Matt Damon's Commencement Address at MIT | Hacker News Reader

Matt Damon's Commencement Address at MIT

news.mit.edu

50 pointsGabriel-Lewis53 comments

Have you noticed that our society holds actors in the highest esteem above all categories of occupation?

What makes you say that? Some people certainly hold 'certain' actors to high esteem, but those are usually ones with admirable characters.

People love celebrities, but I'm not sure if 'high esteem' is apt description.

I think that actors are revered in an almost god-like way, sports people next.

No. Actors are entertaining, because that's their primary skill set. Actors are on average simply better equipped to, say, deliver a speech well, because of long practice. There is less friction in watching them. Taking a guess where you're coming from: Rather than resent that, engineers should work on improving their communication skill, and not discriminate against communication-savvy peers. Healthy respect for other fields and their challenges doesn't diminish ours.

The original comment reminds of when people say "I hate that Steve Jobs is famous and [insert genius hacker/programmer] is not!!!". Of course they aren't. Steve Jobs, like famous actors, are public people and either like being in public or have to. Scientists, programmers, etc. usually don't (but the ones that do, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, are well liked) or don't really care about it and thus people just don't know about them.

It's really not complicated.

Yep, like the Kardashian clan.

Yes, it's as if our society wants to believe they really are the larger than life characters they play on screen. To his credit, he opened with...

It’s an honor to be part of this day.... But let’s be honest — It’s an honor I didn’t earn.

I don't know many people who hold any actors above Elon Musk or Barack Obama.

Republicans?

Considering that most out-spoken celebs hold more liberal views, I doubt it.

That was probably a Ronald Reagan joke

Perhaps in the HN community and nerdy computer world that might be true but I would suggest that ordinary people have never heard of Elon Musk.

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not.

I choose yes it is.

It was not sarcastic. Maybe I am living in a bubble.

Celebrities of all kinds are nothing more than brands. People are fans of brands. People go crazy for Apple products in the same way they go crazy for sneakers that Kanye puts out.

Kind of a weird criticism to level at Matt Damon. Whether you agree with his politics or not, he's clearly extremely smart. He dropped out of Harvard and wrote an Oscar-winning movie script. He talks about theories with professors and hangs out with the President.

Maybe it's a weird criticism because it isn't. How do you read my observation as criticism?

It definitely reads as veiled criticism, yes.

OK well give your responses and time to think about it, yes I suppose in the back of my head I am thinking "what the?".

If I was at MIT I would want the speech to be from someone respected for their achievement in the world of intellectual endeavor.

It feels like it cheapens the institution to bring in an actor.

Now I will say I like Matt Damon's acting, and as far as Hollywood stars go, he comes across to me as if not the smartest, then one of the smartest, and that is certainly something to offset the cheapening of the MIT address.

My original observation remains the same though - actors are at the top of our society in terms of the amount of attention and adoration given by the community, sports stars a close second.

And may I say "The Martian" ..... well no-one does onscreen intellect/science like Matt Damon. What a great movie.

I think maybe somewhere deep down the thing that bothers me about this is that MIT is saying in an indirect way "if you can act really smart then you are on equal footing with people who are really smart". i.e. we value "the appearance of smart".

He dropped out of Harvard and wrote an Oscar-winning movie script. I'd say that's quite an "intellectual" achievement.

As an MIT alumnus, I think this is an excellent commencement speech.

Broadly, though, you're right -- we Americans do love our screen stars.

It's also worth noting that he most likely didn't quite right the speech. He had helpers write the speech. Everyone gets helpers to write/help write speeches.

My favorite example is Steve Jobs calling a lot of people to get help on writing the commencement speech from folks like Aaron Sorkin and others (yes, the same Sorkin that made the Steve Jobs movie which framed him not an entirely positive light).

You really want it broken down? The story is about a celebrity giving a commencement speech at MIT. You then make a provocative observation that celebrities are "held in the highest esteem above all categories of occupation". Which is a clear over-generalization meant to spark conversation on the topic. The most likely trajectory (by far) of any conversation that would be spawned from such a statement would be the traditional criticism: "why do we listen to celebrities so much when they usually don't know what they're talking about?". Hence the inference is that you're trying to criticize Matt Damon's speech.

