Mark Zuckerberg on the Lex Fridman Podcast [video] | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg on the Lex Fridman Podcast [video]

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163 pointssagark1992169 comments

I laughed when Lex's first move was to ask Mark to complete a hardcopy CAPTCHA ("Please circle all the traffic lights"). Kudos to Mark for playing along.

Having not had an opportunity to hear Mark Zuckerberg speak in a (fairly) candid manner before now, I appreciate Lex's effort to get this out there.

"Very impressive performance. Now we can initiate the interview procedure."

Having finally watched the whole thing, just writing some thoughts below...for those who maybe didn't or can't watch.

1 - Zuck really, really is all in on the metaverse thing. I was never sure if it was his idea, or he sees a trend, etc, but now I'm convinced it's all his idea. I find it odd but interesting someone with essentially unlimited real life resources seeks such escape.

1.5 - I think he also overestimates its success. He pretty much sees everyone using it for work, gaming, friend interactions, etc. I just can't see it being so ubiquitous. Also saying people will spend as much on virtual clothes as real clothes feels offbase, but maybe I'm wrong.

2 - I was a little frustrated because he seemed so... unemotional. Being asked about bullying, suicides... most things that would make people stop, think, or even choke up...Zuck just started into his spiels never really answering the questions well. Unsure if it's perhaps just because he's been asked so many times he has it loaded. Seems very inauthentic.

3 - The negative sum thing was interesting. He basically said any choice they make lowers people's opinions on FB, because the side that agrees just thinks 'about time' or 'at least they didn't screw this one up', whereas the side that disagrees gets angry. May sound basic to some, but I never really considered it before.

4 - It was nice to see Zuck -finally- show emotion toward the end, talking about family time and death. A side of him I don't think many people have ever seen. For the first time, he actually looked pensive and even perhaps distraught before answering. Though I did kinda laugh when he said it's weird he used to care about his company most before he had a family, but now it's probably his family. Something so obvious being presented as an aha moment felt...weird.

> I think he also overestimates its success. He pretty much sees everyone using it for work, gaming, friend interactions, etc. I just can't see it being so ubiquitous.

“There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” - Steve Ballmer 2007 [1]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2007/04/ballm...

I think it's perhaps possible that Ballmer, as CEO of a major competitor, was not engaging in dispassionate analysis and in fact there was a non-zero chance that the iPhone would gain significant market share.

I think it’s usually better to accept someone’s words at face value than to attempt to infer deeper meaning. Ballmer has gone on to say that was one of his biggest mistakes and history agrees.

Regardless, there’s many examples of people throughout history finding no value in seemingly pointless technologies only to be proven wrong so I believe the point the quote still stands. I suppose I could always just link to the infamous Dropbox post here instead…

I agree in general, but in the case of CEOs giving public remarks it's safe to assume they are talking their book. Regardless, I don't see it as particularly relevant that people have been pessimistic about technologies that turned out quite successful. For every instance of "they said revolutionary product X was crazy but it turned out to be wildly successful" there are probably a 1000 instances of "they thought revolutionary product X was crazy and it failed miserably and faded into irrelevance." In other words, you have to actually articulate a reason why you think VR will be as successful as Meta claims it will be rather than make a "they laughed at Einstein/Semmelweis/etc too" argument. And with respect to VR I just don't see it. I've played games on the Occulus and they are pretty fun but I just don't see what the value proposition of VR is beyond gaming. And VR gaming can still be a huge industry but I just don't see it being anything more than that. Whereas I think the value proposition of smartphones was fairly obvious. It of course wasn't clear than any particular phone (like the original iPhone, perhaps especially the original iPhone given that it only worked for one carrier at the time) would break through. So it could have been that Ballmer was completely correct if things had turned out slightly differently. But some smartphone would have broken through. I don't think VR is the same. It's not just that there is uncertainty over which particular product will take off, but uncertainty about how big the eventual market for VR products and services will be in total.

> Whereas I think the value proposition of smartphones was fairly obvious.

As someone who was in the industry at the time, I think you're looking with hindsight goggles on.

In the initial age of smartphones we had Blackberries (email/productivity devices) for business people, then a hodge podge of HTC Windows devices, the Hiptop, etc. There was no obvious path to ubiquity, and they were made for business men or teenagers.

Nothing at that stage indicated either the likelihood of every person in a western country carrying one, common services and businesses switching exclusively to them, the massive quantities of time spent on them or them becoming our primary computing devives.

