rise up.

Lex Fridman (22:54.760)

It's interesting to make this kind of incredible progress

Glenn Loury (22:58.320)

from slavery to where we are today

Lex Fridman (23:00.440)

to live out the ideal of this all men are created equal.

Glenn Loury (23:06.160)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (23:06.980)

The power of individual,

Glenn Loury (23:07.820)

because I don't know what you think about it,

Lex Fridman (23:10.020)

but I tend to think that a few small individuals

Glenn Loury (23:14.600)

probably originated this.

Lex Fridman (23:16.320)

Like it's the power of the individual,

Glenn Loury (23:18.280)

because sometimes we think there's injustice in the world,

Lex Fridman (23:20.320)

what can I possibly do?

Lex Fridman (23:22.160)

But I tend to think one person can be the seed

Lex Fridman (23:26.400)

of starting to fix the injustice.

Glenn Loury (23:29.200)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (23:31.080)

One person here, one person there.

Glenn Loury (23:34.360)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (23:36.040)

One thinks of course of Frederick Douglass,

Glenn Loury (23:38.960)

this massively significant figure who was born in slavery,

Lex Fridman (23:46.200)

who stole his freedom because he was property

Lex Fridman (23:52.240)

and he decided he was not gonna be property anymore

Lex Fridman (23:54.720)

and he took it unto himself to emancipate himself personally

Lex Fridman (23:59.040)

and who became an educated, a powerfully articulate,

Lex Fridman (24:04.040)

massively influential person in the United States

Lex Fridman (24:09.400)

and in England going around presenting himself

Lex Fridman (24:14.880)

as an embodiment of human dignity

Lex Fridman (24:18.800)

and commitment to ideals of equality.

Lex Fridman (24:24.320)

And I mean, he's just one person,

Lex Fridman (24:27.680)

but there were others like him.

Lex Fridman (24:30.200)

Just one person.

Glenn Loury (24:31.960)

All it takes is just one person.

Lex Fridman (24:33.560)

So here we are on this topic of equality

Glenn Loury (24:39.600)

in the 21st century.

Lex Fridman (24:43.000)

So what does equality mean today?

Glenn Loury (24:45.400)

If you start to think about this idea of equality of outcome

Lex Fridman (24:53.480)

or the injustice of inequality,

Glenn Loury (24:56.720)

at which point does equality of outcome is just,

Lex Fridman (25:01.040)

at which point is it unjust?

Glenn Loury (25:03.640)

Sort of looking at our world today

Lex Fridman (25:05.640)

and looking at inequality,

Lex Fridman (25:08.840)

how do we know that some inequality is a sign of injustice

Lex Fridman (25:14.320)

and some is the way of life?

Lex Fridman (25:16.520)

So what does equality mean when we look at the world today,

Lex Fridman (25:19.640)

different from Dr. King's speech of the basic humanity?

Glenn Loury (25:23.320)

I don't think King's speech, I have a dream

Lex Fridman (25:27.800)

that one day my four little children will be judged

Glenn Loury (25:29.960)

not by the color of their skin,

Lex Fridman (25:31.400)

but by the content of their character

Glenn Loury (25:34.440)

requires equality of outcome.

Lex Fridman (25:40.200)

He says his children will be judged

Glenn Loury (25:42.080)

by the content of their character.

Lex Fridman (25:44.600)

That's a conditional statement.

Glenn Loury (25:46.560)

That is the judgment will depend upon the content

Lex Fridman (25:49.840)

of their character, not the color of their skin,

Lex Fridman (25:54.040)

but it doesn't follow from that,

Lex Fridman (25:56.800)

that the outcomes, whatever outcomes we consider wealth

Lex Fridman (26:01.560)

and economic power,

Lex Fridman (26:05.320)

position within the society,

Glenn Loury (26:06.920)

representation in the various professions,

Lex Fridman (26:10.240)

the various measures of social achievement

Glenn Loury (26:13.000)

doesn't follow from judging by the content of character

Lex Fridman (26:17.320)

and not color of skin,

Glenn Loury (26:19.080)

that when we look at the end of the day

Lex Fridman (26:21.400)

at the social outcomes that they will be equal

Glenn Loury (26:24.120)

across the different groups.

Lex Fridman (26:27.040)

In fact, I think there's a contradiction in the idea

Glenn Loury (26:29.680)

that groups will be equal

Lex Fridman (26:31.840)

in all of the various social outcomes,

Glenn Loury (26:34.040)

that they will be equally successful in business,

Lex Fridman (26:36.960)

that they will be proportionately represented

Glenn Loury (26:40.760)

in the various professions,

Lex Fridman (26:42.240)

that they will have the same educational achievement,

Glenn Loury (26:45.760)

that the occupational profiles will look the same.

Lex Fridman (26:49.760)

If they are, in fact, distinct groups

Glenn Loury (26:53.080)

with their own cultural traditions and practices,

Lex Fridman (26:58.160)

with their own ideals and norms,

Glenn Loury (27:01.840)

various immigrant populations,

Lex Fridman (27:04.240)

people coming to the United States of America

Glenn Loury (27:06.480)

from all corners of the world,

Lex Fridman (27:09.880)

the descendants of the African slaves,

Glenn Loury (27:13.000)

the black Americans here today,

Lex Fridman (27:15.600)

who are ourselves various with different backgrounds,

Glenn Loury (27:19.520)

different origins and so on,

Lex Fridman (27:21.960)

the different religious practices and commitments

Glenn Loury (27:25.320)

that Jewish or Mormon or Christian or whatever,

Lex Fridman (27:32.760)

however we parcel up the total population

Glenn Loury (27:37.600)

into the various groups,

Lex Fridman (27:38.760)

these groups are themselves different from one another.

Glenn Loury (27:42.800)

They have different norms

Lex Fridman (27:45.240)

within their own cultural practice.

Lex Fridman (27:48.520)

How would we expect,

Lex Fridman (27:49.760)

if in fact we recognize

Glenn Loury (27:51.480)

that the groups are different from one another,

Lex Fridman (27:54.400)

that in a world that is fair,

Glenn Loury (27:56.720)

they would all come out equally represented

Lex Fridman (28:00.040)

in every undertaking.

Glenn Loury (28:00.960)

They're not equally represented,

Lex Fridman (28:03.320)

and that fact, I'm arguing,

Glenn Loury (28:06.240)

is in and of itself insufficient

Lex Fridman (28:09.000)

to justify the conclusion

Glenn Loury (28:11.360)

that they're not somehow being fairly treated.

Lex Fridman (28:15.240)

Fair treatment doesn't imply equal outcomes

Glenn Loury (28:18.640)

in a world in which the populations in question

Lex Fridman (28:21.560)

are themselves different

Glenn Loury (28:23.320)

with respect to their culture, their practices,

Lex Fridman (28:25.440)

their norms, their traditions,

Glenn Loury (28:27.640)

their beliefs, their ideals, and so on.

Lex Fridman (28:31.360)

The fact of those different norms, traditions, beliefs,

Glenn Loury (28:35.200)

cultural orientations, and ideals

Lex Fridman (28:37.200)

will have consequences

Glenn Loury (28:40.000)

in terms of their different social outcomes.

Lex Fridman (28:44.000)

So I just think it's a mistake

Glenn Loury (28:46.160)

that people are making

Lex Fridman (28:47.800)

when they think

Glenn Loury (28:49.920)

fairness of treatment

Lex Fridman (28:53.520)

implies equality of outcomes.

Glenn Loury (28:56.000)

It does not.

Lex Fridman (28:57.480)

Is the process by which we're speaking now

Glenn Loury (29:02.600)

in the midst of the National Basketball Association's

Lex Fridman (29:06.320)

playoffs,

Glenn Loury (29:07.680)

I confess to being a Boston Celtics fan.

Lex Fridman (29:10.440)

I mean, I'm just,

Glenn Loury (29:12.560)

it's a very good team, and I'm excited about my Celtics.

Lex Fridman (29:16.040)

We defeated

Glenn Loury (29:18.240)

the Brooklyn

Lex Fridman (29:21.160)

Nets.

Glenn Loury (29:22.440)

I mean, we defeated Kevin Durant

Lex Fridman (29:25.480)

and Kyrie Irving and company, okay,

Glenn Loury (29:28.800)

in a playoff series.

Lex Fridman (29:31.240)

We whipped them,

Lex Fridman (29:32.720)

and we're on our way to

Lex Fridman (29:35.840)

the Eastern Conference Finals,

Lex Fridman (29:37.840)

and we're on our way to the NBA Finals,

Lex Fridman (29:39.800)

and I'm, you know, if I were a betting man,

Glenn Loury (29:42.520)

I'd put down a few bucks

Lex Fridman (29:44.560)

that the Boston Celtics, underrated as we are,

Glenn Loury (29:47.600)

have a very good chance of winning the NBA Finals.

Lex Fridman (29:50.680)

Okay, so that's the NBA.

Glenn Loury (29:51.840)

That's the National Basketball Association.

Lex Fridman (29:53.560)

I'm a sports fan.

Glenn Loury (29:54.400)

I like basketball.

Lex Fridman (29:55.240)

Slightly biased prediction, but yes.

Glenn Loury (29:57.640)

Yeah, it is somewhat biased.

Lex Fridman (29:59.640)

All I'm saying is,

Glenn Loury (2:00:02.860)

in which more and more people will feel safe

Lex Fridman (2:00:06.940)

to express that view.

Lex Fridman (2:00:07.900)

And the more who express it,

Lex Fridman (2:00:09.060)

the safer those who have yet to express it but who hold it

Glenn Loury (2:00:12.420)

will feel in expressing it.

Lex Fridman (2:00:13.940)

And to the extent that the view is very widespread

Lex Fridman (2:00:17.060)

but is kept under wraps, an explosion could happen.

Lex Fridman (2:00:21.020)

And you can look up tomorrow and have a very different

Glenn Loury (2:00:23.060)

country than you had today

Lex Fridman (2:00:25.460)

because the conspiracy of silence, the spiral of silence

Glenn Loury (2:00:30.740)

ends up getting unraveled by somebody who steps out

Lex Fridman (2:00:34.860)

away from the consensus,

Glenn Loury (2:00:36.100)

dares to take the slings and arrows

Lex Fridman (2:00:38.340)

of exposing themselves as a naysayer

Lex Fridman (2:00:40.900)

but taps into a sentiment that's very widespread.

Lex Fridman (2:00:44.980)

And I fear that with respect to many racial issues,

Glenn Loury (2:00:49.700)

this is the situation that we actually confront,

Lex Fridman (2:00:53.940)

that it could unravel in a very ugly way.

Lex Fridman (2:00:57.220)

But it could also unravel in a beautiful way.

Lex Fridman (2:01:00.100)

So it's depending.

Glenn Loury (2:01:02.260)

There is a spiral of silence, you're saying,

Lex Fridman (2:01:04.300)

and it could be, speaking of children,

Glenn Loury (2:01:07.820)

charismatic children, there's a guy named Elon Musk

Lex Fridman (2:01:11.940)

who might be a candidate for such an unraveling, right?

Glenn Loury (2:01:16.860)

You mentioned the person that speaks out

Lex Fridman (2:01:20.060)

could be a Donald Trump.

Lex Fridman (2:01:21.140)

But in this current situation that we live in,

Lex Fridman (2:01:23.900)

like as this week, Elon has purchased Twitter.

Glenn Loury (2:01:28.260)

That's what I hear.

Lex Fridman (2:01:29.420)

And is pushing for, in all kinds of ways,

Glenn Loury (2:01:34.300)

the increase of free speech on Twitter.

Lex Fridman (2:01:37.460)

And speaking about some of the issues

Glenn Loury (2:01:40.460)

that we've been speaking about here with you,

Lex Fridman (2:01:44.500)

but maybe in broader strokes about just the fact

Glenn Loury (2:01:47.940)

that you have to, it's okay to point out

Lex Fridman (2:01:50.660)

that the emperor wears no clothes,

Lex Fridman (2:01:52.900)

and to do so from all sides in a way

Lex Fridman (2:01:55.940)

that everybody's a little bit pissed off,

Lex Fridman (2:01:57.740)

but not too much.

Lex Fridman (2:01:59.820)

What do you think about this whole effort

Lex Fridman (2:02:01.540)

of free speech in these public platforms?

Lex Fridman (2:02:06.020)

Elon in particular, Twitter, your avid Twitter user.

Lex Fridman (2:02:11.580)

But just public platforms for discourse,

Lex Fridman (2:02:14.340)

for us as a civilization to figure stuff out.

Glenn Loury (2:02:18.860)

Yeah, well, the people on the left

Lex Fridman (2:02:21.780)

are very upset about the possibility

Glenn Loury (2:02:23.620)

that Elon Musk and Twitter will be open to,

Lex Fridman (2:02:28.140)

more open to provocative public speech

Glenn Loury (2:02:33.180)

that has heretofore been banned or suppressed.

Lex Fridman (2:02:37.340)

And I think they might be right to be concerned

Glenn Loury (2:02:41.520)

that that could happen.

Lex Fridman (2:02:43.000)

I don't know enough about the technology

Lex Fridman (2:02:45.300)

and about the market to really,

Lex Fridman (2:02:47.740)

I mean, social media and whatnot,

Glenn Loury (2:02:50.460)

it seems like it's a complicated system

Lex Fridman (2:02:53.720)

of interactions between people and who the users are

Lex Fridman (2:02:56.380)

and so forth and so on.

Lex Fridman (2:02:58.620)

I do know that that New York Post story

Glenn Loury (2:03:02.500)

about Hunter Biden's laptop was real news

Lex Fridman (2:03:06.340)

and could have affected the outcome of the election,

Lex Fridman (2:03:08.940)

and it was suppressed,

Lex Fridman (2:03:10.540)

and that Twitter had a role in suppressing it.

Glenn Loury (2:03:14.380)

I do know that the question of where the COVID 19 virus

Lex Fridman (2:03:18.560)

originated and the role that a lab leak account

Glenn Loury (2:03:22.300)

could have played in the public processing of that event

Lex Fridman (2:03:26.280)

was real news, and that it was suppressed

Glenn Loury (2:03:29.360)

by people who were trying to control misinformation,

Lex Fridman (2:03:32.500)

disinformation, Russian disinformation campaigns

Lex Fridman (2:03:36.140)

and whatnot.

Lex Fridman (2:03:36.980)

So Twitter has users, I'm one of them,

Lex Fridman (2:03:40.780)

and it has a lot of users.

Lex Fridman (2:03:42.120)

It's not as big as Facebook, I gather.

Glenn Loury (2:03:43.820)

It's not, but it's important,

Lex Fridman (2:03:46.780)

the ability to construct counter platforms,

Glenn Loury (2:03:51.940)

people moving around and whatnot.

Lex Fridman (2:03:54.900)

It's a kind of network dynamic

Glenn Loury (2:03:56.460)

that maybe I should understand it better than I do

Lex Fridman (2:03:58.500)

being a social scientist, but.

Glenn Loury (2:04:00.260)

I don't think anyone understands it,

Lex Fridman (2:04:01.860)

even people inside Twitter, which is fascinating.

Glenn Loury (2:04:05.460)

It's a monster because of just the bandwidth of messaging,

Lex Fridman (2:04:09.420)

and you don't know who is a bot and who is a human.

Glenn Loury (2:04:12.660)

That's a fascinating dynamic,

Lex Fridman (2:04:15.580)

and the viral nature of negativity.

Glenn Loury (2:04:20.940)

All of those dynamics, of course,

Lex Fridman (2:04:22.780)

you are probably the right person to understand it

Glenn Loury (2:04:25.700)

from a social scientist perspective,

Lex Fridman (2:04:28.100)

from an economics perspective,

Lex Fridman (2:04:29.980)

but nobody really understands,

Lex Fridman (2:04:31.860)

and it's fascinating within that domain,

Lex Fridman (2:04:34.780)

how do you allow for free speech,

Lex Fridman (2:04:38.900)

not allow for free speech, encourage free speech,

Glenn Loury (2:04:41.520)

defend free speech, and at the same time,

Lex Fridman (2:04:45.300)

manage millions of ongoing conversations

Glenn Loury (2:04:49.260)

from just becoming insanely chaotic.

Lex Fridman (2:04:56.340)

Sort of from Twitter perspective,

Glenn Loury (2:04:58.680)

they want people to be happy, to grow,

Lex Fridman (2:05:02.020)

to actually have difficult, critical conversations,

Lex Fridman (2:05:05.380)

and the problem with humans is they think

Lex Fridman (2:05:08.240)

they know what that is, and they think

Glenn Loury (2:05:12.260)

they can label things as misinformation,

Lex Fridman (2:05:14.300)

as counterproductive or healthy conversations, in quotes,

Lex Fridman (2:05:18.780)

and the problem is, as we are learning,

Lex Fridman (2:05:22.100)

humans are not able to do that effectively.

Glenn Loury (2:05:25.280)

First of all, power corrupts.

Lex Fridman (2:05:27.780)

There's something delicious about having the power

Glenn Loury (2:05:30.900)

to label something as misinformation.

Lex Fridman (2:05:33.180)

You do that once for something

Glenn Loury (2:05:35.800)

that might be obviously misinformation,

Lex Fridman (2:05:37.940)

and then you start getting greedy.

Glenn Loury (2:05:39.780)

You start getting excited.

Lex Fridman (2:05:40.940)

It feels good.

Glenn Loury (2:05:41.860)

It feels good to label something

Lex Fridman (2:05:43.980)

as misinformation or disinformation

Glenn Loury (2:05:46.660)

that you just don't like, and over time,

Lex Fridman (2:05:49.940)

especially if there's a culture inside of a company

Glenn Loury (2:05:52.460)

that leans a certain political direction

Lex Fridman (2:05:55.140)

or leans, in all the groups that we talked about,

Glenn Loury (2:05:57.540)

leans a certain way, they'll start

Lex Fridman (2:05:59.800)

to label as misinformation things they just don't like,

Lex Fridman (2:06:03.580)

and that power is delicious, and it corrupts.

Lex Fridman (2:06:07.540)

You have to construct mechanisms,

Glenn Loury (2:06:08.980)

like the Founding Fathers did,

Lex Fridman (2:06:10.580)

for somehow preventing you from allowing

Glenn Loury (2:06:14.300)

that power to get too delicious.

Lex Fridman (2:06:17.860)

At least that's my perspective on what's going on.

Glenn Loury (2:06:19.660)

Well, I'll just tell you personally,

Lex Fridman (2:06:21.260)

I'm excited about the prospect.

Glenn Loury (2:06:23.340)

I'm glad to see Musk making the move that he's making,

Lex Fridman (2:06:25.860)

and we'll see what happens at Twitter and so forth.

Lex Fridman (2:06:29.100)

You're looking forward for the, what did he say?

Lex Fridman (2:06:33.180)

Let's make Twitter more fun.

Glenn Loury (2:06:35.140)

I'm looking forward to the fun.

Lex Fridman (2:06:39.180)

You've talked about you are at a prestigious university.

Glenn Loury (2:06:43.220)

Brown University.

Lex Fridman (2:06:44.220)

Brown University, and you've mentioned

Glenn Loury (2:06:48.060)

that universities might be in trouble.

Lex Fridman (2:06:50.220)

I think it's with Jordan, but everywhere else,

Glenn Loury (2:06:52.420)

that barbarians are at the gate.

Lex Fridman (2:06:54.940)

Who are the barbarians at the gate of the university?

Lex Fridman (2:06:59.700)

So first of all, what is to you beautiful

Lex Fridman (2:07:03.500)

about the ideal of the university in America, of academia?

Lex Fridman (2:07:09.260)

And what is a threat?

Lex Fridman (2:07:12.100)

Well, you know, a university is dedicated

Glenn Loury (2:07:15.260)

to the pursuit of truth, and to the education

Lex Fridman (2:07:21.540)

and nurturing of young people as they enter

Glenn Loury (2:07:24.460)

into the pursuit of truth, to doing research and to teaching

Lex Fridman (2:07:29.700)

in a environment of free inquiry and civil discourse.

Lex Fridman (2:07:37.020)

So free inquiry means you go wherever the evidence

Lex Fridman (2:07:40.860)

and your imagination may lead you.

Lex Fridman (2:07:43.540)

And civil discourse means that you exchange arguments

Lex Fridman (2:07:46.500)

with people when you don't agree with them

Glenn Loury (2:07:48.140)

on behalf of trying to get to the bottom of things.

Lex Fridman (2:07:50.740)

I think the university is a magnificent institution.

Glenn Loury (2:07:55.220)

It is a relatively modern institution.

Lex Fridman (2:07:59.220)

I mean, last 500 years or so.

Glenn Loury (2:08:01.580)

I mean, there are universities that are older than that,

Lex Fridman (2:08:03.500)

but the great research universities of the world,

Glenn Loury (2:08:07.260)

not only here in the United States,

Lex Fridman (2:08:09.820)

are places where human ingenuity is nurtured,

Glenn Loury (2:08:14.340)

where new lot knowledge is created,

Lex Fridman (2:08:16.780)

and where young people are equipped to answer questions

Glenn Loury (2:08:21.780)

that are open questions about our existence

Lex Fridman (2:08:25.260)

in the world that we live in.

Glenn Loury (2:08:26.940)

You can trace to the university much,

Lex Fridman (2:08:30.020)

if not most, of the advances in technology

Lex Fridman (2:08:33.940)

and resourcefulness and our understanding

Lex Fridman (2:08:35.780)

of the origins of the species, of the nature of the universe,

Glenn Loury (2:08:38.740)

cosmology, et cetera, science,

Lex Fridman (2:08:41.540)

the pursuit of humanistic understanding,

Glenn Loury (2:08:44.740)

the nurturing of traditions of inquiry,

Lex Fridman (2:08:47.460)

so forth, so that's the university.

Glenn Loury (2:08:49.740)

Barbarians are at the gates.

Lex Fridman (2:08:52.260)

The people who are trying to shut down open inquiry

Glenn Loury (2:08:55.420)

at the university on behalf of their particular view

Lex Fridman (2:08:58.460)

about things are a threat to what the university stands for,

Lex Fridman (2:09:03.780)

and they should be resisted.

Lex Fridman (2:09:05.740)

So if I'm inquiring about the nature of human intelligence,

Lex Fridman (2:09:10.740)

and I wanna study differences between human populations

Lex Fridman (2:09:13.740)

and their acquisition of,

Glenn Loury (2:09:15.580)

or their expression of cognitive ability,

Lex Fridman (2:09:19.540)

that's fair game, it's an open question.

Glenn Loury (2:09:22.180)

If I wanna know something about the nature

Lex Fridman (2:09:24.780)

of gender affiliation and identity

Lex Fridman (2:09:28.780)

and gender dysphoria and whatnot,

Lex Fridman (2:09:32.180)

that's fair game to study in a university.