Put more succinctly, the nature of the conversation a person is trying to start is typically a strong indicator of their perspective.

You have plausible deniability here, but would you say the same if this were a physicist or philanthropist or tech CEO? Can you explain what your meaning is in point out your observation? There are thousands of details we could have noticed about this commencement speech. Why was that the one thing you point out?

> He talks about theories with professors and hangs out with the President.

These sound so superficially-smart that I'm almost wondering if you're joking. Every college student "talks about theories with professors", so does Matt Damon actually teach them something or show greater-than-average understanding? And the President is basically just another celebrity in this context, unless you tell us something meaningful Mr. Damon did with the President other than "hang out".

I'll grant you Damon is more articulate than many celebrities, but I've decided that by listening to what he says, not noting that professors and the President have occasionally been in his presence.

(P.S. Perhaps this is a disproportionate fixation on the closing sentence to some other points I agree with.)

Few people continue to show enough intellectual curiosity to discuss theories with professors long after they've dropped out of college. And the President is not "just another celebrity in this context." By virtue of his office, the President has enormous insight into various global problems, and Damon mentioned discussing those issues with him.

OK, when has Damon met with professors, and what did they talk about? My Googling shows he talked to two professors at Harvard about the script of Good Will Hunting. They influenced his choice to make Will a math genius rather than physics, and maybe a few other points in the story (not really elaborated on here[1]). Damon's mother also happens to be a professor. Neither of these really qualify as talking about theories, or purely to satisfy his intellectual curiosity rather than to help in his non-academic work or incidental contact.

Again from some quick Googling, this seems an exemplary quote from Damon about what he would talk with President Obama about: "There are a lot of things that I really question — the legality of the drone strikes, these NSA revelations. Jimmy Carter came out and said we don’t live in a democracy. That’s a little intense when an ex-president says that. So you now, he’s got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor." [2] I see no evidence to suggest that the President has deliberately chosen to speak with Damon about these issues because he especially values his opinion or considers him smart, or that Damon has any particular things to say beyond what any of the somewhat articulate among us here on HN could have said on those issues, or that anything Damon said caused the President to expand his knowledge which is, as you said, founded on responsibilities and insights that Damon can't possibly have.

In other words, any of us could do something notable but in a non-political field, be invited to a small-audience event with the President, have the opportunity to bring up some issues with him for 2 minutes, and honestly say that we'd "discussed issues with the President" like Damon can say, but it wouldn't be proof of much, other than that you're smart enough or maybe just lucky enough in one field to get the attention of the President's staff and be invited to an event that incidentally allowed you to chat with him. Also, if the press cared to report your brief accounts of it as widely as they did for Damon, it probably has more to do with you being a charismatic celebrity that people want to hear about, than with having a notable intellect that people want to learn from.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/trivia?item=tr0776622 [2] http://www.politico.com/blogs/click/2013/08/matt-damon-obama...

No more so than athletes or musical performers (I wouldn't go so far as to say "musicians" -- thinking of people like Britney and Justin Bieber). Or doctors, for that matter, in the more non-celebrity world. In fact I wonder if doctors are held in the highest esteem of any occupation, due to being perhaps the only one where making a lot of money and being considered morally and ethically upstanding can seem to coincide. Or maybe actors are in that category too, except that the ones who make money are fewer, and the ones who are morally bankrupt are more (though partially because the media profits from amplifying those cases).

Music artist is the preferred term. It better fits Britney Spears and Justin Bieber in the sense that it encompasses their performances as well (a form of art).

Actors put in an enormous amount of effort and discipline to get where they are and need more personal character to stay relevant. I don't think Matt Dameon's opinions are any better but I think they should not be dismissed. May be we should build them a hacker news for celebrities.

No more effort and discipline than your above average working person. They are favored because of charisma, but their value is questionable if you get over the starry eyed gullibility.

Especially considering the fact that most actors are actually recruited based on how they look, in addition to other things of course, but it's undeniable that you don't get an actor gig if you are ugly

we could say the same thing about software engineers. you were born smart.

This reminds me of something Joss Whedon said: I suspect that some actors get a head start thanks to genetics, but the successful ones still ran as hard as they could after the starting pistol.

To which i say, Danny Devito.

