English Speech Matt Damons MIT Commencement Speech with Big Subtitles
it is such an honor to be part of your
day it’s an honor to be here with you
with your friends your professors and
your parents but let’s be honest this is
an honor I didn’t really earn I’m just
gonna put that out there I mean I’ve
seen the list of previous commencement
speakers Nobel Prize winners the UN
secretary-general president of the World
Bank president of the United States and
who did you get the guy who did the
voice for a cartoon horse if you’re
wondering which cartoon horse that
spirit stallion of the Cimarron a movie
some of you might have grown up watching
it’s definitely one of my best
performances as a cartoon horse well
look I don’t even have a college degree
as you might have heard I went to
Harvard I just didn’t graduate from
Harvard I got pretty close but I started
to get movie roles and I didn’t finish
all my courses but I put on a cap and
gown and I walked with my class my mom
and dad and brother were there and
everything I just never got an actual
degree you could say I kind of faked
graduated so you can imagine how excited
I was when president rife called to
invite me to speak at the MIT
commencement and then you can imagine
how sorry I was to learn that the MIT
commencement speaker does not get to go
home with a degree so yes for the second
time in my life I am fake graduating
from a college in my hometown
and my mom and my dad and my brother are
here again and this time I brought my
wife and my four kids so welcome kids to
your dad’s second fake graduation you
must be so proud so as I said my mom is
here she’s a professor so she knows the
value of an MIT degree she also knows
that I couldn’t have gotten in here
I mean Harvard you know barely or a
safety school like Yale look I’m not
running for any kind of office I can say
pretty much whatever I want up here no I
couldn’t have gotten in here but I did
grow up here I grew up in the
neighborhood in the shadow of this
imposing place my brother Kyle and I and
my friend Ben Affleck brilliant guy good
guy never really amounted to much we all
grew up right here in Central Square
children of this sometimes rocky
marriage between this city and its great
institutions to us MIT was kind of like
the man this big impressive impersonal
force at least that was our provincial
knee-jerk teenage reaction anyway and
then Ben and I shot a movie here one of
the scenes in Good Will Hunting was
based on something that actually
happened to my brother Kyle he was
visiting a physicist that we knew at MIT
and he was walking down the infinite
corridor he saw those blackboards that
lie in the halls and so my brother who’s
an artist picked up some chalk and wrote
an incredibly elaborate totally fake
version of an equation and it was so
cool and completely insane that no one
erased it for months
this is a true story anyway
Kyle came back and he said you guys
listen to this they’ve got blackboards
running down the hall because these kids
are so smart they just need to you know
drop everything and solve problems it
was then we knew for sure we could never
have gotten in but like I said we later
made a movie here which did not go
unnoticed on campus in fact I’d like to
read you some actual lines some selected
passages from the review of Good Will
Hunting in the MIT school paper
if you haven’t seen it will was me and
Sean is played by the late Robin
Williams a man I miss a hell of a lot so
I’m quoting here Good Will Hunting is
very entertaining but then again any
movie partially said at MIT has to be
more in the end the reviewer writes the
actual character development flies out
the window will and Shawn talk bond
solve each other’s problems and then cry
and hug each other after said crying and
hugging the movie ends such feel-good
pretentiousness is definitely not my mug
of eggnog well that kind of hurts but
don’t worry I know now better than to
cry at MIT but look I’m happy to be here
anyway I might still be a knee-jerk
teenager in key respects but I know an
amazing school when I see it we’re lucky
to have MIT in Boston and we’re lucky it
draws the people that it does people
like you from around the world I mean
you’re working on some crazy stuff in
these buildings stuff that would freak
me out if I actually understood it
theories models paradigm shifts I’m
gonna tell you about one that’s been on
my mind simulation theory mostly you’ve
probably heard of this maybe even took a
class with Max tegmark but for the
uninitiated there’s a philosopher named
Nick Bostrom at Oxford and he’s
postulated if there’s a truly advanced
form of intelligence out there in the
universe it’s probably advanced enough
to run simulations of entire worlds
maybe trillions of them maybe even our
own so the basic idea as I understand it
is that we could be living in a massive
simulation run by a far smarter similar
civilization like a giant computer game
and we don’t even know it and here’s the
thing a lot of physicists a lot of