Glenn Loury (2:09:34.100)

You can't shut that down, you shouldn't be able to,

Lex Fridman (2:09:37.580)

by saying, I have a particular position here,

Glenn Loury (2:09:41.740)

I'm a member of a particular identity group,

Lex Fridman (2:09:43.540)

suppose I wanna study the history of colonialism,

Lex Fridman (2:09:47.580)

and there's a narrative on the progressive side,

Lex Fridman (2:09:51.140)

which is colonialism is about Europeans dominating

Lex Fridman (2:09:54.220)

and stealing or whatever, whatever,

Lex Fridman (2:09:55.620)

and I happen to think, well, there's another aspect

Glenn Loury (2:09:58.140)

to the story about colonialism too,

Lex Fridman (2:09:59.660)

which is that it's a mechanism for the diffusion

Glenn Loury (2:10:02.740)

of the best in human civilization to populations

Lex Fridman (2:10:05.340)

that were significantly lagging behind with respect to that.

Glenn Loury (2:10:08.860)

It brought literacy to the Southern hemispheric populations

Lex Fridman (2:10:12.980)

that were dominated in the process of the colonizing thing.

Glenn Loury (2:10:16.780)

It's complicated.

Lex Fridman (2:10:17.940)

I'm not taking that position, by the way.

Glenn Loury (2:10:19.980)

I'm just saying somebody at a university

Lex Fridman (2:10:22.460)

should be able to take it up and pursue it

Lex Fridman (2:10:26.180)

and engage in argument with people about it.

Lex Fridman (2:10:28.020)

I'm talking about race and ethnicity,

Lex Fridman (2:10:29.540)

but this extends to a wide range of things.

Lex Fridman (2:10:32.340)

Suppose we're talking about race,

Glenn Loury (2:10:33.660)

a wide range of things, suppose we're talking about climate,

Lex Fridman (2:10:36.700)

and one person says the earth is endangered

Glenn Loury (2:10:38.780)

because carbon in global warming, et cetera, et cetera,

Lex Fridman (2:10:42.580)

and another person says, no, wait, no, wait,

Glenn Loury (2:10:45.940)

look at where we stand in the 21st century.

Lex Fridman (2:10:48.180)

We're vastly richer than our ancestors just 250 years ago.

Glenn Loury (2:10:51.460)

We have much more knowledge about that

Lex Fridman (2:10:53.260)

and so forth and so on.

Glenn Loury (2:10:54.100)

250 years from now, human ingenuity will have devised

Lex Fridman (2:10:59.300)

in ways that we can not even begin to anticipate.

Glenn Loury (2:11:02.820)

All manner of technological means for managing the problem.

Lex Fridman (2:11:09.060)

There's no reason that we should shut down

Glenn Loury (2:11:11.420)

industrial civilization today

Lex Fridman (2:11:14.340)

because we fear the consequences of it

Glenn Loury (2:11:16.940)

when in fact we are vastly richer than our ancestors

Lex Fridman (2:11:20.500)

and those who come two centuries after us

Glenn Loury (2:11:22.340)

will be vastly more effective

Lex Fridman (2:11:24.820)

at dealing with problems than we are now.

Glenn Loury (2:11:27.260)

Let's, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (2:11:28.620)

I'm not actually making that argument.

Glenn Loury (2:11:30.820)

I'm just saying the tendency to try to say, oh, no,

Lex Fridman (2:11:35.340)

that person is a climate denier.

Glenn Loury (2:11:36.940)

They can't pursue that area of inquiry

Lex Fridman (2:11:40.260)

is against the spirit of the university.

Glenn Loury (2:11:44.420)

I think the barbarians at the gates

Lex Fridman (2:11:47.100)

has to do with the people who think they know

Lex Fridman (2:11:50.460)

what the right side of history is

Lex Fridman (2:11:52.100)

and try to make the university stand

Glenn Loury (2:11:54.180)

on the right side of history.

Lex Fridman (2:11:56.540)

My position is you don't know

Lex Fridman (2:11:58.660)

what the right side of history is.

Lex Fridman (2:12:01.180)

And the purpose of a university is to equip you

Glenn Loury (2:12:03.740)

to be able to think about what is the right side of history.

Lex Fridman (2:12:07.740)

What is the solution to the dilemmas that confront us

Glenn Loury (2:12:11.940)

as human beings living on this planet

Lex Fridman (2:12:14.500)

with the billions that we are in the condition that we are.

Lex Fridman (2:12:18.820)

So the identitarians,

Lex Fridman (2:12:22.500)

the ones who wanna make the university kowtow

Glenn Loury (2:12:25.820)

to their particular understandings about their own identity.

Lex Fridman (2:12:31.500)

We now have at Brown University and various other places,

Glenn Loury (2:12:36.180)

we don't do Columbus Day anymore.

Lex Fridman (2:12:38.380)

We do Indigenous Peoples Day.

Glenn Loury (2:12:40.660)

When that day comes up in October,

Lex Fridman (2:12:42.980)

we don't talk about Columbus.

Glenn Loury (2:12:44.380)

They're taking down statues of Columbus

Lex Fridman (2:12:46.020)

all across the country and so forth and so on.

Glenn Loury (2:12:48.700)

I'm not arguing anything here other than

Lex Fridman (2:12:50.980)

that the latter day position

Glenn Loury (2:12:59.220)

BIPOCs, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color,

Lex Fridman (2:13:03.540)

the latter day position that the university

Glenn Loury (2:13:05.820)

has to reflect a particular sensibility

Lex Fridman (2:13:09.460)

about these identity questions.

Glenn Loury (2:13:11.980)

I think it's a threat to the integrity of the enterprise.

Lex Fridman (2:13:14.860)

I don't think you're overstating it.

Glenn Loury (2:13:16.580)

I tend to be, just from my limited knowledge of MIT,

Lex Fridman (2:13:22.540)

but perhaps it applies broadly,

Glenn Loury (2:13:25.380)

I think the beauty of the university, broadly speaking,

Lex Fridman (2:13:29.940)

is the faculty and the students.

Lex Fridman (2:13:33.540)

And the problem arises from the overreach

Lex Fridman (2:13:40.420)

of a overgrowing administration

Glenn Loury (2:13:43.980)

that gives, again, thinks that it knows enough

Lex Fridman (2:13:51.100)

to make rules and conclusions based on a set of beliefs,

Lex Fridman (2:13:56.340)

and then based on that, empowers a certain small selection

Lex Fridman (2:14:00.180)

of students to be the sort of voices of activism,

Glenn Loury (2:14:04.860)

of a particular idea.

Lex Fridman (2:14:07.100)

And not, I think activism is beautiful,

Lex Fridman (2:14:10.100)

but not just activism, but anybody that disagrees

Lex Fridman (2:14:12.820)

is shut down, and that, I think,

Glenn Loury (2:14:17.300)

the blame lies with the administration.

Lex Fridman (2:14:20.460)

So I think the solution is in lessening,

Glenn Loury (2:14:23.220)

just like the solution with too big of a government,

Lex Fridman (2:14:25.660)

too big of a bureaucracy, is there needs to be

Glenn Loury (2:14:30.100)

redistribution of power to what makes universities beautiful,

Lex Fridman (2:14:34.660)

which is the old students and the young students,

Glenn Loury (2:14:38.820)

old students being professors.

Lex Fridman (2:14:42.220)

So the scholars, the curious minds,

Glenn Loury (2:14:45.900)

the people that are in this whole thing

Lex Fridman (2:14:48.140)

to explore the world, to be curious about it,

Glenn Loury (2:14:51.180)

on a salary that's probably way too low

Lex Fridman (2:14:53.340)

for the thing they're doing.

Glenn Loury (2:14:54.700)

That's the whole point.

Lex Fridman (2:14:57.020)

And then the administration just gets in the way,

Lex Fridman (2:15:01.100)

and is the source of this kind of,

Lex Fridman (2:15:05.780)

I would say that, in your beautiful phrasing,

Glenn Loury (2:15:08.980)

I would say the administration

Lex Fridman (2:15:10.460)

is the barbarians at the gate.

Lex Fridman (2:15:12.180)

So the solution is smaller bureaucracy,

Lex Fridman (2:15:15.420)

smaller administrations.

Glenn Loury (2:15:16.860)

I have to, on this point, you had this conversation,

Lex Fridman (2:15:18.920)

you put on your self stack with Jordan Peterson

Glenn Loury (2:15:23.160)

about cognitive inequality.

Lex Fridman (2:15:25.380)

I think it's titled Wrestling with Cognitive Inequality.

Glenn Loury (2:15:29.540)

This particular topic of just IQ differences

Lex Fridman (2:15:33.340)

between groups, why is this,

Lex Fridman (2:15:37.180)

why is it so dangerous to talk about?

Lex Fridman (2:15:39.240)

Why this particular topic?

Glenn Loury (2:15:42.880)

Well, it's like you're calling black people inferior.

Lex Fridman (2:15:45.080)

It's like you're saying they're genetically inferior.

Glenn Loury (2:15:46.920)

That's what people are saying.

Lex Fridman (2:15:48.560)

It's like you're rationalizing the disparity of outcomes

Glenn Loury (2:15:51.840)

by reference to the intrinsic inferiority of black people.

Lex Fridman (2:15:55.960)

If you say cognitive ability matters for social outcomes,

Glenn Loury (2:16:01.000)

if you say cognitive ability exists,

Lex Fridman (2:16:03.660)

people really are different

Glenn Loury (2:16:04.680)

in terms of their intellectual functioning.

Lex Fridman (2:16:07.240)

And if you say cognitive ability differences

Glenn Loury (2:16:09.920)

are substantial between racially defined populations,

Lex Fridman (2:16:15.080)

the sum of that, there is cognitive ability,

Glenn Loury (2:16:17.200)

it matters, and the difference by race

Lex Fridman (2:16:19.260)

is the conclusion that outcome differences by race

Glenn Loury (2:16:22.720)

are in part due to natural differences

Lex Fridman (2:16:26.240)

between the populations.

Glenn Loury (2:16:28.000)

People find that to be completely offensive

Lex Fridman (2:16:30.800)

and unacceptable.

Lex Fridman (2:16:32.200)

So that's what I think is going on.

Lex Fridman (2:16:34.040)

Can you steel me on that case

Lex Fridman (2:16:37.240)

that we should be careful doing that kind of research?

Lex Fridman (2:16:41.480)

So this has to do with research.

Glenn Loury (2:16:46.500)

It's like the Nazis used Nietzsche in their propaganda.

Lex Fridman (2:16:54.120)

You can use, white supremacists could use conclusions,

Glenn Loury (2:16:58.500)

cherry pick conclusions of studies to push their agenda.

Lex Fridman (2:17:04.900)

Can you steel me on the case that we should be careful?

Glenn Loury (2:17:07.060)

Yeah, I could do it at three levels.

Lex Fridman (2:17:08.540)

One is what do we mean by cognitive ability?

Lex Fridman (2:17:11.500)

So there's many different kinds of intelligence

Lex Fridman (2:17:13.660)

a person might say.

Lex Fridman (2:17:15.380)

How good are IQ tests at measuring

Lex Fridman (2:17:18.260)

other kinds of human capacities

Glenn Loury (2:17:20.760)

that are pertinent to success in life,

Lex Fridman (2:17:24.220)

like temperament, like emotional intelligence, and so on.

Lex Fridman (2:17:27.680)

So intelligence is not a one dimensional thing

Lex Fridman (2:17:31.020)

measured by G.

Glenn Loury (2:17:32.700)

The cognitive psychologists talk about G,

Lex Fridman (2:17:36.060)

the general intelligence factor,

Glenn Loury (2:17:38.500)

which is a statistical construction.

Lex Fridman (2:17:41.460)

It's a factor analytic resolution

Glenn Loury (2:17:44.620)

of the correlation across individuals

Lex Fridman (2:17:48.340)

in their performance on a battery,

Glenn Loury (2:17:49.780)

a different kind of test.

Lex Fridman (2:17:50.780)

And they use that to define a general factor of intelligence

Glenn Loury (2:17:55.780)

that a person could say that is a very narrow view

Lex Fridman (2:17:59.900)

of what human mental capacities actually are.

Lex Fridman (2:18:04.780)

And that it's much better to think about

Lex Fridman (2:18:07.900)

multi dimensional measures of human mental functioning

Glenn Loury (2:18:12.540)

rather than a single cognitive ability measure,

Lex Fridman (2:18:15.340)

so called IQ, which is a narrow construction

Glenn Loury (2:18:20.340)

that doesn't capture all of the subtle nuance

Lex Fridman (2:18:26.340)

of human difference in functioning.

Glenn Loury (2:18:28.280)

Functioning is not just the ability

Lex Fridman (2:18:30.560)

to recite backwards a sequence of numbers.

Glenn Loury (2:18:34.800)

I say eight, seven, nine, five, three, two.

Lex Fridman (2:18:37.040)

You say two, three, five, seven, eight, nine.

Glenn Loury (2:18:40.040)

It's not just that.

Lex Fridman (2:18:40.960)

Intelligence is a complex management

Glenn Loury (2:18:47.360)

of many different dimensions of human performance,

Lex Fridman (2:18:49.600)

including things like being able to stick with a task

Lex Fridman (2:18:54.760)

and not give up, things like being able to discipline

Lex Fridman (2:18:58.840)

and control your impulses so as to remain focused

Lex Fridman (2:19:02.080)

and so forth.

Lex Fridman (2:19:03.560)

That could be one dimension.

Glenn Loury (2:19:04.620)

I could start by questioning the very foundation

Lex Fridman (2:19:07.560)

of the argument for racial differences in cognitive ability

Glenn Loury (2:19:13.220)

by saying that your measure of cognitive ability is flawed.

Lex Fridman (2:19:18.220)

I could go to a higher level.

Glenn Loury (2:19:19.700)

I could say what we're really interested in

Lex Fridman (2:19:23.740)

is social outcomes and the question of what factors

Glenn Loury (2:19:28.900)

influence social outcomes extends well beyond mental ability

Lex Fridman (2:19:32.420)

to many other things.

Lex Fridman (2:19:33.860)

So here's an example.

Lex Fridman (2:19:37.940)

Visual acuity, how well do you see?

Glenn Loury (2:19:41.900)

You're not wearing glasses, I am.

Lex Fridman (2:19:43.820)

Visual acuity varies between human beings.

Glenn Loury (2:19:48.940)

Some people see better than other people do.

Lex Fridman (2:19:52.180)

Visual acuity can be measured.

Glenn Loury (2:19:54.660)

I can put you at the chart and you can,

Lex Fridman (2:19:57.020)

can you identify and read that bottom line

Lex Fridman (2:19:58.780)

in small print or not?

Lex Fridman (2:20:00.260)

So we can measure visual acuity

Lex Fridman (2:20:02.060)

and it varies between human beings.

Lex Fridman (2:20:04.020)

Visual acuity is partly genetic.

Glenn Loury (2:20:07.500)

I think that's undoubtedly true.

Lex Fridman (2:20:09.860)

We inherit genes that influence whether or not

Glenn Loury (2:20:12.220)

we are nearsighted or farsighted or astigmatic or whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:20:15.900)

So visual acuity differs between people

Lex Fridman (2:20:19.660)

and can be measured and is under genetic control.

Lex Fridman (2:20:23.740)

On the other hand, corrective lenses allow for us

Glenn Loury (2:20:28.060)

to level the playing field between people

Lex Fridman (2:20:29.740)

who are differently endowed in terms of visual acuity.

Glenn Loury (2:20:34.140)

Likewise, social outcomes are what we're really interested in

Lex Fridman (2:20:37.500)

employment, earnings, whether or not they're law abiding,

Lex Fridman (2:20:41.620)

how do they conduct themselves and their families

Lex Fridman (2:20:43.580)

and so forth amongst individuals.

Glenn Loury (2:20:45.700)

Yes, social outcomes are influenced

Lex Fridman (2:20:47.940)

by so called cognitive ability,

Lex Fridman (2:20:49.620)

but they're influenced by many other things as well.

Lex Fridman (2:20:52.340)

If there are interventions that can be undertaken in society

Glenn Loury (2:20:56.660)

that level the playing field between people

Lex Fridman (2:20:58.900)

who have different natural endowments of cognitive ability,

Glenn Loury (2:21:02.020)

the fact that people or groups differ in cognitive ability

Lex Fridman (2:21:05.860)

becomes less significant.

Glenn Loury (2:21:07.540)

Just like it's less significant that people differ

Lex Fridman (2:21:10.140)

with respect to how well they see

Glenn Loury (2:21:12.180)

when corrective lenses allow

Lex Fridman (2:21:14.420)

for the leveling of that playing field.

Glenn Loury (2:21:16.940)

There are in fact interventions, educational interventions,

Lex Fridman (2:21:20.740)

early childhood interventions that have been shown

Glenn Loury (2:21:23.740)

to level the playing field

Lex Fridman (2:21:25.260)

to create better life outcomes for people

Glenn Loury (2:21:27.220)

even if they happen to be endowed with low intelligence.

Lex Fridman (2:21:30.980)

So a second level of arguing against this whole program

Glenn Loury (2:21:35.340)

of research on human differences and intelligence

Lex Fridman (2:21:38.220)

is to observe that yes, human beings

Lex Fridman (2:21:40.340)

and perhaps racially defined groups

Lex Fridman (2:21:42.700)

may differ on the average in intellectual endowment,

Lex Fridman (2:21:46.580)

but there well may be social interventions

Lex Fridman (2:21:49.100)

that level the playing field,

Glenn Loury (2:21:50.620)

whether it's in education

Lex Fridman (2:21:51.980)

or in other kinds of programmatic interventions,

Glenn Loury (2:21:55.180)

especially for the poor.

Lex Fridman (2:21:57.300)

A final level of argument is the one that you alluded to,

Glenn Loury (2:21:59.900)

which is that if you talk like this,

Lex Fridman (2:22:02.100)

you're gonna encourage a kind of politics

Glenn Loury (2:22:04.260)

which is very ugly.

Lex Fridman (2:22:05.940)

And it's best to frame the discussion

Glenn Loury (2:22:09.740)

in ways that don't put emphasis

Lex Fridman (2:22:11.700)

on racially defined natural differences between populations.

Glenn Loury (2:22:17.580)

That's an argument that I am myself personally

Lex Fridman (2:22:22.700)

conflicted about.

Glenn Loury (2:22:24.420)

On the one hand, I think, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:22:27.260)

those people are just stupid.

Lex Fridman (2:22:29.380)

It is racist, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:22:32.940)

On the other hand, I think the calculation,

Glenn Loury (2:22:36.500)

we shouldn't do this kind of research.

Lex Fridman (2:22:38.180)

Suppose I'm at the National Science Foundation,

Glenn Loury (2:22:40.060)

a research team submits a proposal.

Lex Fridman (2:22:42.340)

The proposal proposes to undertake a study.

Glenn Loury (2:22:44.780)

The study would explore the extent to which people

Lex Fridman (2:22:48.540)

and racial groups differ with respect

Glenn Loury (2:22:50.500)

to their intellectual performance

Lex Fridman (2:22:52.500)

and how that's influenced by their genetic

Lex Fridman (2:22:55.020)

and environmental interaction.

Lex Fridman (2:22:56.860)

And I decide not to fund the study

Glenn Loury (2:22:59.140)

based on a political calculation

Lex Fridman (2:23:01.820)

that the subject is too sensitive.

Lex Fridman (2:23:04.580)

And if you explore that subject,

Lex Fridman (2:23:06.580)

you might get the wrong answer.

Lex Fridman (2:23:08.260)

And if you get the wrong answer,

Lex Fridman (2:23:09.900)

the white supremacist will be encouraged.

Glenn Loury (2:23:12.460)

Well, that is presuming before the research is done

Lex Fridman (2:23:17.740)

that I know the outcome of the research

Lex Fridman (2:23:19.780)

and that I can calculate what the political consequence

Lex Fridman (2:23:23.060)

of the research outcome is gonna be.

Glenn Loury (2:23:25.260)

That's assuming the thing before you even know

Lex Fridman (2:23:27.660)

what the thing actually is.

Glenn Loury (2:23:28.940)

It's a kind of omniscience.

Lex Fridman (2:23:30.380)

It presumes that you as the master of the universe

Glenn Loury (2:23:35.620)

can tell people what it is

Lex Fridman (2:23:37.180)

that people are being treated like children,

Lex Fridman (2:23:39.380)

what it is that they're capable of knowing

Lex Fridman (2:23:41.540)

and what it is that they're not capable of knowing.

Glenn Loury (2:23:44.060)

It would be like someone saying to Einstein,

Lex Fridman (2:23:47.460)

I don't know about that special relativity theory.

Glenn Loury (2:23:49.740)

You know, it could well lead

Lex Fridman (2:23:50.940)

to the development of technologies

Glenn Loury (2:23:53.140)

that would allow nuclear weapons.

Lex Fridman (2:23:54.420)

Or someone saying to Oppenheimer,

Glenn Loury (2:23:55.780)

who is a physicist overseeing the Manhattan Project

Lex Fridman (2:23:58.860)

where the US developed a nuclear weapons capacity,

Glenn Loury (2:24:02.180)

don't carry out that project

Lex Fridman (2:24:04.180)

because the results of acquiring that knowledge

Glenn Loury (2:24:08.300)

may be more than we can deal with.

Lex Fridman (2:24:10.420)

Or someone saying to someone doing biomedical research

Glenn Loury (2:24:13.700)

who's interested in exploring the nature of the human genome,

Lex Fridman (2:24:19.260)

don't carry out that experiment,

Glenn Loury (2:24:20.900)

that cloning, undertaking, whatever,

Lex Fridman (2:24:22.740)

because the consequences could be deleterious.

Glenn Loury (2:24:26.020)

Well, the consequences could be deleterious.

Lex Fridman (2:24:27.820)

The consequences could also be the cure of cancer.

Glenn Loury (2:24:30.220)

The consequences could also be

Lex Fridman (2:24:32.140)

being able to generate electric power

Glenn Loury (2:24:33.740)

without producing carbon effluent.

Lex Fridman (2:24:36.780)

So who are you to tell me,

Glenn Loury (2:24:38.940)

you being the person in the political position

Lex Fridman (2:24:42.140)

to control the research,

Lex Fridman (2:24:44.180)

what the consequence of doing the research is?

Lex Fridman (2:24:46.140)

I think I don't want to cede that kind of power

Glenn Loury (2:24:50.860)

to politicians over the course of human inquiry.

Lex Fridman (2:24:55.860)

So yes, I would want there to be regulations

Glenn Loury (2:24:59.700)

governing the use of biologically sensitive

Lex Fridman (2:25:03.860)

and potentially dangerous pathogens

Glenn Loury (2:25:06.580)

in a lab in Wuhan or any place else.

Lex Fridman (2:25:10.060)

I would not want to simply leave that to laissez faire.