5 ft tall and a face only a mother can love. It may be about looks superficially. But not only traditionally attractive people are actors. Some of the best are not.

Personally I find Danny Devito a calming sort of look. I thought everyone did.

Well the more you learn.

Edit:autocorrect meh.

This isn't an accident. Celebrities get really famous by appearing to have whatever qualities the average person wants. Nobody could actually be like the characters Audrey Hepburn played in movies. But the fact that she was so popular tells you a little bit about what the average female used to wish they were like. It would be nice if people looked up to Einstein more than Matt Damon. But people respect Einstein a lot more than they want to be him.

Matt Damon is in the news or the front cover of a magazine several times a year. Einstein, were he alive today, would not be just like the recent Nobel laureates aren't. Damon's career depends on public appearances and extroversions, while most scientists don't care for or need them. That's why it seems people "look up to actors" more. They see more of them, and as you said people see what they like from them.

Anyone leaning left will get invitations to these campuses for honorary degrees. Unfortunately as good as Matt Damon is, now the reputation of these campuses just strikes as favortism towards leftist ideas. I like Matt Damon, but it's just a fact that these degrees are meaningless. A 15 minute speech, some leftist ideas, tell the students they've "accomplished so much" when most of them haven't really accomplshed anything other than spending money they don't have.

Sad really. I don't have any interest in these speeches anymore for value. Especially during a political season.

For what it's worth, he didn't receive an honorary degree (but he was given an MIT pirate's license certificate)

Of course. Humans are basically apes, and familiarity and likability go a long way, they make it feel like you have a connection with the famous person.

People spend countless hours forming lingering one-way emotional relationships with actors as a byproduct of suspension of disbelief. This creates a false sense of familiarity and therefore trust in the actor as a person. Actors in turn tend to acquire a Shoe Button Complex as a result of this misplaced trust which compounds the problem.

My interest in the thoughts of those I don't know personally is restricted to the specific domains in which they've demonstrated competency.

>Shoe Button Complex

"...named for the condition of a family friend who spoke in an oracular style on all subjects after becoming dominant in the shoe button business."

I had to look this up, but it gave me a chuckle.

If you're going by MIT commencement addresses, more like (successful) CEOs and founders.

https://commencement.mit.edu/archive/speakers

> But again, the point is not to become some kind of well- rounded, high-minded voyeur. The point is to try to eliminate your blind spots — the things that keep us from grasping the bigger picture.[...] And that’s when we can really start to understand ourselves better ... and begin to solve some problems.

While it seems rather intuitive on its face, I liked this comment. Too many people move forward discounting new informtion while reinforcing their beliefs. I took the living on display to mean following a path you think others find highest leverge and not neccessarily the individual.

This is as much a defect in personality as it is in scientific thinking, which he seems to touch on later. He says along the lines of `really smart people make really big mistakes`, this is because people make mistakes. Honestly, it had the stay hungry stay foolish vibe. I found it interesting, was worth the read.

edit: After some contemplation, I think the meta point that I found interesting is that (as examined downthread) the contrast between Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk, for example, seems to speak to one of the core themes of this address. I would be forced to admit that if Elon Musk gave this speech, I would certainly consider the information more valubale than if Kim Kardashian did. However, the point I believe Damon makes is that, the information itself is also important.

>>Not every problem has a high-tech solution.

Something the HN crowd should be reminded of regularly.

Fat-heads Rule: http://www15.uta.fi/koskivoimaa/henkilot/kuvat/29a9a37.jpg

Finnish General Arno Pajari possibly not related to Matt "John Pajari" Damon. Accused of war-crimes by Russians in 1944.

Interesting choice...I thought maybe he had gone to MIT but apparently he dropped out from Harvard. I wonder what led to him being chosen (and I say that as a fan of his)?

Probably Good Will Hunting.

More likely connections between the water.org people and the MIT Corporation board. The MIT D-Lab has goals and approaches closely related to water.org's.

See https://d-lab.mit.edu for more.

Perhaps a combination of factors? He was born in Cambridge, MA. MIT celebrated 100 years in the city. And Good Will Hunting.

Why has every commencement address turned into a political speech? Politics is like a disease that has slowly taken over ever facet of life.

It was really a surprisingly powerful ending...

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