[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE] MARK ROBER: All right. Good afternoon, esteemed
faculty, distinguished guests, relieved parents, bored
siblings, confused pets, and, of course, the 2023
graduating class of MIT. [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE] It is indeed a warm welcome. It's hot. And you know what I love to
do on a beautiful, sunny, 95-degree summer day? Where a big black blanket. [LAUGHTER] At least I'm up
here in the shade. You'd think the best
engineering school on the planet could design a bigger
awning for everyone. [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE] It's for next year. [LAUGHTER] Standing here
before you is weird. I feel this pressure
to give some timeless advice that will endure,
despite our world changing at an unprecedented pace. The world is so different,
even from four years ago. For example, for
the undergrads, you are the first graduating
class to have persevered through a global
pandemic, just as this is the first commencement speech
written entirely by ChatGPT. [LAUGHTER] The tech is still very new. So if I make any
grammatical errors or threaten to end all human
life, that did not come for me. That's the robot. [LAUGHTER] At this point, I should probably
tell your parents who I am. I'm Mark Rober, a former
Apple and NASA mechanical engineer who became a YouTuber. And, yes, I know,
to some of you, it sounds like I
just said I quit the NBA to work at Foot Locker. [LAUGHTER] Or I traded a Picasso for
an NFT of a stoned monkey. [LAUGHTER] But I wouldn't have
it any other way. I sort of feel at home
here, because Buzz Aldrin went to MIT. And just like me, Buzz
was a NASA engineer. Only Buzz stuck with it and
became one of the first humans to set foot on the moon. Whereas I quit to become
the first human to sprinkle porch pirates with
glitter and fart spray. [LAUGHTER] It's on YouTube. Your kids will
explain it at dinner. [LAUGHTER] But whether it's seeking karmic
justice for package thieves, or building an obstacle course
for squirrels in my backyard, I plan my monthly YouTube videos
really far out in advance. In fact, I've already
decided what my June 2053 video will be. And it's going to be a
collab with all of you. It's going to be a retrospective
look at all the amazing things this MIT graduating class
of 2023 has accomplished. In fact, this right
now is the video intro. So if you've ever wanted
to be in one of my videos, this is your chance. [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE] Now, will YouTube still
be around in 30 years? Hopefully, unless Elon buys it. [LAUGHTER] But here's the thing. The degree to which you
positively impact the world is the degree to which you'll
be featured in the video. So in order to increase your
chances of making the cut, I want to give you three
pieces of advice based off my life experience. The first bit of advice-- is to moisturize when giving
a commencement speech-- is to embrace naive optimism. What do I mean by
naive optimism? Actually, before
I go any further, usually in my YouTube videos,
when I get to the juicy part, I'm not really used to
this public speaking thing, so the music kicks in. So if you'll just give me a
moment and hit this button. Trust me, this is going to
be better for both of us. Here we go. Right here. Let's see. There we go. [MUSIC PLAYING] [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE] All right. That's better. What do I mean by
naive optimism? [LAUGHTER] Naive optimism means
it's easier to be optimistic about your
future when you're sort of naive about
what lies ahead, when you don't know
what you don't know. As an example, think back
on the first week at MIT, how naive you were about the
number of all-nighters and cans of Red Bull that would be
required to be sitting where you are right now. In fact, you guys drank so
much caffeine I'm surprised you're even sitting at all. [LAUGHTER] If you truly understood
what would be required, that discouragement
might have prevented you from even starting. Sometimes it's an advantage
not to be the expert with all the experience. There's no reputational risk. So it's easier to try new
things and approach them from a fresh first
principles approach. Naive optimism
can also help when faced with a big life decision,
when you feel like you want to know the results
before you decide, but the true outcome
is simply unknowable. Naive optimism means you have
irrational-- naive optimism means you have the irrational
confidence of a child learning to walk or a mom
learning to TikTok. [LAUGHTER] And you pick what you think
is the best path and just move forward, knowing there's
more than one trail that leads to the top of Mount Fuji. It's OK that you don't
know exactly what you want to be doing
20 years from now or what you want to
have accomplished. And by the way,
even if you do know, it doesn't matter,
because you're wrong. Anyone who tells you they
knew where they'd be, where they're at,
20 years ago is either lying, or delusional, or
a time-traveler, or Pat Sajak. [LAUGHTER] Life is like trying
to cross a big flowing river with lots of rocks
and boulders strewn about. If you want to cross the river,
you have to start on the bank and look at the first several
rocks in front of you. You can wiggle
them with your toe and scan a few boulders out. But at some point, you've
just got to pick one and jump, because the river is
dynamic and always changing. If the first rock in
this metaphor is a hobby, let curiosity and passion
guide your initial step. If the first rock represents
your professional career, take curiosity and
passion into account, but you should also
weigh what you're good at and what the world needs,
even if the world might not know they need it yet. Whichever one you'd pick, the
real secret is to dominate it. Obsessively study
it from every angle. Master it. Now, from your position
of more secure footing, you can reevaluate the river. And you'll find you've got a few
more rocks available that you couldn't even see from
where you started, so you could continue
on your journey. Instead of putting