Glenn Loury (2:25:13.260)

On the other hand, I think that the tendency

Lex Fridman (2:25:16.660)

to try to shut down inquiry

Glenn Loury (2:25:19.700)

on behalf of supposed adverse political consequences

Lex Fridman (2:25:24.220)

is the road to ignorance and impoverishment

Glenn Loury (2:25:27.620)

at the end of the day for humankind,

Lex Fridman (2:25:29.460)

denying ourselves the potential benefits

Glenn Loury (2:25:31.580)

of that kind of inquiry.

Lex Fridman (2:25:33.060)

I think we need to take our chances with inquiry

Glenn Loury (2:25:35.660)

rather than to try to control it.

Lex Fridman (2:25:37.060)

And I feel that way about the exploration

Glenn Loury (2:25:39.380)

of human intelligence as much as anything else.

Lex Fridman (2:25:42.780)

So you've asked me to steel man the case

Glenn Loury (2:25:44.660)

against research on IQ of the sort

Lex Fridman (2:25:47.540)

that Charles Murray is famous for popularizing.

Lex Fridman (2:25:51.180)

And I've said A, your measure of intelligence

Lex Fridman (2:25:54.780)

is single dimensional and it ought to be multi dimensional.

Glenn Loury (2:25:58.340)

I've said B, the consequences of people's differing

Lex Fridman (2:26:02.020)

in intelligence depends not only

Glenn Loury (2:26:03.980)

on the natural endowments of the people

Lex Fridman (2:26:05.860)

but also on the environment

Lex Fridman (2:26:08.740)

and the potential for intervening in that environment

Lex Fridman (2:26:12.300)

through one or another kind of instrument

Glenn Loury (2:26:14.340)

as the metaphorical example of the use of corrective lenses

Lex Fridman (2:26:18.340)

to level the playing field between people

Glenn Loury (2:26:20.620)

with different visual acuity indicates.

Lex Fridman (2:26:25.020)

But finally, I've said, yes,

Glenn Loury (2:26:28.020)

research on racial differences in IQ can foster

Lex Fridman (2:26:33.060)

political beliefs that we would regard to be noxious.

Glenn Loury (2:26:38.300)

On the other hand, to presume that what we don't know yet

Lex Fridman (2:26:41.660)

and might find out from the research is gonna be harmful

Glenn Loury (2:26:44.900)

is to assume a kind of presumption

Lex Fridman (2:26:48.260)

or of knowing what the outcome of unknown processes might be

Glenn Loury (2:26:52.820)

which we ought to be very slow to embrace

Lex Fridman (2:26:55.740)

because if we had done so in the past,

Glenn Loury (2:26:57.820)

we wouldn't have nuclear power.

Lex Fridman (2:26:59.980)

There's a lot of things that we wouldn't know.

Glenn Loury (2:27:01.180)

I mean, what were people saying about Darwin

Lex Fridman (2:27:03.340)

and exploration of the evolution

Lex Fridman (2:27:06.220)

and origin of the species?

Lex Fridman (2:27:07.940)

They were afraid that it was gonna, in effect,

Glenn Loury (2:27:10.380)

disprove the religious based accounts

Lex Fridman (2:27:13.380)

of what were they saying about Copernicus

Lex Fridman (2:27:16.300)

and et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (2:27:17.780)

So, you know.

Glenn Loury (2:27:19.780)

That was a masterful layering of, quote,

Lex Fridman (2:27:24.780)

wrestling with cognitive inequality.

Glenn Loury (2:27:26.860)

You dragged in nuclear research,

Lex Fridman (2:27:29.700)

Copernicus, Darwin, biomedical research with genetics,

Glenn Loury (2:27:32.820)

even COVID and the lab leak.

Lex Fridman (2:27:37.180)

I mean, that was just fun to listen to.

Glenn Loury (2:27:39.940)

Okay. Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:27:42.980)

Let me ask you about your politics.

Lex Fridman (2:27:44.900)

So you've recently said that you're a conservative leaning.

Lex Fridman (2:27:48.420)

I mean, maybe that's a day to day thing.

Glenn Loury (2:27:51.060)

Maybe you can push back.

Lex Fridman (2:27:52.100)

But so you have somebody like your friend, John McWhorter,

Glenn Loury (2:27:56.820)

who we could say is on your left, to the left of you.

Lex Fridman (2:28:01.740)

And then you have somebody like Thomas Sowell

Glenn Loury (2:28:05.660)

who maybe is on to the right of you.

Lex Fridman (2:28:09.460)

Yeah, probably.

Lex Fridman (2:28:10.780)

And yet there's a lot of overlap between the three of you.

Lex Fridman (2:28:14.060)

So to what degree does politics affect your view on race

Lex Fridman (2:28:19.700)

in America?

Lex Fridman (2:28:21.020)

And maybe to what degree does your view on race

Lex Fridman (2:28:25.380)

affect your politics?

Lex Fridman (2:28:28.580)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:28:29.420)

And that, for people who don't know, has shifted over time.

Lex Fridman (2:28:33.860)

You've been on quite a roller coaster,

Glenn Loury (2:28:36.300)

as anybody who thinks about the world should be.

Lex Fridman (2:28:38.820)

Well, let's begin with the fact that I was trained

Glenn Loury (2:28:43.060)

as an economist in a tradition of what many people

Lex Fridman (2:28:48.060)

would call neoliberalism.

Glenn Loury (2:28:50.980)

I was trained at MIT, which was not a right wing place

Lex Fridman (2:28:56.220)

by any means, but it was a place where you learned

Glenn Loury (2:29:01.220)

about markets and about the benefits of capitalism

Lex Fridman (2:29:06.220)

as a way of organizing society,

Glenn Loury (2:29:10.740)

the virtues of free enterprise,

Lex Fridman (2:29:13.660)

the fact that the pursuit of profit

Glenn Loury (2:29:15.460)

was not necessarily a bad thing,

Lex Fridman (2:29:17.220)

but it well might be the road to prosperity

Lex Fridman (2:29:20.140)

and to economic growth.

Lex Fridman (2:29:21.780)

The idea that private property and individuals seeking

Glenn Loury (2:29:25.060)

to acquire and succeeding in acquiring wealth

Lex Fridman (2:29:28.900)

did create inequality, but it also created opportunity.

Lex Fridman (2:29:32.420)

And it also expanded the ability to do things

Lex Fridman (2:29:36.060)

and expanded our knowledge and our control

Glenn Loury (2:29:38.540)

over the physical environment in which we're embedded

Lex Fridman (2:29:41.100)

and et cetera.

Lex Fridman (2:29:44.580)

So we were not Marxists at MIT, although we did read Marx.

Lex Fridman (2:29:48.660)

I mean, those of us who were intellectually curious,

Glenn Loury (2:29:50.580)

you read Marx.

Lex Fridman (2:29:51.420)

Marx was an important figure in the history of the West.

Lex Fridman (2:29:54.380)

And I think Marx should be read in capital three volumes,

Lex Fridman (2:29:57.940)

et cetera, alienation of labor and whatnot.

Glenn Loury (2:30:02.220)

The implications of modernization,

Lex Fridman (2:30:04.820)

the advent of industrial capitalism, et cetera.

Glenn Loury (2:30:08.940)

That kind of dynamic deserves to be studied

Lex Fridman (2:30:12.500)

and to come at it in a critical way,

Glenn Loury (2:30:16.380)

informed by the intellectual inheritance of Marx and Marxism.

Lex Fridman (2:30:21.580)

I think that's a part of a full education

Glenn Loury (2:30:23.860)

in social philosophy and economic analysis

Lex Fridman (2:30:28.340)

that an open minded person ought to acquaint themselves with.

Lex Fridman (2:30:32.340)

But at the end of the day,

Lex Fridman (2:30:33.180)

I think that the free marketeers have the better of it.

Glenn Loury (2:30:41.260)

I think the story of the 20th century

Lex Fridman (2:30:43.220)

as far as economic development is concerned reflects that.

Glenn Loury (2:30:47.900)

I think that the experiments where centralized control

Lex Fridman (2:30:52.100)

over economic decisions was the order of the day failed.

Glenn Loury (2:30:57.740)

I think that the fact of the 21st century rise of China

Lex Fridman (2:31:01.900)

as a force has a lot to do with the spread of,

Glenn Loury (2:31:05.660)

in effect, capitalist oriented modes

Lex Fridman (2:31:08.780)

of entering economic exchange,

Glenn Loury (2:31:11.500)

freeing up prices, markets, property, and so forth.

Lex Fridman (2:31:15.540)

Although obviously it's a complicated

Glenn Loury (2:31:18.060)

political economic system, we're talking about China.

Lex Fridman (2:31:21.380)

But I think that the story of the 20th century

Lex Fridman (2:31:26.100)

and the hope for the 21st century

Lex Fridman (2:31:28.300)

is that prosperity is enhanced through the free exchange

Glenn Loury (2:31:34.900)

of goods and the pursuit and acquisition of property

Lex Fridman (2:31:40.140)

by people in a more or less capitalist oriented system.

Glenn Loury (2:31:46.740)

That's the view that I hold.

Lex Fridman (2:31:49.860)

I guess that makes me a conservative, I don't know.

Glenn Loury (2:31:52.340)

I wanna say that's not to the exclusion

Lex Fridman (2:31:56.580)

of a social safety net.

Glenn Loury (2:31:58.420)

I'm not saying that old people in an ideal social system

Lex Fridman (2:32:02.820)

would be left to their own devices

Glenn Loury (2:32:04.460)

regardless of whether or not

Lex Fridman (2:32:05.420)

they had saved for their retirement.

Glenn Loury (2:32:07.340)

I'm not saying that the ideal of extending decent access

Lex Fridman (2:32:13.900)

to healthcare to all people regardless

Glenn Loury (2:32:15.860)

of whether or not they can afford it,

Lex Fridman (2:32:18.020)

decent access to education to people

Glenn Loury (2:32:20.820)

regardless of whether or not they can afford it

Lex Fridman (2:32:22.940)

is standing in the way of prosperity.

Glenn Loury (2:32:25.700)

I don't believe that.

Lex Fridman (2:32:26.980)

I think the mixed economies that we see in Northern Europe

Lex Fridman (2:32:29.580)

and in North America are a balancing

Lex Fridman (2:32:35.020)

of the virtues of free enterprise property

Lex Fridman (2:32:37.900)

and the pursuit of wealth on the one hand

Lex Fridman (2:32:40.500)

against the needs to have a decent society

Glenn Loury (2:32:44.220)

in which people who fall between the cracks nevertheless

Lex Fridman (2:32:47.700)

are bolstered through a sense of social solidarity

Glenn Loury (2:32:51.620)

that is accommodated by our common membership

Lex Fridman (2:32:54.540)

within a single nation state,

Glenn Loury (2:32:56.900)

which is why I think nationalism is important.

Lex Fridman (2:32:59.300)

And it's why I think borders are important

Glenn Loury (2:33:02.140)

because without a coherent polity

Lex Fridman (2:33:06.500)

who can see themselves as in a common situation

Lex Fridman (2:33:12.100)

and agree through their politics

Lex Fridman (2:33:15.100)

to support each other to some extent,

Glenn Loury (2:33:17.540)

you can't sustain a safety net.

Lex Fridman (2:33:18.980)

You cannot have a social safety net for a global population.

Glenn Loury (2:33:23.100)

You can only have a social safety net

Lex Fridman (2:33:24.660)

for a bounded population who have a sense

Glenn Loury (2:33:28.220)

of common membership in an ongoing political enterprise

Lex Fridman (2:33:33.060)

which they pay their dues through their taxes

Glenn Loury (2:33:35.660)

in order to sustain it.

Lex Fridman (2:33:36.980)

There's a balancing that has to go on.

Lex Fridman (2:33:38.900)

So that's the first thing that I would say about my politics.

Lex Fridman (2:33:42.180)

I'm a neoliberal economist.

Glenn Loury (2:33:44.020)

I believe in markets.

Lex Fridman (2:33:45.100)

I believe in prices.

Glenn Loury (2:33:46.180)

I believe in profit.

Lex Fridman (2:33:47.780)

Corporations are not an incarnation of evil.

Glenn Loury (2:33:51.060)

Corporations are a legal nexus

Lex Fridman (2:33:53.500)

through which production gets organized

Glenn Loury (2:33:56.620)

in which you solicit the cooperation of workers,

Lex Fridman (2:34:00.500)

of people who provide capital,

Glenn Loury (2:34:02.380)

of people who provide raw materials

Lex Fridman (2:34:04.060)

and input of customers and so on.

Lex Fridman (2:34:06.740)

And that functionality allows for the production of goods

Lex Fridman (2:34:12.820)

and their distribution and their earning of income

Lex Fridman (2:34:16.620)

and its distribution,

Lex Fridman (2:34:18.820)

which at the end of the day is the foundation

Glenn Loury (2:34:21.340)

of our prosperity.

Lex Fridman (2:34:22.180)

Corporations are people too.

Glenn Loury (2:34:23.460)

Mitt Romney got in trouble for saying that in 2012.

Lex Fridman (2:34:26.660)

But corporations are nothing but a legal fiction.

Glenn Loury (2:34:28.740)

The corporation is not a person as such,

Lex Fridman (2:34:32.140)

but the nexus of contracts and relationships

Glenn Loury (2:34:35.100)

amongst the stakeholders who intersect

Lex Fridman (2:34:38.060)

in the context of the corporation

Glenn Loury (2:34:41.340)

is the way in which we organize

Lex Fridman (2:34:43.220)

the massively complex set of activities

Glenn Loury (2:34:46.380)

that are necessary in order to produce economic benefits,

Lex Fridman (2:34:50.980)

in order to feed people,

Glenn Loury (2:34:52.060)

in order to have everybody with a cell phone in their pocket,

Lex Fridman (2:34:55.020)

in order to be able to travel from one side of a continent

Glenn Loury (2:34:57.900)

to another on a device that is with almost absolute certainty

Lex Fridman (2:35:01.700)

gonna safely take off and land

Lex Fridman (2:35:04.020)

and in order to be able to build cities and et cetera.

Lex Fridman (2:35:07.540)

But do the markets, the ideal of the market

Lex Fridman (2:35:10.620)

collide with the ideal of all men are created equal?

Lex Fridman (2:35:14.980)

The identity, the struggle that we've been talking about

Glenn Loury (2:35:17.780)

of what it means to sort of empower humans

Lex Fridman (2:35:21.380)

that make up this great country.

Lex Fridman (2:35:23.340)

Do they collide and where do they collide?

Lex Fridman (2:35:26.340)

Well, markets are gonna produce inequality

Lex Fridman (2:35:29.380)

and all men being equal is a statement

Lex Fridman (2:35:32.260)

about the intrinsic worth of people,

Glenn Loury (2:35:34.460)

not about the situation that will come about

Lex Fridman (2:35:36.980)

when people interact with each other through markets

Glenn Loury (2:35:39.340)

because people are actually different

Lex Fridman (2:35:41.860)

and because there are factors

Glenn Loury (2:35:43.140)

that are beyond anybody's control called luck and chance

Lex Fridman (2:35:46.260)

that you and I both invest.

Glenn Loury (2:35:49.300)

It looked a priori like your investment and my investment

Lex Fridman (2:35:51.580)

were equally likely to succeed.

Lex Fridman (2:35:53.660)

But as a matter of fact, ex post facto,

Lex Fridman (2:35:55.660)

your investment succeeds, my investment doesn't succeed.

Glenn Loury (2:35:58.900)

I don't have wealth and you have wealth.

Lex Fridman (2:36:01.060)

That is an inevitable consequence of a environment

Glenn Loury (2:36:04.300)

in which both of us are free to make our investment choices

Lex Fridman (2:36:07.660)

and where the consequences of investment

Glenn Loury (2:36:09.860)

depend in part upon random circumstances

Lex Fridman (2:36:12.660)

of which no one has control.

Lex Fridman (2:36:14.820)

But you asked me about my politics

Lex Fridman (2:36:16.420)

and I was just trying to lay down a foundation

Glenn Loury (2:36:18.460)

by saying I begin as an economist

Lex Fridman (2:36:22.500)

in the tradition of liberalism, Adam Smith and so forth,

Glenn Loury (2:36:27.020)

John Maynard Keynes for that matter and so forth,

Lex Fridman (2:36:30.380)

that Milton Friedman and so forth,

Glenn Loury (2:36:34.460)

that Paul Samuelson, Bob Solla, James Tobin and so forth,

Lex Fridman (2:36:39.460)

Thomas Sowell, yes, that appreciates property,

Glenn Loury (2:36:44.660)

the virtues of free enterprise,

Lex Fridman (2:36:46.740)

the set of institutions that allow for security of contract,

Glenn Loury (2:36:53.220)

a rule of law, things of this kind.

Lex Fridman (2:36:56.180)

So that's one thing to say about my politics.

Glenn Loury (2:36:59.140)

Another thing to say about my politics and you're right,

Lex Fridman (2:37:01.140)

I've moved around, is that I began south side of Chicago,

Glenn Loury (2:37:06.140)

black kid, I was a liberal Democrat.

Lex Fridman (2:37:09.460)

I encountered the economics curriculum at the MIT

Lex Fridman (2:37:14.620)

and I became trained in economics

Lex Fridman (2:37:16.660)

in the tradition that I've just described.

Lex Fridman (2:37:19.980)

And I encountered also the Reagan Revolution.

Lex Fridman (2:37:24.300)

This is the late 70s and early 80s.

Glenn Loury (2:37:27.260)

These are big debates about economic policy and so on.

Lex Fridman (2:37:31.260)

And I found a lot to admire in the supply side errors,

Glenn Loury (2:37:37.900)

the people were saying,

Lex Fridman (2:37:39.060)

let's get the government out of the way,

Glenn Loury (2:37:41.020)

the people who were worried about national debt,

Lex Fridman (2:37:43.060)

which is a lot more now than it was then,

Glenn Loury (2:37:46.300)

the people who were worried

Lex Fridman (2:37:47.140)

that the welfare state could be too big,

Glenn Loury (2:37:48.940)

that the incentives of transfer programs

Lex Fridman (2:37:51.060)

could be counterproductive, that you had a war on poverty

Lex Fridman (2:37:54.100)

and we did have a war on poverty and poverty won.

Lex Fridman (2:37:56.700)

And that's what I found.

Lex Fridman (2:37:58.420)

And we did have a war on poverty and poverty won.

Lex Fridman (2:38:01.420)

And there's a lot of evidence that the war on poverty

Glenn Loury (2:38:04.460)

was lost by the people who were trying to, quote unquote,

Lex Fridman (2:38:07.300)

eradicate poverty in our time.

Glenn Loury (2:38:10.780)

That incentives really do matter

Lex Fridman (2:38:13.580)

and that the state, which is driven by politics,

Glenn Loury (2:38:17.500)

is often unresponsive to the dictates of incentives.

Lex Fridman (2:38:20.700)

Whereas markets eliminate people who are inefficient

Lex Fridman (2:38:24.380)

and who are not cognizant of the consequences of incentives

Lex Fridman (2:38:27.180)

because they can't cover their bottom line

Lex Fridman (2:38:29.540)

and they won't persist for very long.

Lex Fridman (2:38:31.420)

If they can't cover their bottom line,

Glenn Loury (2:38:32.700)

they're forced to respond to the realities of differences

Lex Fridman (2:38:35.900)

and costs and benefits and so forth

Glenn Loury (2:38:37.580)

in a way that governments can cover

Lex Fridman (2:38:39.620)

because they have their hand in our pocket.

Glenn Loury (2:38:42.100)

They can cover their losses

Lex Fridman (2:38:43.940)

and they can make accounts balanced,

Glenn Loury (2:38:46.260)

not withstanding their mistakes

Lex Fridman (2:38:47.460)

because they can take my property by fiat,

Glenn Loury (2:38:51.140)

by the power of the state, the tax collector comes,

Lex Fridman (2:38:53.420)

if I don't pay, he seizes my holdings.

Lex Fridman (2:38:56.180)

And they can carry on in that way.

Lex Fridman (2:38:59.100)

They need the corrective influence of markets

Glenn Loury (2:39:02.820)

in order to be responsive to the realities of life.

Lex Fridman (2:39:05.580)

I mean, I may not like it that prices are telling me

Glenn Loury (2:39:10.580)

that something that I wanna do is infeasible.

Lex Fridman (2:39:12.900)

I may not like it, but what the prices are telling me

Glenn Loury (2:39:15.740)

is that the costs of doing it exceed the benefits

Lex Fridman (2:39:20.340)

to be derived from doing it.

Lex Fridman (2:39:22.060)

And if I persist in doing it not withstanding that,

Lex Fridman (2:39:24.220)

I'm gonna run losses.

Lex Fridman (2:39:25.500)

And those losses will accumulate.

Lex Fridman (2:39:26.980)

And the net effect of that over an entire society

Glenn Loury (2:39:30.900)

is stagnation and ultimate attenuation

Lex Fridman (2:39:34.580)

of the economic benefits

Glenn Loury (2:39:36.060)

that might be available to people.

Lex Fridman (2:39:37.260)

Again, I think if you look at the developing world

Glenn Loury (2:39:40.620)

in the postcolonial period,

Lex Fridman (2:39:42.100)

the second half of the 20th century,

Glenn Loury (2:39:44.020)

that's exactly what you see.

Lex Fridman (2:39:46.060)

Planning doesn't work.

Glenn Loury (2:39:48.060)

Centralized control over resource allocation doesn't work.

Lex Fridman (2:39:50.740)

Okay, so I became more conservative in that respect,

Lex Fridman (2:39:54.860)

but I also, and this has to do with race,

Lex Fridman (2:39:59.380)

lost the faith in the posture

Glenn Loury (2:40:05.820)

that what became of the civil rights movement.

Lex Fridman (2:40:08.820)

I mean, the civil rights movement, you quote King 1963,

Glenn Loury (2:40:11.740)

the civil rights movement starts out as

Lex Fridman (2:40:15.300)

we want equal membership in the polity,

Lex Fridman (2:40:17.940)

but it becomes a systematized cover I'm going to argue

Lex Fridman (2:40:29.540)

for deficiencies that are discernible

Glenn Loury (2:40:35.300)

within black American society, which only we could correct.

Lex Fridman (2:40:38.940)

That's a very controversial statement.

Glenn Loury (2:40:40.780)

I make it with trepidation.

Lex Fridman (2:40:43.540)

I don't take any pleasure in saying it,

Lex Fridman (2:40:47.340)

but here's what I'm talking about.

Lex Fridman (2:40:50.540)

So I'm talking about the family.

Lex Fridman (2:40:53.260)

So the family is a matter internal to the community

Lex Fridman (2:41:00.020)

about how men and women relate to each other

Lex Fridman (2:41:03.260)

and engage in social reproduction, childbearing,

Lex Fridman (2:41:07.420)

the standing up of households,

Glenn Loury (2:41:09.780)

the context within which children are developed,

Lex Fridman (2:41:12.340)

are maturing and so forth and so on.

