Lex Fridman on his toughest moment in the jungle

to me this this whole thing of are we living in a simulation to me that's a that's that's the that's the infirmary of of society starting to that to starting to to to to to to parody itself it's people going I have no meaning in my life anymore so is this even real and again go ask the sherpa go ask the Eskimo they're they're not they're not worried you forget what fundamentally matters on life what is the source of meaning in a human life uh if you talk about such subjects nevertheless you could for a Time stroll in the big philosophical questions and uh if you do it for short enough a time you won't forget about the things that matter that there is human suffering that there is real human joy that is real that that the our time in the jungle was very hard did you you suffer enough to know that it's real yeah I man I was hoping we're in a video game that whole time so that's actually that's actually a really good way to there was this moment that I watched where you were washing a shirt in this pathetic puddle cuz we had no water and because we had walked all day and tripped all day and gotten thorns in our hands and our feet and our legs and we were lost in the jungle and it was night time and we didn't know if a big tree was going to just fall on us and mous trap kill us and there's a lot of uncertainty but I watched something very special happen to you and that was I saw you crouching by the side of this puddle it wasn't even a flowing stream so he couldn't drink it and you were just trying to wash the sweat off of your shirt and you you looked at me and you just said the only thing that I care about right now is water mhm and I feel like in that moment we were United in the in the simple reality of the fact that we were so thirsty that it hurt and that it was a little scary yeah uh it was scary but also there's like a a joy in the interaction with the water because it cools your body temperature down and there's like a faith in that interaction that eventually we'll find clean water because uh water is plentiful on Earth it's kind of like a delusional faith that eventually we'll find it was just like a little celebration I think the cooling aspect of the water cuz uh you know the body temperature is really high from traversing the really dense jungle and just the cooling was somehow grounding in a way that nothing else really is yeah it was a little celebration of life of life on Earth of Earth of the Jungle of everything it was nice it was a nice moment I think about that had a couple of those was one in the puddle and one in the river one was uh full of delusion and fear and the other one was full of uh relief and celebration yeah I've I've you know there's this thing that they they say where the the the all the pleasure in life is derived from the transitions when you're cold warm feels good when you're hot cold feels good when you're hungry food feels good and when you're that thirsty water becomes God mhm and it's all you want and also and also the other thing is that when you're when we're out there it felt so good to be so lost and so tired and so like we're doing level like like how would you how would you describe um the physicality of what we were doing the level of physical like exertion well it's something that I've haven't train I don't even know how you would train for that kind of thing but it's extremely dense jungle so every single step is like completely unpredictable in terms of the terrain your foot interacts with so the different variety of slippery that is in the Jung of floor is fascinating cuz some things I mean the slope matters but some roots of trees are slippery some are not uh some trees in the ground already rotted through so if you step through you're going to uh potentially fall through so it could be a uh shallow hole or it could be a very deep hole with some leaves and vegetation covering up a hole where if you fall through you could break a leg and completely lose your footing or fall rolling down hill and if you roll downhill I'm I'm pretty sure there's a 99% probability that you'll hit a thing with spikes on it so there's so many layers of avoiding dangers of small dangers and big dangers all around you with every single step so there's like a mental exhaustion that sets in like the just the perception and you're just observing you you're ex extremely good at perceiving having situational awareness of taking the information in that's really important and filtering out the stuff that's not important but even for you that's exhausting and for me it was completely exhausting just paying attention paying attention to everything around you so that exhaustion was surprising cuz it's like there there's moments when you're like I don't give a damn anymore I'm just going to step I'm just going to like and so that's it you go I don't care anymore and you reach out and you I'm just gonna lean against this tree and then what happened and then spikes in it yeah and then you have to care yeah and then there's just bad luck because there is wasp nest there there is there's just like a million things and that is physically is mentally psychologically exhausting because there's the uncertainty when is this going to end it's up uh in our particular situation up and down Hills up and down Hills very steep downward very steep upward no no water all this kind of stuff it it's uh the most difficult thing I've ever done but it's very difficult to describe what are the parameters that make it difficult because I I run long distances very regular I do extremely difficult physical things regularly that on some surface level could seem much more challenging than what we did but no this was another Beast this is something else but it was also raw and real and Beautiful cuz it's like it's what they'll explor did yeah it's what Earth is without humans and and also just like the massive scale of the trees around us was uh The Humbling size difference between human and tree it's both humbling and that like that tree is really old it's it's a time difference uh lifetime difference and just the scale it's like holy [ __ ] we live on an earth that can create those things makes me feel small in every way that life is short that my physical presence on this Earth is Tiny how vulnerable I am all of those feelings are there and in that the physical uh endurance of traversing the jungle yeah was the the hardest Journey that I remember ever taking every step and then that made making it out of the Jungle and then made it the swim in the water that we could drink that was just pure joy it was probably one of the happiest moments in my life just sitting there with you Paul and with JJ in the w Water full Darkness the rain coming down and all just us all just laughing having made it through that having eaten a bit of food before and the absurdity of the timing of all of it that it somehow worked out and how we're just three little humans sitting in a river just our heads emerged barely above water with jungle all around us what a life that was a real Adventure that was a real Adventure a real one yeah I'll never forget that so um it's a real honor to have shared that of course we had very different experiences when you saw a came in in that situation you're like I have to go meet that guy that's a friend of I mean we were in the in the river in a thunderstorm just our necks above we're all laughing our asses off and I mean we're in the river With The Stingrays and the black cayman and the piranha and all the electric eels and everything and it's pitch black out and then what were we doing we were holding our headlamps up and there was those swirling moths the infinity moths all making those geometric patterns and it's like we're just three ridiculous primates three friends in a river just laughing yeah because we were safer in that River than we had been in there and we were rejoicing that that that the thunderstorm was was compared to the war zone that we'd been living in the thunderstorm was safe and it was it really was a beautiful moment and also that like very different life trajectories have taken these three humans into this one place yeah it's like what yeah wow is this universe that would like uh cuz we're kind of like those moths you know what I mean like we're we're would come from some weird place on this Earth and we' have all kinds of [ __ ] happen to us and we're all pursuing some [ __ ] and some light and we ended up here together enjoying this moment yeah that's something else it just felt absurd and in that absurdity was this like real human joy and damn water tasted good water's good man water and those those little oranges yeah those things and then I would just say like do you feel like I feel like running like no matter how much I run I feel like the like you run you do a workout and then you stop maybe people who do Ultras feel this but like I felt like the we would w we woke up it was like you know wake up at dawn 6:00 a.m. let's start walking you know break Camp go and it's like pretty much you just don't stop all day and it's level 10 cardio all day long and you're sweating buckets and there's no water it's like you would never put yourself through that voluntarily you couldn't you'd never you would never have the resolve to to continue torturing yourself except for that we were trying to make it to the to freedom to get out and it's like the obsession of that with the compass and the machete and the navigating [ __ ]

Channel: Lex Clips

Views: 42,682

Keywords: ai, ai clips, ai podcast, ai podcast clips, artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence podcast, computer science, consciousness, deep learning, einstein, elon musk, engineering, friedman, joe rogan, lex ai, lex clips, lex fridman, lex fridman podcast, lex friedman, lex mit, lex podcast, machine learning, math, math podcast, mathematics, mit ai, paul rosolie, philosophy, physics, physics podcast, science, tech, tech podcast, technology, turing

Id: zaRwFSOOT98

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2024