the pressure on myself to create some master life plan,
this attitude of naive optimism combined with
dedication, enthusiasm, and the willingness to jump
from my current safe rock to the next is what
I feel has led me from college, to NASA,
to YouTube, to eventually landing on this rock of giving
the commencement speech at MI frickin' T. [LAUGHTER] [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE] There's no way I could have
predicted that path when I was exactly in your
shoes 20 years ago. So cross your river
one rock at a time, but do it with a naive
optimism that it's all going to work out. Let that be your North Star. If you actually knew how
cold the river can get, or how long it takes to
recover from a sprained ankle if you slipped, your knowledge
might get in the way. So have faith in yourself. You're about to get
a degree from MIT. So you've obviously made some
pretty great decisions so far. Embrace your inexperience,
and keep taking leaps forward. And apologies to all
the civil engineering majors who have been grumbling
sitting there saying, if he wants to cross
this river so bad, why doesn't he just build
a suspension bridge? Because it's my
metaphor, all right? Back off. [LAUGHTER] And now, for some real talk. You're going to take
that leap of faith, land on a rock, and
only then realize it's not as stable as your
foot wiggle have predicted, and you're going to fall
into the river sometimes. That leads to my second
of three pieces of advice to maximize your chance of
positively impacting the world and making the video cut, which
is to frame your failures. [MUSIC PLAYING] Ah. [LAUGHTER] You can tell, it's the juicy
part, because the music's back. To illustrate what
I mean by this, I asked 50,000 of
my YouTube followers that subscribe to my channel
to play a simple computer programming puzzle that I made. But what they didn't
know is that I had served up two slightly
different versions of the puzzle. In one, if you
failed the puzzle, you didn't lose any of
your starting 200 points, and you were prompted
to try again. Whereas in the other,
if you didn't succeed, you were also prompted
to try again, but I said I was taking away five of
those starting 200 points. That was the only difference. And even though they were
no value in the real world, no one will ever see
these completely fake meaningless internet
points, those who didn't lose those
points attempted to solve the puzzle
two and 1/2 times more and saw success 16%
more of the time. And because 50,000
people took the test, those results are super
statistically significant. Basically, those
who didn't frame losing in a negative light
stuck with it for longer, saw more success,
and learned more. And I think a great example
of this in real life is video games. When Super Mario
Brothers first came out, my friends and I became obsessed
with making it to the castle and rescuing Princess
Peach from the evil Bowser. Water break. We'd get to school
and ask each other, dude, what level
did you make it to? Did you pass the game? We never asked each
other for details on all the different
ways we might have died. This was before Call of Duty. When it comes to video games
like, this no one ever picks up the controller for
the first time, falls in the pit right away,
and thinks, I'm so ashamed. That was such a failure. I'm never doing this again. How am I going to
break it to Luigi? I murdered his brother. [LAUGHTER] What really happens is you
think, OK, I got to remember, there's a pit there. Next time, I'm going to come
at it with a bit more speed. The focus and obsession is about
beating the game, not how dumb you might look if you get
hit by a sliding green shell. And as a direct result
of that attitude, of learning from but not
being focused on the failures, we got really good
and learned a ton in a very short amount of time. And in my personal
and work life, I've dealt with my share
of sliding green shells. I still feel like every video
we make each month there's a moment where it seems
everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. And those failures
can be gut-wrenching. And they can sting real bad. But they sting like missing
that one key Mario long-jump right at the end of level 8-1. And then, right after
that, really quickly it turns in, OK, what did
we just learn from that? What should we try
differently for next time? And this concept
of life imitation is more than just have
a positive attitude or never give up. Because those imply you have to
fight against your true desire to quit. And I feel like when you frame
a challenge or a learning process in this way, you
actually want to do it. It feels natural to ignore
the failure and try again. In the same way a
toddler will want to keep trying to stand
up, or in the same way you want to keep playing
Super Mario Brothers, or in the same way
half the people who attempted my coding puzzle had
a desire to stick with it two and 1/2 times longer. The framing of their
failures made it so they wanted to keep
trying and learning. And that's exactly why the
most meaningful high-fives of my adolescence
were when I said, dude, I finally beat
Bowser last night. It probably goes without saying,
but girls didn't talk to me till I was much older. [LAUGHTER] And in case you're like,
yeah, but my real life would just be so much better
if my top five challenges disappear. Would it? I'd like to point out that if
Super Mario Brothers was just jumping over one pit, and then
you rescued Princess Peach, no one would play it. Where's the risk and the reward? Where's the challenge? There's no ultimate
feeling of satisfaction. The degree you're getting
today means so much to you precisely because of all
the struggle and setbacks that you've had to endure. If you want to cross
the river of life, you're going to get wet. You're going to
have to backtrack. And that's not a bug,
that's a feature. Frame those failures and
slips like a video game. And not only will you learn
more and do it faster, but it will make all
the successful jumps along the way that much sweeter. All right, now, I've