Lex Fridman (2:41:14.660)

So the African American family is in trouble.

Lex Fridman (2:41:17.700)

I think I can demonstrate that

Glenn Loury (2:41:20.300)

by reference to high rates of marital dissolution,

Lex Fridman (2:41:25.580)

by high rates of birth to out of wedlock and so forth.

Glenn Loury (2:41:31.100)

You can't even say that

Lex Fridman (2:41:32.020)

the African American family is in trouble.

Glenn Loury (2:41:34.700)

Violence, homicide is an order of magnitude more prevalent

Lex Fridman (2:41:39.340)

amongst African Americans than it is

Glenn Loury (2:41:40.900)

in the society as a whole.

Lex Fridman (2:41:43.020)

This is behavior, it's behavior of our people.

Glenn Loury (2:41:46.460)

I speak of black people.

Lex Fridman (2:41:47.580)

Of course, we're not the only people in society

Glenn Loury (2:41:49.740)

for whom violence is an issue.

Lex Fridman (2:41:51.620)

It's an order of magnitude more prevalent in our communities.

Glenn Loury (2:41:56.820)

I'm talking about schooling and school failure.

Lex Fridman (2:42:00.180)

So we have affirmative action as a cover.

Glenn Loury (2:42:02.780)

It's a bandaid on differences in the development

Lex Fridman (2:42:06.020)

of intellectual performance,

Glenn Loury (2:42:07.980)

which is only partly a consequence

Lex Fridman (2:42:10.260)

of the natural intelligence of people

Lex Fridman (2:42:12.780)

and largely a consequence of how people spend their time,

Lex Fridman (2:42:16.700)

what they value, how they discipline themselves,

Lex Fridman (2:42:20.140)

what they do with their opportunities,

Lex Fridman (2:42:23.740)

how parents raise their children,

Lex Fridman (2:42:25.860)

what peer groups value and things of this kind.

Lex Fridman (2:42:28.500)

The Asian students who are scoring off the charts

Glenn Loury (2:42:30.940)

on these exams are doing it

Lex Fridman (2:42:33.220)

not because they're intrinsically more intelligent

Glenn Loury (2:42:35.420)

to other people, but because they work harder,

Lex Fridman (2:42:38.220)

because their parents are more insistent

Glenn Loury (2:42:39.820)

on focusing on their intellectual performance

Lex Fridman (2:42:43.220)

because they're disciplined,

Glenn Loury (2:42:45.100)

because of the way that they devote their time

Lex Fridman (2:42:46.900)

and their resources to equipping their children

Glenn Loury (2:42:50.420)

to function in the 21st century.

Lex Fridman (2:42:52.540)

This is what I believe.

Glenn Loury (2:42:53.460)

I think it's demonstrably the case.

Lex Fridman (2:42:56.420)

And it is a factor in racial disparity.

Glenn Loury (2:43:00.140)

The way that the civil rights movement has evolved

Lex Fridman (2:43:03.020)

under the wing of the Democratic Party

Glenn Loury (2:43:05.940)

into an organized apologia for the failures

Lex Fridman (2:43:11.660)

of African Americans to seize the opportunities

Glenn Loury (2:43:14.180)

that exist for us now in the 21st century,

Lex Fridman (2:43:17.500)

but did not exist in the first half of the 20th century,

Glenn Loury (2:43:21.140)

the way in which the civil rights movement

Lex Fridman (2:43:22.740)

has become an avoidance mechanism

Glenn Loury (2:43:27.300)

for us not taking we African Americans responsible.

Lex Fridman (2:43:29.940)

This is Glenn Loury.

Glenn Loury (2:43:30.780)

Not everybody's gonna agree with it.

Lex Fridman (2:43:33.260)

It's part of what makes me a conservative.

Glenn Loury (2:43:36.780)

I am tired of the bellyaching.

Lex Fridman (2:43:38.940)

I'm tired of the excuse me, white supremacy.

Glenn Loury (2:43:42.380)

It is in my mind, a joke.

Lex Fridman (2:43:45.660)

I lament the fact that that kind of rhetoric

Glenn Loury (2:43:49.300)

is so seductively attractive to African Americans

Lex Fridman (2:43:53.940)

and so widely adopted by others.

Lex Fridman (2:43:58.700)

And as I am fond of saying, at the end of the day,

Lex Fridman (2:44:02.900)

nobody is coming to save us.

Glenn Loury (2:44:04.860)

I mean, higher education, MIT, Caltech, Stanford,

Lex Fridman (2:44:10.820)

where the future is happening,

Glenn Loury (2:44:13.660)

that is about mastery over the achievements

Lex Fridman (2:44:17.980)

of human civilization, such as they manifest themselves

Glenn Loury (2:44:21.500)

in the 21st century.

Lex Fridman (2:44:22.340)

There's no substitute for actually acquiring mastery

Glenn Loury (2:44:26.380)

over the material.

Lex Fridman (2:44:27.380)

There's no substitute for that to be patronized,

Glenn Loury (2:44:33.700)

to have the standards lowered.

Lex Fridman (2:44:34.860)

They wanna get rid of the test.

Glenn Loury (2:44:37.100)

They wanna tell African Americans to pat us on the head.

Lex Fridman (2:44:41.140)

We're gonna have a separate program for you.

Glenn Loury (2:44:43.020)

We're gonna give you a side door that you can come into.

Lex Fridman (2:44:45.820)

That doesn't make us any smarter.

Glenn Loury (2:44:48.060)

It doesn't make us any more creative.

Lex Fridman (2:44:51.020)

And it doesn't make us any more fit

Glenn Loury (2:44:54.820)

for the actual competition that's unfolding before us.

Lex Fridman (2:44:58.300)

Now, you wanna be 10% of the population

Lex Fridman (2:45:01.340)

that's carried along for the next 100 years?

Lex Fridman (2:45:03.900)

You wanna be a ward of the state in the late 21st century?

Glenn Loury (2:45:09.020)

You go ahead.

Lex Fridman (2:45:10.100)

Because the Chinese are coming.

Glenn Loury (2:45:12.100)

You're not gonna hold them back.

Lex Fridman (2:45:13.660)

The world is being remade every decade

Glenn Loury (2:45:16.300)

by new ways of seeing and new ways of doing.

Lex Fridman (2:45:19.580)

If you don't get on board with the dynamic advancement

Glenn Loury (2:45:23.700)

of the civilization in which we are embedded,

Lex Fridman (2:45:26.100)

you're gonna end up being dependent on other people

Glenn Loury (2:45:29.380)

to look kindly upon you.

Lex Fridman (2:45:31.300)

And this story that you've got, this bellyache,

Glenn Loury (2:45:35.940)

this excuse, my ancestors were slaves,

Lex Fridman (2:45:41.020)

is only gonna work for so long.

Lex Fridman (2:45:45.020)

So that makes me, I suppose, a kind of conservative.

Lex Fridman (2:45:49.060)

I hate affirmative action.

Glenn Loury (2:45:51.340)

I don't just disagree with it.

Lex Fridman (2:45:52.500)

I don't just think it's against the 14th amendment.

Glenn Loury (2:45:55.340)

I hate it.

Lex Fridman (2:45:56.900)

The hatred comes from an understanding

Glenn Loury (2:45:58.860)

that it is a bandaid, that it is a substitute

Lex Fridman (2:46:01.380)

for the actual development of the capacities

Glenn Loury (2:46:03.740)

of our people to compete.

Lex Fridman (2:46:05.540)

I'd much rather be in the position

Glenn Loury (2:46:08.300)

of having them try to keep me out

Lex Fridman (2:46:10.700)

because I'm so damn good,

Glenn Loury (2:46:12.620)

like they're doing with the Asians,

Lex Fridman (2:46:15.140)

than having them have to beg the Supreme Court

Glenn Loury (2:46:18.340)

to allow for a special dispensation on my behalf

Lex Fridman (2:46:21.100)

because they need diversity and inclusion and belonging.

Glenn Loury (2:46:25.620)

It's not just diversity.

Lex Fridman (2:46:27.060)

It's not just diversity and inclusion.

Glenn Loury (2:46:28.540)

It's diversity and inclusion and belonging.

Lex Fridman (2:46:31.500)

I'm whining because I feel like I don't belong.

Glenn Loury (2:46:35.660)

That's a position of weakness.

Lex Fridman (2:46:37.380)

It's pathetic.

Lex Fridman (2:46:40.180)

And it's only political correctness

Lex Fridman (2:46:42.140)

that keeps people who can see this,

Lex Fridman (2:46:43.780)

and believe me, a lot of people can see it

Lex Fridman (2:46:47.340)

from saying so out loud.

Lex Fridman (2:46:49.180)

So you want the black American community

Lex Fridman (2:46:52.180)

to represent strength.

Glenn Loury (2:46:54.180)

Correct, and I want us to deal with what it is

Lex Fridman (2:46:56.900)

that we have to deal with in order to be able

Glenn Loury (2:46:58.700)

to project strength in an increasingly competitive world.

Lex Fridman (2:47:05.180)

Let me ask you,

Glenn Loury (2:47:08.900)

I know you said you're angry

Lex Fridman (2:47:12.180)

or dislike affirmative action.

Glenn Loury (2:47:14.060)

Let me ask you about something

Lex Fridman (2:47:15.980)

that even to my ear cut wrong.

Glenn Loury (2:47:20.420)

Now I'm relatively apolitical.

Lex Fridman (2:47:23.020)

So President Biden, when he was running for president,

Glenn Loury (2:47:27.180)

gave a campaign promise that he will nominate

Lex Fridman (2:47:30.460)

a black woman to the US Supreme Court,

Glenn Loury (2:47:33.220)

saying, quote, the person I will nominate

Lex Fridman (2:47:36.140)

will be someone with extraordinary qualifications,

Glenn Loury (2:47:39.180)

character, experience, and integrity.

Lex Fridman (2:47:42.020)

First sentence.

Glenn Loury (2:47:43.020)

Second sentence.

Lex Fridman (2:47:44.380)

And that person will be the first black woman

Glenn Loury (2:47:46.940)

ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

Lex Fridman (2:47:50.660)

Do you wish he only said the first sentence

Lex Fridman (2:47:53.100)

and not the second?

Lex Fridman (2:47:55.220)

Yes, I wish that he had only said the first sentence,

Glenn Loury (2:47:58.700)

even if his intention was to do

Lex Fridman (2:48:00.380)

what he said he was gonna do in the second sentence.

Glenn Loury (2:48:03.540)

In other words, I wish that he had simply said,

Lex Fridman (2:48:06.300)

if I have the opportunity to nominate someone

Glenn Loury (2:48:07.980)

to the Supreme Court, it's gonna be

Lex Fridman (2:48:09.300)

a superbly qualified person to carry out that position.

Lex Fridman (2:48:13.020)

And he might've kept to himself his intention

Lex Fridman (2:48:16.340)

to name an African American woman to that position.

Lex Fridman (2:48:18.700)

And then going ahead and named an African American woman

Lex Fridman (2:48:21.060)

to that position.

Lex Fridman (2:48:21.900)

And I'm sure that Katanji Brown Jackson,

Lex Fridman (2:48:25.380)

I don't doubt that she's exceptionally qualified.

Glenn Loury (2:48:27.180)

She has a distinguished career.

Lex Fridman (2:48:28.660)

She served as a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Glenn Loury (2:48:31.700)

She's a graduate at Harvard Law School.

Lex Fridman (2:48:33.020)

She has a background.

Glenn Loury (2:48:34.700)

You do not have to be a world class

Lex Fridman (2:48:39.540)

constitutional legal scholar

Glenn Loury (2:48:41.260)

to get onto the United States Supreme Court.

Lex Fridman (2:48:43.660)

A lot of members of the United States Supreme Court

Glenn Loury (2:48:45.820)

have had different kinds of legal careers

Lex Fridman (2:48:48.540)

before they were elevated to that position.

Glenn Loury (2:48:51.540)

Earl Warren of the famed Warren Court of the 1950s and 60s

Lex Fridman (2:48:57.180)

was a politician as well as a leading jurist and whatnot.

Glenn Loury (2:49:01.060)

I mean, many kinds of people in the US Supreme Court.

Lex Fridman (2:49:03.180)

I have no doubt that Judge Katanji Brown Jackson

Glenn Loury (2:49:06.940)

is a qualified member to be on the Supreme Court.

Lex Fridman (2:49:10.100)

I wish that Biden had not done what he did.

Glenn Loury (2:49:13.780)

He could have just appointed a black woman

Lex Fridman (2:49:16.140)

by saying that he was limiting his considerations

Glenn Loury (2:49:18.860)

to black women.

Lex Fridman (2:49:19.700)

And what are black women as a percentage

Lex Fridman (2:49:21.180)

of all potential appointees to the Supreme Court?

Lex Fridman (2:49:24.940)

3%, 4%, I don't know, we could look the number up.

Glenn Loury (2:49:30.700)

By saying that he puts an asterisk on the appointment,

Lex Fridman (2:49:33.460)

but it's worse than that

Glenn Loury (2:49:35.940)

because she will live down the asterisk

Lex Fridman (2:49:39.140)

if a person is inclined to do that.

Glenn Loury (2:49:42.340)

She will have the opportunity to show

Lex Fridman (2:49:44.140)

through her performance exactly what kind of juror she is.

Glenn Loury (2:49:47.300)

Just as Justice Clarence Thomas has shown

Lex Fridman (2:49:49.820)

through his performance that he was qualified

Lex Fridman (2:49:52.740)

and more than qualified to be

Lex Fridman (2:49:53.900)

on the United States Supreme Court,

Lex Fridman (2:49:57.500)

what I dislike was the pandering.

Lex Fridman (2:50:01.260)

He was seeking votes from black people by pandering to us

Lex Fridman (2:50:06.620)

and then he's treating us like children.

Lex Fridman (2:50:09.020)

Why should I care what color the person is

Lex Fridman (2:50:12.140)

who's on the United States Supreme Court?

Lex Fridman (2:50:14.420)

What I should care about is what kind of opinions

Glenn Loury (2:50:17.700)

they're gonna write when they're on the United States.

Lex Fridman (2:50:20.020)

Do I suppose that being a black woman

Glenn Loury (2:50:22.020)

means that you're gonna write different kinds

Lex Fridman (2:50:23.460)

of opinions than others?

Glenn Loury (2:50:24.340)

Well, perhaps, perhaps that kind of identity politics

Lex Fridman (2:50:30.700)

at the highest level of American legal establishment

Glenn Loury (2:50:35.140)

is something that rubs me very much the wrong way.

Lex Fridman (2:50:39.140)

What I should care about is the nature

Lex Fridman (2:50:42.740)

and the future of the law.

Lex Fridman (2:50:43.780)

I mean, I'm actually struck by this

Glenn Loury (2:50:45.700)

because the court is conservative.

Lex Fridman (2:50:50.780)

It has six conservative members on it

Lex Fridman (2:50:53.820)

and it has three liberal members on it.

Lex Fridman (2:50:58.380)

And if I were and I'm not a liberal Democrat,

Glenn Loury (2:51:02.700)

the highest concern that I would have

Lex Fridman (2:51:04.900)

about an appointment to the Supreme Court is,

Glenn Loury (2:51:07.540)

is this a person who is going to be effective

Lex Fridman (2:51:11.060)

in advocating my liberal views

Lex Fridman (2:51:14.020)

within the highest counsel of American law?

Lex Fridman (2:51:17.020)

Now, the fact that that person is a woman

Glenn Loury (2:51:19.940)

or is a black person is way down the list

Lex Fridman (2:51:23.180)

of the things that I would think are important

Glenn Loury (2:51:26.340)

to the kinds of opinions that they're going to write.

Lex Fridman (2:51:29.660)

So, I mean, I think Joe Biden,

Glenn Loury (2:51:33.380)

this is just a piece of a larger political strategy

Lex Fridman (2:51:39.540)

to cobble together a coalition

Glenn Loury (2:51:41.660)

that'll be successful at the polls

Lex Fridman (2:51:44.020)

in sustaining Democrats.

Glenn Loury (2:51:46.740)

Jim Crow 2.0, this whole characterization

Lex Fridman (2:51:49.980)

of the conflict in the states

Glenn Loury (2:51:52.940)

about election security and voting rights

Lex Fridman (2:51:56.180)

is another part of that strategy.

Glenn Loury (2:51:58.500)

He is pandering to black voters.

Lex Fridman (2:52:01.980)

He is trying to frighten us,

Glenn Loury (2:52:04.980)

thinking that if the Republicans win,

Lex Fridman (2:52:06.940)

our rights will be taken away.

Lex Fridman (2:52:09.740)

And I think it is a infantilization

Lex Fridman (2:52:14.860)

of African American politics.

Glenn Loury (2:52:16.380)

I think black people are not to be as concerned

Lex Fridman (2:52:20.380)

about the color of the skin of a person

Glenn Loury (2:52:22.420)

who is serving in government

Lex Fridman (2:52:23.980)

as they are about the content of their character

Lex Fridman (2:52:26.940)

and the focus of their political

Lex Fridman (2:52:30.700)

and ideological orientation,

Glenn Loury (2:52:32.820)

which for me would be center or even center right,

Lex Fridman (2:52:37.380)

but that's me.

Lex Fridman (2:52:38.860)

And it should not have a significant impact.

Lex Fridman (2:52:41.460)

Nevertheless, he said she can overcome the asterisks,

Lex Fridman (2:52:43.940)

but to me it was deeply disrespectful

Lex Fridman (2:52:46.300)

that anyone would give an extra asterisk

Glenn Loury (2:52:50.380)

to have to overcome.

Lex Fridman (2:52:51.700)

He didn't have to say it.

Glenn Loury (2:52:52.860)

All he had to do was do it.

Lex Fridman (2:52:54.060)

If he wanted to put a black woman on the court,

Glenn Loury (2:52:55.700)

then he could have gone ahead and done it.

Lex Fridman (2:52:57.460)

The reason he said it is because he wanted black people

Glenn Loury (2:52:59.780)

to vote for him by saying it.

Lex Fridman (2:53:01.580)

And I'm saying that treats us like we're children.

Glenn Loury (2:53:04.540)

It's not a political statement.

Lex Fridman (2:53:05.780)

I just thought as a leader,

Glenn Loury (2:53:06.860)

that was kind of disgusting.

Lex Fridman (2:53:12.820)

Let me ask you about Thomas Sowell.

Glenn Loury (2:53:13.900)

You mentioned him.

Lex Fridman (2:53:14.820)

He's a colleague and somebody who was an influence

Glenn Loury (2:53:20.980)

in the space of ideas.

Lex Fridman (2:53:22.660)

So what broadly, what impact has he had on your ideas

Lex Fridman (2:53:27.660)

and how do you think he shaped the landscape of ideas

Lex Fridman (2:53:33.020)

in our culture in general?

Glenn Loury (2:53:35.140)

I think Thomas Sowell, he's in his 90s now.

Lex Fridman (2:53:37.540)

He's been around for a long time.

Glenn Loury (2:53:39.100)

He's still got it.

Lex Fridman (2:53:40.300)

He's still going at it.

Glenn Loury (2:53:41.380)

He's still going at it.

Lex Fridman (2:53:42.220)

Books continue to come out.

Glenn Loury (2:53:43.180)

I think he's a great man.

Lex Fridman (2:53:45.340)

I think Thomas Sowell, regardless of his race,

Glenn Loury (2:53:49.060)

he's black, is one of the 100 most significant economists

Lex Fridman (2:53:54.060)

of the 20th century.

Glenn Loury (2:53:56.180)

He has chosen as his subject,

Lex Fridman (2:53:57.980)

a substantial part of his subject,

Glenn Loury (2:53:59.740)

subject to investigate the deep causes

Lex Fridman (2:54:03.220)

and consequences of racial disparity of one kind or another.

Glenn Loury (2:54:07.740)

He's written fundamental books about that, many of them.

Lex Fridman (2:54:13.780)

He's a social philosopher.

Glenn Loury (2:54:15.820)

He is a economic historian.

Lex Fridman (2:54:18.860)

He is a combatant in the conflict of ideas

Glenn Loury (2:54:24.180)

around how to think about society

Lex Fridman (2:54:25.940)

and this beyond racial differences,

Glenn Loury (2:54:28.420)

although race has been a big part

Lex Fridman (2:54:29.660)

of what he's written about.

Glenn Loury (2:54:31.380)

He's been critical of affirmative action

Lex Fridman (2:54:33.580)

and he didn't just stand back and wag his finger.

Glenn Loury (2:54:36.060)

He got busy looking at the consequences

Lex Fridman (2:54:37.980)

of affirmative action in societies all around the world.

Lex Fridman (2:54:40.740)

And he's written books about that.

Lex Fridman (2:54:42.660)

He's been critical of the narrative about civil rights

Lex Fridman (2:54:47.180)

and racial inequality.

Lex Fridman (2:54:48.780)

He believes in small government.

Glenn Loury (2:54:50.260)

He doesn't think that efforts to redistribute income

Lex Fridman (2:54:54.060)

have proved to be the solution

Glenn Loury (2:54:55.860)

to the problem of racial disparity.

Lex Fridman (2:54:58.660)

Tom has not been honored by the committee

Glenn Loury (2:55:01.100)

that hands out Nobel recognition in economic science

Lex Fridman (2:55:05.140)

and probably won't be because he's controversial.

Lex Fridman (2:55:07.780)

And I reckon that that committee would be loath to encourage

Lex Fridman (2:55:12.540)

the blowback that they would be sure to receive

Glenn Loury (2:55:14.900)

if they were to take a controversial

Lex Fridman (2:55:17.660)

and politically focus and expressive black conservative

Lex Fridman (2:55:23.660)

and honor in that way.

Lex Fridman (2:55:24.860)

So I think another reason is that Tom

Glenn Loury (2:55:27.420)

as a methodological matter is not especially quantitative.

Lex Fridman (2:55:32.660)

He pays attention to data

Lex Fridman (2:55:33.740)

but he doesn't do statistical analysis

Lex Fridman (2:55:36.380)

and he doesn't do modeling.

Lex Fridman (2:55:38.340)

So from a methodological point of view,

Lex Fridman (2:55:40.220)

he's not a cutting edge kind of person

Glenn Loury (2:55:44.180)

of mathematically sophisticated,

Lex Fridman (2:55:47.740)

kind of quantitatively statistically oriented

Lex Fridman (2:55:51.700)

but he does descriptive stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:55:53.100)

He writes in a style that is much more

Glenn Loury (2:55:56.780)

like a social historian than it is

Lex Fridman (2:55:59.460)

like a mathematically trained analytical economist.

