Sexiest Geeks Alive

I first met Patri Friedman in person in 2002 when he was visiting the East Coast and he came to crash at my apartment in NYC for a few days.

What had drawn us together online was our mutual interest in the possibilities of colonizing the oceans of earth. We both believed that while outer space might be the “final frontier” that the oceans could well be the next frontier. We also shared a feeling that a frontier was something that was currently missing from the world, that the existence of a frontier had been very useful to human progress in that past, and that opening a new frontier for people to explore would be very beneficial to the future progress of humankind.

During his visit we talked almost non-stop during our waking hours. His infectious laughter, and boundless enthusiasm were quite contagious, and the place felt emptier when he was gone. Although he did leave something of himself behind - he had dyed his hair blue shortly before his visit, and when he was gone I noticed a blue smudge on a wall he had leaned his back against for many hours while typing on his laptop. I left it there to remember him by for just as long as my wife would let me keep it…

So what makes Patri one of the Sexiest Geeks Alive?

Its not just his occasional purple mohawk, sometimes stylish goatee, or muscular physique (see pictures), nor even just his brilliant mind. Patri even comes from a line of great thinkers, being the grandson of Milton Friedman, and the son of David Friedman. But his good breeding is not his sexiest quality either.

What makes Patri one of the Sexiest geeks alive is his ability to ignore “common wisdom” in the pursuit of a good idea, and even overcome the burden of “common wisdom” in others.

New ideas can not happen without someone who is not just brilliant, but also strange enough to either lack, or to be able to ignore, that part of the mind that acts as a governor concerning what is considered normal by others. The sense of what is normal is what defends old ideas from new ones, and it is only by overcoming this that new ideas can evolve. People who can not overcome their inhibitions about not being “normal” are not capable of having great ideas, or if they do have them, they are incapable of acting on them. They are too busy worrying about what their neighbors will think to ever be great.

In order to have new ideas, and act on them, one has to be something of a freak, and in order to produce good ideas, one has to have a logical mind. And that is just what Patri is; he is a very logical freak. Patri can follow a chain of logic beyond the point where most people stop because it is drifting into an area that seems strange. He is not only capable of acting on strange but logical ideas, he can also use his enthusiasm for such ideas to inspire others - to overcome their inhibitions about what is normal and make them see what might be better.

Patri’s current project, The Seasteading Institute, is a good example of this.

Patri has taken the ideas that he and I (and many others) have discussed concerning colonizing the oceans, and he has built a plan of reasonable sized steps to make this happen. He has created a non-profit institute to pursue these goals, and has even raised enough money to get started.

Patri is capable of thinking that the world can be a better place, coming up with a logical plan to make it happen, and convincing other people to help make his dream a reality.

And that is what makes Patri Friedman one of the Sexiest Geeks Alive.