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Comment by psv1 | Hacker News Reader

The quality of the guests is amazing but the host is extremely off-putting and difficult to listen to.

I find that Lex often side-steps technical depth and wanders into the philosophical side of things. He has the opportunity to ask diving questions but he simply scratches the surface with nearly every guest. It's not entirely his fault, he's under time constraints but I'd hope for more intellectual stimulation. That said, I do appreciate his efforts and he seems like a genuinely nice fella.

Yeah I have an issue with that as well. He gets some great guests on the show and spends most of the time pushing a philosophical debate about AGI and futurism instead of letting the guests talk about their areas of expertise. I'd even argue that it's dangerous because it might give the casual listener an impression that ML/AI is much further ahead than it really is if all of these top minds are discussing AGI.

I'd much rather hear LeCun, Goodfellow, Schmidhuber and Bengio talk about what they're currently working on and where they think the field will go in the next year or two instead of their wild guesses about AGI. I guess the futurism crowd is much larger audience though.

Well, consider that this podcast series spun out of the AGI class that Lex ran. As such, it's hardly surprising that he puts a touch more focus on the AGI side of things. And for me, I like that. I can find videos of Lecunn, Goodfellow, Schmidhuber, and Bengio talking about the low level technical details of their work. I actually appreciate hearing them talk about AGI, as my personal interests heavily involve thinking about the connection(s) between the currently trendy AI stuff (DL, DRL, GAN's, etc.) and what might eventually become AGI.

Lex here. This is a point I think about a lot. I hear conflicting advice from brilliant folks I really respect. Some say "go deep on the philosophy" and others "go deep on the technical details of the person's expertise." The latter is something that surprised me, and something I'll definitely do more of in the coming months. In general, one of the things the internet pleasantly surprised me with is that people like depth (even those outside the field). I obviously love the details, especially in ML, CS, math, physics, and psych.

Thanks for the kind words. I work hard on this thing, and hopefully will improve with time.

Podcasts aren't great for super technical depth IMO given the lack of graphics much less equations, etc. But also IMO hearing about some of the technical details as opposed to what I might hear on an NPR are useful.

It's a difficult tradeoff I know whether for a podcast or even even for a lecture topic. I went to a couple of your sessions this IAP and I'll admit I found one fantastic (in part because it was directly relevant to some things I'm working on/talking about around AI privacy) and one not so much because I'm more focused on practical applications than the math underpinnings.

I don’t know. He could ask Jeremy Howard about the architecture of fast ai and we’d get some interesting answer that becomes dated and irrelevant very quickly. But when he asks what Jeremy’s favorite programming language is and Jeremy comes back with Microsoft flippin Access, you get a view into Jeremy’s commitment to making software accessible to the masses. Or when Elon pauses like Elon does and asks the AGI what’s outside the simulation, which simulation is he talking about? Is he asking the AI to describe its God or ours?

I don’t know, i really like these forays into the philosophical.

Thank you. Exactly! I ask these questions in hope to inspire the rare gems of brilliance. Sometimes those come from deep technical questions and sometimes from silly philosophical questions. Both have potential. I fail often with striking the right balance, but hopefully less and less over time.

This is too harsh in my opinion, but I agree that he isn't really a good host. I don't find him off-putting at all (actually the opposite, he seems to be a nice guy), but I really dislike the questions he asks.

This clearly is a podcast for quite technical people. His guests most of the time (like, almost always, except the cases he invites somebody because he was on a JRE) are people notable for their technical contributions. They discuss some very technical stuff the guest is known for and is literally the best possible person to teach us about. Instead he skips technical questions almost completely and opts for "what's the meaning of life"?! Come on!

When the discussion happens to be pretty technical (mostly, because the guest himself is more of a no-nonsense type of guy) it sometimes feels like some basic background necessary to understand the further explanation was skipped. I assume that it's my fault, since this is supposed to be common knowledge and host doesn't want to interrupt the guests to clarify such nonsense. And later on I understand, that Lex didn't understand that part either, but didn't make any attempts to clarify. Isn't that the point of an interview?..

I wouldn't want to offend him, but often I think "oh, such a waste!" listening to his podcasts. So much stuff is left unanswered.

So, yeah. Nice guy, but no so good interviewer. And way too romantic.

Thanks for the comment and the kind words about me being nice. I'll try to live up to that.

On the technical depth point, I agree. A lot of folks tell me they love the "meaning of life" questions. I love both the technical and the philosophical. My hope is to more and more try to go deep technically with the ML, CS, math, physics folks on the topic of their expertise, and find productive points of passionate disagreement or insight. This isn't easy, and I fail often, but I'm working hard to improve.

Thank you for your work, I hope I didn't offend you and I really wish you luck at improving (for obvious reasons).

The problem with being way too philosophical is that it restricts discussion to sharing opinions, which is totally ok, but the problem with opinions is that every single person on the planet has an opinion, but it's way more rare thing to have some knowledge. So, it may be really interesting to hear somebody's opinion about something, but as far as learning goes, I don't really gain anything from them: the more abstract and complicated the question, the less difference from asking a random person on the street. But when you have somebody in front of you, who has some knowledge that your audience (or you) doesn't have (be it technical, or an experience of making a wildly successful infotainment youtube channel, or anything else), you can learn so much more from every single conversation.