Glenn Loury (2:56:04.140)

On the other hand, he is an economist in the Chicago school

Lex Fridman (2:56:07.380)

with Milton Friedman and George Stickler

Glenn Loury (2:56:09.940)

prominent amongst his teachers who takes price theory

Lex Fridman (2:56:15.180)

which is the analysis of the interplay of market forces,

Glenn Loury (2:56:21.860)

mindful of incentives and so on

Lex Fridman (2:56:25.860)

to implement the basic insights from economic science.

Glenn Loury (2:56:32.100)

There is no free lunch.

Lex Fridman (2:56:33.100)

I mean, there's always gonna be a cost

Glenn Loury (2:56:34.460)

to anything that you do and so on.

Lex Fridman (2:56:36.460)

People respond to incentives, demand curves slope downward.

Glenn Loury (2:56:40.660)

Competition tends to work best

Lex Fridman (2:56:42.140)

when people are free to enter and not and so on.

Glenn Loury (2:56:45.060)

I mean, that kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (2:56:46.860)

But Tom is also a social historian and a philosopher

Glenn Loury (2:56:51.780)

in the tradition of Friedrich von Hayek.

Lex Fridman (2:56:55.860)

One of Tom's books I've deeply admired,

Glenn Loury (2:56:57.820)

"'Knowledge and Decisions,'

Lex Fridman (2:56:59.980)

is an extension of the Hayekian arguments

Glenn Loury (2:57:03.060)

about the limits of central planning and whatnot.

Lex Fridman (2:57:09.060)

So I think Thomas Sowell, African American,

Glenn Loury (2:57:15.380)

born as I understand it in Louisiana,

Lex Fridman (2:57:18.500)

raised in New York City, graduate of Harvard College,

Glenn Loury (2:57:22.300)

a military veteran, a PhD in economics

Lex Fridman (2:57:26.580)

from the University of Chicago,

Glenn Loury (2:57:29.180)

a black conservative social scientist

Lex Fridman (2:57:31.780)

of very high stature, I think he's a great man.

Lex Fridman (2:57:34.540)

And one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century.

Lex Fridman (2:57:37.820)

And you're saying implicitly deserves a Nobel Prize.

Glenn Loury (2:57:42.940)

Yeah, I do think so.

Lex Fridman (2:57:45.500)

I mean, Hayek was awarded by the committee.

Glenn Loury (2:57:50.060)

Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist

Lex Fridman (2:57:53.180)

who wrote about economic development,

Glenn Loury (2:57:54.460)

wrote a famous two volume work,

Lex Fridman (2:57:56.460)

"'An American Dilemma,' about the status of blacks."

Glenn Loury (2:57:59.460)

I mean, I think Tom could be put in that company

Lex Fridman (2:58:04.620)

very easily without any difficulty.

Glenn Loury (2:58:06.100)

I agree, Daniel Kahneman, them,

Lex Fridman (2:58:08.900)

so it doesn't have to be an American.

Glenn Loury (2:58:09.940)

Psychologist, an economist, Eleonora Ostrom,

Lex Fridman (2:58:14.820)

the political scientist who was honored in a joint prize

Glenn Loury (2:58:17.420)

given to her and Oliver Williamson 15 years ago or so.

Lex Fridman (2:58:21.900)

He could be put in that company really quite easily.

Glenn Loury (2:58:26.060)

Let me ask you, you mentioned Obama

Lex Fridman (2:58:27.860)

in the very beginning that we were talking about.

Lex Fridman (2:58:34.260)

How did it feel, that seems like forever ago,

Lex Fridman (2:58:38.140)

that in 2008, Barack Obama became president?

Glenn Loury (2:58:41.780)

Now at that time, perhaps you identify

Lex Fridman (2:58:45.780)

as conservative already.

Lex Fridman (2:58:48.940)

So politics aside, just in general,

Lex Fridman (2:58:53.940)

how did it feel that in 150 years

Lex Fridman (2:58:59.860)

where this country has come along?

Lex Fridman (2:59:03.260)

Well, yeah, I didn't identify in 2008

Glenn Loury (2:59:07.340)

as a conservative to the same extent that I do today.

Lex Fridman (2:59:12.420)

I was kind of in transition yet again.

Glenn Loury (2:59:15.940)

I was excited by the Obama candidacy.

Lex Fridman (2:59:18.380)

At first I was skeptical because after all, he's not black.

Glenn Loury (2:59:25.260)

The man's father is a Kenyan

Lex Fridman (2:59:27.460)

and the man's mother is a white American

Lex Fridman (2:59:31.860)

and he identifies as black.

Lex Fridman (2:59:35.060)

I find it interesting that the first black president

Glenn Loury (2:59:38.700)

of the United States,

Lex Fridman (2:59:39.660)

and I could have put inverted commas around black,

Lex Fridman (2:59:42.460)

and the first black vice president of the United States,

Lex Fridman (2:59:45.920)

neither of them descend from American slaves.

Glenn Loury (2:59:49.660)

Kamala Harris's father is of African ancestry in part.

Lex Fridman (2:59:54.740)

He's a Jamaican immigrant

Lex Fridman (2:59:56.000)

and her mother is an Indian immigrant.

Lex Fridman (30:01.280)

if you take a look at who the star players are

Glenn Loury (30:04.520)

in the National Basketball Association,

Lex Fridman (30:06.160)

you're gonna find that there's some Eastern Europeans.

Glenn Loury (30:09.480)

You know, there's some really good basketball players

Lex Fridman (30:11.840)

coming out of Eastern Europe,

Lex Fridman (30:15.160)

and more power to them,

Lex Fridman (30:17.080)

and there are a lot of African Americans.

Glenn Loury (30:19.760)

We're overrepresented.

Lex Fridman (30:22.120)

There are not that many Jews, as far as I know.

Glenn Loury (30:24.480)

No offense intended there, Lex,

Lex Fridman (30:26.480)

but I mean,

Glenn Loury (30:28.280)

the NBA is not

Lex Fridman (30:32.200)

equally representative

Glenn Loury (30:34.120)

of all of the different populations in the United States.

Lex Fridman (30:37.480)

Now, we could go into the reasons why,

Lex Fridman (30:39.120)

but I'm just saying the process

Lex Fridman (30:41.400)

by which you get to be playing in the NBA is fair.

Glenn Loury (30:44.600)

If you can play, you can get on the court.

Lex Fridman (30:48.560)

All they're looking for is people who can play.

Glenn Loury (30:51.240)

I think something like that is true

Lex Fridman (30:54.320)

in many different venues.

Glenn Loury (30:56.080)

I expect, if you're a really good technical engineer,

Lex Fridman (31:01.680)

companies are gonna employ you,

Lex Fridman (31:04.200)

and if you can make money, they're gonna advance you,

Lex Fridman (31:07.320)

and you will be able to rise to the top of that profession.

Glenn Loury (31:12.240)

I expect that the people who are engaged

Lex Fridman (31:15.400)

in financial transactions,

Glenn Loury (31:17.040)

who are actually making bets on the market,

Lex Fridman (31:20.120)

by and large, are the people who are good at that activity,

Lex Fridman (31:24.200)

and if you're good at that activity in this world,

Lex Fridman (31:26.200)

in this modern world,

Glenn Loury (31:27.960)

you're gonna rise to the top.

Lex Fridman (31:31.680)

I'm not saying that there are no barriers of discrimination.

Glenn Loury (31:37.680)

Of course, there are of many different sorts,

Lex Fridman (31:40.520)

but I'm saying that to expect that there would be,

Glenn Loury (31:43.560)

okay, I mean, let's look at who's actually writing code.

Lex Fridman (31:46.240)

Let's look at who's actually trading bonds.

Glenn Loury (31:48.440)

Let's look at who's actually starting businesses and so on.

Lex Fridman (31:53.960)

To say that in a fair world,

Glenn Loury (31:57.120)

I would expect that if blacks are 10% of the population,

Lex Fridman (31:59.960)

they'd be 10% of every one of those things,

Glenn Loury (32:02.360)

is to ignore the reality that the differences

Lex Fridman (32:06.640)

in the culture and practices and norms

Glenn Loury (32:09.840)

of the various population groups

Lex Fridman (32:11.600)

will lead to differences in their representation

Glenn Loury (32:14.840)

amongst people who are outstanding performers

Lex Fridman (32:17.080)

in one or another activity.

Lex Fridman (32:20.080)

How do you know if the difference in culture

Lex Fridman (32:24.040)

accounts for the difference in outcomes,

Glenn Loury (32:26.920)

or it's the existence of barriers,

Lex Fridman (32:30.120)

especially barriers early on in life,

Lex Fridman (32:32.960)

of discrimination that are racially based?

Lex Fridman (32:35.280)

So if you think about affirmative action,

Glenn Loury (32:41.040)

in which ways is affirmative action empowering,

Lex Fridman (32:44.840)

in which way is it limiting

Glenn Loury (32:47.480)

for these early development of different groups,

Lex Fridman (32:50.800)

but let's just speak to African Americans.

Glenn Loury (32:53.080)

We should say that you went to some no name

Lex Fridman (32:56.280)

Northwestern University at first,

Lex Fridman (32:57.720)

but then you ended up with the great university of MIT.

Lex Fridman (33:01.440)

So that's your, not early, but middle development.

Lex Fridman (33:06.960)

So speaking of the development,

Lex Fridman (33:09.040)

the opportunities, the equality of opportunity,

Lex Fridman (33:13.240)

how do we know we got that equality right?

Lex Fridman (33:17.000)

Yeah, I'm glad you put it like that.

Glenn Loury (33:19.360)

We were talking about results,

Lex Fridman (33:20.640)

now we're talking about opportunity.

Glenn Loury (33:22.120)

I was taking the position that

Lex Fridman (33:23.920)

when King says, I have a dream and he envisions a world

Glenn Loury (33:29.560)

where his children will not be barred

Lex Fridman (33:32.320)

from the good things in life

Glenn Loury (33:34.920)

because of the color of their skin,

Lex Fridman (33:37.040)

we're talking about opportunity, not about results.

Lex Fridman (33:42.560)

But opportunity is not just something

Lex Fridman (33:45.360)

that depends upon what the law is

Lex Fridman (33:48.680)

and what public policies are.

Lex Fridman (33:50.000)

Opportunity also depends upon the social conditions

Glenn Loury (33:54.760)

in which people are raised,

Lex Fridman (33:56.880)

the social and economic conditions.

Lex Fridman (33:58.360)

So the child of a poor family that has no resources,

Lex Fridman (34:04.680)

it doesn't have the same opportunity

Glenn Loury (34:06.440)

as a child of a wealthy family

Lex Fridman (34:08.680)

to realize their full human potential.

Glenn Loury (34:11.720)

You asked me, how can we tell whether or not

Lex Fridman (34:14.240)

a difference in outcomes is a reflection

Glenn Loury (34:19.080)

of unequal opportunity,

Lex Fridman (34:21.120)

or it's a reflection of differences in culture

Lex Fridman (34:23.520)

and interest and practice?

Lex Fridman (34:26.680)

And I don't know that there's a single answer

Glenn Loury (34:29.600)

to that question,

Lex Fridman (34:30.440)

but I think one wants to look at the data,

Glenn Loury (34:33.440)

one wants to try to measure.

Lex Fridman (34:37.840)

As a social scientist, I would say what you wanna do

Glenn Loury (34:40.560)

is you wanna estimate the significance of various factors

Lex Fridman (34:47.240)

for determining the outcome.

Glenn Loury (34:48.480)

If the outcome is how much money does a person make

Lex Fridman (34:51.840)

when they work in the labor market?

Lex Fridman (34:53.720)

So you look at their wages and you think,

Lex Fridman (34:56.640)

well, that depends upon a number of things.

Glenn Loury (34:58.640)

It depends upon how educated they are,

Lex Fridman (35:00.920)

what kind of skills they have,

Lex Fridman (35:02.920)

what kind of work experience they have, and so on.

Lex Fridman (35:06.960)

And those things are all legitimate factors

Glenn Loury (35:11.240)

that might determine how much they end up making

Lex Fridman (35:13.840)

in the labor market.

Lex Fridman (35:15.680)

But you also wanna perhaps, controlling for those things,

Lex Fridman (35:19.680)

see whether or not the fact that they are black

Glenn Loury (35:23.280)

or they are Latino or whatever,

Lex Fridman (35:25.720)

fact that they are male or that they are female,

Glenn Loury (35:29.320)

the fact that they do or do not speak English

Lex Fridman (35:31.880)

as their native language, this kind of thing,

Glenn Loury (35:34.440)

whether those factors also are implicated

Lex Fridman (35:38.680)

in determining how successful they are in the labor market.

Lex Fridman (35:42.320)

And if you find that after you have controlled

Lex Fridman (35:46.360)

for the things that are legitimately determining success

Lex Fridman (35:51.800)

and failure in the labor market,

Lex Fridman (35:52.920)

like skills and education and experience,

Glenn Loury (35:56.480)

having controlled for those things,

Lex Fridman (35:58.640)

the fact that a person is black or is a woman

Glenn Loury (36:01.640)

or is an immigrant or is of Latino background

Lex Fridman (36:09.440)

also affects their earnings,

Glenn Loury (36:11.680)

then you might conclude that to that extent,

Lex Fridman (36:14.440)

they're not getting equal opportunity in the labor market,

Glenn Loury (36:16.720)

that kind of idea.

Lex Fridman (36:18.960)

But I wanna focus a little bit more here

Glenn Loury (36:22.160)

on what we mean by opportunity

Lex Fridman (36:23.760)

because it's not just whether employers treat the worker

Glenn Loury (36:29.840)

on a fair and even basis,

Lex Fridman (36:33.160)

irregardless of the worker's racial or ethnic background.

Glenn Loury (36:36.760)

That's one opportunity issue,

Lex Fridman (36:39.560)

but that's at the end of the development process.

Glenn Loury (36:43.720)

They are now presenting themselves to the market,

Lex Fridman (36:46.800)

trying to find work and being employed at this or that wage.

Glenn Loury (36:50.880)

That's the end of the line.

Lex Fridman (36:52.760)

What about the developmental opportunity,

Lex Fridman (36:54.960)

the opportunity to acquire skills in the first place?

Lex Fridman (36:58.760)

That goes all the way back,

Glenn Loury (37:00.200)

that goes all the way back to birth.

Lex Fridman (37:01.560)

It even goes back to before birth.

Glenn Loury (37:03.480)

Or the mother carrying the infant in the womb,

Lex Fridman (37:10.520)

she has certain nutritional practices

Glenn Loury (37:15.320)

as she might be smoking or drinking alcohol

Lex Fridman (37:18.360)

or something like that.

Glenn Loury (37:19.200)

I'm not saying she is, I'm not saying she isn't,

Lex Fridman (37:20.840)

I'm just saying whether she is or she isn't

Glenn Loury (37:23.360)

that will affect the development of the fetus.

Lex Fridman (37:27.080)

The newborn, now there's a question of environment.

Glenn Loury (37:32.000)

There's a question of the development

Lex Fridman (37:33.680)

of their neurological potential.

Lex Fridman (37:37.800)

Do they learn how to read?

Lex Fridman (37:40.200)

Are they stimulated verbally?

Lex Fridman (37:42.360)

How many words have they heard spoken?

Lex Fridman (37:45.320)

Are they being nurtured in a home environment

Lex Fridman (37:49.680)

so as to maximize the possibility

Lex Fridman (37:52.760)

of them achieving their human potential?

Lex Fridman (37:55.160)

What about the peer group influences?

Lex Fridman (37:57.920)

What about the values and norms of the surrounding

Lex Fridman (38:03.600)

human communities in which they're embedded?

Lex Fridman (38:05.920)

Do they encourage the young person

Glenn Loury (38:08.560)

to apply themselves in a systematic way

Lex Fridman (38:13.320)

to their studies and to their focus

Glenn Loury (38:15.920)

on their acquisition of language command

Lex Fridman (38:18.880)

and of their educational potential?

Lex Fridman (38:22.520)

So development is not only something

Lex Fridman (38:25.560)

that is controlled by the society's practices,

Glenn Loury (38:29.760)

it's also something that is influenced

Lex Fridman (38:32.280)

by the cultural background of the individual.

Lex Fridman (38:37.000)

And those things are not equal.

Lex Fridman (38:40.280)

Those things vary across groups in a very significant way.

Lex Fridman (38:46.560)

And that too will be a factor

Lex Fridman (38:50.280)

determining disparities of outcome.

Lex Fridman (38:53.480)

So when I see outcomes that are different,

Lex Fridman (38:56.000)

I see wealth holding that's different.

Glenn Loury (38:58.720)

I see educational achievement that's different.

Lex Fridman (39:01.000)

I see representation in the professional schools

Lex Fridman (39:03.720)

and law school and medical school

Lex Fridman (39:05.040)

that's different between groups.

Lex Fridman (39:06.800)

One question is are the institutions treating people fairly?

Lex Fridman (39:11.000)

But another question is do the background

Glenn Loury (39:15.240)

in social and cultural influences

Lex Fridman (39:17.240)

equip people in the same way?

Lex Fridman (39:20.640)

And we know that the answer to that,

Lex Fridman (39:22.400)

not in every instance do they equip people in the same way.

Lex Fridman (39:25.840)

And so it makes the judgment, the moral judgment

Lex Fridman (39:28.320)

that we make when we see inequality of outcome complicated.

Glenn Loury (39:34.040)

Inequality of outcome is a systemic factor to some degree,

Lex Fridman (39:39.080)

but it is also a cultural factor to some degree,

Glenn Loury (39:43.880)

I wanna say, and that's controversial, I know.

Lex Fridman (39:47.920)

A lot of people, they think of themselves

Glenn Loury (39:50.200)

as being progressive.

Lex Fridman (39:51.360)

They wanna point a finger at society

Glenn Loury (39:55.200)

whenever they see a disparity.

Lex Fridman (39:58.320)

But I think that that's a mistake.

Glenn Loury (3:00:00.340)

She was Kamala Harris,

Lex Fridman (3:00:04.180)

raised up largely in Canada,

Glenn Loury (3:00:09.760)

though born in the United States.

Lex Fridman (3:00:11.360)

Barack Obama is, as I've said, of mixed ancestry

Lex Fridman (3:00:17.360)

and neither of his parents are the descendants

Lex Fridman (3:00:20.200)

of American descendants of African slaves.

Lex Fridman (3:00:26.320)

But blackness is flexible.

Lex Fridman (3:00:31.000)

It's something that you can put on

Glenn Loury (3:00:35.460)

or you can take off to a certain degree for some people

Lex Fridman (3:00:38.600)

and so be it.

Glenn Loury (3:00:41.640)

I was excited, our time has come, hope and change.

Lex Fridman (3:00:48.600)

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

Glenn Loury (3:00:51.160)

These are slogans from 2008.

Lex Fridman (3:00:54.680)

I can't believe I bought that crap.

Glenn Loury (3:00:57.560)

Oh, interesting.

Lex Fridman (3:00:58.400)

Let me push back here.

Glenn Loury (3:01:00.120)

You talked about, I mean, to me a Jew is a Jew.

Lex Fridman (3:01:05.080)

Skin color is skin color.

Glenn Loury (3:01:08.000)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (3:01:10.160)

I mean, Barack Obama is black when it matters,

Glenn Loury (3:01:17.680)

when you're talking to a white supremacist,

Lex Fridman (3:01:20.800)

when you're talking to, if you're a slave owner,

Glenn Loury (3:01:25.320)

he's black.

Lex Fridman (3:01:26.440)

Just like you said, when Hitler comes around,

Glenn Loury (3:01:30.680)

a Jew is a Jew.

Lex Fridman (3:01:31.520)

It doesn't matter how you identify, it doesn't matter what.

Lex Fridman (3:01:35.800)

So in that sense, don't you think that Barack Obama

Lex Fridman (3:01:40.240)

is black in the most powerful of ways,

Lex Fridman (3:01:43.400)

which is designating how far the MLK, the Dr. King vision?

Lex Fridman (3:01:49.200)

Oh, sure.

Lex Fridman (3:01:50.140)

And look, I said it a little bit tongue in cheek.

Lex Fridman (3:01:52.720)

Yes, yes, of course.

Lex Fridman (3:01:54.160)

But I think Obama has been very careful

Lex Fridman (3:01:57.160)

about manufacturing a kind of public persona

Glenn Loury (3:02:00.880)

that is intended to position him in the most effective way.

Lex Fridman (3:02:09.000)

You mean like every politician?

Glenn Loury (3:02:10.760)

Yeah, like every politician, sure.

Lex Fridman (3:02:12.580)

And that the racial identity piece is an aspect of that.

Glenn Loury (3:02:17.200)

I mean, anything I say here would only be speculation

Lex Fridman (3:02:21.320)

because I have no facts about the personal history

Glenn Loury (3:02:24.180)

of Barack Obama.

Lex Fridman (3:02:25.020)

And I accept Barack Hussein Obama,

Glenn Loury (3:02:27.760)

as Hillary Clinton once said, I take him at his word

Lex Fridman (3:02:30.880)

about whatever she was talking about.

Lex Fridman (3:02:34.800)

Well, was he a Christian?

Lex Fridman (3:02:35.840)

I think is what the question was.

Lex Fridman (3:02:37.700)

And there was some right wing attack on Obama

Lex Fridman (3:02:40.880)

for having been raised for some years in the Philippines

Lex Fridman (3:02:45.560)

and all of that, or Indonesia, I beg your pardon,

Lex Fridman (3:02:48.440)

in Indonesia and his stepfather and all of that.

Lex Fridman (3:02:51.560)

But she took him at his word and I take him at his word

Lex Fridman (3:02:55.960)

about his racial identity.

Glenn Loury (3:02:58.120)

No.

Lex Fridman (3:02:58.960)

But you were captivated by the power of his words

Lex Fridman (3:03:01.680)

and you regret to the degree you were captivated.

Lex Fridman (3:03:04.360)

Well, I mean, I think in retrospect,

Glenn Loury (3:03:06.440)

that whole campaign looks like a pie in the sky

Lex Fridman (3:03:09.920)

kind of fairy tale.

Glenn Loury (3:03:13.140)

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

Lex Fridman (3:03:15.760)

I can't quote exactly that speech that he gave

Glenn Loury (3:03:18.320)

in Grant Park in Chicago when he was announced

Lex Fridman (3:03:21.440)

as the winner of the election.

Lex Fridman (3:03:23.740)

But today is the day that the rise of the ocean

Lex Fridman (3:03:27.080)

stopped words to this effect.

Glenn Loury (3:03:28.880)

I mean, those who doubted that we could do it,

Lex Fridman (3:03:32.800)

that tonight is your answer.

Glenn Loury (3:03:34.240)

This was gonna be a new day, it was gonna be a new regime.

Lex Fridman (3:03:36.960)

Well, it wasn't a new day and it wasn't a new regime.