Fast forwarding 15 years - yes, the value proposition is obvious. However it seems we're in a similar situation with a hand wavey "VR is just for gamers". Time will tell.

Fair enough. I may just be indexing too much on my own experience. It certainly seemed obvious to me in the mid-2000s that ubiquitous computing would be hugely valuable but I was also a nerd into that sort of thing so maybe I shouldn't generalize from that.

> Also saying people will spend as much on virtual clothes as real clothes feels offbase, but maybe I'm wrong. As a gamedev I can absolutely believe this. You don't have to spend much time googling the breakdown of consumer spend in the games industry to see that this is absolutely, sadly, true. But they don't need to spend all their time in those metaverse to do that.

Isn't the cost different? Asking in earnest, it's been years since I've been big into gaming. I remember xbox avatars charging a couple dollars for an outfit, whereas a typical casual outfit for me would be 50 to 70 dollars

Dota2 cosmetics can cost much more than that figure, depending on if you buy it outright or grind for it.

https://win.gg/news/how-much-does-the-drow-ranger-arcana-rea...

Oh, and most of the additional battlepass rewards are just temporary.

I don't know how true this is, but read that Rogue (StarCraft 2 player), wins tournaments for the prize money.. so he can spend it in MapleStory. And that he doesn't practice as much as other pros. Mind-boggling if true, since he's in the world champion semi-finals[0] being played tomorrow for his 2nd favourite game.

[0] https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/IEM_Katowice/2022#Playoffs...

Top end Skins in Fortnite cost ~$20 each. However, on the after market they go for many $100’s.

The difference is accessibility and optionality in the digital world.

I could absolutely see people spend more on digital goods than physical goods.

> 1 - Zuck really, really is all in on the metaverse thing. I was never sure if it was his idea, or he sees a trend, etc, but now I'm convinced it's all his idea.

It's not just zuck. Microsoft, google, apple, etc are all focused on it. Nadella and others have called it the next internet. So the entire tech industry is betting big on it. Microsoft just spend billions of Activision in preparation for the metaverse.

https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud/satya-nadella-the-meta...

And it's not all his idea. A company the size of facebook doesn't work that way. He has final say, but he has a team working for him. And as I stated, it's an industry-wide thing. Not just a facebook or zuckerburg thing. Whether it amounts to much, we'll just have to wait and see. But my money is on zuckerburg, nadella, cook, etc.

> 1.5 - I think he also overestimates its success. He pretty much sees everyone using it for work, gaming, friend interactions, etc. I just can't see it being so ubiquitous.

People said the same thing about social media and smartphones.

> 2 - I was a little frustrated because he seemed so... unemotional. Being asked about bullying, suicides... most things that would make people stop, think, or even choke up...

No it wouldn't. People are able to talk about things without getting emotional. It's the basis of all rational debate/discourse. Are you right now crying uncontrollably because we are talking about bullying, suicides, etc? Of course not. The only reason he'd do it is if his PR team said fake tears work well on the braindead public. It's why so many in media ( from Rachel Maddow to Stephen Colbert ) were crying on-air. An easy way to manipulated the masses that waste their lives watching them.

> Are you right now crying uncontrollably because we are talking about bullying, suicides, etc.

Well, no.

But if I had created a product and learned it was being used to torment children until they killed themselves, then yes, I absolutely would feel gutted and likely cry. Perhaps I'm too empathetic to be a CEO, which is fitting I guess - I'll never be one.

> But if I had created a product and learned it was being used to torment children until they killed themselves, then yes, I absolutely would feel gutted and likely cry.

Using that logic, everyone who created anything would be crying all day. Is it just facebook that's the problem? What about smartphones? What about the creators of Netscape? What about tim berners-lee. Facebook is a product used by billions of people. What do you want? Is it just facebook or the internet?

> Perhaps I'm too empathetic to be a CEO, which is fitting I guess - I'll never be one.

For how empathetic you are, you don't seem to feel any empathy for zuckerburg.

Nice comments and summary. I almost watched the whole thing, skipped 20 minutes a half hour in. The only product that Facebook/Meta has that I really like is the Oculus technology. I love the Oculus and some of the content. I do wish them luck with the metaverse.

I think VR is a healthy activity, in small doses. I can get up from my desk feeling tired, and 5 minutes playing ping pong against a robot is refreshing, similar in effect to walking outside for 5 minutes.

