Ronald Sullivan: The Ideal of Justice in the Face of Controversy and Evil
政治与社会音乐与艺术生物与进化哲学与宗教心理与人性
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"human like, they will start to ask very fundamentally human questions about freedom, about suffering,"
像人类一样，他们将开始提出关于自由、关于痛苦的非常根本的人类问题，
— Ronald Sullivan （46:49.200）
"So the terminology that you mentioned is weaponized as sort of safe spaces or that certain conversations"
因此，您提到的术语被武器化为某种安全空间或某些对话
— Ronald Sullivan （19:33.200）
"But in our case, it was just, he had the misfortune of having a famous name and the police department"
但就我们而言，只是，他不幸拥有了名声和警察局
— Ronald Sullivan （1:27:29.980）
"And evil might be just a little bit of a predisposition biologically, but the rest is just trajectories"
邪恶可能只是生物学上的一点倾向，但其余的只是轨迹
— Ronald Sullivan （32:51.960）
🎙️ 完整对话（1168 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Ronald Sullivan, a professor at Harvard Law School
以下是与哈佛法学院教授罗纳德·沙利文的对话
Lex Fridman (00:04.620)
known for taking on difficult and controversial cases.
以处理疑难和有争议的案件而闻名。
Lex Fridman (00:08.500)
He was on the head legal defense team for the Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez
他是爱国者队足球运动员亚伦·埃尔南德斯的首席法律辩护团队成员
Lex Fridman (00:14.120)
in his double murder case.
在他的双重谋杀案中。
Lex Fridman (00:16.020)
He represented one of the Gena 6 defendants and never lost the case during his years in
他代表 Gena 6 名被告之一，并在其任职期间从未败诉。
Ronald Sullivan (00:21.780)
Washington D.C.'s Public Defender Services office.
华盛顿特区公设辩护服务办公室。
Ronald Sullivan (00:25.960)
In 2019, Ronald joined the legal defense team of Harvey Weinstein, a film producer
2019年，罗纳德加入电影制片人哈维·韦恩斯坦的法律辩护团队
Ronald Sullivan (00:32.240)
facing multiple charges of rape and other sexual assault.
面临多项强奸和其他性侵犯指控。
Ronald Sullivan (00:36.460)
This decision met with criticism from Harvard University students, including an online petition
这一决定遭到了哈佛大学学生的批评，其中包括网上请愿书
Ronald Sullivan (00:41.860)
by students seeking his removal as faculty dean of Winthrop House.
学生们要求解除他温思罗普学院院长的职务。
Ronald Sullivan (00:46.640)
Then, a letter supporting him signed by 52 Harvard Law School professors appeared in
随后，一封由 52 名哈佛法学院教授签名的支持他的信出现在
Ronald Sullivan (00:52.240)
the Boston Globe on March 8, 2019.
波士顿环球报，2019 年 3 月 8 日。
Ronald Sullivan (00:56.100)
Following this, the Harvard administration succumbed to the pressure of a few Harvard
此后，哈佛政府屈服于少数哈佛人士的压力
Ronald Sullivan (00:59.600)
students and announced that they will not be renewing Ronald Sullivan's dean position.
学生并宣布他们不会续任罗纳德·沙利文的院长职位。
Ronald Sullivan (01:05.720)
This created a major backlash in the public discourse over the necessary role of universities
这引起了公众对大学必要作用的强烈反对
Ronald Sullivan (01:11.800)
in upholding the principles of law and freedom at the very foundation of the United States.
维护美国建国之初的法律和自由原则。
Ronald Sullivan (01:19.220)
This conversation is brought to you by Brooklyn & Sheets, WineAxis online wine store, Monk
本对话由 Brooklyn & Sheets、WineAxis 在线葡萄酒商店、Monk 为您带来
Ronald Sullivan (01:24.360)
Pack low carb snacks, and Blinkist app that summarizes books.
带上低碳水化合物零食和总结书籍的 Blinkist 应用程序。
Lex Fridman (01:28.600)
Click their links to support this podcast.
单击他们的链接来支持此播客。
Ronald Sullivan (01:31.440)
As a side note, let me say that the free exchange of difficult ideas is the only mechanism through
作为旁注，让我说，自由交流困难的想法是通过
Lex Fridman (01:37.440)
which we can make progress.
Ronald Sullivan (01:39.780)
Truth is not a safe space.
Lex Fridman (01:42.560)
Truth is humbling, and being humbled can hurt.
Lex Fridman (01:46.520)
But this is the role of education, not just in the university but in business and in life.
Lex Fridman (01:52.880)
Freedom and compassion can coexist, but it requires work and patience.
Ronald Sullivan (01:58.520)
It requires listening to the voices and to the experiences unlike our own.
Lex Fridman (02:03.600)
Listening, not silencing.
Ronald Sullivan (02:06.680)
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Ronald Sullivan.
Ronald Sullivan (02:14.100)
You were one of the lawyers who represented the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in
Ronald Sullivan (02:20.160)
advance of a sexual assault trial.
Ronald Sullivan (02:22.400)
For this, Harvard forced you to step down as faculty deans, you and your wife of Winthrop
Ronald Sullivan (02:27.840)
House.
Lex Fridman (02:28.840)
Can you tell the story of this saga from first deciding to represent Harvey Weinstein to
Lex Fridman (02:35.240)
the interesting complicated events that followed?
Lex Fridman (02:38.880)
Yeah, sure.
Lex Fridman (02:40.000)
So I got a call one morning from a colleague at the Harvard Law School who asked if I would
Lex Fridman (02:48.360)
consent to taking a call from Harvey.
Ronald Sullivan (02:52.600)
He wanted to meet me and chat with me about representing him.
Lex Fridman (02:56.560)
I said yes, and one thing led to another.
Ronald Sullivan (03:00.520)
I drove out to Connecticut where he was staying and met with him and some of his advisors,
Lex Fridman (03:08.200)
and then a day or two later, I decided to take the case.
Ronald Sullivan (03:13.300)
This would have been back in January of 2019, I believe.
Lex Fridman (03:19.000)
So the sort of cases, I have a very small practice most of my time is teaching and writing,
Lex Fridman (03:27.340)
but I tend to take cases that most deem to be impossible.
Lex Fridman (03:34.280)
I take the challenging sorts of cases, and this fit the bill.
Ronald Sullivan (03:39.480)
It was quite challenging in the sense that everyone had prejudged the case.
Ronald Sullivan (03:46.000)
When I say everyone, I just mean the general sentiment in the public had the case prejudged,
Ronald Sullivan (03:52.640)
even though the specific allegations did not regard any of the people in the New Yorker.
Ronald Sullivan (04:02.520)
It's the New Yorker article that exposed everything that was going on, allegedly, with Harvey.
Lex Fridman (04:12.280)
So I decided to take the case, and I did.
Lex Fridman (04:17.160)
Is there a philosophy behind you taking on these very difficult cases?
Lex Fridman (04:22.360)
Is it a set of principles?
Lex Fridman (04:23.360)
Is it just your love of the law, or is there a set of principles why you take on the cases?
Ronald Sullivan (04:29.880)
Yeah, I'd like to take on hard cases, and I like to take on the cases that are with
Lex Fridman (04:38.120)
unpopular defendants, unpopular clients.
Ronald Sullivan (04:43.640)
With respect to the latter, that's where Harvey Weinstein fell, it's because we need lawyers
Lex Fridman (04:52.640)
and good lawyers to take the unpopular cases, because those sorts of cases determine what
Ronald Sullivan (05:00.640)
sort of criminal justice system we have.
Ronald Sullivan (05:04.160)
If we don't protect the rights and the liberties of those whom the society deems to be the
Ronald Sullivan (05:09.520)
least and the last, the unpopular client, then that's the camel's nose under the tent.
Ronald Sullivan (05:15.200)
If we let the camel's nose under the tent, the entire tent is going to collapse.
Ronald Sullivan (05:19.740)
That is to say, if we short circuit the rights of a client like Harvey Weinstein, then the
Ronald Sullivan (05:26.680)
next thing you know, someone will be at your door, knocking it down and violating your
Ronald Sullivan (05:31.560)
rights.
Ronald Sullivan (05:32.560)
There's a certain creep there with respect to the way in which the state will respect
Ronald Sullivan (05:39.000)
the civil rights and civil liberties of people, and these are the sorts of cases that test
Lex Fridman (05:43.920)
it.
Ronald Sullivan (05:44.920)
For example, there was a young man many, many years ago named Ernesto Miranda.
Lex Fridman (05:52.160)
By all accounts, he was not a likable guy.
Ronald Sullivan (05:55.240)
He was a three time knife thief and not a likable guy, but lawyers stepped up and took
Lex Fridman (06:03.800)
his case.
Ronald Sullivan (06:05.060)
Because of that, we now have the Miranda warnings, you have the right to remain silent.
Lex Fridman (06:10.280)
Those warnings that officers are forced to give to people.
Lex Fridman (06:15.460)
So it is through these cases that we express oftentimes the best values in our criminal
Lex Fridman (06:21.400)
justice system.
Lex Fridman (06:22.400)
So I proudly take on these sorts of cases in order to vindicate not only the individual
Ronald Sullivan (06:28.400)
rights of the person whom I'm representing, but the rights of citizens writ large, most
Ronald Sullivan (06:36.160)
of whom do not experience the criminal justice system, and it's partly because of lawyers
Ronald Sullivan (06:42.880)
who take on these sorts of cases and establish rules that protect us, average everyday ordinary
Ronald Sullivan (06:51.560)
concrete citizens.
Ronald Sullivan (06:53.680)
From a psychological perspective, just you as a human, is there fear, is there stress
Lex Fridman (06:59.640)
from all the pressure?
Ronald Sullivan (07:00.640)
Because if you're facing, I mean, the whole point, a difficult case, especially in the
Ronald Sullivan (07:04.840)
latter that you mentioned of the going against popular opinion, you have the eyes of millions
Ronald Sullivan (07:10.600)
potentially looking at you with anger as you try to defend this set of laws that this country's
Ronald Sullivan (07:19.280)
built on.
Lex Fridman (07:20.280)
No, it doesn't stress me out particularly.
Ronald Sullivan (07:24.200)
It sort of comes with the territory.
Lex Fridman (07:26.360)
I try not to get too excited in either direction.
Lex Fridman (07:31.660)
So a big part of my practice is wrongful convictions, and I've gotten over 6,000 people out of
Ronald Sullivan (07:40.660)
prison who've been wrongfully incarcerated, and a subset of those people have been convicted,
Lex Fridman (07:46.920)
and people who've been in jail 20, 30 years who have gotten out.
Lex Fridman (07:51.640)
And those are the sorts of cases where people praise you and that sort of thing.
Lex Fridman (07:57.160)
And so, look, I do the work that I do, I'm proud of the work that I do, and in that sense
Ronald Sullivan (08:04.980)
I'm sort of a part time Daoist, the expression reversal is the movement of the Dao.
Lex Fridman (08:11.760)
So I don't get too high, I don't get too low, I just try to do my work and represent
Lex Fridman (08:17.000)
people to the best of my ability.
Lex Fridman (08:18.680)
So one of the hardest cases of recent history would be the Harvey Weinstein in terms of
Lex Fridman (08:23.060)
popular opinion or unpopular opinion.
Lex Fridman (08:25.760)
So if you continue on that line, where does that story take you, of taking on this case?
Lex Fridman (08:33.040)
Yeah, so I took on the case and then there was a few students at the college.
Lex Fridman (08:40.120)
So let me back up, I had an administrative post at Harvard College, which is a separate
Ronald Sullivan (08:44.660)
entity from the Harvard Law School, Harvard College is the undergraduate portion of Harvard
Ronald Sullivan (08:49.480)
University and the law school is obviously the law school, and I initially was appointed
Lex Fridman (08:56.380)
as master of one of the houses.
Ronald Sullivan (08:58.800)
We did a name change five or six years into it and were called faculty deans.
Lex Fridman (09:04.820)
But the houses at Harvard are based on the college system of Oxford and Cambridge.
Lex Fridman (09:09.500)
So when students go to Harvard after their first year, they're assigned to a particular
Lex Fridman (09:15.040)
house or college and that's where they live and eat and so forth.
Lex Fridman (09:19.040)
And these are undergraduate students?
Lex Fridman (09:20.280)
These are undergraduate students.
Lex Fridman (09:21.720)
So I was responsible for one of the houses as its faculty dean.
Lex Fridman (09:28.120)
So it's an administrative appointment at the college and some students who clearly didn't
Ronald Sullivan (09:34.480)
like Harvey Weinstein began to protest about the representation.
Lex Fridman (09:42.120)
And from there, it just mushroomed into one of the most craven, cowardly acts by any university
Ronald Sullivan (09:52.040)
in modern history.
Lex Fridman (09:53.320)
It's just a complete and utter repudiation of academic freedom.
Lex Fridman (10:00.400)
And it is a decision that Harvard certainly will live to regret, frankly, it's an embarrassment.
Ronald Sullivan (10:09.320)
We expect students to do what students do and I encourage students to have their voices
Ronald Sullivan (10:16.040)
heard and to protest.
Lex Fridman (10:17.280)
I mean, that's what students do.
Lex Fridman (10:20.000)
What is vexing are the adults.
Ronald Sullivan (10:24.400)
The dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Claudine Gay, absolutely craven and cowardly.
