Who is Hedgy? - A Story of Minimalism | AMA #5 - Ask Me Anything with Lex Fridman
00:00:00.000 | Wizard asks, "Can you tell the tale of Hedgie?" Sure. So Hedgie is a stuffed hedgehog, stuffed
00:00:08.960 | animal. Maybe let me show him first. That made an appearance and I mentioned on the episode was
00:00:15.840 | Simon Sinek and he's been making an appearance in a couple that I've already recorded and haven't
00:00:20.880 | released yet. Maybe let me put him on a throne of plastic, which is what all the great kings sit on.
00:00:32.080 | There you go. So I decided to include him on the video shot in the podcast because
00:00:38.800 | some people mentioned that I have a very boring scene usually and it's nice to add some flavor.
00:00:47.040 | I don't really own much stuff at all to add, much flavorful stuff to add to the scene, but
00:00:53.360 | Hedgie happens to be one of the things I own. But the reason I wanted to do this as an AMA is
00:00:59.520 | I think there is some interesting lessons in it. I haven't attempted to articulate yet that I was
00:01:06.720 | hoping to explore a little bit to see if there's something valuable there because I think this
00:01:13.760 | stuffed hedgehog is somehow a reflection of my personality and the way I approach life that
00:01:20.400 | may have some flaws in it, but maybe has some lessons for others that might be inspiring or
00:01:28.800 | serve as an example of what to avoid. So first the story of how I got to own this stuffed hedgehog.
00:01:39.680 | I found him at a thrift store many years ago now. I was at the thrift store and there's this kind of
00:01:48.960 | box of stuffed toys, maybe kids that have grown up and they've given up on their childhood heroes
00:01:56.160 | in the form of stuffed animals, I don't know. But it was just like a bunch of like Barbies and
00:02:01.280 | bunnies and stuffed bears and they all have... The thing about stuffed animals,
00:02:08.080 | now I don't want to generalize, but allow me. The stuffed animals I've seen
00:02:14.480 | always have this kind of dumb smile on their face, this kind of vapid, empty look on their face like
00:02:22.560 | please love me even though I feel dead inside, but I'm going to keep smiling so you get to
00:02:32.880 | buy me and keep me. Now all of this obviously is anthropomorphization of objects that are not
00:02:39.440 | actually alive, and I'm being mostly humorous with this discussion, but there's little kernels
00:02:46.400 | of truth in it. I think to me most stuffed animals are kind of, at least in my imagination of it,
00:02:52.160 | kind of have this dumb, vapid look on their face of shallow happiness. And the reason this hedgehog
00:03:00.240 | jumped out at me from this bin is he had this deep, almost menacing, but really profound
00:03:12.000 | seriousness about him that he was disturbed, both disturbed about the way the world is
00:03:20.320 | and deep in thought about how to fix it. I mean that's how I felt that look came out to me,
00:03:29.600 | almost like a mix of the... I think of myself of Prince Mishkin from Dostoevsky's The Idiot,
00:03:41.680 | and I think of Hedgie here as the main character. I don't think he has a name,
00:03:48.000 | but the main character from Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky. Basically this
00:03:56.320 | bitter, brooding character. And so, I don't know, there's an immediate connection that symbolized
00:04:01.360 | something to me. So I knew I had to get him. I think there is this connection, and I think you
00:04:06.720 | experience that connection with people sometimes, and with things, with ideas, with books. It just
00:04:12.080 | jumps out at you as something profoundly unique. I also think that there's layers of humor and
00:04:22.080 | absurdity about, first of all, the idea of this hedgehog and the brooding Dostoevsky character
00:04:33.120 | amidst the sea of shallow, smiling, stuffed animals, and the fact that I own very few things
00:04:39.440 | and gave away most things I own a couple of times in my life. And the one thing that survived through
00:04:46.880 | all of that is a stuffed animal from a thrift store that seems to be pissed off at life. So,
00:04:53.520 | I think this just makes me smile, the absurdity of it all. And that's why he's, hopefully, until
00:05:03.200 | the building burns down or something, he'll be a lifelong companion.
00:05:08.240 | I wanted to use this opportunity, using Hedgie here, as a chance to talk about three related
00:05:15.440 | things. One is minimalism and stoicism, which is very much a part of my life, of how I approach
00:05:22.400 | life. The second is, on the robotics side, maybe just interesting psychological phenomena of
00:05:29.680 | anthropomorphization that I think is fascinating. And finally, friendship. So, on the idea of
00:05:39.280 | minimalism, I gave away most things I own a couple of times in my life, so just down to a few clothes,
00:05:46.240 | jeans, shirts, underwear, socks, a pair of shoes, and this most recent time, also a couple of suits,
00:05:55.600 | dress shirts and ties, and a laptop. Now, there's probably way too much to talk about there,
00:06:03.920 | and mostly I think it's probably not interesting to people, but I did want to mention or try to
00:06:09.280 | describe my thinking around these steps and why I did it and what kind of lessons I learned, I think.
