#482 – Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Episode publishedPodcast: Lex Fridman PodcastLex Fridman Podcast
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The following is a conversation with Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, a messaging platform actively used by over 1,000,000,000 people. Pavel has spent his life fighting for freedom of speech, building tools that protect human communication from surveillance and censorship. For this, he has faced pressure from some of the most powerful governments and organizations on earth. In the face of this immense pressure, he has always held his ground, continuously fighting to protect user privacy and the freedom of all of us humans to communicate with each other. I got the chance to spend a few
I get to experience the difference between a society with freedom and a society without freedom pretty early in life. I was four years old when my family moved from the Soviet Union to Northern Italy, and I could see that a society without freedom cannot enjoy the abundance of opinions, of ideas, of goods, and services. Even for a four or five year old kid, it was obvious. Like, you can't experience all the toys, the ice cream sorts, the cartoons in the Soviet Union that you couldn't access in Italy. And then I got to realize something even more important. You don't get to contribute to this a
You also wrote translates to freedom matters more than money. How do you prevent these values for freedom being corrupted by money, by people with influence, by people with power?
Well, the biggest enemies of freedom are fear and greed. So you make sure that they don't stand in your way. If you imagine the worst thing that can happen to you and then make yourself be comfortable with it, there's nothing more left to be afraid of. So you stand your ground and you remember that it's worth living your life according to the principles that you believe in even though this life can end up being shorter than a longer life, but lived in slavery. Do you contemplate your mortality? You think about your death? Oh, yes. Are you afraid of it? In a way, you have to go against your ins
Yeah. Remembering that death exists makes you deeply feel every moment that you do get.
That's why I love reminding myself that I can die any day.
In many ways, you live a pretty stoic existence. I got a chance to spend a couple of weeks with you. In many ways, you seek to minimize the negative effects of the outside world on your mind. You've written, quote, if you want to reach your full potential and maintain clarity of mind, stay away from addictive substances. My success and health are the result of twenty plus years of complete abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, pills, and illegal drugs. Short term pleasure isn't worth your future. Let's talk about each one of these. Alcohol, what's been your philosophy behind that?
That one is quite easy. When I was 11 years old, my biochemistry teacher, he gave me this book he wrote. It was called the illusion of paradise. And there, he would describe the biological and chemical processes that happen in your body once you consume this or that substance. It was mainly related to illegal drugs, but alcohol was one of these addictive substances that he covered. So it turns out that when you drink alcohol, the thing that happens is that your brain cells become paralyzed. They become literally zombies. And then next day, sometime after the party is over, some of your brain c
Yeah. In many ways, it's a poison we let in our body. But by way of advice, what what advice would you give to people who consider not drinking? You know, a lot of people use alcohol to enable them to have a vibrant social life. There's a lot of pressures from society, you know, at a
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