If you want to get into philosophical questions you should get some actual philosophers on the show because right now it seems like most of your guests are just making up answers to your questions on the spot and it's not very insightful. At the very least keep the questions more open ended, ask them what are the biggest road blocks to AGI and how do we get over them, or if they have some contrarian opinions about AGI.

Joe Rogan got so popular because he lets his guests drive the conversation and allows them to talk about themselves and whatever it is that they're interested in. He seems to really follow Dale Carnegie's advice from How to Win Friends and Influence People (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...).

Joe Rogan is not a good example, since is unable to discuss complicated stuff (did you see the one with Bostrom? it was painful) and here guests are valuable for their technical knowledge. Do you want for Lex to sit there half-stoned and ask every guest if he tried DMT?

People watch JRE, because it's fun and he has a lot of very influential people as guests nowadays. It doesn't mean that more interviewers should be like him, God forbid...

I'm not sure why is it so. But I love listening to Lex. Unlike many podcast hosts, the way he lets his guests talk is amazing. His questions are well-crafted. His voice is definitely soothing to listen over a long commute!

Thank you. I try my best to ask good questions and then shut up ;-)

It's obvious how much thought you've put into your first powerful question with each guest, and at least this listener greatly appreciates your tone and the philosophical elements of your podcast. Please keep it up. You've got one of the most interesting podcasts going right now; right up there with Pivot, Rogan and The Daily.

Interesting, I find Lex to be one of the best podcast hosts I've listened to. I like his mix of philosophical and technical conversation. Most of his guests seem to genuinely enjoy and engage in the conversation.

Thank you for the kind words. Some people love the philosophy, some the technical details. I try to mix it up, and have fun with it. But it's good to know that people have more patience for technical depth than I realized. So I'll try to do more of it in the future.

Those are very strong words. Why?

The deadpan delivery and lack of personality, the arrogant attitude, the poor quality of the questions that he asks, the fact that he reads questions from a sheet in front of him instead of listening to his guests and having a real conversation with them, the way in which he comes across as disingenuous in most interactions... I could go on (and I know that a lot of this is subjective).

Lex here. I hear you. I'm working hard to improve. The parts about arrogance and disingenuousness I hope are not true, but I appreciate comments like this because they help me reflect on it, and see that there might be truth to it. Your words hurt but in the end are a gift, so thank you. I'll do my best to improve.

You should probably add that you're Lex in your HN profile.

I just did. I'm more of a lurker on HN, but might as well be open. I get criticism sometimes, but I it's probably good to just take it, accept it, and grow from it.

I wondered who'd call themselves AlanTuring on HN :-)

I think you come across very genuine, not arrogant at all. And it shows that you do your best to reflect, don't worry about that. However, while the philosopher (and sensationalist) in me want to disagree: yes, be more technical! You have a unique audience and guests to cater to, I can't imagine the pressure.

That being said, it's your podcast, and it wouldn't be where it's at if it wasn't for your character and honset curiosity, and its appreciated for exactly what it is. Cheers!

The deadpan delivery and lack of personality, the arrogant attitude,

Interesting. I don't see much in the way of arrogance when I watch these. What you call "deadpan delivery and lack of personality" I attribute to his being Russian, and just having a somewhat stereotypically Russian style of delivery.

Lex here. Yep. Russian. Underneath the cold stare and the suit is possibly some personality and a bit of humor. Then again it's like past or present life on Mars. Many astrobiologists believe it was at least once there, but no proof has been found yet.

Underneath the cold stare and the suit is possibly some personality and a bit of humor.

I have a close friend who is Russian, and I've found that, at least in his case, there definitely is a sense of humor there, despite the stereotypes. I just find his Russian humor to be very subtle and even after all these years I don't always pick up on when he's joking and when he isn't. From watching your interviews, I get a very similar vibe. I suspect you have a fine sense of humor, but that not all Americans will appreciate or recognize it easily.

How can you say he has both a lack of personality and an arrogant attitude?

I don't know how you could possibly listen to his interview with George Hotz (one of my favourites) and say that he has no personality.

I think you have assumed the worst, that his entire personality is an act, and this has coloured your view of everything else. Once you realize that he's being sincere, I think you will find it much more enjoyable.

What's wrong with using strong words?

For me it's the questions. He gets these incredible guests with deep understanding of their respective fields and yet they keep being asked nonsensical question they can't possible give a meaningful answer to.

For example almost every guest some variation of "Do you think one day we'll have superhuman AI?" Then the guest is struggling to come up with some platitude, because there is nothing else to say. It's a waste of time.

He is self-aware too, he sometimes apologizes for asking, yet he keeps doing it anyway.

Yeah, in the interview with Kahneman he doesn't even really get into any of his work in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, instead he wastes half the show on hypotheticals about AGI.

We're as close to AGI today as we were 10-30 years ago, as in really far away. There's nothing that any of his guests can add to that debate that hasn't been covered in countless scifi novels. I don't care what Vsauce or Bjarne Stroustrup have to say about it.

To each their own. I enjoy observing brilliant people a bit out of their element.

There's plenty material available from/about Lex's guests' work; why not ask them to speculate about superhuman AI or whatever?

It's not a problem in of itself. I think the main issue is these are questions frequently asked by other podcast hosts already, and the people here are hoping for something more in-depth on topics the guests are more qualified to discuss.

To be fair though, it's quite clear that AGI is the intended overarching theme of the podcast. I'd argue that regardless of how any individual interview goes, Lex is creating incredible value by getting all of these top-notch thinkers to join a shared long-term conversation on what this technology means to us all.

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