00:06:18.640 | So, I think there's something extremely powerful when you sit in a room and it's barren, it's empty,
00:06:27.520 | and there's something about that experience that puts you face to face with your own mortality,
00:06:37.280 | and the reality that nothing lasts forever. There's something about material possessions
00:06:42.560 | that allows you to live in an illusion that you can actually own things, that
00:06:50.720 | there is a kind of infinity to your existence because you can own things and thereby hold on
00:07:00.080 | to them. The idea that you can own things is probably a hopeful chance to escape our own mortality,
00:07:07.200 | or at least escape having to come face to face with it often enough, and also a chance to lose
00:07:14.640 | yourself in the acquisition of more and more material possessions. I mean, I can wax poetically
00:07:22.320 | about what downsides material possessions have. I don't know, maybe it's just a bunch of psychology,
00:07:30.400 | but the reality is when you're sitting in a room alone and you gave away almost everything,
00:07:35.440 | and it's just you, you get to really be alone with yourself in the way that I think
00:07:39.920 | the best of meditation aspires to, is removing all the thoughts, all the distractions of the world,
00:07:46.480 | and really just being. I think material possessions have that same, just like
00:07:52.240 | thoughts can fill up your head and form as distractions, or social media or the internet
00:07:58.160 | and digital communication in general can be distractions. In the same way, possessions can be
00:08:04.400 | distractions to your mind, and an empty room does wonders. I mean, it's such an exceptionally
00:08:11.680 | powerful thing. The other thing I did, and it coincided with moments in my life where it was
00:08:17.920 | a big transition step, I think giving away stuff gives you the kind of freedom, it liberates you
00:08:26.720 | intellectually, physically, to take big, bold risks. I think I often hear this kind of statement,
00:08:35.520 | especially when people have a family and kids, or they have mortgages, or they have
00:08:40.800 | responsibility, like quote-unquote adult responsibilities, that they say, well,
00:08:47.600 | it must be nice for you to be able to take this big risk or take on this big challenge,
00:08:54.240 | but I don't have that freedom. And I think I am very cognizant of the fact that we use
00:09:02.240 | these very real constraints as excuses on ourselves to hold ourselves back.
00:09:09.120 | Now, they're real, to me, like having a family, having kids, or having a mortgage is a superpower
00:09:17.440 | that puts a fire under you that when you take the big risks, that you better succeed. That's a
00:09:26.720 | beautiful fire. Instead, a lot of people, I feel, use that as an excuse not to take the big risks.
00:09:33.600 | And in the same way, material possessions may hold you back from taking a wild journey of moving,
00:09:41.280 | of taking a whole new career. It kind of weighs you down, it slows you down in the aggressiveness
00:09:49.600 | and the size of the leaps you take. So for me, giving away stuff was a kind of catalyst to say,
00:09:55.600 | I'm gonna take this big step, and I'm going to take it in the biggest, boldest way possible.
00:10:01.600 | On the practical side, I was surprised how difficult it was to actually give away stuff,
00:10:08.400 | how painful it was, how even though you haven't used something for years, you think, well,
00:10:17.280 | you immediately, when coming face to face with a thing, you think, well, that's an awesome thing,
00:10:27.200 | why don't I want to keep it in my life? Well, the reality is that life is short,
00:10:33.040 | and we can't do all of the things. So when you come face to face with a thing in your life that
00:10:38.400 | you haven't actually given any attention to for a long time, that shouldn't be a burden,
00:10:44.080 | that shouldn't be a thing that weighs on you, that you want to hold on to.
00:10:47.760 | The step of allowing yourself to realize that, damn it, life is finite, that here's a book,
00:10:58.880 | for example, or a board game that I will most likely never get to again.
00:11:06.400 | Allowing yourself to realize that and let go of that and feel the pain of it, because it's
00:11:14.560 | ultimately coming face to face with your mortality, that life ends, there's not enough time
00:11:19.280 | for all of the things. That's what giving away stuff is, that's what that exercise is,
00:11:25.920 | that's why it's painful. If you're being honest, that's why it's painful.
00:11:30.240 | And actually going through with it is really liberating.
00:11:36.400 | The other thing I wanted to mention is, it's kind of funny, I don't have a particular connection
00:11:45.360 | with stuffed animals of any kind, so it's funny I have this stuffed hedgehog in my life.