Ronald Sullivan (10:31.060)
The dean of the college, same thing, Rakesh Khurana, craven and cowardly.
Ronald Sullivan (10:37.200)
They capitulated to the loudest voice in the room and ran around afraid of 19 year olds.
Ronald Sullivan (10:45.280)
Oh, 19 year olds are upset that I need to do something.
Lex Fridman (10:50.120)
And it appeared to me that they so desired the approval of students that they were afraid
Ronald Sullivan (10:58.120)
to make the tough decision and the right decision.
Lex Fridman (11:01.600)
It really could have been an important teaching moment at Harvard.
Ronald Sullivan (11:06.360)
Very important teaching moment.
Lex Fridman (11:07.920)
So they forced you to step down from that faculty dean position at the house.
Ronald Sullivan (11:13.240)
I would push back on the description a little bit.
Lex Fridman (11:17.200)
So I don't write the, you know, the references to the op ed I did in New York time.
Ronald Sullivan (11:23.820)
Harvard made a mistake by making me step down or something like that.
Lex Fridman (11:27.760)
So I don't write those things.
Ronald Sullivan (11:29.280)
I did not step down and refuse to step down.
Lex Fridman (11:33.240)
Harvard declined to renew my contract.
Lex Fridman (11:37.440)
And I made it clear that I was not going to resign as a matter of principle and forced
Lex Fridman (11:44.280)
them to do the cowardly act that they, in fact, did.
Lex Fridman (11:50.320)
And you know, the worst thing about this, they did the college, Dean Gay and Dean Khurana,
Lex Fridman (11:59.920)
commissioned this survey.
Ronald Sullivan (12:01.120)
They've never done this before.
Lex Fridman (12:02.700)
Survey from the students, you know, how do you feel at Winthrop House?
Lex Fridman (12:06.880)
And the funny thing about the survey is they never released the results.
Lex Fridman (12:11.080)
Why did they never release the results?
Ronald Sullivan (12:13.460)
They never released the results because I would bet my salary that the results came
Lex Fridman (12:20.200)
back positive for me.
Lex Fridman (12:21.880)
And it didn't fit their narrative because most of the students were fine.
Lex Fridman (12:26.400)
Most of the students were fine.
Ronald Sullivan (12:27.400)
It was the loudest voice in the room.
Lex Fridman (12:29.520)
So they never released it, and I challenged them to this day, release it, release it.
Lex Fridman (12:35.080)
But no, they wanted to create this narrative.
Lex Fridman (12:42.600)
And when the data didn't support the narrative, then they just got silent, oh, we're not going
Ronald Sullivan (12:50.400)
to release it.
Lex Fridman (12:51.400)
The students demanded it.
Ronald Sullivan (12:52.480)
I demanded it.
Lex Fridman (12:53.920)
And they wouldn't release it because I just know in my heart of hearts that it came back
Ronald Sullivan (13:03.620)
in my favor that most students at Winthrop House said they were fine.
Lex Fridman (13:08.640)
There was a group of students that weaponized the term unsafe.
Ronald Sullivan (13:13.520)
They said we felt unsafe, and they bantied this term about.
Lex Fridman (13:19.820)
But again, I'm confident that the majority of students at Winthrop House said they felt
Ronald Sullivan (13:25.040)
completely fine and felt safe and so forth.
Lex Fridman (13:29.200)
And the supermajority, I am confident, either said I feel great at Winthrop or I don't care
Ronald Sullivan (13:36.400)
one way or the other.
Lex Fridman (13:37.640)
And then there was some minority who had a different view.
Lex Fridman (13:40.880)
But lessons learned, it was a wonderful opportunity at Winthrop.
Ronald Sullivan (13:49.640)
I met some amazing students over my 10 years as master and then faculty dean, and I'm still
Ronald Sullivan (13:56.560)
in touch with a number of students, some of whom are now my students at the law school.
Lex Fridman (14:02.820)
So in the end, I thought it ended up being a great experience, the national media was
Ronald Sullivan (14:12.280)
just wonderful in this, just wonderful.
Ronald Sullivan (14:15.240)
People wrote such wonderful articles and accounts and wagged their finger appropriately at Harvard.
Ronald Sullivan (14:24.680)
Compare me to John Adams, which I don't think is an apt comparison, but it's always great
Lex Fridman (14:28.640)
to read something like that.
Lex Fridman (14:31.660)
But anyway, that was the Harvard versus Harvey situation.
Lex Fridman (14:37.500)
So that seems like a seminal mistake by Harvard, and Harvard is one of the great universities
Ronald Sullivan (14:42.520)
in the world.
Lex Fridman (14:44.120)
And sort of its successes and its mistakes are really important for the world as a beacon
Ronald Sullivan (14:50.480)
of how we make progress.
Lex Fridman (14:53.480)
So what lessons for the bigger academia that's under fire a lot these days, what bigger lessons
Lex Fridman (15:01.520)
do you take away?
Lex Fridman (15:03.520)
Like how do we make Harvard great?
Lex Fridman (15:06.520)
How do we make other universities, Yale, MIT great in the face of such mistakes?
Ronald Sullivan (15:12.600)
Well, I think that we have moved into a model where we have the consumerization of education.
Ronald Sullivan (15:24.080)
That is to say, we have feckless administrators who make policy based on what the students
Lex Fridman (15:35.160)
say.
Ronald Sullivan (15:37.280)
Now this comment is not intended to suggest that students have no voice in governance,
Lex Fridman (15:44.340)
but it is to suggest that the faculty are there for a reason.
Ronald Sullivan (15:48.440)
They are among the greatest minds on the planet Earth in their particular fields, at schools
Ronald Sullivan (15:53.980)
like Harvard and Yale, Stanford, the schools that you mentioned, MIT, quite literally the
Ronald Sullivan (15:59.840)
greatest minds on Earth, they are there for a reason.
Lex Fridman (16:04.160)
Things like curriculum and so forth are rightly in the province of faculty.
Lex Fridman (16:11.460)
And while you take input and critique and so forth, ultimately, the grownups in the
Ronald Sullivan (16:17.720)
room have to be sufficiently responsible to take charge and to direct the course of a
Ronald Sullivan (16:26.760)
student's education.
Lex Fridman (16:28.720)
And my situation is one example where it really could have been an excellent teaching moment
Ronald Sullivan (16:35.960)
about the value of the Sixth Amendment, about what it means to treat people who are in the
Ronald Sullivan (16:44.120)
crosshairs of the criminal justice system, but rather than having that conversation,
Ronald Sullivan (16:52.400)
it's just this consumerization model, well, there's a lot of noise out here, so we're
Lex Fridman (16:57.880)
going to react in this sort of way.
Ronald Sullivan (17:00.720)
Higher education as well, unfortunately, has been commodified in other sorts of ways that
Ronald Sullivan (17:07.180)
has reduced or impeded, hampered these schools commitments to free and robust and open dialogue.
Lex Fridman (17:17.960)
So to the degree that academic freedom doesn't sit squarely at the center of the academic
Lex Fridman (17:24.160)
mission, any school is going to be in trouble.
Lex Fridman (17:27.400)
And I really hope that we weather this current political moment where 19 year olds without
Ronald Sullivan (17:42.760)
degrees are running universities and get back to a system where faculty, where adults make
Ronald Sullivan (17:54.000)
decisions in the best interests of the university and the best interests of the student.
Ronald Sullivan (17:59.120)
Even to the degree though, some of those decisions may be unpopular, and that is going to require
Ronald Sullivan (18:08.240)
a certain courage and hopefully in time, and I'm confident that in time, administrators
Lex Fridman (18:21.200)
are going to begin to push back on these current trends.
Ronald Sullivan (18:25.120)
Harvard's been around for a long time, it's been around for a long time for a reason,
Lex Fridman (18:29.400)
and one of the reasons is that it understands itself not to be static.
Lex Fridman (18:34.020)
So I have every view that Harvard is going to adapt and get itself back on course and
Lex Fridman (18:49.760)
be around another 400 years, at least that's my hope.
Lex Fridman (18:53.200)
So I mean, what this kind of boils down to is just having difficult conversation, difficult
Lex Fridman (18:58.560)
debates.
Ronald Sullivan (18:59.560)
When you mentioned sort of 19 year olds, and it's funny, I've seen this even at MIT, it's
Lex Fridman (19:04.840)
not that they shouldn't have a voice.
Ronald Sullivan (19:09.240)
They do seem to, I guess you have to experience it and just observe it.
Lex Fridman (19:13.900)
They have a strangely disproportionate power.
Ronald Sullivan (19:18.000)
It's very interesting to basically, I mean, you say, yes, there's great faculty and so
Ronald Sullivan (19:23.260)
on, but it's not even just that the faculty is smart or wise or whatever, it's that they're
Ronald Sullivan (19:30.840)
just silenced.
Lex Fridman (19:33.200)
So the terminology that you mentioned is weaponized as sort of safe spaces or that certain conversations
Ronald Sullivan (19:40.040)
make people feel unsafe.
Lex Fridman (19:43.440)
What do you think about this kind of idea?
Lex Fridman (19:47.840)
Is there some things that are unsafe to talk about in the university setting?
Lex Fridman (19:55.520)
Is there lines to be drawn somewhere?
Lex Fridman (19:58.520)
And just like you said on the flip side with a slippery slope, is it too easy for the lines
Ronald Sullivan (1:00:00.420)
Are they just trying to hold on to their like deeply held emotions and trying to get onto
Lex Fridman (1:00:06.460)
the jury?
Lex Fridman (1:00:07.460)
I mean, it's an incredibly difficult process.
Ronald Sullivan (1:00:09.140)
I don't know if you can comment on a case so difficult, like the ones you've mentioned
Ronald Sullivan (1:00:13.740)
before, how do you select a jury that represents the people and doesn't, and carries the sort
Lex Fridman (1:00:20.580)
of the ideal of the law?
Lex Fridman (1:00:22.100)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:00:23.100)
So a couple things.
Lex Fridman (1:00:24.100)
Yes, it is televised and it will be televised, as they say, gavel to gavel.
Lex Fridman (1:00:28.900)
So the entire trial, the whole thing is going to be televised.
Lex Fridman (1:00:32.620)
So people are getting a view of how laborious jury selection can be.
Ronald Sullivan (1:00:39.580)
I think as of yesterday, they had picked six jurors and it's taken a week and they have
Lex Fridman (1:00:44.340)
to get to 14.
Lex Fridman (1:00:46.460)
So they've got, you know, probably another week or more to do.
Lex Fridman (1:00:52.660)
I've been in jury trials where it took a month to choose a jury.
Lex Fridman (1:00:56.380)
So that's the most important part, you have to choose the right sort of jury.
Lex Fridman (1:01:01.700)
So unbiased in the criminal justice system has a particular meaning.
Ronald Sullivan (1:01:06.740)
It means that, let me tell you what it doesn't mean.
Lex Fridman (1:01:12.100)
It doesn't mean that a person is not aware of the case.
Ronald Sullivan (1:01:17.780)
It also does not mean that a person hasn't formed an opinion about the case.
Lex Fridman (1:01:22.820)
Those are two popular misconceptions.
Lex Fridman (1:01:26.380)
What it does mean is that notwithstanding whether an individual has formed an opinion,
Ronald Sullivan (1:01:31.580)
notwithstanding whether an individual knows about the case, that individual can set aside
Ronald Sullivan (1:01:37.580)
any prior opinions, can set aside any notions that they've developed about the case and
Ronald Sullivan (1:01:43.140)
listen to the evidence presented at trial in conjunction with the judge's instructions
Ronald Sullivan (1:01:49.020)
on how to understand and view that evidence.
Lex Fridman (1:01:53.380)
So if a person can do that, then they're considered unbiased.
Lex Fridman (1:01:58.780)
So as a longtime defense attorney, I would be hesitant in a big case like this to pick
Ronald Sullivan (1:02:07.540)
a juror who's never heard of the case or anything going around because I'm thinking, well, who
Lex Fridman (1:02:11.940)
is this person and what in the world do they do?
Lex Fridman (1:02:17.940)
Or are they lying to me?
Lex Fridman (1:02:18.940)
I mean, how can you not have heard about this case?
Lex Fridman (1:02:23.060)
So they may bring other problems.
Lex Fridman (1:02:25.980)
So I don't mind so much people who've heard about the case or folks who've formed initial
Ronald Sullivan (1:02:30.900)
opinions, but what you don't want is people who have tethered themselves to that opinion
Ronald Sullivan (1:02:40.260)
in a way that they can't be convinced otherwise.
Lex Fridman (1:02:46.500)
But you also have people who, as you suggested, who just lie because they want to get on the
Ronald Sullivan (1:02:52.100)
jury or lie because they want to get off the jury.
Lex Fridman (1:02:54.460)
So sometimes people come and say the most ridiculous, outrageous, offensive things because
Ronald Sullivan (1:03:02.220)
they know that they'll get excused for cause.
Lex Fridman (1:03:05.020)
And others who, you can tell, really badly want to get on the jury.
Lex Fridman (1:03:11.220)
So they pretend to be the most neutral, unbiased person in the world, what the law calls the
Lex Fridman (1:03:20.080)
reasonable person.
Ronald Sullivan (1:03:21.180)
We have in law the reasonable person standard, and I would tell my class the reasonable person
Ronald Sullivan (1:03:28.300)
in real life is the person that you would be least likely to want to have a drink with.
