Disagreement as an Art: How Lex Fridman Handles Negative Comments

Fridman takes a question from a viewer named Amy about handling openness, criticism and destructive feedback. He says his answer will probably keep changing as people learn how to hold civil, healthy conversation online. He contrasts his approach with the Joe Rogan model: Rogan, whom Fridman admires for his openness and genuineness, mostly avoids reading comments except to get a sense of the community.

Fridman says he is not famous enough to be flooded with comments and still learns a lot from them. What saddens him is how little "artful agreement" there is online, especially in political discourse. He believes disagreement takes care, skill, compassion and respect, and that behind passionate disagreement there should be respect, even love, for the other person.

The disagreement he dislikes sits somewhere between apathy and derision, which he describes as a kind of jealousy or dismissal of the other person's significance. He says he is not open to that and would like the internet to move away from it. Tense criticism that carries deep respect, by contrast, he finds beautiful, though it is more often seen in person.

Fridman links his taste for heated debate to Russian culture. In person he often argues a view he does not hold, for example turning anti-democratic-socialist when someone says they are a Bernie Sanders fan, or sceptical of a basic income when someone likes Andrew Yang. He says the goal is to try a viewpoint on for size and bounce ideas around, which can produce humor, wit and something profound.

He says his openness is grounded in optimism that this kind of discourse is possible, and he tries to cultivate it in his community. The criticism that is only mockery, he says, is just part of life, and he jokes about stepping in something unpleasant on the sidewalk.

Fridman also loves "busting chops": his closest friends tease him constantly, and for him that is how they show love. But he says you have to earn that, because without respect or friendship it turns into mockery. A basic problem of the internet, he says, is that social media mechanisms reward mockery regardless of respect, and while observers may find it funny, the people in the arena do not.

Whether criticism is harsh and disrespectful or respectful, Fridman says he treats it as a kind of pain. Using the analogy of recently touching a hot stove, he describes stepping outside himself as a third-person observer, breathing and taking in the full experience. Once the shock settles, he asks what lesson he can learn after stripping away the meanness or mockery.

In the stove example, the lesson is that you can hover a hand above the burner to sense heat rather than touch it. He admits the analogy is a bit silly, but says the habit of extracting something to do better next time is the point.

He applies the same approach to the criticisms he hears of his communication. People say he is too philosophical, gets lost in the weeds, speaks in a monotone, mumbles, lacks eye contact or asks too many stupid questions. Because he puts himself out there and makes himself vulnerable, he says, he takes these seriously: some contain truth even when delivered meanly, and some he can work on over the long term.

Fridman tries to empathise with where a critic's view comes from. On the charge that he asks stupid questions or gets outclassed, he says that can mean he succeeded: his role is to be "staff," with no ego, letting the other person shine. Simple, almost naive questions can reach the core of an idea if the guest accepts what he calls the dance.

He concedes that if it is not done well, or the other person does not accept the dance, it can simply look like a dumb question. When it works, he says, nobody notices how simple the question was. Some of that is luck.

He points to comments saying Jim Keller, whom he deeply admires, outclassed him in their conversation, and says he sees that as success because it is not a competition. He wants to push back enough to be productive but not so much that things become tense or awkward. He compares this to tango, where there is a lead and a follow that can switch, and says critics of his style give him kernels of truth to learn from.

Fridman calls criticism a gift, though one that burns, especially when it carries mockery. After taking the lesson, he imagines the critic and sends them love, forgiving the roughness of their message even though they did not ask for it. He also imagines meeting them in person, shaking hands and laughing, and he assumes much of what happens online is miscommunication or his own misreading.

On social media, if he sees no underlying respect, he reaches out and tries to patch things up. If that fails he uses whatever the platform offers, such as blocking, muting or limiting, and he stresses this is not driven by anger or ill feeling. He simply does not see the medium as a place where mutual respect can be found with that person.

He says that if they met in person he would go straight for a hug. He then lets the burn go, forgets it and moves on with a smile. Fridman adds that he has been very fortunate, with plenty of positive feedback, profound conversations and people who showed him he was wrong with respect, so he sometimes feels like the luckiest guy in the world.

He closes by describing this longer AMA answer as an experiment, since he is testing whether one, five or twenty minutes works best. He says his view will keep evolving, and he might eventually adopt the Rogan model, but for now he remains open to criticism online and in person.