Leonard Susskind: Is Ego Powerful or Dangerous in Science? | AI Podcast Clips
00:00:00.000 | (gentle music)
00:00:02.580 | - Jumping back to Feynman just for a second,
00:00:10.760 | he had a little bit of an ego.
00:00:14.180 | (laughing)
00:00:16.320 | - Yes.
00:00:17.200 | - Why, do you think ego is powerful or dangerous in science?
00:00:21.560 | - I think both, both, both.
00:00:25.280 | I think you have to have both arrogance and humility.
00:00:28.920 | You have to have the arrogance to say, I can do this.
00:00:33.040 | Nature is difficult, nature is very, very hard.
00:00:36.040 | I'm smart enough, I can do it.
00:00:38.560 | I can win the battle with nature.
00:00:41.400 | On the other hand, I think you also have to have
00:00:43.440 | the humility to know that you're very likely to be wrong
00:00:48.440 | on any given occasion.
00:00:51.460 | Everything you're thinking could suddenly change.
00:00:54.460 | Young people can come along and say things
00:00:57.920 | you won't understand and you'll be lost and flabbergasted.
00:01:01.360 | So I think it's a combination of both.
00:01:05.020 | You better recognize that you're very limited
00:01:08.160 | and you better be able to say to yourself,
00:01:11.680 | I'm not so limited that I can't win this battle with nature.
00:01:14.920 | It takes a special kind of person
00:01:19.040 | who can manage both of those, I would say.
00:01:22.240 | - And I would say there's echoes of that in your own work,
00:01:25.440 | a little bit of ego, a little bit of
00:01:27.400 | outside of the box, humble thinking.
00:01:29.260 | - I hope so.
00:01:32.000 | - So was there a time where you felt,
00:01:37.000 | you looked at yourself and asked,
00:01:40.500 | am I completely wrong about this?
00:01:42.340 | - Oh yeah, about the whole thing or about specific things?
00:01:46.400 | - The whole thing.
00:01:47.400 | Wait, which whole thing?
00:01:49.480 | - Me and me and my ability to do this thing.
00:01:52.360 | - Oh, those kinds of doubts.
00:01:53.840 | First of all, did you have those kinds of doubts?
00:01:56.240 | - No, I had different kind of doubts.
00:01:58.360 | I came from a very working class background
00:02:00.320 | and I was uncomfortable in academia for a long time.
00:02:05.080 | But they weren't doubts about my ability or my,
00:02:08.680 | they were just the discomfort in being in an environment
00:02:15.120 | that my family hadn't participated in.
00:02:19.020 | I knew nothing about as a young person.
00:02:20.720 | I didn't learn that there was such a thing called physics
00:02:23.120 | until I was almost 20 years old.
00:02:25.080 | - Yeah.
00:02:25.920 | - So I did have certain kind of doubts,
00:02:32.020 | but not about my ability.
00:02:34.320 | I don't think I was too worried
00:02:36.460 | about whether I would succeed or not.
00:02:38.360 | I never felt this insecurity, am I ever gonna get a job?
00:02:44.320 | That had never occurred to me that I wouldn't.
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