Ronald Sullivan (1:03:34.060)
They're the most boring, neutral, not interesting sort of person in the world.
Lex Fridman (1:03:40.560)
And so a lot of jurors engage in the performative act of presenting themselves as the most sort
Ronald Sullivan (1:03:48.180)
of even killed, rational, reasonable person because they really want to get on the jury.
Ronald Sullivan (1:03:52.820)
Yeah, there's an interesting question, I apologize, I haven't watched a lot because it is very
Ronald Sullivan (1:03:57.940)
long.
Lex Fridman (1:03:58.940)
You know, there's certain questions you ask in the jury selection.
Ronald Sullivan (1:04:06.180)
I remember I think one jumped out at me, which is something like, does the fact that this
Lex Fridman (1:04:15.220)
person is a police officer make you feel any kind of way about them?
Lex Fridman (1:04:21.140)
So trying to get at that, you know, I don't know what that is, I guess that's bias.
Lex Fridman (1:04:27.220)
And it's such a difficult question to ask, like I asked myself with that question, like
Lex Fridman (1:04:33.000)
how much, you know, we all kind of want to pretend that we're not racist, we don't judge,
Ronald Sullivan (1:04:39.420)
we don't have, we're like these, we're the reasonable human, but, you know, legitimately
Lex Fridman (1:04:44.560)
asking yourself like, what are the prejudgments you have in your mind?
Lex Fridman (1:04:53.140)
Is that even impossible for a human being?
Ronald Sullivan (1:04:55.740)
Like when you look at yourself in the mirror and think about it, is it possible to actually
Lex Fridman (1:04:59.540)
answer that?
Ronald Sullivan (1:05:00.540)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:05:01.540)
Look, I do not believe that people can be completely unbiased.
Ronald Sullivan (1:05:08.060)
We all have baggage and bias and bring it wherever we go, including to court.
Lex Fridman (1:05:15.820)
What you want is to try to find a person who can at least recognize when a bias is working
Lex Fridman (1:05:25.540)
and actively try to do the right thing.
Lex Fridman (1:05:29.180)
That's the best we can ask.
Lex Fridman (1:05:31.720)
So if a juror says, yeah, you know, I grew up in a place where I tend to believe what
Lex Fridman (1:05:36.940)
police officers say, that's just how I grew up.
Lex Fridman (1:05:39.720)
But if the judge is telling me that I have to listen to every witness equally, then I'll
Ronald Sullivan (1:05:46.460)
do my best and I won't weigh that testimony any higher than I would any other testimony.
Ronald Sullivan (1:05:52.300)
If you have someone answer a question like that, that sounds more sincere to me, sounds
Lex Fridman (1:05:57.300)
more honest.
Lex Fridman (1:05:58.300)
And if you want a person, you want a person to try to do that.
Lex Fridman (1:06:02.060)
And then in closing arguments, as the lawyer, I'd say something like, ladies and gentlemen,
Ronald Sullivan (1:06:07.500)
we chose you to be on this jury because you swore that you would do your level best to
Lex Fridman (1:06:15.300)
be fair.
Ronald Sullivan (1:06:17.300)
That's why we chose you.
Lex Fridman (1:06:19.420)
And I'm confident that you're going to do that here.
Lex Fridman (1:06:23.020)
So when you heard that police officer's testimony, the judge told you, you can't give more credit
Lex Fridman (1:06:30.060)
to that testimony just because it's a police officer.
Lex Fridman (1:06:33.660)
And I trust that you're going to do that and that you're going to look at witness number
Lex Fridman (1:06:37.660)
three, you know, John Smith, you're going to look at John Smith.
Ronald Sullivan (1:06:40.940)
John Smith has a different recollection and you're duty bound, duty bound to look at that
Ronald Sullivan (1:06:47.740)
testimony and this person's credibility, you know, the same degree as that other witness,
Lex Fridman (1:06:52.940)
right?
Lex Fridman (1:06:53.940)
And now what you have is just a, he said, she said matter, and this is a criminal case
Lex Fridman (1:06:58.540)
that has to be reasonable doubt, right?
Ronald Sullivan (1:07:01.140)
So, you know, and really someone who's trying to do the right thing, it's helpful, but no,
Ronald Sullivan (1:07:07.300)
you're not going to just find 14 people with no biases.
Lex Fridman (1:07:11.620)
That's absurd.
Ronald Sullivan (1:07:12.620)
Well, that's fascinating that, especially the way you're inspiring the way you're speaking
Lex Fridman (1:07:17.100)
now is, I mean, I guess you're calling on the jury.
Ronald Sullivan (1:07:20.220)
That's kind of the whole system is you're calling on the jury, each individual on the
Ronald Sullivan (1:07:23.940)
jury to step up and really think, you know, to, to step up and be their most thoughtful
Ronald Sullivan (1:07:31.220)
selves, actually, most introspective, like you're trying to basically ask people to be
Lex Fridman (1:07:39.020)
their best selves.
Lex Fridman (1:07:41.340)
And that's, and they, I guess a lot of people step up to that.
Ronald Sullivan (1:07:45.100)
A lot of people do, I'm very, I'm very pro jury, juries, they, they get it right a lot
Ronald Sullivan (1:07:52.820)
of the time, most of the time, and they really work hard to do it.
Lex Fridman (1:07:58.100)
So what do you think happens?
Ronald Sullivan (1:08:02.660)
I mean, maybe, I'm not so much on the legal side of things, but on the social side, it's
Ronald Sullivan (1:08:11.660)
like with the O.J. Simpson trial, do you think it's possible that Derek Chauvin does not
Lex Fridman (1:08:17.780)
get convicted of the, what is it, second degree murder?
Lex Fridman (1:08:23.020)
How do you think about that?
Lex Fridman (1:08:24.780)
How do you think about the potential social impact of that, the, the riots, the protests,
Ronald Sullivan (1:08:30.180)
the, either, either direction, any words that are said, the tension here could be explosive,
Ronald Sullivan (1:08:37.220)
especially with the cameras.
Lex Fridman (1:08:38.220)
Yeah.
Ronald Sullivan (1:08:39.220)
You know, so yes, there's certainly a possibility that he, he'll be acquitted.
Ronald Sullivan (1:08:44.860)
For homicide charges, for the jury to convict, they have to make a determination as to Officer
Ronald Sullivan (1:08:55.360)
Chauvin's, former Officer Chauvin's state of mind, whether he intended to cause some
Ronald Sullivan (1:09:04.060)
harm, whether he was grossly reckless in causing harm, so much so that he disregarded a known
Ronald Sullivan (1:09:13.300)
risk of death or serious bodily injury.
Lex Fridman (1:09:16.260)
And as you may have read in the papers, yesterday the judge allowed a third degree murder charge
Ronald Sullivan (1:09:23.620)
in Kentucky, which is, it's the mindset, the state of mind there is not an intention,
Lex Fridman (1:09:33.820)
but it's depraved indifference.
Lex Fridman (1:09:37.220)
And what that means is that the jury doesn't have to find that he intended to do anything.
Lex Fridman (1:09:42.340)
Rather, they could find that he was just indifferent to a risk.
Ronald Sullivan (1:09:50.060)
As dark.
Lex Fridman (1:09:51.060)
Yeah.
Ronald Sullivan (1:09:52.060)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:09:53.060)
I'm not sure what's worse.
Ronald Sullivan (1:09:54.060)
Well, that's, that's a good point, but, but it's a, it's another basis for the jury
Lex Fridman (1:10:00.340)
to convict.
Lex Fridman (1:10:01.340)
But look, you never know what happens when you go to a jury trial.
Lex Fridman (1:10:04.680)
So there could be an acquittal, and if there is, I imagine there would be massive protests.
Ronald Sullivan (1:10:16.520)
If he's convicted, I don't think that would happen, because I just don't see, at least
Ronald Sullivan (1:10:23.780)
nothing I've seen or read suggests that there's a big pro Chauvin camp out there ready to
Ronald Sullivan (1:10:30.780)
protest.
Lex Fridman (1:10:31.780)
Well, there could be a, is there also potential tensions that could arise from the sentencing?
Ronald Sullivan (1:10:37.620)
I don't know how that exactly works, sort of not enough years kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (1:10:41.620)
Yeah, it could be.
Ronald Sullivan (1:10:42.620)
All that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:10:43.620)
It could be.
Ronald Sullivan (1:10:44.620)
I mean, it's, a lot could happen.
Lex Fridman (1:10:45.620)
So it depends on what he's convicted of, you know, one count I think is like up to
Ronald Sullivan (1:10:49.660)
10 years, another counts up to 40 years.
Lex Fridman (1:10:52.820)
So it depends what he's convicted of, and yes, it depends on how much of the, how much
Ronald Sullivan (1:10:57.560)
time the judge gives him if he is convicted.
Ronald Sullivan (1:11:01.980)
There's a lot of space for people to be very angry, and so we will see what happens.
Ronald Sullivan (1:11:07.560)
I just feel like with a judge and the lawyers, there's an opportunity to have really important
Lex Fridman (1:11:15.620)
long lasting speeches.
Ronald Sullivan (1:11:17.980)
I don't know if they think of it that way, especially with the cameras.
Lex Fridman (1:11:23.280)
It feels like they have the capacity to heal or to divide.
Lex Fridman (1:11:29.940)
Do you ever think about that as a lawyer, as a legal mind, that your words aren't just
Lex Fridman (1:11:35.940)
about the case, but about the, they'll reverberate through history potentially?
Ronald Sullivan (1:11:42.820)
That is, that is certainly a possible consequence of things you say.
Lex Fridman (1:11:49.340)
I don't think that most lawyers think about that in the context of the case.
Ronald Sullivan (1:11:55.500)
Your role is much more narrow.
Ronald Sullivan (1:11:58.180)
You're the partisan advocate, as a defense lawyer, partisan advocate for that client.
Ronald Sullivan (1:12:04.700)
As a prosecutor, you're a minister of justice attempting to prosecute that particular case.
Lex Fridman (1:12:11.780)
But the reality is you are absolutely correct that sometimes the things you say will have
Ronald Sullivan (1:12:19.280)
a shelf life.
Lex Fridman (1:12:20.800)
You mentioned O.J. Simpson before, if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.
Ronald Sullivan (1:12:25.900)
It's going to be just in our lexicon for probably a long time now.
Lex Fridman (1:12:30.980)
So it happens, but that's not, and shouldn't be foremost on your mind.
Ronald Sullivan (1:12:36.700)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:12:37.700)
What do you make of the O.J. Simpson trial?
Lex Fridman (1:12:41.420)
Do you have thoughts about it?
Lex Fridman (1:12:44.400)
He's out and about on social media now, he's a public figure.
Lex Fridman (1:12:48.520)
Is there lessons to be drawn from that whole saga?
Lex Fridman (1:12:51.580)
Well, you know, that was an interesting case.
Ronald Sullivan (1:12:53.820)
I was a young public defender, I want to say, in my first year as a public defender when
Lex Fridman (1:12:58.960)
that verdict came out.
Lex Fridman (1:13:00.420)
So that case was important in so many ways.
Ronald Sullivan (1:13:03.180)
One, it was the first DNA case, major DNA case, and there were significant lessons learned
Ronald Sullivan (1:13:10.900)
from that.
Ronald Sullivan (1:13:11.900)
The second mistake that the prosecution made was that they didn't present the science
Ronald Sullivan (1:13:19.800)
in a way that a lay jury could understand it.
Lex Fridman (1:13:25.160)
And what Johnny Cochran did was he understood the science and was able to translate that
Ronald Sullivan (1:13:34.740)
into a vocabulary that he bet that that jury understood.
Lex Fridman (1:13:43.140)
So Cochran was dismissive of a lot of DNA.
Ronald Sullivan (1:13:46.700)
They say they found such and such amount of DNA, that's just like me wiping my finger
Lex Fridman (1:13:55.460)
against my nose and just that little bit of DNA.
Lex Fridman (1:14:00.220)
And that was effective because the prosecution hadn't done a good job of establishing that
Ronald Sullivan (1:14:06.220)
yes, it's microscopic, you don't need that much, yes, wiping your hand on your nose and
Ronald Sullivan (1:14:12.100)
touching something, you can transfer a lot of DNA and that gives you good information.
Lex Fridman (1:14:17.120)
But you know, it was the first time that the public generally, and that jury maybe since
Ronald Sullivan (1:14:22.060)
high school science had heard, you know, nucleotide, I mean, it was just all these terms getting
Lex Fridman (1:14:27.820)
thrown at them, but it was not weaved into a narrative.
Lex Fridman (1:14:33.260)
So Cochran taught us that no matter what type of case it is, no matter what science is involved,
Lex Fridman (1:14:40.580)
it's still about storytelling.
Ronald Sullivan (1:14:42.620)
It's still about a narrative and he was great at that narrative and was consistent with
Lex Fridman (1:14:53.620)
his narrative all the way out.
Ronald Sullivan (1:14:56.540)
Another lesson that was relearned is that, you know, you never ask a question to which
Lex Fridman (1:15:03.100)
you don't know the answer.
Ronald Sullivan (1:15:04.580)
That's like trial advocacy 101.
Lex Fridman (1:15:09.380)
And so when they gave O.J. Simpson the glove and it wouldn't fit, you know, you don't do
Ronald Sullivan (1:15:15.840)
things where you just don't know how it's going to turn out.
