Remarks by 2025 Academic Convocation keynote speaker Astro Teller

Astro Teller, a visionary scientist, prolific inventor, celebrated author, esteemed educator, influential business leader, and trailblazing entrepreneur, addressed the crowd at the Gordon Field House during RIT's annual Academic Convocation ceremony on May 9. The full text of his speech is below:

You made it, graduates!  You finished the tutorial level!  You know how to work the controls.  The game of life doesn’t come with a clear mission so you’re in explore mode now.  Or survival mode depending on how you’re feeling.  

I get that the world may not feel like your oyster.  And I’m not going to tell you that everything is going to be okay. But I am going to get specific about the benefits of approaching life with optimism, excitement, humility, and curiosity.  Not because things can’t go wrong but because the rest of your life - this thing you’re about to go make - is the ultimate act of creation.  And the mindset you bring to that creation process will determine the journey you create and how you experience that journey. Getting your mindset right is the hardest and most rewarding thing you will ever do, and it takes a lifetime to get right.

The only thing on the door of my office is a poster of the tarot card of The Fool. I don't believe tarot cards are magic. But as the Captain of Moonshots, my job is to teach people how to start new, audacious journeys. And the best metaphor I know for the creation journey is The Fool. In the card, The Fool is setting out on an adventure, looking up as he steps off of a literal cliff into the figurative unknown.  With almost no belongings, no protection, no idea where the journey will take him. Seeing the unknowns not as something to be avoided or controlled but as itself the source of the magic to be found. The essence of The Fool is potential. Just like each of you in this moment.

The Fool is always in the beginner's mind—an attitude of openness, non-judgement, and lack of preconceptions. Knowing the “right way” to do things is helpful, but it is also a mental prison. When you’re brainstorming, for example, the beginner’s mindset is what unlocks creativity. But the gravitational pull of normalcy and seriousness is profoundly strong and makes maintaining this mindset harder as we age. I can’t access my beginner’s mind if I’m worried what other people think of me. Any fear of looking Foolish would block my creativity. So, to keep my creativity high, I make a point of wearing something every single day that is silly. Usually, it is both my socks and my underwear. No one can see them and of course my underwear doesn’t make me a great brainstormer. But having a daily reminder to stay open, curious, lighthearted, and silly in my approach to even serious things keeps my beginner’s mind active and that does show up in how I brainstorm. If you want to stave off the disease of serious normalcy in your life, if you want to keep The Fool’s beginner’s mind, I challenge you to pick some lighthearted daily habit that explicitly reminds you not to worry about seeming Foolish.  Edison, Ford, the Wright brothers—seeming Foolish is good company to keep!

Learning to embrace being The Fool is not all-or-nothing.  You can ramp into it, starting with smaller bites if that helps you get started. Your annoying classmate who asked a lot of “stupid” questions—they might just have been strengthening their understanding of the fundamentals and not worried about how it sounded when they ask. Being The Fool in a smaller way at first.

Here’s another way to embody the Fool. That podium distances the speaker from the audience.  It sends a physical signal that there is a wall between speaker and audience and signals that the speaker is more important than the audience.  The Fool wouldn’t stand behind a podium. It feels less exposed back there but controlling the downside of any situation usually comes at the cost of reducing its upside potential. Which is why I make a point not to give talks behind podiums. I challenge you to do something similar for the rest of your lives.  Pick a habit that regularly removes protective barriers between you and the world. Standing out here feels more exposed—connecting us that little bit more.

Working to be The Fool doesn’t mean “be stupid.” The Fool keeps the energy and openness of youth even while building wisdom. The court jester, often called the fool, was the one person in court who spoke the truth - and got away with it.  Wouldn’t that be something to live your life where instead of drowning in office politics, you could speak the truth? The Fool isn’t unprotected—he has made armor from his vulnerability and forged a tool from the truth.  I challenge you to find your own way to make your vulnerability feel protective and the truth a better tool for you than conformity.

