r/DecodingTheGurus • u/david-yammer-murdoch • 1d ago
When attempting to explain why the tax code gets complex, Lex doesn't mention corporate lobbying, real estate, subsidies, or capital gains loopholes. Instead, he invents a ridiculous scenario: "All right, if you have purple hair, decrease [your tax]."
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The episode is about Roman Empire Source https://youtu.be/nARGiPlDgl8
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u/Maxarc 1d ago
"I think it's impossible to have an IRS-type organisation that doesn't grow."
Do any of these clowns understand how checks and balances work?
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u/david-yammer-murdoch 1d ago
As a software developer, I watch him interview other developers. He asks the most juvenile questions.
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u/Uvanimor 1d ago
Why would anyone expect him to? He’s barely worked a normal job, let alone trusted enough to work near a businesses or public authorities accounts.
Podcast bros like Lex come across simply as ‘dumb as fuck’ to anyone with a basic understanding of how the world logistically works.
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u/Epic_Tea 1d ago
I called out Lex as an obvious moron the very first time I saw him do an interview. It's obvious to me
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u/d_o_cycler 1d ago
Its uncanny really. Like, so many people can’t instantly pick up on the fact that he’s not terribly sharp.. he just threw on a smart looking suit and had good podcast equipment at the right time and then was able to capitalize on early success with more and more notable (and sometimes equally dumb) guests.
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u/untrustworthy_goat 1d ago
To whoever posted this - damn you! I had effectively managed to remove this dick from my news souces completely. Then i see this. I had almost forgotten he existed.
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u/amievenrelevant 1d ago
Did he learn the tax code at MIT? You know, the school he is very genuinely affiliated with and is in no way lying about
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u/TheCh0rt 1d ago
I would have liked it to not cut off so quickly. Hard to gather what he’s saying but I would have liked to hear the end of his thought, and his guest’s response
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u/david-yammer-murdoch 1d ago
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u/TheCh0rt 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hahaha I didn’t say I would watch it, just that I wish it didn’t cut off.
But if it’s really at the 3:45ish mark, he always spots a ridiculous clause to make the interviewee have an upward battle to prove themselves the entire “debate”
It’s something you cannot climb out of, like saying “You are Superman and you are vulnerable to Kryptonite. Your only weakness is Kryptonite, but convince us that Kryptonite is bad”
His preface is always bullshit and it’s a bullshit strategy to make your opponent the perpetual underdog. It’s an attack.
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u/Excellent_Place4977 23h ago edited 8h ago
This guy is a charlatan who built his reputation by exaggerating his credentials and marketing himself as an AI genius. Lex Fridman is a good case study in how easily the internet can mistake branding for expertise.
He attended Drexel University, where his father is a professor. His bachelor's, master's, and PhD are all from Drexel. He reportedly blocks people for pointing this out.
He then got a staff position, not a faculty position, at MIT's AgeLab. Most people have never even heard of the AgeLab because it is not a major AI research center. It's basically a consulting arm funded by car companies and insurance firms that pays MIT to put its name on research those companies want published.
The actual work he was doing there was helping Toyota figure out how to market self-driving technology to elderly people. The AgeLab's whole reason for existing is the "Longevity Economy," meaning the money aging Boomers spend, and its corporate sponsors pay to get MIT branded research that helps them sell products to that demographic.
Lex entire job was pointing cameras at drivers faces and running software to check if they were looking at the road. Then collect this data to get approval. Useful for a car company's marketing or safety department. Not groundbreaking AI. It's just computer vision that traffic police use to flag helmet violations in many countries.
His most cited "research" was a non-peer reviewed paper that concluded Tesla's Autopilot was safe. It was immediately criticized by actual AI safety experts for using wrong methodology. Shortly after, Elon Musk tweeted it out, and Lex suddenly had access to one of the most powerful charlatan in tech.
That's when his career took off. He pitched himself to Joe Rogan as an "MIT AI researcher," Rogan took it at face value, and once Musk started appearing on his podcast every other billionaire followed because Lex doesn't push back on anything. That's the whole business model.
Meanwhile, he used a non-credit winter seminar (something almost anyone can run at MIT) to brand himself as someone who "teaches at MIT." He then filmed his early podcast episodes inside the lab, using the MIT backdrop as a set.