Ronald Sullivan (1:15:18.220)
It was way, way too risky and I think that's what acquitted him because the glove just
Ronald Sullivan (1:15:25.700)
wouldn't fit and he got to do this and ham in front of the camera and all of that and
Lex Fridman (1:15:32.540)
it was big.
Lex Fridman (1:15:33.540)
Do you think about, do you think about representation as a storytelling, like you, yourself and
Lex Fridman (1:15:37.540)
your role?
Ronald Sullivan (1:15:38.540)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (1:15:39.540)
Absolutely.
Ronald Sullivan (1:15:40.540)
We tell stories.
Lex Fridman (1:15:41.540)
It is fundamental.
Ronald Sullivan (1:15:43.860)
We, since time immemorial, we have told stories to help us make sense of the world around
Lex Fridman (1:15:51.180)
us.
Ronald Sullivan (1:15:52.180)
As a scientist, you tell a different type of story, but we as a public have told stories
Ronald Sullivan (1:16:03.220)
from time immemorial to help us make sense of the physical and the natural world and
Ronald Sullivan (1:16:09.700)
we are still a species that is moved by storytelling.
Lex Fridman (1:16:15.300)
So that's first and last in trial work.
Ronald Sullivan (1:16:19.020)
You have to tell a good story.
Lex Fridman (1:16:22.420)
And you know, the basic introductory books about trial work teach young students, young
Ronald Sullivan (1:16:28.940)
students and young lawyers to start an opening with this case is about, this case is about
Lex Fridman (1:16:35.940)
and then you fill in the blank and you know, that's your narrative.
Ronald Sullivan (1:16:38.960)
That's the narrative you're going to, you're going to tell.
Lex Fridman (1:16:41.580)
And of course you can do the ultra dramatic, the glove doesn't fit kind of the climax and
Ronald Sullivan (1:16:47.560)
all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (1:16:49.620)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:16:50.620)
But that's the best of narratives.
Lex Fridman (1:16:51.620)
Yes.
Ronald Sullivan (1:16:52.620)
The best of stories.
Lex Fridman (1:16:53.620)
Yes.
Ronald Sullivan (1:16:54.620)
Speaking of other really powerful stories that you were involved with is the Aaron Hernandez
Lex Fridman (1:16:59.660)
trial and the whole story, the whole legal case.
Lex Fridman (1:17:03.540)
Can you maybe overview the big picture story and legal case of Aaron Hernandez?
Lex Fridman (1:17:09.300)
Yeah.
Ronald Sullivan (1:17:10.300)
Aaron, whom I miss a lot, so he was charged with a double murder in the case that I tried.
Lex Fridman (1:17:20.420)
And this was a unique case and one of those impossible cases in part because Aaron had
Ronald Sullivan (1:17:26.780)
already been convicted of a murder.
Lex Fridman (1:17:31.020)
And so we had a client who was on trial for a double murder after having already been
Ronald Sullivan (1:17:36.420)
convicted of a separate murder.
Lex Fridman (1:17:40.060)
And we had a jury pool just about all of whom knew that he had been convicted of a murder
Ronald Sullivan (1:17:48.480)
because he was a very popular football player in Boston, which is a big football town with
Lex Fridman (1:17:54.180)
the Patriots.
Lex Fridman (1:17:55.940)
So everyone knew that he was a convicted murderer and here we are defending for in a double
Lex Fridman (1:18:02.800)
murder case.
Lex Fridman (1:18:04.980)
So that was the context.
Ronald Sullivan (1:18:07.820)
It was an odd case in the sense that this murder had gone unsolved for a couple of years
Lex Fridman (1:18:15.680)
and then a nightclub bouncer said something to a cop who was working at a club that Aaron
Ronald Sullivan (1:18:27.020)
Hernandez was somehow involved in that murder that happened in the theater district.
Ronald Sullivan (1:18:32.300)
That's the district where all the clubs are in Boston and where the homicide occurred.
Lex Fridman (1:18:37.340)
And once the police heard Aaron Hernandez's name, then they went all out in order to do
Ronald Sullivan (1:18:46.740)
this.
Ronald Sullivan (1:18:47.740)
They found a guy named Alexander Bradley, who was a very significant drug dealer in
Ronald Sullivan (1:19:01.100)
the sort of Connecticut area, very significant, very powerful.
Lex Fridman (1:19:09.260)
And he essentially, in exchange for a deal, pointed to Aaron and said, yeah, I was with
Ronald Sullivan (1:19:17.620)
Aaron and Aaron was the murderer.
Lex Fridman (1:19:24.080)
So that's how the case came to court.
Ronald Sullivan (1:19:25.860)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:19:26.860)
So that sets the context.
Lex Fridman (1:19:28.380)
What was your involvement in this case, like legally, intellectually, psychologically,
Lex Fridman (1:19:36.820)
when this particular second charge of murder?
Lex Fridman (1:19:40.540)
So a friend called me, Jose Baez, who is a defense attorney, and he comes to a class
Ronald Sullivan (1:19:49.940)
that I teach every year at Harvard, the trial advocacy workshop, as one of my teaching faculty
Ronald Sullivan (1:19:57.040)
members.
Lex Fridman (1:19:58.620)
It's a class where we teach students how to try cases.
Lex Fridman (1:20:02.440)
So Jose called me and said, hey, I got a call from Massachusetts, Aaron Hernandez.
Lex Fridman (1:20:12.600)
You want to go and talk to him with me?
Lex Fridman (1:20:15.720)
So I said, sure.
Lex Fridman (1:20:16.720)
So we went up to the prison and met Aaron and spoke with him for two or three hours
Ronald Sullivan (1:20:26.500)
that first time.
Lex Fridman (1:20:27.740)
And before we left, he said he wanted to retain us.
Ronald Sullivan (1:20:32.340)
He wanted to work with us.
Lex Fridman (1:20:33.660)
And that started the representation.
Lex Fridman (1:20:34.980)
What was he like in that time?
Lex Fridman (1:20:39.140)
What was he worn down by the whole process?
Lex Fridman (1:20:42.020)
Was there still a light in that?
Lex Fridman (1:20:44.340)
He was not.
Ronald Sullivan (1:20:45.340)
He had, I mean, more than just a light, he was luminous almost.
Lex Fridman (1:20:49.700)
He had a radiant million dollar smile whenever you walked in.
Ronald Sullivan (1:20:55.540)
My first impression I distinctly remember was, wow, this is what a professional athlete
Lex Fridman (1:21:00.960)
looks like.
Ronald Sullivan (1:21:01.960)
I mean, he walked in and he's just bigger and more fit than anyone anywhere.
Lex Fridman (1:21:09.180)
And it's like, wow.
Lex Fridman (1:21:10.780)
And when you saw him on television, he looked kind of little.
Lex Fridman (1:21:13.940)
And I remember thinking, well, what do those other guys look like in person?
Lex Fridman (1:21:21.740)
And he's extraordinarily polite, young, I was surprised by how young he was.
Lex Fridman (1:21:32.820)
Both in mind and body.
Ronald Sullivan (1:21:36.300)
Chronologically, I was thinking he was in his early 20s, I believe.
Lex Fridman (1:21:42.020)
But there seemed to be like an innocence to him in terms of just the way he saw the world.
Ronald Sullivan (1:21:46.180)
I think that's right.
Lex Fridman (1:21:47.740)
They picked that up from the documentary, just taking that in.
Ronald Sullivan (1:21:50.820)
I think that's right, yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:21:53.560)
So there is a Netflix documentary titled Killer Inside the Mind of Aaron Hernandez.
Lex Fridman (1:22:01.180)
What are your thoughts on this documentary?
Lex Fridman (1:22:02.460)
I don't know if you've gotten a chance to see it.
Ronald Sullivan (1:22:04.980)
I have not seen it.
Lex Fridman (1:22:05.980)
I did not participate in it.
Ronald Sullivan (1:22:07.180)
I know I was in it because there was news footage, but I did not participate in it.
Lex Fridman (1:22:13.500)
I had not talked to Aaron about press or anything before he died.
Ronald Sullivan (1:22:22.340)
My strong view is that the attorney client privilege survives death.
Lex Fridman (1:22:25.860)
And so I was not inclined to talk about anything that Aaron and I talked about.
Lex Fridman (1:22:29.860)
So I just didn't participate and have never watched it.
Lex Fridman (1:22:34.260)
Not even watch, huh?
Ronald Sullivan (1:22:36.820)
Does that apply to most of your work, do you try to stay away from the way the press perceives
Lex Fridman (1:22:42.300)
stuff?
Ronald Sullivan (1:22:43.300)
Well, during, yes, I try to stay away from it.
Lex Fridman (1:22:46.540)
I will view it afterwards.
Ronald Sullivan (1:22:48.700)
I just hadn't gotten around to watching Aaron, because it's kind of sad.
Lex Fridman (1:22:53.660)
So I just haven't watched it.
Lex Fridman (1:22:55.180)
But I definitely stay away from the press during trial.
Lex Fridman (1:23:00.340)
And there are some lawyers who watch it religiously to see what's going on, but I'm confident
Ronald Sullivan (1:23:06.700)
in my years of training and so forth that I can actively sense what's going on in the
Ronald Sullivan (1:23:15.820)
courtroom and that I really don't need advice from Joe476 at Gmail, some random guy on the
Ronald Sullivan (1:23:26.820)
internet telling me how to try cases.
Lex Fridman (1:23:29.140)
So to me, it's just confusing and I just keep it out of my mind.
Lex Fridman (1:23:33.340)
And even if you think you can ignore it, just reading it will have a little bit of an effect
Lex Fridman (1:23:38.220)
on your mind.
Ronald Sullivan (1:23:39.220)
I think that's right.
Lex Fridman (1:23:40.700)
Over time it might accumulate.
Lex Fridman (1:23:43.980)
So the documentary, but in general, it mentioned or kind of emphasized and talked about Aaron's
Ronald Sullivan (1:23:54.700)
sexuality or sort of they were discussing basically the idea that he was a homosexual.
Lex Fridman (1:24:03.300)
And some of the trauma, some of the suffering that he endured in his life had to do with
Ronald Sullivan (1:24:10.500)
sort of fear given the society of what his father would think of what others around him
Ronald Sullivan (1:24:18.900)
sort of, especially in sport culture and football and so on.
Lex Fridman (1:24:23.060)
So I don't know in your interaction with him was, do you think that maybe even leaning
Ronald Sullivan (1:24:31.180)
up to a suicide, do you think his struggle with coming to terms with the sexuality had
Lex Fridman (1:24:38.820)
a role to play in much of his difficulties?
Ronald Sullivan (1:24:43.620)
Well I'm not going to talk about my interactions with them and anything I derived from that.
Lex Fridman (1:24:50.940)
But what I will say is that a story broke on the radio at some point during the trial
Ronald Sullivan (1:25:04.500)
that Aaron had been in the same sex relationship with someone and some local sportscasters,
Lex Fridman (1:25:11.460)
local Boston sportscasters really mushroomed the story.
Lex Fridman (1:25:18.940)
So he and everyone was aware of it.
Ronald Sullivan (1:25:25.980)
You also may know from the court record that the prosecutors floated a specious theory
Ronald Sullivan (1:25:36.380)
for a minute but then backed off of it that Aaron was, that there was some sort of I guess
Lex Fridman (1:25:43.420)
gay rage at work with him and that might be a cause, a motive for the killing.
Lex Fridman (1:25:51.260)
And luckily they really backed off of that.
Lex Fridman (1:25:54.060)
That was quite an offensive claim in theory.
Lex Fridman (1:25:58.620)
So but to answer your question more directly, I mean I have no idea why he killed himself.
Lex Fridman (1:26:04.700)
It was a surprise and a shock.
Ronald Sullivan (1:26:08.540)
I was scheduled to go see him like a couple days after it happened.
Ronald Sullivan (1:26:13.060)
I mean he was anxious for Jose and I to come in and do the appeal from the murder which
Ronald Sullivan (1:26:22.780)
he was convicted for.
Lex Fridman (1:26:23.840)
He wanted us to take over that appeal.
Ronald Sullivan (1:26:27.720)
He was talking about going back to football.
Ronald Sullivan (1:26:29.500)
I mean he said, well you talk about this, earlier you talked about the sort of innocent
Ronald Sullivan (1:26:34.420)
aspect of him.
Ronald Sullivan (1:26:35.420)
He said, you know, well Ron, maybe not the Patriots but you know, I want to get back
Ronald Sullivan (1:26:40.580)
in the league and I was like, you know, Aaron, that's going to be tough, man.
Lex Fridman (1:26:47.580)
But he really believed it and then for a few days later that to happen, it was a real shock
Ronald Sullivan (1:26:56.420)
to me.
Lex Fridman (1:26:57.420)
Like when you look back at that, at his story, does it make you sad?
Ronald Sullivan (1:27:04.660)
Very.
Lex Fridman (1:27:05.660)
Very.
Ronald Sullivan (1:27:06.660)
I thought, so one, I believe he absolutely did not commit the crimes that we acquitted
Lex Fridman (1:27:16.620)
him on.
Ronald Sullivan (1:27:17.620)
I think that was the right answer for that.
Ronald Sullivan (1:27:23.660)
I don't know enough about Bradley, the first case, I'm sorry, to make an opinion on.
Lex Fridman (1:27:29.980)
But in our case, it was just, he had the misfortune of having a famous name and the police department
Lex Fridman (1:27:39.020)
just really got on him there.