I’m not suggesting you can’t lose or that everything will always go your way. If I gave you a choice between choice A, $100, or choice B, a 10% chance at getting $10,000, you’d all choose choice B.  Thanks to RIT you all can calculate expected utility. That’s the secret of the happy confidence of The Fool - not confidence that everything will go perfectly, but confidence that there is often a big positive arbitrage in choosing the unknown.  I challenge you to judge every unknown for its expected utility, not its risk, and take as many high expected utility adventures as you can find, no matter how risky they are.  You’re likely to have lower payoffs in the short run and much better payoffs in the long run if you play things that way. And this isn’t just payoffs for you personally. If you want to help the world be meaningfully better and not just more-of-the-same, you’ll need to take these same kinds of uncomfortable bets.

When I was around your age, I had an epiphany. I was feeling crushed by the weight of expectation on what I should accomplish. That expectation (inherited from my extended family) made the future seem like an impossible test where anything below an A+ was a failure.  As a result, I was dreading the future. So I made a deal with myself. I would stop chasing outcomes. In exchange, I committed that I would approach each day with passion, sincerity, humility, and curiosity. That I would judge myself on how much I was learning and improving (which I can control), not how much I was achieving (which I have much less control over).  That made the future seem brighter and easier.  I’ve had great success in life and while much of it was luck, it happened because of my learning focus, not despite it. When the Fool sets out on his journey, since he doesn't even know where he is going, the Fool holds a high curiosity and learning bar, not a high achievement bar. I challenge you to let go of how much achievement is good enough and try holding yourself to a high learning and curiosity bar instead.

A study on luck asked participants to categorize themselves as either lucky or unlucky and then read a facsimile newspaper with the assignment to count the number of articles about England. Into this fake newspaper the researchers had put a quarter page ad that said in huge font “Tell the researcher you saw this and get $100.” Every participant got the same fake newspaper. Most participants who had described themselves as lucky saw this ad and collected $100. Many fewer of the “unlucky” ones reported seeing the ad. A lot of what makes luck is being open to serendipity—the people who described themselves as lucky tended to look at the not-task-relevant parts of the newspaper and saw the $100 offer. The Fool loves side quests and often goes looking for them. I challenge you to push down your focus and see how high you can turn up your curiosity. Yes, you have to file your taxes on time. But don’t let that become an excuse to be largely in focused goal-chasing mode. You’ll get more in life and have more fun getting it if you’re open to side quests. And you’ll find and take more side quests and get more out of them if you surround yourself with friends and mentors who encourage you to color outside the lines.

Yoda's advice “Do. Or Do Not. There is no try” often lands as an indictment of trying that flies in the face of The Fool stepping-out-into-the-unknown. But Yoda understands that life is almost all try with a light sprinkling of got-it-done and his coaching was the Jedi equivalent of, as they say in martial arts, punch-through-the-board. If you go into any adventure or endeavor flinching, it will not go your way. You have to lean into each adventure and endeavor like you’ll succeed even while having the humility to know that most adventures won’t work out as planned. I see that in The Fool’s jaunty step off the cliff. It is hard to do but I challenge you to lean into each adventure in your life as though it will succeed.

Finally, when the Fool steps off the cliff, that’s not blindness or negligence. The Fool sees every challenge as an opportunity. A challenge can feel like a burden.  Something you might resent. An opportunity is a gift. Something to be grateful for. The Fool’s constant gratitude allows every journey to feel like an opportunity rather than a challenge. Feeling grateful profoundly changes how we experience our lives. I wear something around my neck to remind me every day to practice gratefulness, not in denial of the hard things about life but even gratefulness for those hard things. I challenge you to find a daily reminder to be grateful, seeing obstacles as adventures.

Don’t just go live your life. Go create it. And being Foolish is core to the act of creation. The need to not look foolish is a burden none of us carries when we’re five, is a burden all of us carry as we graduate from college, and we unlock freedom, happiness, and success as we learn to put that burden down again. I wish you all amazing, surprising, delightful adventures as you head out from Brick City today and I strongly encourage you to pick a few daily reminders that the more expert you are, the more precious being The Fool becomes.

Good luck and congratulations again, graduating class of 2025!