cosmologists they won’t rule it out I
just watched a discussion online a few
weeks back it was moderated by Neil
deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium
and by and large the panel couldn’t and
wouldn’t give a definitive answer
Tyson himself put the odds at 5050 now
I’m not sure how scientific that was but
it had numbers in it so I was impressed
but it it got me to thinking what if
this all of this is a simulation I mean
it’s a crazy idea but what if it is and
if there are multiple simulations how
come we have to be in the one where
Donald Trump becomes the Republican
nominee for president can we like
transfer to a different one well
professor tegmark has an excellent take
on all of this my advice he said
recently is to go out and do really
interesting things so the simulators
don’t shut you down now then again what
if it isn’t a simulation either way my
answer is the same either way what we do
matters what we do affects the outcome
so either way mit you’ve got to go out
and do really interesting things
important things inventive things
because this world real or imagined this
world has some problems that we need you
to drop everything and solve so go ahead
and take your pick from the world’s
worst buffet economic inequality that’s
a problem how about the refugee crisis
massive global insecurity climate change
pandemics institutional racism Appleton
nativism fear driven brains working
overtime here in America and in places
like Austria where a far-right candidate
nearly won the president a presidential
election for the first time since World
War two or the brexit for God’s sakes
that insane idea that the best path for
Britain is to cut loose from Europe and
drift out to sea I mean what is Europe
even going to look like in 25 years and
add to that an American political system
that’s failing we’ve got congressmen on
a two-year election cycle who are
incentivized to think short-term and
simply do not engage with long term
problems and add to that a media that
thrives on scandal and people with their
pants down anything to get you to tune
in so they can hock you products that
you don’t need and add to that a banking
system that steals people’s money it’s
alright I’m not running for office
but by the way while I’m on this let me
just say to this to the bankers
specifically the ones who brought you
the biggest heist in history it was
theft and you knew it it was fraud and
you knew it and you know what else we
know that you knew it so yeah you sort
of got away with it you got that house
in the Hamptons that other people paid
for is their own mortgages went
underwater and you might have their
money but you don’t have our respect and
just so you know when we pass you on the
street and look you in the eye that’s
what we’re thinking and I don’t know if
justice is coming for you in this life
or the next but if justice does come for
you in this life her name will be
Elizabeth Warren alright so before my
little banking digression I rattled off
a bunch of big problems and a natural
response is to tune out and turn away
but before you step out into our big
trouble the world I want to pass along a
piece of advice that Bill Clinton
offered me a little over a decade ago
actually when he said it it felt less
like advice and more like a direct order
what he said was turned toward the
problems you see you have to engage and
turn towards the problems that you see
except it sounded like turn towards the
problem that you see but when he said
this to me he literally turned his body
for emphasis towards me yeah no listen
it seemed kind of simple at the time but
the older I get the more wisdom I see in
this that is what I want to urge you to
do today to turn towards the problems
that you see and engage with them walk
right up to him look him in the eye and
then look yourself in the eye and decide
what you’re gonna do about them now in
my experience there is just no
substitute for actually going and seeing
these things I owe this insight like
many others to my mom when I was a
teenager mom thought it was important
for us to see the world outside of
Boston and I don’t just mean Framingham
she took us to places like Guatemala
where we saw extreme poverty up close
and it changed my whole frame of
reference and I think it was that same
impulse that took my brother and me to
Zambia in 2006 as part of the one
campaign the organization that bono
founded to fight desperate and what he
calls stupid poverty and preventable
disease in the developing world and on
that trip in a small community I met
this girl and I walked with her to a
nearby borewell where she could get
clean water she’d just come home from
school and I knew the reason that she
was able to go go to school at all was
clean water namely the fact that it was
available nearby so she didn’t have to
walk miles back and forth all day to get
water for her family like so many girls
and women do around the world so I asked
her if she wanted to stay in her village
when she grew up and she smiled and said