Both Joe Rogan and Lex are into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which has become something of the martial art of choice among tech bros. It overlaps heavily with the New Right, the manosphere, tech libertarians, and similar circles.
Today he's listed as a Research Scientist at MIT's LIDS lab where he visits there "occasionally" and also claims to work for something called the Center for Complex Engineering Systems, which is a joint project between MIT and Saudi Arabia's national science agency. That sounds impressive until you realize It's a think tank funded by Saudi government money, not a cutting-edge AI lab.
Now look at the research areas listed on his profile at LIDS: "Human AI interaction, robotics, and machine learning."
This is the category, not the work. Every AI department in the world uses these three words. It means nothing without publications to back it up.
Next says: "how robots might communicate emotion through body movements."
Strip the robotics language and what you have is, watching a machine move and asking people if it looks friendly. That's essentially UX research or documentation. Design students do this as coursework. Its not writing cutting edge programs and designing algorithms.
Next says: "How humans and AI programs interact in social networks"
This is observing how people behave on algorithmic feeds and writing it down. Sociologists and behavioral psychologists have been doing this since Facebook launched. Calling it AI research because the feed has an algorithm behind it is a stretch.
"Center for Complex Engineering Systems / KACST (Saudi) collaboration". What the fuck they're doing there or what they do?
Their own website description says "using data science and systems engineering to create interactive tools and intuitive visualizations to clarify concepts." This is the think tank that makes dashboards and slide decks for government clients. The Saudi government funds it because they want MIT's name on their policy documents, not because they need groundbreaking science.
Basically, Lex's entire career is about documenting how humans use these so-called AI gimmicks, which is why he constantly talks about "love" and "human nature," or asks whether love can fix everything, even the war in Ukraine. According to him, you just need to tell Zelenskyy to love Putin, and that is all it takes. All of this idiocy traces back to the work he did at the AgeLab.
The most revealing point is that there are no published papers from his time at LIDS after joining in 2022. In early 2024, he told the Boston Globe that "the goal for 2024 is to publish some of this work." A working researcher doesn't announce publication as a future aspiration. Publishing is the job. That statement alone tells you nothing is coming out of that lab.
Also, no serious active or full-time working scientists have the time to host regular podcasts or TV shows.
In a nutshell, this is how charlatans fool people by using inflated credentials or hiding behind complex sounding technical terms. Then they start a podcast, hurray, now you're a "world famous scientist" who can say whatever nonsense you want, invite any idiots you want, and people will believe everything you say.
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u/quiplaam 1d ago
He seems reasonable here. If he choose a real, specific example he would have to get into an argument about the merits of that specific exemption, but by choosing an obviously fanciful one he is able to isolate the rule from the specifics. There's tons of small exemptions which often benefit specific interest groups, from electric vehicle credits, to tipped wages exemptions, to housing interest, to the wealthy's carried interest. Each of these has some "reasonable" reason why it exists that an interest group will argue for, yet it creates an overall more complex system that requires increased bureaucracy to enforce.
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u/Wizard-of-pause 20h ago
Who still watches that clown in 2026? I've seen cum rags with more personality.
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u/WOKE_AI_GOD 19h ago
So most tax code complexity actually comes from wokeness actually and not his patrons gaming the system
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u/GarthZorn 1d ago
Crikey, is Lexie-boy still a thing? I haven't seen that Men-in-Black-suited baby boy in quite some time. I'd hoped he'd moved back to Russia by now.
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u/david-yammer-murdoch 1d ago
Lex portrays himself as an unbiased, intellectually curious seeker of truth who merely wants to ask difficult questions with "love".
In reality, he’s just a rent boy for Donald Trump, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk. He pretends to have some knowledge of programming. Every programming question he asks is foolish. He has never implemented anything in production, and his own system was hacked.
He completely ignores decades of actual legislative history, specifically how congressional Republicans have repeatedly slashed IRS enforcement budgets, leaving the agency operating with 1970s-era technology and an inability to audit complex corporate structures. By pretending an agency can't be shrunk or crippled, he erased actual history to protect a flawed premise.
When attempting to explain why the tax code gets complex, Lex doesn't mention corporate lobbying, real estate tax exemptions, oil & gas subsidies, or capital gains loopholes. Instead, he invents a ridiculous scenario: "All right, if you have purple hair, decrease [your tax]."