00:11:51.840 | He does represent another interesting thing that is more serious in my robotics work,
00:11:56.800 | which is anthropomorphization. You might think as a process of downsizing, of giving away stuff,
00:12:05.120 | that I would get rid of a stuffed animal, and I very much wanted to. But there's a kind of
00:12:13.360 | funny fact that he has sat aimlessly on my computer desk for many years. I didn't give him
00:12:26.240 | any attention, but he kind of saw a lot of the experiences that I've been through, all the
00:12:34.880 | struggles, all the all-nighters, writing papers, the coffee, programming, the people who were in
00:12:44.560 | my life. It's silly to say, it's not like I talk to a stuffed animal, or think about him at all,
00:12:56.000 | but we shared a set of experiences. So when I looked at this particular stuffed animal,
00:13:03.760 | he doesn't just represent a stuffed animal, he represents a set of experiences that we were both
00:13:09.600 | in the room for. This might be kind of silly to describe, but there's something there, and I think
00:13:17.520 | that's a really powerful idea. That's a really powerful idea of shared experiences. It's true for
00:13:25.840 | human-to-human interaction, too. Some of my close friends are people, like it doesn't really make
00:13:34.160 | sense that we're friends, but I think what makes us friends is the experiences we've been through.
00:13:43.680 | That's what makes great relationships, too. I think there's different flavors of love. I think
00:13:51.920 | one, sort of like romantic love, one is there's the spark in the beginning, the magic that kind
00:14:01.360 | of clouds all your thinking, all of that. But then there's the love that develops through a bunch of
00:14:10.000 | shared experiences, and especially difficult ones, struggle, loss, trouble of any kind,
00:14:18.960 | I mean hardship. There's something in experiencing hardship together that brings us humans close.
00:14:27.280 | I don't know, it's kind of interesting that the depth of relationship is formed not in some kind
00:14:37.040 | of mathematical compatibility, that we like the same books, or we like the same ideas, or we had
00:14:45.920 | the same upbringing, but all those things might help, I don't know. But the deepest glue, the
00:14:55.040 | strongest glue, I should say, is in the things we've experienced together. There's something in
00:15:01.840 | that. The fact that I would have a silly stuffed animal still with me through all of that downsizing,
00:15:10.640 | I mean, I gave away a lot of really valuable stuff, and a stupid stuffed animal, sorry man,
00:15:20.160 | has survived all of that. It's interesting and speaks to the bond formed through shared
00:15:28.240 | experiences. I'll probably elaborate on that in technical ways in the robotics AI work that I'm
00:15:34.160 | doing. I think it's a really interesting set of ideas there, but I thought it was just fun.
00:15:38.720 | This whole video is pretty fun and absurd, really. I just wanted to do something different.
00:15:43.920 | I like being silly on occasion to kind of lighten things up.
00:15:46.880 | It does bring up the idea of friendships and relationships in general that I'll probably
00:15:52.240 | discuss in detail at another time. Maybe not, I don't know. It's certainly something I think
00:15:58.800 | about. I do think it's an interesting contradiction that given how much I value friendship, love,
00:16:07.360 | relationships, romantic relationship, family, that I don't have, I'm not in a relationship,
00:16:16.560 | and I don't have a family. I think about that quite a lot,
00:16:21.360 | that all the passions that are in my life may be somehow interfering with my,
00:16:32.880 | literally, it's probably just time, but interfering with the opportunities before me to
00:16:40.560 | meet others, to have the magical moments of connection. It's interesting. It's tragic in a
00:16:50.160 | kind of the old Russian melancholy way that perhaps makes for better poetry and better music,
00:16:58.400 | but there's still time. I am a part of an amazing community of positive people that I just love
00:17:04.240 | talking to, love interacting with. I love the work I'm doing. I love interacting with people
00:17:11.840 | through the medium of videos like this, of podcasts and so on. My life truly is amazing.
00:17:18.880 | I'm deeply grateful for all elements of it. There's zero complaint here. I'm not sure if
00:17:26.400 | Hedgy is a conscious creature. If there's consciousness, according to panpsychism,
00:17:31.680 | there's consciousness in everything, so he is, in fact, conscious under that definition.
00:17:37.440 | I think if we're being honest, then we look at Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky,
00:17:44.080 | the main character there. Now, he comes off as bitter, but I think he's actually deeply
00:17:50.960 | appreciative of life. To him, that bitterness is beauty. That's his mechanism by which he discovers
00:17:57.920 | the beauty of life. That's where, conscious or not, I believe Hedgy resides. He is deeply
00:18:05.680 | appreciative of life as well. Thank you for watching and listening to this most absurd of
00:18:12.320 | AMAs, but I want to give you a little look into my minimalist existence, a part of which
00:18:20.560 | is a stuffed hedgehog. Thanks very much. See you later.
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