Lex Fridman (1:27:44.340)
So yes, I miss him a lot, it was very, very sad and surprising.
Lex Fridman (1:27:52.300)
And I mean just on the human side, of course we don't know the full story, but just everything
Ronald Sullivan (1:27:57.220)
that led up to suicide, everything led up to an incredible professional football player,
Lex Fridman (1:28:04.180)
you know, that whole story.
Ronald Sullivan (1:28:06.180)
He was a remarkably talented athlete, remarkably talented athlete.
Lex Fridman (1:28:10.760)
And it has to do with all the possible trajectories, right, that we can take through life, as we
Ronald Sullivan (1:28:16.220)
were talking about before.
Lex Fridman (1:28:17.820)
And some of them lead to suicide, sadly enough.
Lex Fridman (1:28:23.940)
And it's always tragic when you have somebody with great potential result in the things
Lex Fridman (1:28:34.060)
that happen.
Ronald Sullivan (1:28:35.900)
People love it when I ask about books.
Ronald Sullivan (1:28:37.700)
I don't know whether technical, like legal or fiction, nonfiction books throughout your
Ronald Sullivan (1:28:44.980)
life have had an impact on you, if there's something you could recommend or something
Ronald Sullivan (1:28:50.380)
you could speak to about something that inspired ideas, insights about this complicated world
Ronald Sullivan (1:28:57.860)
of ours.
Lex Fridman (1:28:58.860)
Oh, wow.
Ronald Sullivan (1:28:59.860)
Yeah, so I'll give you a couple.
Lex Fridman (1:29:05.540)
So one is Contingency, Irony and Solidarity by Richard Warty.
Ronald Sullivan (1:29:09.900)
He's passed away now, but was a philosopher at some of our major institutions, Princeton,
Lex Fridman (1:29:18.820)
Stanford.
Ronald Sullivan (1:29:23.300)
Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, at least that's a book that really helped me work through
Lex Fridman (1:29:30.260)
a series of thoughts.
Lex Fridman (1:29:31.480)
So it stands for the proposition that our most deeply held beliefs are contingent, that
Ronald Sullivan (1:29:40.940)
there's nothing beyond history or prior to socialization that's definatory of the human
Ronald Sullivan (1:29:48.300)
being, that's Warty.
Lex Fridman (1:29:50.980)
And he says that our most deeply held beliefs are received wisdom and highly contingent
Ronald Sullivan (1:29:58.060)
along a number of registers.
Lex Fridman (1:30:01.940)
And he does that, but then goes on to say that he nonetheless can hold strongly held
Ronald Sullivan (1:30:10.060)
beliefs, recognizing their contingency, but still believes them to be true and accurate.
Ronald Sullivan (1:30:15.140)
He helps you to work through what could be an intellectual tension, other words, so you
Ronald Sullivan (1:30:23.660)
don't delve into, one doesn't delve into relativism, everything is okay, but he gives
Lex Fridman (1:30:30.100)
you a vocabulary to think about how to negotiate these realities.
Lex Fridman (1:30:38.100)
Do you share this tension?
Lex Fridman (1:30:40.100)
I mean, there is a real tension.
Ronald Sullivan (1:30:41.820)
It seems like even the law, the legal system is all just a construct of our human ideas,
Lex Fridman (1:30:48.620)
and yet it seems to be, almost feels fundamental to what a just society is.
Ronald Sullivan (1:30:57.820)
Yeah, I definitely share the tension and love his vocabulary and the way he's helped me
Lex Fridman (1:31:06.800)
resolve the tension.
Lex Fridman (1:31:09.000)
So right, I mean, yeah, so like, you know, infanticide, for example.
Ronald Sullivan (1:31:15.300)
Perhaps it's socially contingent, perhaps it's received wisdom, perhaps it's anthropological,
Ronald Sullivan (1:31:23.220)
you know, we need to propagate the species, and I still think it's wrong.
Lex Fridman (1:31:29.400)
And Warty has helped me develop a category to say that, no, I can't provide any, in
Ronald Sullivan (1:31:37.620)
Warty's words, noncircular theoretical backup for this proposition.
Ronald Sullivan (1:31:42.940)
At some point, it's going to run me into a circularity problem, but that's okay.
Ronald Sullivan (1:31:48.180)
I hold this nonetheless in full recognition of its contingency, but what it does is makes
Ronald Sullivan (1:31:54.860)
you humble, and when you're humble, that's good because, you know, this notion that ideas
Ronald Sullivan (1:32:02.540)
are always already in progress, never fully formed, I think is the sort of intellectual
Lex Fridman (1:32:10.580)
I strive to be.
Lex Fridman (1:32:12.620)
And if I have a sufficient degree of humility that I don't have the final answer, capital
Lex Fridman (1:32:20.980)
A, then that's going to help me to get to better answers, lowercase a.
Lex Fridman (1:32:26.660)
And Warty does that, and he talks about in the solidarity part of the book, he has this
Ronald Sullivan (1:32:33.520)
concept of imaginative, the imaginative ability to see other different people as we instead
Ronald Sullivan (1:32:42.660)
of they.
Lex Fridman (1:32:43.900)
And I just think it's a beautiful concept, but he talks about this imaginative ability
Lex Fridman (1:32:47.620)
and it's this active process.
Lex Fridman (1:32:49.860)
So I mean, so that's a book that's done a lot of work for me over the years.
Ronald Sullivan (1:32:58.980)
Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois was absolutely pivotal in my intellectual development.
Ronald Sullivan (1:33:06.820)
One of the premier set of essays in the Western literary tradition, and it's a deep and profound
Ronald Sullivan (1:33:18.180)
sociological, philosophical, and historical analysis of the predicament of blacks in America
Lex Fridman (1:33:28.420)
from one of our country's greatest polymaths.
Ronald Sullivan (1:33:36.060)
It's a beautiful text and I go to it yearly.
Lex Fridman (1:33:40.780)
So for somebody like me, so growing up in the Soviet Union, the struggle, the civil
Ronald Sullivan (1:33:46.740)
rights movement, the struggle of race, and all those kinds of things that is, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:33:53.380)
this universal, but it's also very much a journey of the United States.
Ronald Sullivan (1:33:57.340)
It was kind of a foreign thing that I stepped into.
Ronald Sullivan (1:34:00.820)
Is that something you would recommend somebody like me to read, or is there other things
Lex Fridman (1:34:06.780)
about race that are good to connect to?
Ronald Sullivan (1:34:11.140)
My flavor of suffering injustice, I'm a Jew as well, my flavor has to do with World War
Ronald Sullivan (1:34:17.140)
II and the studies of that, you know, all the injustices there.
Lex Fridman (1:34:20.820)
So I'm now stepping into a new set of injustices and trying to learn the landscape.
Ronald Sullivan (1:34:27.340)
I would say anyone is a better person for having read Du Bois.
Ronald Sullivan (1:34:35.100)
He's just a remarkable writer and thinker, and to the extent you're interested in learning
Ronald Sullivan (1:34:42.860)
another history, he does it in a way that is quite sophisticated.
Lex Fridman (1:34:49.460)
So it's interesting, I was going to give you three books.
Ronald Sullivan (1:34:54.980)
I noted the accent when I met you, but I didn't know exactly where you're from.
Lex Fridman (1:35:00.900)
But the other book I was going to say is Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and I mean, I've always
Ronald Sullivan (1:35:07.660)
wanted to go to St. Pete's just to sort of see with my own eyes what the word pictures
Lex Fridman (1:35:14.340)
that Dostoevsky created in Crime and Punishment.
Lex Fridman (1:35:18.740)
And you know, I love others of his stuff too, The Brothers Care, Masov, and so forth.
Lex Fridman (1:35:23.480)
But Crime and Punishment I first read in high school as a junior or senior, and it is a
Ronald Sullivan (1:35:30.980)
deep and profound meditation on both the meaning and the measure of our lives.
Lex Fridman (1:35:40.740)
And Dostoevsky, obviously in conversation with other thinkers, really gets at the crux
Lex Fridman (1:35:53.940)
of a fundamental philosophical problem, what does it mean to be a human being?
Lex Fridman (1:36:01.500)
And for that, Crime and Punishment captured me as a teenager, and that's another text
Ronald Sullivan (1:36:07.340)
that I return to often.
Ronald Sullivan (1:36:10.860)
We've talked about young people a little bit at the beginning of our conversation.
Ronald Sullivan (1:36:17.060)
Is there advice that you could give to a young person today thinking about their career,
Lex Fridman (1:36:23.340)
thinking about their life, thinking about making their way in this world?
Ronald Sullivan (1:36:28.180)
Yeah, sure.
Lex Fridman (1:36:29.180)
I'll share some advice.
Ronald Sullivan (1:36:30.420)
It actually picks up on a question we talked about earlier in the academy and schools.
Lex Fridman (1:36:36.480)
But it's some advice that a professor gave to me when I got to Harvard.
Lex Fridman (1:36:42.940)
And it is this, that you have to be willing to come face to face with your intellectual
Lex Fridman (1:36:48.560)
limitations and keep going.
Lex Fridman (1:36:52.860)
And it's hard for people, I mean, you mentioned this earlier, to face really difficult tasks,
Lex Fridman (1:37:01.140)
and particularly in these sort of elite spaces where you've excelled all your life, and
Ronald Sullivan (1:37:05.620)
you come to MIT and you're like, wait a minute, I don't understand this.
Lex Fridman (1:37:09.300)
Wait, this is hard.
Ronald Sullivan (1:37:10.500)
I've never had something really hard before.
Lex Fridman (1:37:14.460)
And there are a couple options, and a lot of people will pull back and take the gentleman
Ronald Sullivan (1:37:19.660)
or gentlewoman's bee and just go on, or risk going out there, giving it your all, and still
Lex Fridman (1:37:28.060)
not quite getting it.
Lex Fridman (1:37:29.940)
And that's a risk, but it's a risk well worth it, because you're just going to be the better
Lex Fridman (1:37:35.940)
person, the better student for it.
Lex Fridman (1:37:38.580)
And even outside of the academy, I mean, come face to face with your fears and keep going
Lex Fridman (1:37:45.820)
and keep going in life, and you're going to be the better person, the better human being.
Ronald Sullivan (1:37:51.500)
Yeah, it does seem to be, I don't know what it is, but it does seem to be that fear is
Lex Fridman (1:37:57.700)
a good indicator of something you should probably face.
Ronald Sullivan (1:38:05.380)
Fear kind of shows the way a little bit.
Lex Fridman (1:38:08.140)
Not always.
Ronald Sullivan (1:38:09.140)
You might not want to go into the cage with a lion, but maybe you should.
Lex Fridman (1:38:16.260)
Maybe.
Ronald Sullivan (1:38:17.260)
Let me ask sort of a darker question, because we're talking about Dostoyevsky, we might
Lex Fridman (1:38:22.780)
as well.
Lex Fridman (1:38:25.460)
Do you, and connected to the freeing innocent people, do you think about mortality?
Lex Fridman (1:38:36.380)
Do you think about your own death?
Lex Fridman (1:38:38.020)
Are you afraid of death?
Lex Fridman (1:38:40.340)
I'm not afraid of death.
Ronald Sullivan (1:38:42.180)
I do think about it more now, because I'm now in my mid fifties, so I used to not think
Ronald Sullivan (1:38:48.920)
about it much at all, but the harsh reality is that I've got more time behind me now
Ronald Sullivan (1:38:57.460)
than I do in front of me, and it kind of happens all of a sudden, too.
Ronald Sullivan (1:39:01.220)
You realize, wait a minute, I'm actually on the back nine now, so yeah, my mind moves
Ronald Sullivan (1:39:08.860)
to it from time to time.
Lex Fridman (1:39:10.140)
I don't dwell on it.
Ronald Sullivan (1:39:11.860)
I'm not afraid of it.
Ronald Sullivan (1:39:14.160)
My own personal religious commitments, I'm Christian, and my religious commitments buoy
Ronald Sullivan (1:39:21.660)
me that death, and I believe this, death is not the end, so I'm not afraid of it.
Lex Fridman (1:39:31.260)
Now, this is not to say that I want to rush to the afterlife.
Ronald Sullivan (1:39:35.780)
I'm good right here for a long time, and I hope I've got 30, 35, 40 more years to
Lex Fridman (1:39:42.820)
go, but no, I don't fear death.
Ronald Sullivan (1:39:50.100)
We're finite creatures.
Lex Fridman (1:39:52.380)
We're all gonna die.
Ronald Sullivan (1:39:53.380)
Well, the mystery of it, you know, for somebody, at least for me, we human beings want to figure
Lex Fridman (1:40:01.500)
everything out.
Ronald Sullivan (1:40:04.300)
Whatever the afterlife is, there's still a mystery to it.
Ronald Sullivan (1:40:08.220)
That uncertainty can be terrifying if you ponder it, but maybe what you're saying is
Ronald Sullivan (1:40:17.540)
you haven't pondered it too deeply so far, and it's worked out pretty good.
Lex Fridman (1:40:21.340)
It's worked out, yeah, no complaints.
Lex Fridman (1:40:24.500)
So you said, again, the Sejewski kind of was exceptionally good at getting to the core
Lex Fridman (1:40:32.220)
of what it means to be human.
Lex Fridman (1:40:34.180)
Do you think about, like, the why of why we're here, the meaning of this whole existence?
Ronald Sullivan (1:40:41.660)
Yeah, no, I do, I think, and I actually think that's the purpose of an education.