Glenn Loury (3:03:40.100)

It was American politics more or less as usual.

Lex Fridman (3:03:43.120)

Barack Obama turns out not to be the Messiah.

Glenn Loury (3:03:46.360)

Maybe there should be no surprise in that.

Lex Fridman (3:03:48.400)

Race relations got set back during Obama's tenure.

Glenn Loury (3:03:53.760)

My beef with Obama is that, okay, you're black.

Lex Fridman (3:03:57.920)

You say you're black, you're black.

Glenn Loury (3:03:59.600)

You got elected, now we have a black president.

Lex Fridman (3:04:02.300)

A black president.

Glenn Loury (3:04:05.380)

You can do stuff that nobody else could do.

Lex Fridman (3:04:09.080)

You're a black president.

Glenn Loury (3:04:11.000)

You could tell the people burning down the city

Lex Fridman (3:04:13.840)

to get their butts back in their houses and to stop it.

Glenn Loury (3:04:20.480)

You could tell the race hustlers,

Lex Fridman (3:04:23.000)

they all shocked into the world.

Glenn Loury (3:04:26.460)

Not only has our time come

Lex Fridman (3:04:28.280)

for those who supported my campaign,

Glenn Loury (3:04:30.740)

your time is over for those who wanna carry on

Lex Fridman (3:04:36.120)

a advocacy rooted in racial grievance.

Glenn Loury (3:04:40.280)

The election of myself to this highest office proves

Lex Fridman (3:04:44.040)

that the institution of this state are legitimate

Lex Fridman (3:04:46.720)

and open to all comers.

Lex Fridman (3:04:50.560)

I think Barack Obama, when the SHIT hit the fan,

Glenn Loury (3:04:56.480)

if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

Lex Fridman (3:04:58.200)

I deeply regret that he said that.

Glenn Loury (3:05:00.200)

He's president of the United States.

Lex Fridman (3:05:02.460)

The color of his skin and the color of Trayvon's skin,

Glenn Loury (3:05:06.480)

the correlation between those two things.

Lex Fridman (3:05:08.080)

If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

Glenn Loury (3:05:09.440)

Now he says, when he said it,

Lex Fridman (3:05:12.280)

he only meant to sympathize with the parents.

Lex Fridman (3:05:15.680)

But in fact, when he said it from the highest office

Lex Fridman (3:05:18.020)

in the land and then sent his attorney general,

Glenn Loury (3:05:20.920)

Eric Holder out to enforce this narrative,

Lex Fridman (3:05:24.680)

he doubled down on a racial narrative

Glenn Loury (3:05:27.480)

that I think is actually false.

Lex Fridman (3:05:30.000)

I think the story that systemic racism in America

Glenn Loury (3:05:35.000)

as reflected in policing that terrorizes black people

Lex Fridman (3:05:38.320)

because of the color of their skin is demonstrably false.

Glenn Loury (3:05:42.680)

I think that the central threat to black lives

Lex Fridman (3:05:47.360)

is violent crime perpetrated largely by black people

Glenn Loury (3:05:52.820)

against other black people.

Lex Fridman (3:05:54.440)

I think there is such a thing as police brutality

Lex Fridman (3:05:56.300)

and I think there are reasons to have regulations of police

Lex Fridman (3:05:58.840)

but I think it is a second order issue

Glenn Loury (3:06:02.240)

in terms of the quality of life of African Americans.

Lex Fridman (3:06:07.000)

I think Obama could have told the people

Glenn Loury (3:06:08.820)

who after Freddie Gray died in police custody

Lex Fridman (3:06:12.000)

in a van in Baltimore and who undertook

Glenn Loury (3:06:15.300)

to burn that city down to get their asses off the street

Lex Fridman (3:06:19.280)

and go back to their apartments and stop it.

Glenn Loury (3:06:21.080)

I think he could have said in the aftermath

Lex Fridman (3:06:22.820)

of Michael Brown being shot dead by Darren Wilson

Glenn Loury (3:06:26.560)

in Ferguson, Missouri and there was a grand jury deliberation

Lex Fridman (3:06:30.720)

that he elected not to indict Officer Wilson

Lex Fridman (3:06:34.040)

and people took the streets in that city

Lex Fridman (3:06:35.680)

and stood on top of vehicles and so forth and so on.

Glenn Loury (3:06:39.240)

He could have told them we don't mob around courthouses

Lex Fridman (3:06:42.980)

in this country, we respect the rule of law,

Glenn Loury (3:06:46.000)

get your butts off the streets

Lex Fridman (3:06:48.480)

and back into your apartments.

Glenn Loury (3:06:49.840)

He didn't do that.

Lex Fridman (3:06:53.400)

To push back a little bit.

Glenn Loury (3:06:54.680)

Yeah, good, push back.

Lex Fridman (3:06:56.720)

I think you're asking Barack Obama,

Glenn Loury (3:06:59.620)

the first black president of the United States,

Lex Fridman (3:07:04.460)

to do the thing that I think should be done

Glenn Loury (3:07:07.240)

by the second black president of the United States.

Lex Fridman (3:07:09.720)

I think his very example, given the color of his skin,

Glenn Loury (3:07:15.440)

was the most powerful thing.

Lex Fridman (3:07:17.480)

And actually doing some of these hard Thomas Sowell type

Glenn Loury (3:07:22.360)

of Glen Lurie type of strong words about race,

Lex Fridman (3:07:26.920)

it may be too much to ask given the nature

Glenn Loury (3:07:29.620)

of modern day politics.

Lex Fridman (3:07:31.680)

He is a politician.

Glenn Loury (3:07:33.260)

He is a politician.

Lex Fridman (3:07:34.100)

And he needed to get elected, he needed to get reelected.

Glenn Loury (3:07:38.400)

It was in his second term

Lex Fridman (3:07:39.640)

where most of what I'm talking about happened,

Lex Fridman (3:07:41.340)

so he wasn't facing further election.

Lex Fridman (3:07:43.040)

But Obama was what, 46 or 47 when he was inaugurated?

Glenn Loury (3:07:48.680)

He served for eight years, so he's in his mid 50s.

Lex Fridman (3:07:52.120)

He's got another half century or 40 years of life,

Glenn Loury (3:07:54.840)

God willing.

Lex Fridman (3:07:56.500)

His post presidency, I think,

Glenn Loury (3:07:58.960)

was what was primarily on his mind.

Lex Fridman (3:08:00.680)

Not getting elected to anything,

Lex Fridman (3:08:03.140)

but being enshrined in a certain way.

Lex Fridman (3:08:05.280)

And the persona that he is now embodying,

Glenn Loury (3:08:11.280)

which depends upon a racial narrative

Lex Fridman (3:08:14.880)

that I and Thomas Sowell and others object to,

Glenn Loury (3:08:18.160)

I think was very much in the forefront of his mind

Lex Fridman (3:08:21.360)

when he made decisions as the chief executive officer

Glenn Loury (3:08:23.720)

of the country that we've all now have to live with.

Lex Fridman (3:08:28.720)

Yeah, but the fact is, he opened the door

Glenn Loury (3:08:34.360)

in a way that hasn't been done

Lex Fridman (3:08:35.960)

in the history of the United States,

Glenn Loury (3:08:40.680)

that I don't see there being even a significant discussion

Lex Fridman (3:08:47.500)

when an African American, a black man or a black woman

Glenn Loury (3:08:52.060)

runs for president, maybe a black man, let's say,

Lex Fridman (3:08:54.920)

because there still hasn't been a woman president.

Glenn Loury (3:08:56.960)

I just see that that broke open the possibility of that.

Lex Fridman (3:09:01.000)

That's not even a discussion.

Lex Fridman (3:09:02.520)

And that example by itself, I mean, to me,

Lex Fridman (3:09:05.960)

the role of the president isn't just policy.

Glenn Loury (3:09:08.760)

It's to inspire.

Lex Fridman (3:09:09.780)

It's to do the Dr. King thing, which is, I have a dream.

Lex Fridman (3:09:16.760)

And Barack Obama is an example of somebody

Lex Fridman (3:09:19.500)

that could give one hell of a speech.

Glenn Loury (3:09:21.240)

It got you to believe.

Lex Fridman (3:09:23.840)

Obama is a smooth operator without any question.

Glenn Loury (3:09:26.920)

He's a master of his craft.

Lex Fridman (3:09:28.440)

He did the impossible.

Glenn Loury (3:09:30.800)

I mean, he beat Hillary Clinton in that primary fight,

Lex Fridman (3:09:34.280)

and he beat John McCain in that general election,

Lex Fridman (3:09:38.000)

and hats off to him.

Lex Fridman (3:09:39.120)

And moreover, he remains a iconic figure in American culture.

Glenn Loury (3:09:43.960)

I don't think there's any doubt about that.

Lex Fridman (3:09:46.160)

Let me just mention, Clarence Thomas is also black.

Glenn Loury (3:09:50.120)

Clarence Thomas has a story that is vivid and inspiring,

Lex Fridman (3:09:56.300)

just like Obama's story.

Glenn Loury (3:09:57.380)

He overcome obstacles just like Obama did.

Lex Fridman (3:10:00.060)

I mean, extreme poverty and so forth and so on.

Glenn Loury (3:10:02.620)

Clarence Thomas has served longer than any other member

Lex Fridman (3:10:07.260)

of the United States Supreme Court.

Glenn Loury (3:10:09.380)

He is one of nine justices,

Lex Fridman (3:10:13.160)

and it's three equal branches of government.

Lex Fridman (3:10:15.620)

So Clarence Thomas, by my arithmetic,

Lex Fridman (3:10:18.340)

personifies 1 27th of the American state.

Glenn Loury (3:10:25.060)

He is an iconic figure.

Lex Fridman (3:10:28.700)

His example should be an inspiration to Americans

Glenn Loury (3:10:32.940)

of all races, but especially a black American youngsters.

Lex Fridman (3:10:36.380)

He happens to be conservative.

Glenn Loury (3:10:38.900)

He's very conservative.

Lex Fridman (3:10:41.300)

So fucking what?

Glenn Loury (3:10:43.660)

He too deserves to be in that pantheon.

Lex Fridman (3:10:46.520)

He is not. By the custodians of American education,

Glenn Loury (3:10:50.860)

Clarence Thomas's name is not on that many schools.

Lex Fridman (3:10:53.220)

Barack Obama's name will be on many of them.

Glenn Loury (3:10:55.300)

I'm not equating them.

Lex Fridman (3:10:56.560)

They're different people.

Glenn Loury (3:10:57.460)

The offices are very different.

Lex Fridman (3:10:59.560)

But the same logic that you just used

Glenn Loury (3:11:01.980)

to extol the significance of Barack Obama's ascendancy

Lex Fridman (3:11:07.020)

could and should be applied to Clarence Thomas,

Glenn Loury (3:11:10.260)

in my opinion.

Lex Fridman (3:11:12.020)

Yes, but it's the office, but also there is a resume

Lex Fridman (3:11:19.060)

and there's accomplishments,

Lex Fridman (3:11:20.580)

but then there is oratory and charisma

Lex Fridman (3:11:23.620)

and a number of Twitter followers.

Lex Fridman (3:11:26.640)

So there's ability to captivate a large number of people.

Lex Fridman (3:11:31.200)

And that's a skill.

Lex Fridman (3:11:33.140)

That's a skill that correlates,

Lex Fridman (3:11:35.860)

but is not directly connected to

Lex Fridman (3:11:38.740)

with how impressive your resume is.

Glenn Loury (3:11:40.820)

I agree, and moreover, the judicial function,

Lex Fridman (3:11:43.180)

the judge doesn't go out and give speeches of that sort

Glenn Loury (3:11:45.460)

because it's exactly antithetical to what he's doing.

Lex Fridman (3:11:48.300)

He's a custodian of the law,

Lex Fridman (3:11:50.420)

and that's not a popular feature,

Lex Fridman (3:11:53.660)

figure in American policy.

Glenn Loury (3:11:54.820)

He doesn't stand for election, and it's a good thing too.

Lex Fridman (3:11:57.780)

So I take that point.

Glenn Loury (3:11:59.740)

Here, I want to say something else, though,

Lex Fridman (3:12:01.140)

that's provocative.

Glenn Loury (3:12:02.340)

The next black president,

Lex Fridman (3:12:03.740)

you say the first black president

Glenn Loury (3:12:05.340)

shouldn't have been the one to do that.

Lex Fridman (3:12:06.980)

The second one should,

Glenn Loury (3:12:08.540)

is more likely than not gonna be a Republican.

Lex Fridman (3:12:10.540)

I'm not, I don't have a particular person in mind.

Glenn Loury (3:12:12.380)

I'm just saying.

Lex Fridman (3:12:13.220)

I agree, I agree, I agree.

Lex Fridman (3:12:17.420)

And that's why it's gonna be super fun.

Lex Fridman (3:12:20.620)

Let me ask you to put on your wise sage hat

Lex Fridman (3:12:25.380)

and give advice to young people.

Lex Fridman (3:12:27.560)

So if you're talking to somebody

Glenn Loury (3:12:28.980)

who's in high school, in college,

Lex Fridman (3:12:31.100)

what advice would you give them about their career,

Glenn Loury (3:12:34.300)

about life in general,

Lex Fridman (3:12:37.300)

how to live a life they can be proud of?

Glenn Loury (3:12:39.340)

Well, I'd say the world is your oyster.

Lex Fridman (3:12:44.180)

I mean, first order of business, you're not a victim.

Glenn Loury (3:12:46.020)

I don't care what color you are.

Lex Fridman (3:12:47.060)

I don't care, you're male, female,

Glenn Loury (3:12:47.980)

you're gay, straight, whatever.

Lex Fridman (3:12:49.460)

The world is your oyster.

Glenn Loury (3:12:51.280)

You are so privileged.

Lex Fridman (3:12:52.340)

You sit here in the United States of America,

Glenn Loury (3:12:54.060)

a free country, a rich country,

Lex Fridman (3:12:55.340)

everything is possible for you.

Lex Fridman (3:12:56.860)

Believe me, you can do anything, okay?

Lex Fridman (3:13:00.700)

Secondly, I would say mastery over the medium

Glenn Loury (3:13:05.700)

in which we're embedded is the key to the future.

Lex Fridman (3:13:11.780)

So get educated, focus, work hard,

Glenn Loury (3:13:17.360)

invest in your future by acquiring the skills that you need

Lex Fridman (3:13:21.700)

to be able to navigate the 21st century.

Glenn Loury (3:13:25.500)

I would say the Chinese are coming

Lex Fridman (3:13:28.500)

and I don't mean anything against China.

Glenn Loury (3:13:30.340)

I just mean to say the world's a small place

Lex Fridman (3:13:32.180)

and it's getting smaller.

Lex Fridman (3:13:34.500)

And you better get moving and you better get moving quickly.

Lex Fridman (3:13:43.140)

I'd say your identity, your coloration, your orientation,

Glenn Loury (3:13:47.340)

your category is not the most important thing about you.

Lex Fridman (3:13:56.260)

So the temptation to limit yourself,

Glenn Loury (3:14:00.940)

I give this speech to my kids.

Lex Fridman (3:14:03.120)

I would say, I quote James Joyce.

Glenn Loury (3:14:10.780)

He has a passage in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

Lex Fridman (3:14:16.860)

in which he says, do you know what Ireland is?

Glenn Loury (3:14:22.060)

Ireland is an old sow that eats her pharaoh.

Lex Fridman (3:14:27.020)

This is Joyce.

Glenn Loury (3:14:28.940)

He says, Stephan Daedalus is the character

Lex Fridman (3:14:32.700)

that he has in mind in this Chronicle.

Glenn Loury (3:14:35.300)

He says, your ethnic inheritance,

Lex Fridman (3:14:39.940)

he's talking about Irish nationalism,

Glenn Loury (3:14:43.380)

are like nets holding you back.

Lex Fridman (3:14:46.300)

That your challenge is to learn how to turn those nets

Lex Fridman (3:14:49.780)

into wings and thereby to fly, okay?

Lex Fridman (3:14:54.020)

Flying into the open skies of modern society.

Glenn Loury (3:14:58.200)

Don't be your grandfather, don't be your father.

Lex Fridman (3:15:02.540)

Don't wear your things so heavily

Glenn Loury (3:15:04.400)

that it keeps you from being open

Lex Fridman (3:15:06.020)

to everything that's new in the world.

Glenn Loury (3:15:08.700)

Wear it lightly.

Lex Fridman (3:15:10.540)

Yes, everybody comes from somewhere,

Lex Fridman (3:15:12.220)

but it doesn't have to be where you end up.

Lex Fridman (3:15:15.380)

So you're not your father, you're not your grandfather.

Glenn Loury (3:15:19.540)

You are this wonderfully blessed human being

Lex Fridman (3:15:25.020)

in the middle of, going into the middle of the 21st century

Lex Fridman (3:15:28.380)

and don't miss it, don't live blinkeredly,

Lex Fridman (3:15:34.940)

don't live small, live big.

Glenn Loury (3:15:41.100)

Live big and wear your history lightly.

Lex Fridman (3:15:48.020)

Yeah, everybody's got a mother tongue,

Glenn Loury (3:15:51.300)

everybody's got a story, everybody has a people,

Lex Fridman (3:15:54.420)

but the world is a small place.

Glenn Loury (3:15:56.720)

I love that you're quoting an Irishman.

Lex Fridman (3:16:01.720)

One of the greatest writers of the 20th century,

Glenn Loury (3:16:05.760)

a profound one, but an Irishman nevertheless.

Lex Fridman (3:16:09.240)

The levels of humor within that is not lost on me.

Glenn Loury (3:16:14.480)

Let me just mention the great Ralph Ellison,

Lex Fridman (3:16:16.900)

the African American writer, Invisible Man

Glenn Loury (3:16:19.280)

is his masterpiece, embodied this spirit.

Lex Fridman (3:16:23.900)

Okay, we black Americans, we do come from somewhere,

Glenn Loury (3:16:26.760)

that come in from somewhere is from slavery in America,

Lex Fridman (3:16:29.800)

that's our ancestral heritage.

Lex Fridman (3:16:32.880)

But that's not what we are, skin and bone,

Lex Fridman (3:16:37.320)

these are superficial things, the spirit.

Lex Fridman (3:16:40.160)

And if I were a more religious person,

Lex Fridman (3:16:41.880)

I could give a whole disposition about that,

Lex Fridman (3:16:44.200)

but it's the spirit, it's that light that's inside,

Lex Fridman (3:16:46.300)

that's who we are and our challenge

Glenn Loury (3:16:48.600)

is to live in the fullness of it,

Lex Fridman (3:16:50.640)

as opposed to this blinkered thing

Glenn Loury (3:16:53.480)

where we don't look left, we don't look right,

Lex Fridman (3:16:55.200)

we're just fitting within this template that we inherit.

Glenn Loury (3:16:59.960)

That is a travesty, really.

Lex Fridman (3:17:03.780)

Glenn, you've lived an incredible life, a productive one,

Lex Fridman (3:17:07.400)

but just representing some powerful ideas,

Lex Fridman (3:17:11.600)

some powerful ideals, but life comes to an end.

Glenn Loury (3:17:17.480)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (3:17:18.440)

Do you think about your death?

Lex Fridman (3:17:20.900)

Are you afraid of it?

Lex Fridman (3:17:24.120)

Well, it is a really interesting coincidence

Glenn Loury (3:17:29.640)

that you posed me that question,

Lex Fridman (3:17:33.080)

because I'm coming from a funeral.

Glenn Loury (3:17:37.560)

Today is Sunday, on the preceding Tuesday, five days ago,

Lex Fridman (3:17:44.360)

I was at the funeral of Eugene Wesley Smith,

Glenn Loury (3:17:48.120)

who was my brother in law, he was my sister's husband.

Lex Fridman (3:17:55.080)

My sister, Leonette, passed away in August of 2021.

Glenn Loury (3:18:01.520)

Her husband has died at the age of 68 in April of 2022,

Lex Fridman (3:18:09.760)

and I was at his funeral.

Glenn Loury (3:18:12.560)

He died suddenly of a heart attack

Lex Fridman (3:18:14.140)

that came completely out of the blue.

Glenn Loury (3:18:15.660)

He seemed to be in perfect health.

Lex Fridman (3:18:18.480)

He was a magnificent human being.

Glenn Loury (3:18:20.440)

I could go into the details, but take my word for it.

Lex Fridman (3:18:24.600)

He was a businessman, a steel trader, metals trader.

Glenn Loury (3:18:29.120)

He would buy and sell.

Lex Fridman (3:18:30.880)

He worked mostly from his home office.

Glenn Loury (3:18:32.740)

He had clients, counterparties,

Lex Fridman (3:18:35.240)

people he did business with all over the world.

Glenn Loury (3:18:39.400)

He had three sons, one of whom is in his early 30s,

Lex Fridman (3:18:44.120)

two of whom are in their late 30s.

Glenn Loury (3:18:45.760)

These are my sister's children.

Lex Fridman (3:18:48.000)

She's deceased, now he's deceased.

Glenn Loury (3:18:50.480)

The older two sons are severely developmentally disabled,

Lex Fridman (3:18:54.520)

and although they're in their late 30s,

Glenn Loury (3:18:57.400)

they're not independently viable.

Lex Fridman (3:18:59.860)

They don't function effectively.

Glenn Loury (3:19:02.000)

They have to be cared for.

Lex Fridman (3:19:04.320)

That responsibility has now fallen to the family,

Lex Fridman (3:19:08.240)

but mainly to the surviving son who lives with his wife

Lex Fridman (3:19:12.680)

and his two young children,

Lex Fridman (3:19:14.880)

and has assumed the responsibility.

Lex Fridman (3:19:17.060)

They've cared at home, my sister and her husband, Wesley,

Glenn Loury (3:19:20.440)

Eugene Wesley Smith, cared for their disabled sons at home.

Lex Fridman (3:19:24.960)

They didn't want to see them institutionalized.

Glenn Loury (3:19:26.680)

They had some help from programs at the state

Lex Fridman (3:19:29.260)

and social worker and so on,

Lex Fridman (3:19:30.400)

but they mainly took on the burden

Lex Fridman (3:19:32.400)

of caring for them at home.

Glenn Loury (3:19:34.540)

Anyway, I go on at length here,

Lex Fridman (3:19:36.160)

and I don't know how much of this you will choose

Glenn Loury (3:19:38.440)

to make use of, and it doesn't matter, really.

Lex Fridman (3:19:41.240)

I'm just trying to respond to your question.

Glenn Loury (3:19:43.240)

I was asked to offer some remarks at the funeral,

Lex Fridman (3:19:49.320)

and I offered them.

Lex Fridman (3:19:51.000)

And I spoke well of this great man.

Lex Fridman (3:19:56.160)

He was a great man.

Glenn Loury (3:19:57.040)

He had a straight back.

