Infinite Jest

This book by David Foster Wallace has been genuinely recommended 2 times on Lex Fridman. The people who vouched for it on air: George Hotz, Michael Kearns. It comes up in conversations about productivity & performance. The earliest recommendation we indexed is from Nov 2019 and the most recent from Oct 2020. Every quote below is verbatim, attributed, and linked to the exact second it was said. Sourced expert opinion, not medical advice.

A spoof on our culture featuring a drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation house near Boston. The center becomes a hotbed of revolutionary activity by Quebec separatists in revolt against the Organization of North American Nations which now rules the continent.

• “infinite jest is a book about wireheading really very enjoyable to read very uh well-written you will grow as a person reading this book”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “very enjoyable to read very well-written you will grow as a person reading this book”
  George Hotz · Lex Fridman Podcast · Oct 202002:51:57

  Said during "George Hotz: Hacking the Simulation & Learning to Drive with Neural Nets | Lex Fridman Podcast #132". The episode features George Hotz: Hacker known as geohot, famous for jailbreaking the iPhone and PlayStation 3. Founder of comma ai, which sells the $1,000 comma two device and open-source openpilot software for semi-autonomous driving. George Hotz riffs on hacking the simulation, crypto, immortality, and why end-to-end neural nets beat Tesla's task-by-task approach to self-driving.

• “my favorite novel is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace which actually coincidentally much of it takes place in the halls of buildings right around us”

  Why it counts as a recommendation: “my favorite novel”
  Michael Kearns · Lex Fridman Podcast · Nov 201900:03:07

  Said during "Michael Kearns: Algorithmic Fairness, Privacy & Ethics | Lex Fridman Podcast #50". The episode features Michael Kearns: A University of Pennsylvania computer science professor and co-author of The Ethical Algorithm. He is a world-class researcher in machine learning theory, algorithmic game theory, and quantitative finance. Michael Kearns explains how fairness, privacy, and ethics can be encoded into algorithms, and where the math runs into human values.