no no I want to go to Lusaka and become
a nurse so clean water something as
basic as that had given this child a
chance to dream and now as I learned
more about water and sanitation I was
floored by the extent to which it
undergirds all these problems of extreme
poverty the fate of entire communities
economies countries is caught up in that
glass of water something the rest of us
get to take for granted
people at one told me that water is the
least sexy and cool aspect of the effort
to fight extreme poverty and water goes
hand-in-hand with sanitation so if you
think water isn’t sexy you should try to
get into the business but I was
hooked already I the enormity of it the
complexity of the issue it just it just
hooked me
and getting out in the world and meeting
people like this little girl is what put
me on the path to starting water.org
with a brilliant civil engineer named
Gary white and for Gary and me seeing
the world and its problems its
possibilities heightened our disbelief
that so many people millions 660 million
in fact can’t get a safe clean drink of
water or a clean private place to go to
the bathroom there are more people with
a cell phone than access to a toilet on
our planet and this heightened our
determination to do something about it
now you see some tough things out there
but you also see life-changing joy and
it all changes you
there was a refugee crisis back in oh
nine that I read about in this amazing
article in The New York Times people
were streaming across the border of
Zimbabwe to a little little town in
northern South Africa called Messina
well I was working in South Africa at
the time so I went up to Messina to see
for myself what was going on I spent a
day speaking with women who had made
this perilous journey across the Limpopo
River dodging bandits on one side
crocodiles in the river bandits on the
other every woman that I spoke to that
day had been raped every single one on
one side of the river or both and at the
end of my time there I met a woman who
was so positive she was so joyful she
had just been given her papers so she’d
been granted political asylum in South
Africa and in the midst of this joyful
conversation I mustered up my courage
and I said ma’am do you mind my asking
were you assaulted on your journey to
South Africa and she replied still
smiling oh yes I was raped but I have my
papers now and those bastards didn’t get
my dignity
human beings will take your breath away
they will teach you so much
but you have to engage I only had that
experience because I went there myself
it was difficult in many ways but of
course that’s the point there is a lot
of trouble out there MIT but there’s a
lot of beauty too and I hope you see
both but again the point is not to
become some kind of well-rounded
high-minded voyeur the point is to
eliminate your blind spots the things
that keep us from grasping the bigger
picture and look even though I grew up
in this neighborhood in this incredible
multicultural neighborhood that was a
little rough at that time I find myself
here before you as a middle-aged
American white male movie star I don’t
have a clue where my blind spots begin
and end but looking at the world as it
is and engaging with it is the first
step towards identifying our blind spots
and that’s when we can really start to
understand ourselves better and begin to
solve some problems and with that as
your goal there’s a few more things I
hope you’ll keep in mind first you’re
gonna fail sometimes and that’s a good
thing for all the amazing successes I’ve
been lucky to share and few things have
shaped me more than the auditions that
Ben and I used to go on as young actors
where we’d get on a bus we show up in
New York we’d wait our turn we’d cry our
hearts out for a scene and then be told
okay thanks meaning game over we used to
call it being okay thanks to and those
experiences became our armor all right
now you’re thinking great
thanks Matt failure is good and thanks a
ton tell me something I didn’t hear at
my high school graduation to which I say
okay I will you know the real danger for
MIT graduates it’s not getting okay
thanks to the real danger is all that
smoke that’s been blown up your
graduation gowns about how freakin smart
you are well you are that smart but
don’t believe the hype that’s thrown at
you you don’t have all the answers and
you shouldn’t and that’s fine you’re
going to have your share of bad ideas
for one hour for me one was playing a
character named Edgar
wacker I wish I could tell you I’m
making that up that’s but as the great
philosopher Benjamin Affleck once said
judge me by how good my good ideas are
not how bad my bad ideas are you’ve got
a suit up in your armor you’ve got to
get ready to sound like a total fool not
having an answer isn’t embarrassing it’s
an opportunity don’t be afraid to ask
questions I know so much less the second
time I’m fake graduating than the first
time the second thing I want to leave
you with is you got to keep listening