Lex Fridman (3:19:59.040)

He was a standup guy.

Glenn Loury (3:20:00.200)

He could be counted on.

Lex Fridman (3:20:01.680)

His word was his bond.

Glenn Loury (3:20:02.720)

He had broad shoulders.

Lex Fridman (3:20:04.160)

He carried a lot of people with him,

Glenn Loury (3:20:06.480)

business associates, family members,

Lex Fridman (3:20:08.960)

and so forth and so on.

Glenn Loury (3:20:10.560)

He had a huge heart.

Lex Fridman (3:20:12.080)

He was a giving and kind person.

Glenn Loury (3:20:13.960)

He had a great mind.

Lex Fridman (3:20:15.200)

He was an intellectual, even though as a businessman,

Glenn Loury (3:20:18.320)

much of his day was taken up with the minutia of contracts

Lex Fridman (3:20:24.200)

and the details of the order being delivered

Lex Fridman (3:20:27.560)

and not being delivered,

Lex Fridman (3:20:28.440)

of the quality of the product,

Glenn Loury (3:20:30.120)

of the financing, and so forth and so on.

Lex Fridman (3:20:32.080)

There was still a powerful mind there.

Glenn Loury (3:20:34.140)

Yeah, he was a powerful mind, and he studied.

Lex Fridman (3:20:36.560)

He read books.

Glenn Loury (3:20:37.380)

He was interested in music and art.

Lex Fridman (3:20:38.880)

He was a spiritual seeker,

Glenn Loury (3:20:43.360)

had been ordained as a child minister in his youth,

Lex Fridman (3:20:46.200)

and while he remained a master of the Christian canon,

Glenn Loury (3:20:53.400)

he also explored Eastern religion and other spiritual paths

Lex Fridman (3:20:58.680)

and kind of stood above any particular tradition

Glenn Loury (3:21:01.880)

as a man who believed in God

Lex Fridman (3:21:03.720)

but thought that God manifests himself in many ways

Glenn Loury (3:21:06.880)

to human beings and that there was much to learn

Lex Fridman (3:21:09.400)

from other religious traditions as well.

Glenn Loury (3:21:12.020)

This is Wesley.

Lex Fridman (3:21:13.200)

We called him Wesley by his middle name,

Glenn Loury (3:21:14.640)

Eugene Wesley Smith.

Lex Fridman (3:21:15.800)

May he rest in peace.

Glenn Loury (3:21:17.960)

68.

Lex Fridman (3:21:18.800)

That's five years younger than I am right now.

Glenn Loury (3:21:20.960)

He dropped dead without any warning.

Lex Fridman (3:21:23.200)

I could, too.

Glenn Loury (3:21:25.720)

So.

Lex Fridman (3:21:26.920)

How did that make you feel?

Lex Fridman (3:21:29.000)

What were the thoughts in your mind leading up to it,

Lex Fridman (3:21:31.660)

having to give that speech in the days that followed?

Glenn Loury (3:21:34.400)

Well, first of all, I wondered,

Lex Fridman (3:21:35.240)

what would I say, what would I say?

Glenn Loury (3:21:36.640)

And, you know, there was no way to prepare,

Lex Fridman (3:21:38.480)

and I decided, you know, I rehearsed in my mind this,

Glenn Loury (3:21:41.920)

you know, he had straight back, he had broad shoulders,

Lex Fridman (3:21:43.800)

he had a big heart, he had a great mind,

Glenn Loury (3:21:45.680)

you know, he had a capacious spirit and whatnot,

Lex Fridman (3:21:49.520)

and I used that as a template for making my remarks.

Lex Fridman (3:21:52.480)

But my main thought was, my God,

Lex Fridman (3:21:54.540)

life is precious and life is fleeting,

Lex Fridman (3:21:57.480)

and death is a part of life.

Lex Fridman (3:22:00.840)

My death is a part of my life.

Lex Fridman (3:22:03.280)

And I thought, you know, well,

Lex Fridman (3:22:05.760)

I want to take better care of myself than I do,

Glenn Loury (3:22:07.920)

you know, et cetera, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (3:22:09.940)

But I also thought, a lot of this is not in my hands at all.

Glenn Loury (3:22:13.620)

I thought, one should have his affairs in order.

Lex Fridman (3:22:16.840)

My brother did not have all of his affairs in order,

Glenn Loury (3:22:18.880)

in the sense that there is a lot of,

Lex Fridman (3:22:21.340)

you know, things are going to probate,

Glenn Loury (3:22:22.600)

there was no will, there's, you know,

Lex Fridman (3:22:24.360)

it's kind of unsettled.

Glenn Loury (3:22:26.160)

I don't want that to happen to my surviving family members.

Lex Fridman (3:22:30.280)

I want to have my affairs such that, should heaven forbid,

Glenn Loury (3:22:34.480)

I fall over one day and don't get up again.

Lex Fridman (3:22:38.360)

People don't have to scramble about

Lex Fridman (3:22:39.860)

how to take care of things from that point forward.

Lex Fridman (3:22:43.440)

But as a human, are you afraid?

Glenn Loury (3:22:47.280)

In your own heart.

Lex Fridman (3:22:48.120)

I'm afraid.

Glenn Loury (3:22:48.960)

Now, I read this wonderful book called The Swerve.

Lex Fridman (3:22:52.240)

It's about Lucretius.

Glenn Loury (3:22:53.840)

It's about the nature of things,

Lex Fridman (3:22:56.620)

which is this great classical work from the Roman period

Glenn Loury (3:23:01.440)

by this guy, Lucretius.

Lex Fridman (3:23:03.720)

And I'm trying to think of the name of the author,

Lex Fridman (3:23:05.540)

but you could look it up.

Lex Fridman (3:23:06.600)

The Swerve is the book.

Glenn Loury (3:23:07.840)

It won like a National Book Award or a Pulitzer Prize.

Lex Fridman (3:23:11.120)

And it's the history of the recovery of this book

Glenn Loury (3:23:15.800)

by one of these Italian, Renaissance Italian people

Lex Fridman (3:23:20.920)

who would go into the monasteries in Central Europe

Lex Fridman (3:23:24.500)

and look through the scrolls and they discover

Lex Fridman (3:23:27.200)

these classical works from antiquity,

Glenn Loury (3:23:29.560)

which had been lost through the dark ages

Lex Fridman (3:23:31.840)

and they republish and read these works.

Lex Fridman (3:23:36.960)

And Lucretius's great work on the nature of things

Lex Fridman (3:23:41.080)

was one of these books, Poggio Broccolini.

Glenn Loury (3:23:45.360)

I don't remember the Italian guy's name,

Lex Fridman (3:23:47.000)

but this all could be looked up.

Glenn Loury (3:23:49.360)

Yeah, Poggio Broccolini.

Lex Fridman (3:23:51.480)

15th century and the name of the author

Glenn Loury (3:23:58.200)

is Stephen Greenblatt.

Lex Fridman (3:23:59.880)

Yeah, Stephen Greenblatt, a magnificent book

Lex Fridman (3:24:02.400)

and a terrific story.

Lex Fridman (3:24:04.960)

Anyway, one of Lucretius's points, he was an atheist.

Glenn Loury (3:24:09.880)

I mean, he was a Roman.

Lex Fridman (3:24:11.640)

I mean, he didn't believe in mysticism.

Lex Fridman (3:24:15.240)

And he argued it's irrational to be afraid of death.

Lex Fridman (3:24:20.240)

Why should I fear death?

Glenn Loury (3:24:21.920)

Death is coming to all of us.

Lex Fridman (3:24:24.520)

The point of being afraid, I mean, I'm wasting my time

Glenn Loury (3:24:27.040)

fearing something that I have no ultimate control over.

Lex Fridman (3:24:30.120)

It's irrational to be afraid of death.

Glenn Loury (3:24:34.280)

Yeah, because you can't predict when it happens.

Lex Fridman (3:24:38.240)

You only know that it happens.

Lex Fridman (3:24:41.480)

So why be afraid?

Lex Fridman (3:24:43.080)

How's that?

Lex Fridman (3:24:43.920)

And therefore live every day fully,

Lex Fridman (3:24:45.120)

live every day purposefully, you know,

Lex Fridman (3:24:49.760)

and so on, but these are all just words.

Lex Fridman (3:24:52.200)

You know, I don't wanna die.

Glenn Loury (3:24:55.040)

I wanna live forever.

Lex Fridman (3:24:55.880)

I'm not gonna live forever.

Glenn Loury (3:24:57.480)

I don't wanna suffer.

Lex Fridman (3:24:59.680)

I see people suffering.

Glenn Loury (3:25:01.040)

I saw my late wife, Linda Datcher Lowry,

Lex Fridman (3:25:04.200)

Dr. Linda Datcher Lowry, professor of economics

Glenn Loury (3:25:08.400)

at Tufts University, whom I met in graduate school at MIT,

Lex Fridman (3:25:12.400)

black woman from Baltimore.

Glenn Loury (3:25:14.680)

We married, we raised two sons together.

Lex Fridman (3:25:17.240)

She died at the age of 59 from metastatic breast cancer.

Lex Fridman (3:25:22.120)

And I watched her suffer and I watched her die.

Lex Fridman (3:25:24.280)

And it took a while.

Lex Fridman (3:25:27.360)

And we cared for her at home right up until the very end.

Lex Fridman (3:25:30.360)

She died in our bed with our sons on either side of her.

Lex Fridman (3:25:35.000)

And the dog curled up by the door,

Lex Fridman (3:25:38.320)

the porch door in the bedroom, and she expired.

Lex Fridman (3:25:42.920)

And I watched her suffer and I watched her die.

Lex Fridman (3:25:45.560)

And I don't wanna suffer.

Lex Fridman (3:25:46.880)

Who does?

Lex Fridman (3:25:48.360)

I don't wanna die.

Glenn Loury (3:25:50.080)

I am likely to suffer before I die.

Lex Fridman (3:25:54.280)

I am likely to see my death coming and to lament it.

Glenn Loury (3:26:00.360)

There's a book by Richard John Newhouse, the theologian,

Lex Fridman (3:26:04.080)

called As I Lay Dying,

Glenn Loury (3:26:07.280)

As I Lay Dying, Richard John Newhouse.

Lex Fridman (3:26:12.200)

He had stomach cancer and he thought he was dying.

Lex Fridman (3:26:15.920)

And he wrote this book As I Lay Dying.

Lex Fridman (3:26:18.720)

And then he recovered, he went into remission

Lex Fridman (3:26:22.720)

and he had another couple of years.

Lex Fridman (3:26:24.200)

He thought he was dying and he had another couple of years.

Lex Fridman (3:26:27.240)

And I can remember meeting him at a bookstore

Lex Fridman (3:26:30.800)

in suburban Boston when he was on a tour.

Glenn Loury (3:26:34.200)

He was just a friend of mine,

Lex Fridman (3:26:35.920)

a theologian and a public intellectual.

Glenn Loury (3:26:39.680)

He founded the Institute on Religion and Public Life

Lex Fridman (3:26:43.360)

in New York City, which still exists,

Glenn Loury (3:26:45.880)

Richard John Newhouse.

Lex Fridman (3:26:47.760)

And he's contemplating his own death

Glenn Loury (3:26:49.360)

from the point of view of a Christian minister.

Lex Fridman (3:26:51.280)

He was first a Lutheran pastor

Lex Fridman (3:26:53.280)

and then he converted to Catholicism

Lex Fridman (3:26:55.840)

or as he would have put it, I returned to the church

Glenn Loury (3:26:58.240)

because he thought the Renaissance was over.

Lex Fridman (3:27:00.800)

I mean, I'm sorry, the Reformation,

Glenn Loury (3:27:03.200)

Richard thought was over.

Lex Fridman (3:27:04.040)

He says there's only one church, et cetera.

Glenn Loury (3:27:07.960)

Get into theology stuff here.

Lex Fridman (3:27:11.160)

But I'm saying all that to say,

Glenn Loury (3:27:14.120)

I read that book aloud to my wife, Linda,

Lex Fridman (3:27:16.600)

as she lay dying in that bed.

Glenn Loury (3:27:17.960)

I read that book and it was filled with hope.

Lex Fridman (3:27:21.760)

I mean, it first acknowledged the dread.

Glenn Loury (3:27:25.320)

Yes, I lie dying.

Lex Fridman (3:27:27.760)

I don't wanna die.

Glenn Loury (3:27:29.320)

I'm a Christian minister.

Lex Fridman (3:27:30.680)

Christ was raised from the dead.

Glenn Loury (3:27:32.480)

I'm supposed to believe in everlasting life

Lex Fridman (3:27:34.120)

but the fact of the matter is this is me

Lex Fridman (3:27:35.640)

and I'm lying here and I'm dying.

Lex Fridman (3:27:37.600)

This is the end of me.

Lex Fridman (3:27:39.960)

How are you gonna do anything other than dread

Lex Fridman (3:27:42.160)

the end of me?

Lex Fridman (3:27:43.000)

So let's acknowledge that I don't wanna die, okay?

Lex Fridman (3:27:45.520)

I'm just gonna tell you that upfront.

Lex Fridman (3:27:47.880)

But that is not the end of,

Lex Fridman (3:27:53.080)

my death is not the end of life.

Glenn Loury (3:27:55.680)

I have lived well and fully.

Lex Fridman (3:27:58.160)

I will go and do my best right up until the end.

Glenn Loury (3:28:02.480)

I will accept what is inevitable

Lex Fridman (3:28:05.520)

and I will hold out this belief.

Lex Fridman (3:28:07.000)

And he's a Christian minister so he holds out this belief.

Lex Fridman (3:28:09.360)

And he knows that the belief is not rational.

Glenn Loury (3:28:12.000)

It's not a reasoned deductive scientific conclusion.

Lex Fridman (3:28:16.840)

It's spiritual in the most fundamental way.

Glenn Loury (3:28:21.440)

It is something that people hold on to and they have hope

Lex Fridman (3:28:25.000)

and he had hope.

Glenn Loury (3:28:27.080)

I don't know if I have that hope.

Lex Fridman (3:28:29.360)

I used to be, but I'm no longer a Christian

Lex Fridman (3:28:36.360)

and I'm no longer a theist really.

Lex Fridman (3:28:39.560)

I'm with Lucretius there.

Glenn Loury (3:28:42.480)

I mean, there's no magic that's going on here.

Lex Fridman (3:28:46.560)

There's no unseen hand behind the scene

Glenn Loury (3:28:49.400)

that's arranging things.

Lex Fridman (3:28:51.080)

What I believe is that when I look at the natural world,

Glenn Loury (3:28:54.000)

I see the evolution of the species

Lex Fridman (3:28:56.520)

and I see the organic development of the planets.

Glenn Loury (3:28:59.760)

I mean, the earth is going to not exist

Lex Fridman (3:29:02.480)

in a finite number of years.

Glenn Loury (3:29:04.480)

I think with a very high probability,

Lex Fridman (3:29:06.280)

the sun is gonna die.

Glenn Loury (3:29:08.480)

It's gonna implode.

Lex Fridman (3:29:10.520)

It's gonna go supernova, whatever is gonna happen.

Lex Fridman (3:29:13.240)

And there's not gonna be any there, there.

Lex Fridman (3:29:17.920)

What's the meaning of life, Glen Lowry?

Glenn Loury (3:29:19.680)

That's the meaning of life.

Lex Fridman (3:29:21.160)

Yeah, let's go, let's go.

Lex Fridman (3:29:23.960)

What's the why?

Lex Fridman (3:29:25.920)

Or is that something economists and social scientists

Lex Fridman (3:29:29.960)

and mathematicians are not equipped to answer?

Lex Fridman (3:29:33.480)

Surely.

Glenn Loury (3:29:34.320)

You know, I think we try to live well and meaningfully

Lex Fridman (3:29:38.040)

within our time.

Glenn Loury (3:29:39.640)

We bond, we reproduce, we try to pass on

Lex Fridman (3:29:43.120)

and we accept our limitations and our mortality.

Glenn Loury (3:29:48.200)

We try to contribute

Lex Fridman (3:29:53.080)

and that's through our children and through our work.

Lex Fridman (3:30:00.640)

And we're in this together, we're not in this alone.

Lex Fridman (3:30:03.640)

We are connected to other people.

Glenn Loury (3:30:08.400)

I get a lot of gratitude out of teaching.

Lex Fridman (3:30:11.160)

I'm a teacher.

Glenn Loury (3:30:13.160)

My students are gonna outlive me.

Lex Fridman (3:30:16.120)

They're gonna have students.

Glenn Loury (3:30:18.360)

I'm a writer.

Lex Fridman (3:30:19.760)

My writing is gonna outlive me.

Glenn Loury (3:30:20.920)

I don't wanna be self important or pretentious here.

Lex Fridman (3:30:25.200)

I doubt that I'm gonna be the James Joyce

Glenn Loury (3:30:27.240)

of the 21st century.

Lex Fridman (3:30:29.120)

They may not be reading my stuff in a hundred years

Glenn Loury (3:30:31.520)

because people will certainly be reading Ulysses

Lex Fridman (3:30:36.320)

in a hundred years.

Lex Fridman (3:30:38.560)

But I try to have an impact on the world that I'm a part of

Lex Fridman (3:30:43.120)

and try to leave a legacy that's dignified.

Glenn Loury (3:30:47.680)

I mean, I could give some flowery words

Lex Fridman (3:30:49.200)

here, truth seeking and whatnot.

Lex Fridman (3:30:51.240)

What about love?

Lex Fridman (3:30:52.320)

Love.

Lex Fridman (3:30:55.400)

What role does love play in this life thing?

Lex Fridman (3:30:59.520)

Love makes the world go round.

Lex Fridman (3:31:00.880)

I mean, without love, I mean, what have we got?

Lex Fridman (3:31:03.400)

I mean, we don't have family and, you know,

Glenn Loury (3:31:13.240)

we certainly have missed out if love is not a central part

Lex Fridman (3:31:16.680)

of our existence.

Lex Fridman (3:31:18.440)

But stop asking me questions like that.

Lex Fridman (3:31:20.240)

Yeah.

Glenn Loury (3:31:21.840)

Glenn, thank you for doing everything you do,

Lex Fridman (3:31:24.320)

for thinking the way you do, for being fearless and bold.

Lex Fridman (3:31:27.880)

And the Glenn show and your writing and your work

Lex Fridman (3:31:32.280)

and just being who you are.

Glenn Loury (3:31:33.320)

Thank you for being you.

Lex Fridman (3:31:34.960)

And thank you for giving me the huge honor

Glenn Loury (3:31:37.080)

of spending your extremely valuable time with me today.

Lex Fridman (3:31:39.800)

This was awesome.

Glenn Loury (3:31:40.840)

It's been my pleasure, Lex.

Lex Fridman (3:31:42.120)

I mean, really, and it has been like four hours, man.

Glenn Loury (3:31:45.680)

You're wearing me out for me.

Lex Fridman (3:31:47.760)

I love it.

Glenn Loury (3:31:49.280)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Glenn Lowry.

Lex Fridman (3:31:52.000)

To support this podcast,

Glenn Loury (3:31:53.320)

please check out our sponsors in the description.

Lex Fridman (3:31:55.800)

And now let me leave you with some words

Glenn Loury (3:31:57.880)

from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Lex Fridman (3:32:00.440)

If you can't fly, then run.

Glenn Loury (3:32:02.720)

If you can't run, then walk.

Lex Fridman (3:32:05.200)

If you can't walk, then crawl.

Lex Fridman (3:32:07.640)

But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.

Lex Fridman (3:32:11.480)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Glenn Loury (40:00.120)

I think it misunderstands the difficulty of the problem.

Lex Fridman (40:05.800)

You think that if you get the right law,

Glenn Loury (40:08.560)

if you have the right public policy,

Lex Fridman (40:11.040)

if the right politicians are elected to office,

Glenn Loury (40:13.480)

suddenly those disparities will go away.

Lex Fridman (40:16.040)

And I'm here to tell you that that's a false hope.

Lex Fridman (40:22.240)

And moreover, it is probably the wrong goal.

Lex Fridman (40:27.400)

But I mean, we could go into that.

Glenn Loury (40:28.880)

You were talking about affirmative action,

Lex Fridman (40:30.440)

which is something else altogether.

Lex Fridman (40:33.520)

And you were talking about me and my education,

Lex Fridman (40:35.800)

which is also something that's a little bit different.

Lex Fridman (40:39.280)

And I'm happy to talk about those things.

Lex Fridman (40:41.040)

Northwestern University, by the way, was a great university.

Glenn Loury (40:44.520)

I'm just joking, it's one of the great universities

Lex Fridman (40:47.080)

of the world, yes.

Lex Fridman (40:48.040)

And I studied mathematics at Northwestern University,

Lex Fridman (40:51.120)

which is how I ended up at MIT in the first place.

Lex Fridman (40:54.000)

And I got a very good technical training in mathematics

Lex Fridman (40:58.080)

when I was at Northwestern, so.

Glenn Loury (41:00.000)

You love both mathematics and human nature.

Lex Fridman (41:03.560)

And so, which is why you ended up going into economics

Glenn Loury (41:08.320)

at one of the great economics programs in the world at MIT

Lex Fridman (41:11.920)

and getting your PhD there.

Lex Fridman (41:13.040)

So one of the many hats you wear is that of an economist,

Lex Fridman (41:16.280)

which allows you to think systematically and rigorously

Glenn Loury (41:19.880)

about the way the world and the way humans work at scale.

Lex Fridman (41:24.840)

Trying to remove the full mushy mess of humans,

Glenn Loury (41:28.720)

like a psychology perspective, economics allows you to do.

Lex Fridman (41:33.560)

Well, economics is one of the social sciences.

Glenn Loury (41:35.800)

I think there's value in psychology and in sociology.

Lex Fridman (41:39.320)

There's a lot to know that doesn't come up

Glenn Loury (41:42.000)

within the study of economics.

Lex Fridman (41:44.080)

We study markets and the dynamics of economic development

Lex Fridman (41:49.280)

and trade and so on.

Lex Fridman (41:54.400)

But yeah, speaking personally, as I was coming along,

Glenn Loury (41:59.200)

I was fascinated by mathematics.

Lex Fridman (42:01.160)

I was good at it and ended up at Northwestern

Lex Fridman (42:04.600)

and took a lot of courses there in functional analysis

Lex Fridman (42:09.600)

and logic and mathematics and dynamical systems

Lex Fridman (42:14.480)

and stuff that I ended up employing

Lex Fridman (42:18.280)

in my graduate studies in economics.

Lex Fridman (42:20.920)

But you're right, I was not satisfied simply

Lex Fridman (42:25.680)

to be proving theorems.

Glenn Loury (42:27.560)

I wanted to be addressing issues of social significance

Lex Fridman (42:32.160)

and economics.