got some good news, which is that you're not
crossing the river alone. For my third and
final bit of advice is to foster your relationships. [MUSIC PLAYING] Nice. A sad truth about getting older
is life gets busier and busier. And it gets harder and harder
to make really close friends like you did here at school. And this isn't great,
because we evolved to be social
cooperative creatures. 50,000 years ago, conditions
were much harsher. So those who were more
inclined to cooperate with their fellow
humans were also much more likely
to succeed and pass on those cooperation genes. So we've inherited
these brains designed for social interaction. And we are hardwired to
cooperate with other people. And, look, I don't blame you if
you want to cast aside advice from a guy who makes a living
trying to outwit squirrels. But I wouldn't
recommend doing that to six million years of
evolutionary programming. Because in today's society,
it's really convenient just to isolate yourself. You can attend the board
meeting from your kitchen table. You can order food
in the shower. You can bank on the toilet. You can even look
for a new apartment without leaving your apartment. It's easier to stay
anonymous in our big cities versus the small
tribes of our ancestors where everyone knew each other. Which means we've got to
actively work at fostering meaningful relationships. And because I know
this can be harder for some more than
others, here's a life fact I've found
that really helps. Confirmation bias is when your
brain ignores evidence that doesn't support your beliefs. And then it cherry-picks
the evidence that does. And, generally, when
people hear this term, they think it's a broken
unscientific way for our brains to approach the world. And this is true. But you could judo-flip
it to your advantage. The trick is to positively
apply confirmation bias to your relationships. If you assume good intentions
on the part of your friends and family, and
you tell yourself you're lucky to have
them, your brain will naturally work to find
evidence to support that. That's just how our brains work. If you tell yourself that
your fellow humans are inherently good, your brain will
find examples of it everywhere. And that will
reinforce your outlook. The opposite,
unfortunately, is also true. Basically, whether you think
the world and everyone in it is out to hurt you or
help you, you're right. Studies have shown that the
best predictor of divorce is if the couple assumes bad
intentions in their partner's actions, or if you marry Kanye. [LAUGHTER] But if you get it in your head
that your partner is selfish, or inconsiderate, or
willfully refusing to take out the garbage, that creates
a negative feedback loop of confirmation bias, seeking
to find further evidence that your spouse is a jerk,
even when good faith efforts are being made. And this hack works not just for
spouses, friends, and family, but even total strangers
who might infuriate you. And, look, I agree with
you, they're wrong. But don't forget, as
George Carlin pointed out, anyone who's driving slower
than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster
than you is a maniac. Fostering your
relationship closes out my list of three bits of advice,
because that may be where your impact is the greatest. Due to a challenging
upbringing, my mom barely graduated high school. But she took being
a mom and instilling values in her children
really seriously. As such, she's the single
biggest influence on my life by far. She passed away
over a decade ago from ALS, six months before I
ever released my first YouTube video. But I love the idea that the
ripples from her influence are still being felt as
strongly as they ever have through the work
that I try and do today. If there's anything I've
said today has resonated with you in my mind, it's a
direct result of her commitment to this third piece of advice. So leverage concrete
means to confirmation bias to enhance your
relationships as you cooperate to cross the river. Train your brain to
assume good intentions. And try to remember if someone
cuts you off on the freeway, maybe they're not
out to get you. Maybe they just have diarrhea. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC - RICHARD STRAUSS, "ALSO
SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA"] Now, for piece of
advice number four, engage in occasional
playful anarchy. But, Mark, you told us
were only going to give us three pieces of advice. Boom! Here's a fourth,
because, why not? I am playing music
in a commencement speech because why not? Is not ending your
speech with pump up music just objectively better? Or like how these
graduation robes and hats are just objectively silly? Why shouldn't I take my
own fourth piece of advice right now and engage in
some playful anarchy? Anybody can toss
their hat in the air. We see it at every graduation. But few have dared to
make it actually fly. I bet Buzz Aldrin
never tried this. You know what? Time out. This is actually a
great opportunity to review everything
we just talked about. [LAUGHTER] To my first point, I will
embrace my naive optimism that my hat will
actually get airborne. But if not, to my
second point, if it goes haywire, and I
accidentally blow up E-53, I can reframe the
failure as an opportunity to renovate a very old
and sketchy building. [LAUGHTER] Maybe this time we'll
even add a few windows. [LAUGHTER] And then, to my third point,
when I get sued by the faculty, I will foster the relationship
I have with my defense lawyers. [LAUGHTER] Because settling
with MIT over damages will bring us all
closer together. [LAUGHTER] [CHEERING] And so, now, after
turning on my hat-- [MUSIC - RICHARD STRAUSS, "ALSO
SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA"] --I've done my part and
filmed a banger of an intro to our upcoming collab
30 years from now. Which means all
that's left to do is your part, to
go out and change the world for the better. Congratulations,
MIT class of 2023. You totally got this. [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE] Thank you. [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