Lex Fridman (1:40:50.140)
What does it mean to be a human being?
Lex Fridman (1:40:51.860)
And in one way or another, we set out to answer those questions, and we do it in a different
Ronald Sullivan (1:40:58.220)
way.
Lex Fridman (1:40:59.220)
I mean, some may look to philosophy to answer these questions.
Lex Fridman (1:41:07.340)
Why is it in one's personal interest to do good, to do justice?
Lex Fridman (1:41:17.020)
Some may look at it through the economist lens.
Ronald Sullivan (1:41:22.900)
Some may look at it through the microscope in the laboratory that the phenomenal world
Lex Fridman (1:41:32.980)
is the meaning of life.
Ronald Sullivan (1:41:36.580)
Others may say that that's one vocabulary, that's one description, but the poet describes
Ronald Sullivan (1:41:44.500)
a reality to the same degree as a physicist, but that's the purpose of an education.
Ronald Sullivan (1:41:51.320)
It's to sort of work through these issues.
Lex Fridman (1:41:53.860)
What does it mean to be a human being?
Lex Fridman (1:41:59.340)
And I think it's a fascinating journey, and I think it's a lifelong endeavor to figure
Lex Fridman (1:42:04.260)
out what is the thing, that nugget, that makes us human.
Lex Fridman (1:42:09.220)
Do you still see yourself as a student?
Lex Fridman (1:42:11.780)
Of course.
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:12.780)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:42:13.780)
I mean, that's the best part about going into university teaching.
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:19.460)
You're a lifelong student.
Lex Fridman (1:42:20.880)
I'm always learning.
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:21.880)
I learn from my students and with my students and my colleagues.
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:27.380)
You continue to read and learn and modify opinions, and I think it's just a wonderful
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:33.860)
thing.
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:34.860)
Well, Ron, I'm so glad that somebody like you is carrying the fire of what is the best
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:45.260)
of Harvard.
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:46.260)
It's a huge honor that you would spend so much time, waste so much of your valuable
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:50.900)
time with me.
Lex Fridman (1:42:51.900)
I really appreciate that conversation.
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:52.900)
Not a waste at all.
Lex Fridman (1:42:53.900)
I think a lot of people love it.
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:55.260)
Thank you so much for talking today.
Lex Fridman (1:42:56.580)
Thank you.
Ronald Sullivan (1:42:58.380)
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ronald Sullivan, and thank you to Brooklyn
Lex Fridman (1:43:02.780)
and Sheetz, Wine Access Online Wine Store, Monk Pack Low Carb Snacks, and Blinkist app
Ronald Sullivan (1:43:09.100)
that summarizes books.
Lex Fridman (1:43:10.900)
Click their links to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (1:43:13.540)
And now let me leave you with some words from Nelson Mandela, when a man is denied the right
Lex Fridman (1:43:18.480)
to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.
Ronald Sullivan (1:43:25.620)
Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (20:04.400)
to be drawn everywhere?
Ronald Sullivan (20:05.920)
Yeah, that's a great question.
Lex Fridman (20:08.460)
So this idea of unsafe space, at least the vocabulary derives from some research, academic
Ronald Sullivan (20:16.220)
research about feeling psychologically unsafe.
Lex Fridman (20:21.880)
And so the notion here is that there are forms of psychological disquiet that impedes people
Ronald Sullivan (20:32.520)
from experiencing the educational environment to the greatest degree possible.
Lex Fridman (20:39.320)
And that's the argument.
Lex Fridman (20:44.740)
And assuming for a moment that people do have these feelings of disquiet at elite universities
Ronald Sullivan (20:53.820)
like MIT and like Harvard, that's probably the safest space people are going to be in
Ronald Sullivan (20:59.880)
for their lives because when they get out into the quote unquote real world, they won't
Ronald Sullivan (21:06.840)
have the sorts of nets that these schools provide, safety nets that these schools provide.
Lex Fridman (21:14.320)
So to the extent that research is descriptive of a psychological feeling, I think that the
Lex Fridman (21:20.480)
duty of the universities are to challenge people.
Ronald Sullivan (21:24.480)
Seems to me that it's a shame to go to a place like Harvard or a place like MIT, Yale, any
Ronald Sullivan (21:29.520)
of these great institutions and come out the same person that you were when you went in.
Ronald Sullivan (21:37.100)
That seems to be a horrible waste of four years and money and resources.
Ronald Sullivan (21:42.040)
Rather, we ought to challenge students, that they grow, challenge some of their most deeply
Ronald Sullivan (21:50.200)
held assumptions.
Ronald Sullivan (21:53.180)
They may continue to hold them, but the point of an education is to rigorously interrogate
Ronald Sullivan (22:00.480)
these fundamental assumptions that have guided you thus far and to do it fairly and civilly.
Lex Fridman (22:08.400)
So to the extent that there are lines that should be drawn, there's a long tradition
Ronald Sullivan (22:13.640)
in the university of civil discourse.
Lex Fridman (22:15.760)
So you should draw a line somewhere between civil discourse and uncivil discourse.
Ronald Sullivan (22:22.280)
The purpose of a university is to talk difficult conversations, tough issues, talk directly
Lex Fridman (22:29.800)
and frankly, but do it civilly.
Ronald Sullivan (22:33.700)
Also to yell and cuss at somebody and that sort of thing, well, do that on your own space,
Lex Fridman (22:42.280)
but observe the norms of civil discourse at the university.
Lex Fridman (22:47.880)
So look, I think that the presumption ought to be that the most difficult topics are appropriate
Lex Fridman (22:57.880)
to talk about at a university.
Ronald Sullivan (23:00.120)
That ought to be the presumption.
Ronald Sullivan (23:01.840)
Now should MIT, for example, give its imprimatur to someone who is espousing the flat earth
Lex Fridman (23:15.520)
theory, the earth is flat, right?
Ronald Sullivan (23:20.360)
If certain ideas are so contrary to the scientific and cultural thinking of the moment, yeah,
Ronald Sullivan (23:35.120)
there's space there to draw a line and say, yeah, we're not going to give you this platform
Lex Fridman (23:40.640)
to tell our students that the earth is flat.
Lex Fridman (23:45.920)
But a topic that's controversial, but contestatory, that's what universities are for.
Lex Fridman (23:54.440)
If you don't like the idea, present better ideas and articulate them.
Lex Fridman (23:58.920)
And I think there needs to be a mechanism outside of the space of ideas of humbling.
Lex Fridman (24:04.560)
I've done martial arts for a long time.
Ronald Sullivan (24:07.080)
I got my ass kicked a lot.
Lex Fridman (24:08.960)
I think that's really important.
Ronald Sullivan (24:12.200)
In the space of ideas, I mean, even just in engineering, just all the math classes, my
Lex Fridman (24:18.520)
memories of math, which I love, is kind of pain.
Ronald Sullivan (24:25.080)
It's basically coming face to face with the idea that I'm not special, that I'm much dumber
Ronald Sullivan (24:32.280)
than I thought I was, and that accomplishing anything in this world requires really hard
Ronald Sullivan (24:39.600)
work.
Lex Fridman (24:40.600)
It's really humbling.
Ronald Sullivan (24:42.420)
That puts you, because I remember when I was 18 and 19, and I thought I was going to be
Ronald Sullivan (24:47.640)
the smartest, the best fighter, the Nobel Prize winning, all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (24:54.240)
And then you come face to face with reality, and it hurts.
Lex Fridman (24:58.760)
And it feels like there needs to be efficient mechanisms from the best universities in the
Ronald Sullivan (25:02.960)
world without abusing you.
Ronald Sullivan (25:06.520)
It's a very difficult line to walk without mentally or physically abusing you, be able
Ronald Sullivan (25:13.600)
to humble you.
Lex Fridman (25:15.700)
And that's what I felt was missing in these very difficult, very important conversations
Ronald Sullivan (25:20.000)
is the 19 year olds, when they spoke up, the mechanism for humbling them with ideas was
Lex Fridman (25:28.040)
missing.
Ronald Sullivan (25:29.040)
It kind of got broken down because, as you say, I sensed fear.
Lex Fridman (25:39.540)
Everything was permeated with fear.
Lex Fridman (25:41.560)
And fear is paralyzing, fear is destructive, especially in a place that's supposed to be
Lex Fridman (25:47.020)
all about freedom of ideas.
Lex Fridman (25:50.560)
And I don't know if you have anything, any thoughts to say on this whole idea of cancel
Ronald Sullivan (25:56.400)
culture, where people, a lot of people use it as become political, so staying maybe
Ronald Sullivan (26:03.640)
outside of the world of politics.
Ronald Sullivan (26:07.040)
Is this, do you have thoughts about it, does it bother you that people are sort of put
Lex Fridman (26:12.940)
in this bin and labeled as something and then thereby you can ignore everything they say?
Ronald Sullivan (26:19.320)
I mean, Steven Pinker, there's a lot of Harvard folks that are fighting against these set
Lex Fridman (26:24.840)
of ideas, but do you have thoughts?
Lex Fridman (26:27.340)
I think that we as a culture are way, way, way too quick to cancel people.
Lex Fridman (26:35.200)
And it's become almost reflexive now, someone says something or makes an offhand comment,
Lex Fridman (26:47.240)
even a mistake, there's a move to simply cancel folks.
Lex Fridman (26:54.120)
So I think that this, quote unquote, cancel culture has really gotten out of control at
Lex Fridman (27:02.920)
this point.
Ronald Sullivan (27:04.320)
It's forcing people to be robotic in many ways.
Lex Fridman (27:09.080)
No offense to robots.
Ronald Sullivan (27:10.080)
I was going to say, now I know I'm venturing into your intellectual domain.
Lex Fridman (27:15.720)
For future robots watching this, no offense.
Lex Fridman (27:18.840)
And there are minutes discouraging a lot of good people from getting into public life
Lex Fridman (27:24.760)
in any sort of way, because who needs the stress of it?
Ronald Sullivan (27:29.800)
Well, in some sense, you're an inspiration that you're able to withstand the pressure
Lex Fridman (27:36.140)
of the masses.
Lex Fridman (27:37.440)
But it's a sad aspect of human nature that we kind of get into these crowds and we start
Ronald Sullivan (27:44.600)
chanting and it's fun for some reason, and then you forget yourself and then you sort
Ronald Sullivan (27:49.380)
of wake up the next day not having anticipated the consequences of all the chanting.
Lex Fridman (27:57.160)
And we would get ourselves in trouble in that.
Ronald Sullivan (27:58.920)
I mean, there's some responsibility on social networks and the mechanisms by which they
Ronald Sullivan (28:06.120)
make it more frictionless to do the chanting, to do the canceling, to do the outrage and
Ronald Sullivan (28:10.400)
all that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (28:11.400)
I actually, on the technology side, have a hope that that's fixable.
Lex Fridman (28:14.840)
But yeah, it does seem to be, you know, it almost like the internet showed to us that
Ronald Sullivan (28:23.600)
we have a lot of broken ways about which we communicate with each other and we're trying
Ronald Sullivan (28:28.560)
to figure that out.
Lex Fridman (28:29.560)
Same with the university.
Ronald Sullivan (28:31.880)
This mistake by Harvard showed that we need to reinvent what the university is.
Ronald Sullivan (28:37.560)
I mean, all of this is, it's almost like we're finding our baby deer legs and trying to strengthen
Ronald Sullivan (28:44.560)
the institutions that have been very successful for a long time.
Ronald Sullivan (28:48.920)
You know, the really interesting thing about Harvey Weinstein and you choosing these exceptionally
Ronald Sullivan (28:54.920)
difficult cases is also thinking about what it means to defend evil people, what it means
Ronald Sullivan (29:06.260)
to defend these, we could say unpopular, and you might push back against the word evil,
Lex Fridman (29:13.640)
but bad people in society.
Ronald Sullivan (29:16.880)
First of all, do you think there's such a thing as evil or do you think all people are
Lex Fridman (29:20.120)
good and it's just circumstances that create evil?
Lex Fridman (29:24.360)
And also, is there somebody too evil for the law to defend?
Lex Fridman (29:29.760)
So the first question, that's a deep philosophical question, whether the category of evil does
Lex Fridman (29:36.180)
any work for me.
Ronald Sullivan (29:38.920)
It does for me.
Ronald Sullivan (29:39.920)
I do think that, I do subscribe to that category that there is evil in the world as conventionally
Ronald Sullivan (29:49.160)
understood.
Lex Fridman (29:51.560)
So there are many who will say, yeah, that just doesn't do any work for me.
Lex Fridman (29:57.360)
But the category evil, in fact, does intellectual work for me and I understand it as something
Lex Fridman (30:04.960)
that exists.
Lex Fridman (30:08.400)
Is it genetic or is it the circumstance?
Lex Fridman (30:11.600)
What kind of work does it do for you intellectually?
Ronald Sullivan (30:13.480)
I think that it's highly contingent, that is to say that the conditions in which one
Ronald Sullivan (30:21.600)
grows up and so forth begins to create this category that we may think of as evil.
Ronald Sullivan (30:32.600)
Now there are studies and whatnot that show that certain brain abnormalities and so forth
Lex Fridman (30:42.020)
are more prevalent in, say, serial killer.
Lex Fridman (30:45.580)
So there may be a biological predisposition to certain forms of conduct, but I don't
Ronald Sullivan (30:54.560)
have the biological evidence to make a statement that someone is born evil and I'm not a determinist
Ronald Sullivan (31:05.480)
thinker in that way, so you come out the womb evil and you're destined to be that way.