Glenn Loury (42:33.720)

I discovered to my delight was a field of study

Lex Fridman (42:37.960)

that allowed me both to develop

Glenn Loury (42:41.480)

rigorous analytical frameworks,

Lex Fridman (42:45.320)

modeling and precision of logical deduction

Lex Fridman (42:52.240)

and inference on the one hand,

Lex Fridman (42:56.080)

satisfying my mathematical interests,

Lex Fridman (43:00.440)

but on the other hand,

Lex Fridman (43:01.280)

could address questions of social significance

Lex Fridman (43:03.800)

like why does racial inequality persist?

Lex Fridman (43:07.600)

Why are some countries prospering and growing

Lex Fridman (43:10.360)

and others less so?

Lex Fridman (43:12.880)

Why do the prices of raw materials fluctuate

Lex Fridman (43:16.040)

in the way that they do over time and so on and so forth?

Lex Fridman (43:19.280)

And I ended up falling in love with the application

Glenn Loury (43:24.280)

of mathematical analysis to the study of social issues.

Lex Fridman (43:29.360)

What do you use beautiful about mathematics,

Glenn Loury (43:32.080)

about mathematical puzzles, about logic,

Lex Fridman (43:35.600)

all those kinds of things?

Glenn Loury (43:36.800)

Because it's still there.

Lex Fridman (43:39.400)

The love for math is still there for you.

Lex Fridman (43:41.160)

So is there something you could speak to?

Lex Fridman (43:43.280)

What is the kernel, the flame of that love?

Glenn Loury (43:48.000)

It's like magic.

Lex Fridman (43:50.120)

I mean, you know, being able to prove something

Lex Fridman (43:52.800)

and I mean, you know, I think of offhand,

Lex Fridman (43:56.120)

you know, there's no largest prime number, okay?

Lex Fridman (43:58.960)

So how would somebody know that?

Lex Fridman (44:02.520)

Okay, what's a prime number?

Lex Fridman (44:03.480)

So a prime number is a number that has a whole number

Lex Fridman (44:05.920)

that has no divisor other than one.

Glenn Loury (44:08.720)

There are no divisors of the number

Lex Fridman (44:11.040)

that makes it a prime number, like 13 or 19 or 37,

Glenn Loury (44:16.280)

whatever, okay.

Lex Fridman (44:17.520)

So they're prime numbers.

Glenn Loury (44:19.560)

There's no largest prime number.

Lex Fridman (44:20.760)

There are infinite number of prime numbers.

Lex Fridman (44:22.160)

There's no largest prime number, okay?

Lex Fridman (44:23.920)

That's an idea.

Glenn Loury (44:24.760)

You can get your mind around it in an instant.

Lex Fridman (44:26.720)

It doesn't take a whole lot of depth to see the question.

Glenn Loury (44:31.680)

There's no largest prime number.

Lex Fridman (44:33.240)

I wonder if prime numbers show up in economics.

Glenn Loury (44:35.440)

I mean that.

Lex Fridman (44:36.280)

Oh, they don't show up in economics except cryptography.

Glenn Loury (44:39.120)

I understand that's important.

Lex Fridman (44:40.320)

Yes, yes.

Glenn Loury (44:41.160)

For code, you know, in coding stuff.

Lex Fridman (44:44.480)

And that shows up in economics.

Lex Fridman (44:45.920)

But in terms of models, probably not.

Lex Fridman (44:49.560)

That's, so prime numbers are little,

Glenn Loury (44:55.080)

you know, in abstract algebra,

Lex Fridman (44:58.760)

it's like they show up in all these places

Glenn Loury (45:00.880)

that are just like beautiful mathematical puzzles

Lex Fridman (45:04.200)

that don't immediately have an application,

Lex Fridman (45:05.960)

but somehow maybe challenge you,

Lex Fridman (45:09.040)

and as a result, push mathematics forward.

Glenn Loury (45:11.440)

Like Fermat's last theorem, you know,

Lex Fridman (45:14.160)

as far as I know, no obvious real world application,

Lex Fridman (45:18.200)

but it has challenged mathematicians

Lex Fridman (45:19.960)

throughout the centuries.

Glenn Loury (45:21.080)

Indeed.

Lex Fridman (45:22.120)

And somehow indirectly progressed the field, but.

Glenn Loury (45:28.760)

That the rational numbers are countable.

Lex Fridman (45:31.640)

They can be put in one to one relationship

Glenn Loury (45:34.760)

with the integers and, you know,

Lex Fridman (45:37.000)

but that the real numbers are not countable

Lex Fridman (45:38.800)

and there's a lot more real, quote unquote,

Lex Fridman (45:41.080)

more real numbers.

Glenn Loury (45:41.920)

These are orders of infinity.

Lex Fridman (45:43.360)

This is Cantor, Georg Cantor, and all that kind of stuff.

Glenn Loury (45:48.880)

Or Gödel's theorem, I studied this as an undergraduate,

Lex Fridman (45:52.680)

you know, the incompleteness theorem

Glenn Loury (45:54.440)

that there are propositions within any logical system

Lex Fridman (45:58.040)

that's rich enough to accommodate arithmetic.

Glenn Loury (46:02.600)

There are going to be propositions

Lex Fridman (46:04.520)

that you can formulate that are true,

Lex Fridman (46:06.560)

but that you cannot prove to be true.

Lex Fridman (46:10.600)

So the idea that you could systematically develop

Glenn Loury (46:14.680)

a logical framework for mathematical inquiry

Lex Fridman (46:19.080)

that could demonstrate the truth or falsity

Glenn Loury (46:21.800)

of any proposition is not a feasible goal.

Lex Fridman (46:26.800)

A feasible goal.

Glenn Loury (46:27.640)

This was Hilbert's project as I understand it

Lex Fridman (46:30.600)

and Gödel showed that there was no hope ever

Glenn Loury (46:35.280)

of being able to demonstrate the closure

Lex Fridman (46:39.120)

of logical systems that were rich enough

Glenn Loury (46:41.480)

to accommodate the real numbers.

Lex Fridman (46:43.880)

They gave an existential crisis to all mathematicians

Lex Fridman (46:47.960)

and scientists alike and humans

Lex Fridman (46:50.760)

because maybe you can't prove everything.

Glenn Loury (46:52.480)

I remember, you know, when I was a junior college,

Lex Fridman (46:56.960)

a community college student

Glenn Loury (46:58.160)

before I transferred to Northwestern

Lex Fridman (47:00.080)

and I took a calculus course and it was a lot of fun

Lex Fridman (47:04.520)

and it was differentiating algebraic expressions

Lex Fridman (47:09.440)

and integrating and using trigonometric substitutions

Lex Fridman (47:12.760)

and it was a lot of simple problem solving.

Lex Fridman (47:16.080)

I get to Northwestern,

Glenn Loury (47:17.440)

I take a course in differential equations.

Lex Fridman (47:19.920)

And again, it was a lot of formulaic applying

Glenn Loury (47:23.040)

if you get a differential equation of this structure

Lex Fridman (47:25.360)

like if it's linear, you got exponentials, et cetera,

Glenn Loury (47:28.240)

you can solve it.

Lex Fridman (47:29.800)

And then I took a course that showed me, you know,

Glenn Loury (47:32.840)

where the question was not how to solve

Lex Fridman (47:35.600)

any particular functional expression,

Lex Fridman (47:38.560)

but it was proving the existence of a solution

Lex Fridman (47:41.760)

to a differential equation where it was like X dot equals

Glenn Loury (47:45.720)

F of X and T and F is just some arbitrary function.

Lex Fridman (47:49.240)

What do I have to assume about the function F

Glenn Loury (47:52.400)

in order to know that there exists a solution

Lex Fridman (47:54.680)

to the differential equation,

Glenn Loury (47:56.960)

dx dt equals F of X and T.

Lex Fridman (48:00.800)

And it's basically, they called it a Lipschitz condition.

Glenn Loury (48:03.880)

It's a condition about the bounding of the slope

Lex Fridman (48:08.200)

of the function F as a function of X that it doesn't,

Glenn Loury (48:13.600)

that you can sort of uniformly bound the slope

Lex Fridman (48:16.480)

on that function and then you can use a iterative process

Glenn Loury (48:20.240)

to show that the sequence of, you know, partial solutions

Lex Fridman (48:24.760)

to the thing converges to something that's a solution

Glenn Loury (48:26.640)

to the real thing.

Lex Fridman (48:27.480)

Anyway, again, I'm not gonna bore you

Glenn Loury (48:29.480)

or pretend that I'm a mathematician, I'm not.

Lex Fridman (48:32.960)

But what I'm saying is the difference

Glenn Loury (48:34.080)

between a specific algebraic formula

Lex Fridman (48:38.520)

that you can manipulate and solve on the one hand

Lex Fridman (48:42.480)

and the abstract question of whether there exists

Lex Fridman (48:45.320)

a solution in the general case is like a huge,

Glenn Loury (48:49.680)

was like a huge step for me in my study of mathematics

Lex Fridman (48:53.360)

and the techniques that you have to employ

Glenn Loury (48:56.400)

to address these larger questions and so on.

Lex Fridman (48:59.680)

So I, you know, when I was an undergraduate,

Glenn Loury (49:03.520)

I took the first year PhD sequence in math analysis

Lex Fridman (49:08.440)

at Northwestern from a brilliant mathematician

Glenn Loury (49:11.880)

named Avner Friedman and learned about measure theory

Lex Fridman (49:16.840)

and learned about some early functional analysis ideas

Lex Fridman (49:25.160)

and when I saw that those ideas were being applied

Lex Fridman (49:28.360)

by advanced study in economics, I was delighted.

Glenn Loury (49:32.080)

I found an intellectual home.

Lex Fridman (49:34.320)

So one of the fascinating challenges in mathematics

Glenn Loury (49:38.800)

is to think how can you, which echoes

Lex Fridman (49:43.160)

the challenge of economics, what are the properties

Glenn Loury (49:47.200)

of an equation that allow you to say something profound

Lex Fridman (49:52.120)

and say it simply?

Lex Fridman (49:53.720)

And so the question of economics is how do you

Lex Fridman (49:56.400)

construct a model where you can generalize nicely

Lex Fridman (50:00.200)

and say something profound and say it simply?

Lex Fridman (50:03.480)

So one of the questions, one of the challenges

Glenn Loury (50:06.360)

of economics is macro versus microeconomics is,

Lex Fridman (50:13.520)

you know, the world is made up of individuals.

Lex Fridman (50:16.280)

So there's a connection to this, our discussion

Lex Fridman (50:18.640)

of race and discrimination and outcomes

Lex Fridman (50:21.960)

and all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (50:24.240)

The world is made up of individuals,

Lex Fridman (50:26.560)

but in order to say something general,

Lex Fridman (50:29.800)

we have to construct groups in order to analyze the data.

Glenn Loury (50:34.800)

We have to aggregate that data somehow.

Lex Fridman (50:37.920)

We have to make an average over some set of people.

Lex Fridman (50:41.480)

So what are the pros and cons of looking at things

Lex Fridman (50:46.080)

like equality of opportunity and equality of outcome

Glenn Loury (50:50.120)

based on groups versus based on individuals

Lex Fridman (50:53.600)

and what are the groups, if there's any pros

Lex Fridman (50:58.800)

to looking at groups that we should be looking at?

Lex Fridman (51:01.560)

Okay, well, those are big questions.

Glenn Loury (51:04.360)

I mean, in economics, you're right.

Lex Fridman (51:06.920)

I mean, micro, you have an account of how individuals

Glenn Loury (51:10.440)

make decisions about spending their money

Lex Fridman (51:13.200)

on this consumption side and about how enterprises

Glenn Loury (51:16.080)

make decisions about what to produce, how much of it,

Lex Fridman (51:20.600)

what inputs to use, what techniques of production

Lex Fridman (51:23.200)

and so on, individual firms, individual consumers,

Lex Fridman (51:27.960)

and then you want to aggregate.

Lex Fridman (51:29.160)

So there's a so called theory of general equilibrium

Lex Fridman (51:32.120)

where you think supply and demand in a bunch of markets,

Glenn Loury (51:38.200)

you think prices that move to equilibrate,

Lex Fridman (51:40.960)

but you recognize that the price in one market

Glenn Loury (51:43.040)

affects people's behavior in another,

Lex Fridman (51:44.880)

the markets are interacting with each other.

Glenn Loury (51:47.040)

You realize that the behavior of one individual

Lex Fridman (51:49.160)

affects the supplies and available resources

Lex Fridman (51:53.880)

and for other individuals, so they're knitted together

Lex Fridman (51:56.840)

in some kind of systematic way.

Lex Fridman (52:00.000)

And you want to try to demonstrate the fact

Lex Fridman (52:04.640)

that notwithstanding all these interdependencies,

Glenn Loury (52:07.480)

there exists a solution to the system of equations

Lex Fridman (52:12.160)

that equates demand and supply

Glenn Loury (52:14.000)

across all the different markets.

Lex Fridman (52:15.360)

This is the existence of general equilibrium.

Glenn Loury (52:19.120)

Then you want to try to say something about the properties

Lex Fridman (52:22.440)

of an equilibrium, if it exists, is it efficient?

Lex Fridman (52:25.520)

What do you mean by efficiency?

Lex Fridman (52:27.600)

Well, the idea of so called Pareto efficient outcomes,

Glenn Loury (52:32.000)

these are outcomes that cannot be uniformly improved upon,

Lex Fridman (52:35.320)

everybody can't be made better off

Glenn Loury (52:36.880)

by an alternative outcome.

Lex Fridman (52:39.160)

You want to demonstrate the efficiency

Glenn Loury (52:41.240)

of competitive equilibrium.

Lex Fridman (52:43.880)

What do you mean by competition?

Glenn Loury (52:45.240)

You mean that people take their actions

Lex Fridman (52:46.920)

to do the best for themselves that they can.

Glenn Loury (52:51.760)

Profits of firms, well being of consumers,

Lex Fridman (52:54.400)

they try to do the best for themselves that they can,

Lex Fridman (52:59.080)

but they do so in reference to a set of prices

Lex Fridman (53:02.000)

that they believe they cannot control.

Glenn Loury (53:03.600)

That's the criterion of competitive market circumstance.

Lex Fridman (53:08.320)

So does a competitive equilibrium exist?

Glenn Loury (53:11.280)

Do there exist a set of prices

Lex Fridman (53:12.760)

which if everybody recognizes them as given

Lex Fridman (53:15.840)

and responds to those prices on behalf of their own interest,

Lex Fridman (53:20.800)

the outcome will be supply equaling demand

Glenn Loury (53:24.360)

in all the markets where people are interacting

Lex Fridman (53:26.360)

with one another, and that requires the use

Glenn Loury (53:30.080)

of some concepts and topology, fixed point theorems

Lex Fridman (53:33.760)

and whatnot that are familiar to mathematics,

Glenn Loury (53:36.040)

not very deep mathematical results,

Lex Fridman (53:38.280)

but important to economics.

Glenn Loury (53:40.520)

That's all about general equilibrium and whatnot.

Lex Fridman (53:43.160)

But you ask about groups.

Glenn Loury (53:45.080)

By the way, amazing whirlwind summary of all of economics,

Lex Fridman (53:49.240)

but yes, go ahead, that was great.

Glenn Loury (53:53.600)

Markets of competition of operator efficiency anyway,

Lex Fridman (53:58.160)

but yes, groups.

Lex Fridman (53:59.040)

And prices. And prices.

Lex Fridman (54:01.840)

And by the way, there are some very beautiful

Glenn Loury (54:07.480)

formalizations of everything that I'm saying here.

Lex Fridman (54:10.280)

You end up in vector spaces,

Glenn Loury (54:11.720)

you end up with sets of bundles of consumption

Lex Fridman (54:15.800)

and production, you end up with convexity,

Glenn Loury (54:17.840)

you end up with hyperplanes,

Lex Fridman (54:19.840)

which are in this finite dimensional vector space,

Glenn Loury (54:23.800)

which are all of the bundles that have the same value

Lex Fridman (54:29.840)

at a certain price.

Glenn Loury (54:30.680)

You end up with inner products.

Lex Fridman (54:35.120)

It's very pretty.

Glenn Loury (54:36.280)

Yeah, but you almost forget that it's just a bunch

Lex Fridman (54:38.760)

of humans transacting with each other.

Glenn Loury (54:43.720)

That markets are made up of individuals.

Lex Fridman (54:47.080)

Markets are made up of individuals.

Lex Fridman (54:49.000)

And in order to carry out this formalization,

Lex Fridman (54:51.480)

you have to make assumptions about the individuals.

Lex Fridman (54:54.560)

And the end result is true in a formal sense,

Lex Fridman (54:58.960)

but may not be true as a representation of the reality,

Glenn Loury (55:03.120)

because it depends upon assumptions

Lex Fridman (55:04.600)

that themselves may not hold.

Lex Fridman (55:07.920)

But at least you know what it is that has to be true

Lex Fridman (55:10.960)

in order for your formal framework to be relevant,

Glenn Loury (55:15.880)

which is already a step in the right direction, I think.

Lex Fridman (55:18.840)

I mean, the formalization is better than the intuition.

Glenn Loury (55:22.520)

There aren't your intuition where we sit back

Lex Fridman (55:24.720)

and we don't really know exactly what we're talking about

Glenn Loury (55:28.440)

because we haven't pinned it down in a precise way.

Lex Fridman (55:33.000)

I'm in favor of the formalization.

Glenn Loury (55:34.960)

People, they think, what is mathematics

Lex Fridman (55:37.720)

and the social sciences?

Glenn Loury (55:39.160)

After all, we're dealing with people.

Lex Fridman (55:40.480)

People are not automata.

Glenn Loury (55:42.160)

I agree with that.

Lex Fridman (55:43.600)

But the analysis of the interaction of people,

Glenn Loury (55:48.240)

I think, to be rigorous, requires us to be specific

Lex Fridman (55:53.240)

about what we're talking about, about markets,

Glenn Loury (55:55.120)

about consumers, about firms, about profits,

Lex Fridman (55:57.920)

about technology, about preferences.

Lex Fridman (56:00.800)

And that's the language of economics.

Lex Fridman (56:06.360)

But people's behavior depends upon what they seek in life,

Glenn Loury (56:11.360)

depends upon their goals and their objectives.

Lex Fridman (56:14.880)

Those things are at play.

Glenn Loury (56:17.320)

They can be pushed this way or that.

Lex Fridman (56:20.200)

So, I mean, nationalism,

Glenn Loury (56:23.640)

fighting and dying for your country,

Lex Fridman (56:27.240)

religion, sacrificing on behalf of some abstract ideal

Glenn Loury (56:31.520)

of the good or of what is the human situation

Lex Fridman (56:35.440)

and what is the meaning of life.

Glenn Loury (56:37.840)

Economists have to assume that these things

Lex Fridman (56:40.280)

are some particular thing

Glenn Loury (56:41.760)

before they can turn the crank on their machine

Lex Fridman (56:44.880)

to analyze the outcomes of human interaction.

Lex Fridman (56:48.520)

And yet these things, belief in my identity,

Lex Fridman (56:53.920)

but the things that I'm willing to sacrifice and die

Glenn Loury (56:56.400)

for purposes of life that I affirm

Lex Fridman (56:59.320)

and pass on to my children are important preconditions

Glenn Loury (57:03.920)

for actually carrying out any economic analysis.

Lex Fridman (57:06.840)

And they are subject to manipulation and to change over time.

Lex Fridman (57:11.000)

And that's not something that economics

Lex Fridman (57:13.360)

has a whole lot to say about.

Glenn Loury (57:15.280)

Well, is there some general things

Lex Fridman (57:17.760)

that are really powerful in terms of,

Glenn Loury (57:19.800)

you said nation, religion, those are groups.

Lex Fridman (57:24.240)

Can you group people nicely

Lex Fridman (57:26.640)

in helping you understand human nature?

Lex Fridman (57:29.200)

So group them into nations based on their citizenry.

Lex Fridman (57:33.880)

That's geography, right?

Lex Fridman (57:35.280)

The geographic location of your birth

Glenn Loury (57:39.320)

or your long term residence, or maybe religious belief,

Lex Fridman (57:44.520)

what religion you believe over time.

Lex Fridman (57:48.480)

Is there groups like that?

Lex Fridman (57:49.680)

And then race, is that useful?

Lex Fridman (57:56.000)

What are the pros and cons of looking at outcomes

Lex Fridman (57:59.520)

based on these kinds of groups, race in particular?

Glenn Loury (58:07.200)

I think they're pros and I think they're cons.

Lex Fridman (58:09.040)

I mean, I am myself, Glenn Loury sits before you right now,

Glenn Loury (58:14.440)

a black American, an African American.

Lex Fridman (58:16.680)

I quote unquote, I identify as,

Glenn Loury (58:19.160)

that's the way they talk about it nowadays.

Lex Fridman (58:21.240)

I identify as a black American.

Glenn Loury (58:22.840)

My skin is brown, my hair is coarse, my nose is broad,

Lex Fridman (58:27.840)

relative to the way other people's noses look.

Glenn Loury (58:31.000)

My lips are thicker.

Lex Fridman (58:32.680)

That's a consequence of my ancestral descent

Glenn Loury (58:37.760)

from the human population resident in the African continent

Lex Fridman (58:43.080)

in millennia past, my race.

Glenn Loury (58:49.560)

Here in the United States,

Lex Fridman (58:50.760)

we have various quote unquote races defined crudely

Glenn Loury (58:55.760)

in the way that I just tried to define myself.

Lex Fridman (58:59.840)

You could say, and I think there is a very powerful argument

Glenn Loury (59:03.480)

that these are superficial differences.

Lex Fridman (59:07.480)

I mean, really?

Lex Fridman (59:09.200)

Why should it matter that your eye color

Lex Fridman (59:11.960)

or your hair color or the shape of the bones in your face

Glenn Loury (59:17.120)

or the color, the tone of your skin,

Lex Fridman (59:19.220)

the amount of melanin,

Lex Fridman (59:20.200)

how it is that you react to ultraviolet radiation

Lex Fridman (59:23.120)

in terms of your skin, what is that the basis of anything?

Glenn Loury (59:30.720)

I mean, that's arbitrary, that's not meaningful.

Lex Fridman (59:33.320)

Could there really be meaning

Lex Fridman (59:34.680)

in these superficial differences among human beings?

Lex Fridman (59:38.000)

Isn't that a archaic or barbaric way

Glenn Loury (59:40.960)

of thinking about ourselves,

Lex Fridman (59:42.160)

to look at each other's skin color or hair texture

Lex Fridman (59:46.000)

and then to decide, oh, that's a black or that's a white

Lex Fridman (59:49.480)

or that's a Latin or that's an Asian or that's a whatever.

Glenn Loury (59:53.040)

That's something that we should outgrow, a person might say.

Lex Fridman (59:59.360)

That's a relic of a kind of tribal society