the world wants to hear your ideas good
and bad but today is not the day you
switch from receive to transmit once you
do that your education is over and your
education should never be over even
outside of your work there are always
ways to keep challenging yourself listen
to online lectures I just took a retook
a philosophy course that I took at
Harvard when I was 19 you go to MIT
OpenCourseWare go to wait but why calm
go to ted.com I’m told there’s even a
Trump University I have no earthly idea
what they teach there but whatever you
do just keep listening even to people
you don’t agree with at all
I love what President Obama said at
Howard University’s commencement last
month he said democracy requires
compromise even when you are 100 percent
right I heard that and thought here is a
man who has been happily married for a
long time
not that the first lady has ever been
wrong about anything just like my wife
never wrong not even when she decided
last month that in a family with four
kids what was missing in our lives was a
third rescue dog that was an outstanding
decision honey and I love you the third
and last thought I want to leave you
with is that not every problem has a
high-tech solution now if anybody has
the right to think we can pretty much
tech support the world’s problems into
submission its you think of the
innovations that got their start at MIT
or by MIT alums the world wide web
nuclear fission
condensed soup that’s true you should be
very proud of that but the truth is we
can’t science the you-know-what out of
every problem there is not always an app
for that
I mean take water again as an example
people are always looking at some quite
scientific quick fix for the problem of
dirty and disease ridden water a pill
you put in a glass of filter etc but
there’s no magic bullet the problems
just too complex yes there is definitely
absolutely a role for science there’s
incredible advances being made in clean
water technology companies and
universities are getting in on the game
and I’m glad to know that professors
like Susan Mercat at D lab are focusing
on water and sanitation but as I’m sure
she’d agree science alone can’t solve
this problem we need to be just as
innovative in public policy just as
innovative in our financial models and
that’s the idea behind approach an
approach we have at water credit at
water.org called water credit it’s based
on Gary’s insight that poor people were
already paying for their water and they
know less than the rest of us want to
participate in their own solutions
so water credit helps connect the poor
with microfinance organizations which
enables them to build water connections
and toilets in their homes and
communities and this approach is really
working helping four million people so
far and it’s only to start our loans are
paying back at 99 percent and above
which is a hell of a better deal in
those bankers I was
talking about earlier gave anybody and I
agree it is still not sexy but it is
without a doubt the coolest thing I have
ever been a part of so thanks so let me
ask you this in closing what are you
going to be a part of what is the
problem that you will try to solve
whatever your answer it is not going to
be easy
sometimes your work will hit a dead end
sometimes your work will be measured in
half steps sometimes your work will make
you wear a white sequined military
uniform and make love to Michael Douglas
alright maybe that’s just my work but
for all of you here your work starts
today and seriously how lucky are you I
mean what are the odds that you are the
ones who are here today in the Earth’s
4.5 billion year run with a hundred
billion people who have lived and died
and the 7 billion of us here now here
you are yes here you are alive at a time
of potential extinction level events a
time when fewer and fewer people can
cause more and more damage a time when
science and technology may not hold all
the answers but are indispensable to any
solution what are the odds that you get
to be you right now the MIT class of
2016 with so much on the line there are
potentially trillions of human beings
who will someday exist or not
whose fate in large part depends on the
choices you make on your ideas on your
grit and persistence and willingness to
engage if this were a movie I was trying
to pitch I’d be laughed out of every
office in Hollywood
Joseph Campbell himself would tell me to
throttle down and lower the stakes but I
can’t because this is a fact this is not
fiction this improbable thing is
actually happening there’s more at stake
today than in any story ever told and
how lucky you are that you’re here and
you’re you
and how lucky we are that you’re here
and you are you so I hope you’ll turn
toward the problem of your choosing
I hope you’ll turn toward the problem of
your choosing I hope you’ll drop
everything and I hope you’ll solve it
this is your life class of 2016 this is
your moment and it is all down to you
ready player one your game begins now
thank you congratulations
[Applause]