Ronald Sullivan (31:11.500)
To the extent there may be biological determinants, they still require some nurture as well.
Lex Fridman (31:21.280)
But do you still put a responsibility on the individual?
Lex Fridman (31:26.440)
Of course, yeah.
Ronald Sullivan (31:27.720)
We all make choices and so some responsibility on the individual indeed.
Ronald Sullivan (31:36.820)
We live in a culture, unfortunately, where a lot of people have a constellation of bad
Ronald Sullivan (31:45.360)
choices in front of them and that makes me very sad.
Ronald Sullivan (31:49.960)
Some people grow up with predominantly bad choices in front of them and that's unfair
Lex Fridman (31:56.360)
and that's on all of us, but yes, I do think we make choices.
Lex Fridman (32:00.640)
Wow, that's so powerful, the constellation of bad choices.
Ronald Sullivan (32:08.180)
That's such a powerful way to think about equality, which is the set of trajectories
Lex Fridman (32:17.520)
before you that you could take.
Ronald Sullivan (32:19.820)
If you just roll the dice, life is a kind of optimization problem, sorry to take this
Lex Fridman (32:27.600)
into math, over a set of trajectories under imperfect information.
Lex Fridman (32:33.440)
So you're going to do a lot of stupid shit to put it in technical terms, but the fraction
Ronald Sullivan (32:44.640)
of the trajectories that take you into bad places or into good places is really important
Lex Fridman (32:49.880)
and that's ultimately what we're talking about.
Lex Fridman (32:51.960)
And evil might be just a little bit of a predisposition biologically, but the rest is just trajectories
Ronald Sullivan (32:57.520)
that you can take.
Lex Fridman (32:58.520)
I've been studying Hitler a lot recently.
Ronald Sullivan (33:01.360)
I've been reading probably way too much and it's interesting to think about all the possible
Ronald Sullivan (33:06.040)
trajectories that could have avoided this particular individual developing the hate
Ronald Sullivan (33:14.040)
that he did, the following that he did, the actual final, there's a few turns in him psychologically
Ronald Sullivan (33:23.240)
where he went from being a leader that just wants to conquer and to somebody who allowed
Ronald Sullivan (33:33.280)
his anger and emotion to take over, to where he started making mistakes in terms of militarily
Lex Fridman (33:40.080)
speaking, but also started doing evil things.
Lex Fridman (33:46.360)
And all the possible trajectories that could have avoided that are fascinating, including
Ronald Sullivan (33:51.280)
he wasn't that bad at painting, at drawing from the very beginning and his time in Vienna,
Ronald Sullivan (34:00.360)
there's all these possible things to think about and of course there's millions of others
Lex Fridman (34:04.080)
like him that never came to power and all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (34:08.320)
But that goes to the second question on the side of evil.
Lex Fridman (34:12.640)
Do you think, and Hitler's often brought up as like an example of somebody who is like
Ronald Sullivan (34:18.000)
the epitome of evil, do you think you would, if you got that same phone call after World
Ronald Sullivan (34:25.960)
War II and Hitler survived during the trial for war crimes, would you take the case defending
Lex Fridman (34:37.960)
Adolf Hitler?
Lex Fridman (34:39.700)
If you don't want to answer that one, is there a line to draw for evil for who not to defend?
Ronald Sullivan (34:46.000)
No, I think everyone, I'll do the second one first, everyone has a right to a defense
Lex Fridman (34:51.760)
if you're charged criminally in the United States of America.
Lex Fridman (34:56.040)
So no, I do not think that there's someone so evil that they do not deserve a defense.
Lex Fridman (35:03.320)
Process matters.
Ronald Sullivan (35:05.440)
Process helps us get to results more accurately than we would otherwise.
Lex Fridman (35:11.820)
So it is important and it's vitally important and indeed more important for someone deemed
Ronald Sullivan (35:18.100)
to be evil to receive the same quantum of process and the same substance of process
Lex Fridman (35:23.760)
that anyone else would.
Ronald Sullivan (35:25.620)
It's vitally important to the health of our criminal justice system for that to happen.
Lex Fridman (35:31.480)
So yes, everybody, Hitler included, were he charged in the United States for a crime that
Ronald Sullivan (35:38.340)
occurred in the United States, yes.
Ronald Sullivan (35:44.700)
Whether I would do it, if I were a public defender and assigned the case, yes, I started
Ronald Sullivan (35:49.760)
my career as a public defender.
Lex Fridman (35:51.680)
I represent anyone who was assigned to me.
Ronald Sullivan (35:56.040)
I think that is our duty.
Ronald Sullivan (35:59.320)
In private practice, I have choices and I likely, based on the hypo you gave me, and
Ronald Sullivan (36:10.000)
I would tweak it a bit because it would have to be a U.S. crime.
Lex Fridman (36:15.400)
But I get the broader point and don't want to bog down in technicalities.
Ronald Sullivan (36:19.320)
I'd likely pass right now as I see it, unless it was a case where nobody else would represent
Lex Fridman (36:30.120)
him, then I would think that I have some sort of duty and obligation to do it.
Lex Fridman (36:40.800)
But yes, everyone absolutely deserves a right to competent counsel.
Ronald Sullivan (36:45.840)
That is a beautiful ideal, it's difficult to think about it in the face of public pressure.
Ronald Sullivan (36:52.840)
It's just, I mean, it's kind of terrifying to watch the masses during this past year
Ronald Sullivan (37:00.300)
of 2020, to watch the power of the masses to make a decision before any of the data
Ronald Sullivan (37:08.240)
is out, if the data is ever out, any of the details, any of the processes, and there is
Lex Fridman (37:17.600)
an anger to the justice system.
Ronald Sullivan (37:20.600)
There's a lot of people that feel like even though the ideal you describe is a beautiful
Lex Fridman (37:25.280)
one, it does not always operate justly.
Ronald Sullivan (37:30.380)
It does not operate to the best of its ideals, it operates unfairly.
Ronald Sullivan (37:35.000)
When we go to the big picture of the criminal justice system, what do you, given the ideal,
Lex Fridman (37:42.880)
works about our criminal justice system and what is broken?
Lex Fridman (37:48.840)
Well there's a lot broken right now, and I usually focus on that.
Lex Fridman (37:54.880)
But in truth, a lot works about our criminal justice system.
Lex Fridman (37:59.080)
So there's an old joke, and it's funny, but it carries a lot of truth to it.
Lex Fridman (38:07.920)
And the joke is that in the United States, we have the worst criminal justice system
Lex Fridman (38:16.840)
in the world, except for every place else.
Lex Fridman (38:20.840)
And yes, we certainly have a number of problems, and a lot of problems based on race and class,
Lex Fridman (38:29.040)
and economics, station, but we have a process that privileges liberty.
Lex Fridman (38:36.160)
And that's a good feature of the criminal justice system.
Lex Fridman (38:40.420)
So here's how it works.
Ronald Sullivan (38:41.640)
The idea of the relationship between the individual and the state is such that in the United States,
Ronald Sullivan (38:49.900)
we privilege liberty over and above very many values, so much so that a statement by increased
Ronald Sullivan (38:57.920)
Mather not terribly far from where we're sitting right now has gained traction over
Ronald Sullivan (39:04.640)
all these years, and it's that better ten guilty go free than one innocent person convicted.
Ronald Sullivan (39:10.840)
That is an expression of the way in which we understand liberty to operate in our collective
Lex Fridman (39:18.340)
consciousness.
Ronald Sullivan (39:19.420)
We would rather a bunch of guilty people go free than to impact the liberty interests
Lex Fridman (39:28.260)
of any individual person.
Lex Fridman (39:30.900)
So that's a guiding principle in our criminal justice system, liberty.
Lex Fridman (39:36.840)
So we set a process that makes it difficult to convict people.
Ronald Sullivan (39:42.880)
We have rules of procedure that are cumbersome and that slow down the process and that exclude
Ronald Sullivan (39:51.120)
otherwise reliable evidence, and this is all because we place a value on liberty.
Lex Fridman (39:58.240)
And I think these are good things, and it says a lot about our criminal justice system.
Ronald Sullivan (40:04.640)
Some of the bad features have to do with the way in which this country sees color as a
Ronald Sullivan (40:11.640)
proxy for criminality and treats people of color in radically different ways in the criminal
Lex Fridman (40:18.600)
justice system, from arrests to charging decisions to sentencing.
Ronald Sullivan (40:27.300)
People of color are disproportionately impacted on all sorts of registers.
Ronald Sullivan (40:33.920)
One example, and it's a popular one, that although there appears to be no distinguishable
Ronald Sullivan (40:44.240)
difference between drug use by whites and blacks in the country, blacks, though only
Ronald Sullivan (40:52.940)
12% of the population represent 40% of the drug charges in the country, there's some
Ronald Sullivan (41:00.960)
disequities along race and class in the criminal justice system that we really have to fix.
Lex Fridman (41:09.800)
And they've grown to more than bugs in the system and have become features, unfortunately,
Ronald Sullivan (41:16.380)
of our system.
Ronald Sullivan (41:17.380)
Oh, to make it more efficient, to make judgments, so the racism makes it more efficient.
Ronald Sullivan (41:23.160)
It efficiently moves people from society to the streets, and a lot of innocent people
Lex Fridman (41:33.520)
get caught up in that.
Ronald Sullivan (41:35.000)
Well, let me ask in terms of the innocents.
Lex Fridman (41:39.360)
So you've gotten a lot of people who are innocent, I guess, revealed their innocence, demonstrated
Ronald Sullivan (41:50.360)
their innocence.
Lex Fridman (41:51.640)
What's that process like?
Lex Fridman (41:53.240)
What's it like emotionally, psychologically?
Ronald Sullivan (41:55.440)
What's it like legally to fight the system through the process of revealing the innocence
Lex Fridman (42:04.860)
of a human being?
Lex Fridman (42:05.860)
Yeah, emotionally and psychologically, it can be taxing.
Ronald Sullivan (42:09.040)
I follow a model of what's called empathic representation, and that is I get to know
Ronald Sullivan (42:17.240)
my clients and their family, that I get to know their strivings, their aspirations, their
Ronald Sullivan (42:22.040)
fears, their sorrows.
Lex Fridman (42:24.420)
So that certainly sometimes can do psychic injury on one.
Ronald Sullivan (42:32.080)
If you get really invested and really sad or happy, it does become emotionally taxing.
Lex Fridman (42:42.700)
But the idea of someone sitting in jail for 20 years completely innocent of a crime, can
Ronald Sullivan (42:48.840)
you imagine sitting there every day for 20 years knowing that you factually did not do
Lex Fridman (42:54.920)
the thing that you were convicted of by a jury of your peers?
Ronald Sullivan (42:59.820)
It's got to be the most incredible thing in the world.
Lex Fridman (43:05.560)
But the people who do it and the people who make it and come out on the other side as
Ronald Sullivan (43:09.680)
productive citizens are folks who say they've come to an inner peace in their own minds
Lex Fridman (43:16.860)
and they say, these bars aren't going to define me, that my humanity is there and it's immutable.
Lex Fridman (43:27.800)
And they are not bitter, which is amazing.
Lex Fridman (43:30.680)
I tend to think that I'm not that good of a person.
Ronald Sullivan (43:33.600)
I would be bitter for every day of 20 years if I were in jail for something.
Lex Fridman (43:39.480)
But people tell me that they can't survive, that one cannot survive like that.
Lex Fridman (43:44.820)
And you have to come to terms with it.
Lex Fridman (43:47.000)
And the people whom I've exonerated, most of them come out and they just really just
Ronald Sullivan (43:57.600)
take on life with a vim and vigor without bitterness.
Lex Fridman (44:02.480)
And it's a beautiful thing to see.
Lex Fridman (44:04.400)
Do you think it's possible to eradicate racism from the judicial system?
Lex Fridman (44:10.800)
I do.
Ronald Sullivan (44:11.800)
I think that race insinuates itself in all aspects of our lives and the judicial system
Lex Fridman (44:19.280)
is not immune from that.
Lex Fridman (44:21.300)
So to the extent we begin to eradicate dangerous and deleterious race thinking from society
Lex Fridman (44:30.080)
generally, then it will be eradicated from the criminal justice system.
Ronald Sullivan (44:36.320)
I think we've got a lot of work to do and I think it'll be a while, but I think it's
Lex Fridman (44:42.040)
doable.
Ronald Sullivan (44:43.040)
I mean, you know, the country – so historians will look back 300 years from now and take
Ronald Sullivan (44:52.200)
note of the incredible journey of diasporic Africans in the U.S., an incredible journey
Ronald Sullivan (45:02.480)
from slavery to the heights of politics and business and judiciary and the academy and
Lex Fridman (45:12.560)
so forth in not a lot of time, in actually not a lot of time.
Lex Fridman (45:17.620)
And if we can have that sort of movement historically, let's think about what the next 175 years
Lex Fridman (45:25.120)
will look like.
Ronald Sullivan (45:26.120)
I'm not saying it's going to be short, but I'm saying that if we keep at it, keep
Ronald Sullivan (45:31.640)
getting to know each other a little better, keep enforcing laws that prohibit the sort
Ronald Sullivan (45:41.120)
of race based discrimination that people have experienced and provide as a society opportunities
Ronald Sullivan (45:48.360)
for people to thrive in this world, then I think we can see a better world and if we
Ronald Sullivan (45:55.200)
see a better world, we'll see a better judicial system.
