INFJ
Lex Fridman has been under my radar for some months if not some years and it’s time I evaluate Lex’s personality type – the INFJ.
Researcher, scientist, writer – if you do get invited on his podcast be prepared to converse about a wide array of topics – from science, technology, history, philosophy and the nature of intelligence, consciousness, love, and power.
Yes we can say INFJ’s have dominant intuition followed by Fe empathy powers, but it’s that Ti (child) were interested in. Lex has excellent awareness of it, his PhD in Computer Science is a huge part of it. I myself have run across INFJ’s who weren’t necessarily programmers but dabbled with code enough to understand its concepts quite quickly.
Even Lex’s inferior function Se has come out from time to time – when assessing a personality it’s important to take the environment into account and contextualize what is required of you.
Lex has had so many big names on his podcast, way too many to name from Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Kanye West. He’s gotten invited to several others as well including the Joe Rogan Experience.
But what’s so funny is that I first stumbled on Lex’s Youtube channel, by searching the most random thing ever:
“Who would win a fight between bear or an ape”?
Well low and behold, Lex had John Danaher ( Brazilian jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts instructor and coach from New Zealand) on his show and wow did they really answer my question. Not only that, it was so fun!
Back to Lex’s type, it’s clear Ti (Introverted Thinking) and Fe (Extraverted Feeling) reveals itself quite often throughout his podcast. Fe allows Lex to engage in a feedback loop to gauge how a guest is feeling – you will also find common with INFJ’s is that they will challenge you from time to time as is the case with Lex’s podcast with Kanye West.
Lex literally says to Kanye, “Has anyone ever called out for your […]”
Kanye expressed his distrust for people, which is pretty true as well especially nowadays.
But the fact is that Lex was quite direct (Se) and this may leave the person on the other end feeling like it’s an ultimatum. I’ve seen this with INFJ’s – it’s the need for closure. Let’s not forget INFJ’s lead with Ni (Introverted Intuition) as their dominant (hero) function. Ni spends all it’s time converging things into one path, and it’s on 24/7.
He’s well known for his research in AI, human-robot interaction, autonomous vehicles, and machine learning at MIT. Aside form this, he actually writes code in PHP (I too as well!).
An interesting fan fact is that Lex worked for Google for 6 months to move onto a company called AgeLab, there Lex focused on psychology and human behavior through big data analytics. That is some heavy (Ni), (Ti) and (Se).
Extraverted Sensing (Se) in Lex far extends beyond technology and onto the training mat. In Lex’s case it’s in the form of dedicated practitioner of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ)
INFJ’s are much needed in this age we call the “AI Renaissance”, where ethics (Fe) comes into play. Something the INFJ is quite responsible with (even more Fe).