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Comment by criticaltinker | Hacker News Reader

For others wondering who Lex Fridman is:

> Lex Fridman is a computer scientist and AI researcher at MIT, podcaster, and online public personality. His topics of research include artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction and machine learning at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). [1][2][3]

Can anyone provide a summary of the discussion with Joe Rogan?

[1] https://wikitia.com/wiki/Lex_Fridman

[2] https://lexfridman.com/

[3] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wZH_N7cAAAAJ

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This description of Lex Fridman's research is generous. If you listen to his own podcast (previously called the Artificial Intelligence podcast, now the Lex Fridman Podcast), you'll find that he has a knack for missing the deeper insights of guests discussing those very fields of research.

I've read that on his subreddit you get banned if you mention that he got his PhD from Drexel.

His main contribution at MIT was dodgy studies that shill for Tesla... https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27359/mit-study-showing-high-f...

Why though? Drexel's a pretty good school IMO

It's unfortunate that as he's become more popular his interviews have become increasingly self-indulgent and vapid.

Maybe it's to appeal to a wider audience, however I think more likely it's just a negative consequence of fame. With a lack of honest feedback you start to buy into your own bullshit, thinking that every personal idea you have is some profound philosophical insight, rather than the type of affected navel-gazing done by people who fancy themselves public intellectuals.

Neil degrasse Tyson comes to mind.

I could never make it through any of the podcasts he’s been on because of this. It’s always weird hearing him brought up and described as a genius. He isn’t dumb, but genius is a huge stretch IMO.

This is a pretty light on math/AI podcast in the series of podcasts between Rogan and Fridman. Some small talk about Boston Dynamics and Elon Musk, but more discussion surrounding Renzo Gracie and Wim Hof (sp?), if I'm recalling correctly.

It was not my favorite discussion between the two, but they did touch on the Russian education system, which was kind of interesting. I enjoy Rogan when he has scientists and comedians on as he usually lets them talk on the subjects they are interested in, but Lex Fridman seemed to want to discuss the Topics that Rogan was interested in, which was a little disappointing.

Thanks. I'm sure this is worth listening to, but it's a much larger investment in time than reading over a transcript.

Having tried the automated transcription services on my own podcast, I know that they suck. You have to pay someone to at least fix them up, if not just transcribe the whole thing from scratch. So I'm not blaming anyone for not having a transcript immediately.

Hey @AlbertCory,

How would having a transcript save you time? Wouldn't it take more or less the same amount of time (+/- 25%) to read through the transcript? Would you rather CTRL+F for a few terms? Or just quickly glance through it?

Asking, because I'm interested in the podcast space overall.

Thanks.

You would be surprised, but reading a transcript is much faster than listening, even on speedup (1.25x, 1.5x, )

You can also quickly scan ahead, or reread a sentence. Navigating audio is harder.

As the sibling says: I can skim over the boring, boilerplate stuff ("thanks for having me") much faster in a transcript.

Since I can see the whole thing, it's much easier to skip down to the more interesting stuff, or realize that there isn't any.

A typical podcast is 150 to 200 words per minute, while many on hacker news read at north of 600 words per minute.

I'm not the original poster, but I have bad hearing and exclusively read transcripts over listening to podcasts - can't tell you how many times I've been grateful when podcasters provide even a partial list of transcripts for episodes. Speed-reading is also a lot faster overall versus simple listening.

This lack of transcripts really surprises and frustrates me. Wasnt Berkeley forced to take down its videos unless they added captioning? I guess it’s because they’re taxpayer funded right? But Twitter was also getting flack for introducing video without the accessibility of captions, but for a company that can afford $100 million to buy one podcast, why can’t they be compelled to provide transcripts?

The first half is like:

Lex: vaccines are good

Rogan: maybe, but they are for weak unhealthy people. I'm healthy and fit. Also, long term side-effects

Lex: but we don't know the long-term side effects of covid either

Rogan: yeah. I'll just take it like a man. Also, why nobody speaks about vitamins, exercise, why they only speak about vaccines

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