Lex Fridman (45:57.720)
So I think it's kind of fascinating if you look throughout history and race is just part
Ronald Sullivan (46:01.960)
of that is we create the other and treat the other with disdain through the legal system,
Lex Fridman (46:11.800)
but just through human nature.
Ronald Sullivan (46:13.800)
I tend to believe, we mentioned offline that I work with robots.
Ronald Sullivan (46:18.440)
It sounds absurd to say, especially to you, especially because we're talking about racism
Lex Fridman (46:22.000)
and it's so prevalent today, I do believe that there will be almost like a civil rights
Ronald Sullivan (46:28.520)
movement for robots because I think there's a huge value to society of having artificial
Ronald Sullivan (46:39.440)
intelligence systems that interact with humans and are human like and the more they become
Ronald Sullivan (46:49.200)
human like, they will start to ask very fundamentally human questions about freedom, about suffering,
Ronald Sullivan (46:58.480)
about justice, and they will have to come face to face, like look in the mirror in asking
Ronald Sullivan (47:05.960)
the question, just because we're biologically based, just because we're sort of, well, just
Lex Fridman (47:14.360)
because we're human, does that mean we're the only ones that deserve the rights?
Ronald Sullivan (47:20.120)
Again, giving, forming another other group, which is robots, and I'm sure there could
Ronald Sullivan (47:26.200)
be along that path different versions of other that we form.
Lex Fridman (47:32.400)
So racism, race is certainly a big other that we've made, as you said, a lot of progress
Ronald Sullivan (47:39.260)
on throughout the history of this country, but it does feel like we always create, as
Lex Fridman (47:44.000)
we make progress, create new other groups.
Lex Fridman (47:47.040)
And of course the other group that perhaps is outside the legal system that people talk
Ronald Sullivan (47:52.460)
about is the essential, now I eat a lot of meat, but the torture of animals, the people
Ronald Sullivan (48:00.140)
talk about when we look back from a couple of centuries from now, look back at the kind
Ronald Sullivan (48:04.460)
of things we're doing to animals, we might regret that, we might see that in a very different
Ronald Sullivan (48:09.400)
light.
Lex Fridman (48:10.400)
And it's kind of interesting to see the future trajectory of what we wake up to about the
Ronald Sullivan (48:15.240)
injustice in our ways.
Lex Fridman (48:20.140)
But the robot one is the one I'm especially focused on, but at this moment in time it
Ronald Sullivan (48:25.020)
seems ridiculous, but I'm sure most civil rights movements throughout history seem ridiculous
Lex Fridman (48:29.640)
at first.
Ronald Sullivan (48:30.640)
Well, it's interesting, sort of outside of my intellectual bailiwick robots, as I understand
Ronald Sullivan (48:38.860)
the development of artificial intelligence, though the aspect that still is missing is
Ronald Sullivan (48:53.400)
this notion of consciousness, and that it's consciousness that is the thing that will
Ronald Sullivan (49:04.680)
move if it were to exist, and I'm not saying that it can or will, but if it were to exist
Ronald Sullivan (49:11.940)
would move robots from machines to something different, something that experienced the
Lex Fridman (49:23.260)
world in a way analogous to how we experience it.
Lex Fridman (49:29.600)
And also as I understand the science, there's, unlike what you see on television, that we're
Lex Fridman (49:37.100)
not there yet in terms of this notion of the machines having a consciousness.
Ronald Sullivan (49:46.620)
Or a great general intelligence, all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (49:49.820)
Yeah, yeah.
Ronald Sullivan (49:50.820)
A huge amount of progress has been made, and it's fascinating to watch, so I'm on both
Ronald Sullivan (49:56.540)
minds as a person who's building them, I'm realizing how sort of quote unquote dumb they
Ronald Sullivan (50:02.180)
are, but also looking at human history and how poor we are predicting the progress of
Lex Fridman (50:09.600)
innovation and technology.
Ronald Sullivan (50:11.860)
It's obvious that we have to be humble by our ability to predict, coupled with the fact
Ronald Sullivan (50:17.780)
that we keep, to use terminology carefully here, we keep discriminating against the intelligence
Ronald Sullivan (50:25.080)
of artificial systems.
Lex Fridman (50:28.160)
The smarter they get, the more ways we find to dismiss their intelligence.
Lex Fridman (50:33.880)
So this has just been going on throughout.
Ronald Sullivan (50:38.900)
It's almost as if we're threatened in the most primitive human way, animalistic way.
Ronald Sullivan (50:45.900)
We're threatened by the power of other creatures, and we want to lessen, dismiss them.
Lex Fridman (50:52.440)
So consciousness is a really important one, but the one I think about a lot in terms of
Ronald Sullivan (50:57.900)
consciousness, the very engineering question, is whether the display of consciousness is
Lex Fridman (51:03.740)
the same as the possession of consciousness.
Lex Fridman (51:06.880)
So if a robot tells you they are conscious, if a robot looks like they're suffering when
Ronald Sullivan (51:15.240)
you torture them, if a robot is afraid of death and says they're afraid of death and
Ronald Sullivan (51:21.220)
are legitimately afraid, in terms of just everything we as humans use to determine the
Ronald Sullivan (51:31.280)
ability of somebody to be their own entity, they're the one that loves, one that fears,
Ronald Sullivan (51:38.220)
one that hopes, one that can suffer, if a robot in the dumbest of ways is able to display
Lex Fridman (51:47.460)
that, it starts changing things very quickly.
Ronald Sullivan (51:53.260)
I'm not sure what it is, but it does seem that there's a huge component to consciousness
Ronald Sullivan (51:58.540)
that is a social creation, like we together create our consciousness, like we believe
Ronald Sullivan (52:05.640)
our common humanity together.
Ronald Sullivan (52:09.300)
Alone we wouldn't be aware of our humanity, and the law as it protects our freedoms seems
Ronald Sullivan (52:15.600)
to be a construct of the social construct, and when you add other creatures into it,
Ronald Sullivan (52:22.660)
it's not obvious to me that you have to build, there'll be a moment when you say, this thing
Ronald Sullivan (52:28.740)
is now conscious.
Ronald Sullivan (52:30.620)
I think there's going to be a lot of fake it until you make it, and there'll be a very
Ronald Sullivan (52:35.380)
gray area between fake and make that is going to force us to contend with what it means
Lex Fridman (52:42.980)
to be an entity that deserves rights, where all men are created equal.
Ronald Sullivan (52:48.900)
The men part might have to expand in ways that we are not yet anticipating.
Lex Fridman (52:55.140)
It's very interesting.
Ronald Sullivan (52:56.140)
I mean, my favorite, the fundamental thing I love about artificial intelligence is it
Lex Fridman (53:01.300)
gets smarter and smarter.
Ronald Sullivan (53:02.620)
It challenges to think of what is right, the questions of justice, questions of freedom.
Ronald Sullivan (53:09.700)
It basically challenges us to understand our own mind, to understand what, almost from
Ronald Sullivan (53:21.700)
an engineering first principles perspective, to understand what it is that makes us human,
Ronald Sullivan (53:26.760)
that is at the core of all the rights that we talk about and all the documents we write.
Lex Fridman (53:31.340)
So even if we don't give rights to artificial intelligence systems, we may be able to construct
Lex Fridman (53:36.660)
more fair legal systems to protect us humans.
Ronald Sullivan (53:40.220)
Well, I mean, interesting ontological question between the performance of consciousness and
Ronald Sullivan (53:49.380)
actual consciousness to the extent that actual consciousness is anything beyond some contingent
Ronald Sullivan (53:58.420)
reality.
Lex Fridman (53:59.420)
But you've posed a number of interesting philosophical questions, and then there's
Ronald Sullivan (54:04.940)
also, it strikes me that philosophers of religion would pose another set of questions as well
Ronald Sullivan (54:13.580)
when you deal with issues of structure versus soul, body versus soul, and it will be a complicated
Ronald Sullivan (54:27.060)
mix and I suspect I'll be dust by the time those questions get worked out.
Lex Fridman (54:33.860)
And so, yeah, the soul is a fun one.
Ronald Sullivan (54:37.060)
There's no soul, I'm not sure maybe you can correct me, but there's very few discussion
Lex Fridman (54:41.940)
of soul in our legal system, right?
Ronald Sullivan (54:44.620)
Right, correct, none.
Lex Fridman (54:47.740)
But there is a discussion about what constitutes a human being, and I mean, you gestured at
Ronald Sullivan (54:53.060)
the notion of the potential of the law widening the domain of a human being.
Lex Fridman (55:01.940)
So in that sense, right, you know, people are very angry because they can't get sort
Ronald Sullivan (55:10.140)
of pain and suffering damages if someone negligently kills a pet because a pet is not a human being.
Lex Fridman (55:17.980)
And people say, well, I love my pet, but the law sees a pet as chattel, as property like
Ronald Sullivan (55:25.380)
this water bottle.
Lex Fridman (55:27.940)
So the current legal definitions trade on a definition of humanity that may not be worked
Ronald Sullivan (55:37.420)
out in any sophisticated way, but certainly there's a broad and shared understanding
Lex Fridman (55:45.400)
of what it means.
Lex Fridman (55:47.700)
So it probably doesn't explicitly contain a definition of something like soul, but it's
Ronald Sullivan (55:55.260)
more robust than, you know, a carbon based organism, that there's something a little
Ronald Sullivan (56:02.100)
more distinct about what the law thinks a human being is.
Lex Fridman (56:07.060)
So if we can dive into, we've already been doing it, but if we can dive into more difficult
Ronald Sullivan (56:12.740)
territory.
Lex Fridman (56:14.400)
So 2020 had the tragic case of George Floyd.
Lex Fridman (56:20.740)
Can you reflect on the protests, on the racial tensions over the death of George Floyd?
Lex Fridman (56:27.820)
How do you make sense of it all?
Lex Fridman (56:29.700)
What do you take away from these events?
Ronald Sullivan (56:32.540)
The George Floyd moment occurred at an historical moment where people were in quarantine for
Ronald Sullivan (56:44.420)
COVID, and people have these cell phones to a degree greater than we've ever had them
Lex Fridman (56:56.300)
before.
Lex Fridman (56:57.300)
And this was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back after a number of these sorts
Lex Fridman (57:03.580)
of cell phone videos surfaced.
Ronald Sullivan (57:08.100)
People were fed up.
Ronald Sullivan (57:10.860)
There was unimpeachable evidence of a form of mistreatment, whether it constitutes murder
Ronald Sullivan (57:21.940)
or manslaughter, the trial is going on now, and jurors will figure that out, but there
Ronald Sullivan (57:28.020)
was widespread appreciation that a fellow human being was mistreated, that we were just
Ronald Sullivan (57:36.500)
talking about humanity, that there was not a sufficient recognition of this person's
Lex Fridman (57:43.980)
humanity.
Ronald Sullivan (57:44.980)
The common humanity of this person, yeah.
Lex Fridman (57:46.700)
The common humanity of this person, well said.
Lex Fridman (57:50.040)
And people were fed up.
Lex Fridman (57:51.180)
So we were already in this COVID space where we were exercising care for one another, and
Ronald Sullivan (57:59.780)
there was just an explosion, the likes of which this country hasn't seen since the civil
Lex Fridman (58:04.740)
rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s.
Lex Fridman (58:10.700)
And people simply said, enough, enough, enough, enough.
Lex Fridman (58:15.800)
This has to stop.
Ronald Sullivan (58:17.000)
We cannot treat fellow citizens in this way, and we can't do it with impunity.
Lex Fridman (58:23.260)
And the young people said, we're not going to stand for it anymore, and they took to
Ronald Sullivan (58:28.380)
the streets.
Lex Fridman (58:30.140)
But with millions of people protesting, there is nevertheless taking us back to the most
Ronald Sullivan (58:38.540)
difficult of trials.
Ronald Sullivan (58:40.680)
You have the trial, like you mentioned, that's going on now, of Derek Chauvin, of one of
Ronald Sullivan (58:45.700)
the police officers involved.
Lex Fridman (58:49.580)
What are your thoughts?
Lex Fridman (58:51.220)
What are your predictions on this trial where the law, the process of the law is trying
Lex Fridman (58:57.380)
to proceed in the face of so much racial tension?
Ronald Sullivan (59:01.740)
Yeah, it's going to be an interesting trial.
Ronald Sullivan (59:04.420)
I've been keeping an eye on it there in jury selection now, today, as we're talking.
Lex Fridman (59:10.820)
So a lot's going to depend on what sort of jury gets selected.
Ronald Sullivan (59:14.020)
Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but so one of the interesting qualities of this trial, maybe
Ronald Sullivan (59:21.140)
you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the cameras are allowed in the courtroom, at least during
Lex Fridman (59:26.060)
the jury selection.
Lex Fridman (59:28.340)
So you get to watch some of this stuff.
Lex Fridman (59:31.780)
And the other part is the jury selection, again, I'm very inexperienced, but it seems
Ronald Sullivan (59:36.340)
like selecting an, what is it, unbiased jury is really difficult for this trial.
Ronald Sullivan (59:43.900)
It almost like, I don't know, me as a listener, listening to people that are trying to talk
Lex Fridman (59:54.180)
their way into the jury kind of thing, trying to decide, is this person really unbiased?
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