I think using VR as a productivity tool for such as software development, shared white-boarding, etc. is a long way off.

I can see the use cases for VR, and I'm interested in the hardware. The circle I can't square is the idea that people love consumerism so much, they just want to transfer the experience into a Facebook marketplace for cosmetic items in some kind of VR walled garden. This is the part that I find uncomfortable and dystopian.

I'd much rather have standalone games of high quality, and hardware capable enough for good desktop computing use cases as an alternative to a monitor.

I absolutely agree. Tech should be a small part of life (outside of work, of course).

I can see value in the future of VR/AR but I am curious about a few things.

- Will there be a balance of open source self hosted VR/AR solutions or will Meta dominate all of this? Along that line do any of the hardware developers provide unrestricted open source SDK's that are easy for developers to integrate into their software?

- Will everyone have to be tied into Meta and tracked around everything they do and Meta tracking everything that everyone looks at with transcripts of every conversation everyone has?

- How will companies incentivize all people to adopt this? Will this be dominated by introverts? Will I see the same variety of personality types in VR that I see in real life? I ask because VRChat is dominated by a specific sub-set of personality types or at least that was my experience.

Kent Bye and others are doing great work around building an XR Ethics framework [1]

XR will soon not only include eye tracking, but full brain computer interfaces with very rich data on how you are reacting to stimuli. [2]

If you think only gamers will strap a box to their head, XR includes augmented reality such as more socially acceptable lightweight glasses. Facebook is working with Ray Ban sunglasses to avoid the Google Glass social rejection factor.

Another Facebook / Cambridge Analytica level manipulation of population could be so much more effective and wide spread. It will be very hard for us to detect how our decisions are being influenced. Wild stuff!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrdqp8zHdAU

[2] https://www.roadtovr.com/valve-brain-computer-interfaces-vr-...

> XR will soon not only include eye tracking, but full brain computer interfaces with very rich data on how you are reacting to stimuli. [2]

VR and AR will have eye tracking in the next generation of headsets. However at the moment unless its trained to your eyes, its pretty inaccurate >5degrees off.

Brain computer interfaces, are a way off. Yes there are ecg style hairnets, but we've not managed to generalise that yet. (we know this because Musk has confidently predicted a timeline for his BCI endeavour.)

But that isn't the major risk here.

We know that glasses need to be light, and not look stupid. This means that we need to optimise to the point of insanity how we manage power. This basically means that its impossible to jump out to the cloud and have battery life. The power budget for an all day wearable is something like 2.5wh

So the risk of facebook listening in to all things is pretty small. especially given that they really don't have the compute capacity to manage it.

This leads me to my point, AR will be local only for most things. but it will have things like build in "friend/object finder" and precise always on mm accurate location services. (its the only way to make AR content workable)

The privacy problem comes in when people start to realise that they can make apps for these glasses that access the camera, A network of cameras that have ultra precise global pose (that is lat, lon, height and roll pitch and yaw of the camera) with inbuilt face detection, you'll have a pretty great stalking network.

Now, so far so logical. Where it gets fun is here, if we allow open source, unrestricted access to hardware, it means that people can build and distribute these apps with little friction. Our present society cannot handle this.

I do don't know what the answer is. AR has great potential for helping people. But I suspect its going to be a total shitshow.

Do I think it'll be a shitshow because Facebook make it? no, I think Facebook will have to make the _most_ secure/privacy respecting system and prove it just to be taken seriously. Its the Apple/startup version I worry about. AR and privacy don't really mix. Butu we are going to kid ourselves that this isnt true for many years.

Thanks for the insights. One doesn't need a Matrix style port into the brain.

Valve and OpenBCI have working Index headsets with EEG and bio-feedback data. Reasonable use cases are fine-tuning game play based on the players stress and enjoyment of different experiences. Today you can buy widget [1] that allow you to control objects in VR (if that game has used the SDK) with your mind my focusing attention on them [2].

Cambridge Analytica used just content and click data! (to build the most accurate map of various countries voting populations and identify key cultural fissures to exploit)

[1] https://www.next-mind.com/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMXfyZc_Gvg&t=221s

Just commenting, Valve Index (open) and then something like Simula VR (VR desktop) gives you 360 sphere around you open applications eg. editor/browser.

I feel you about VRChat I felt the same (felt old/out of place). Recently tried Zenith bunch of kids. Nothing wrong with that but yeah.

I personally am avoiding meta because I hate that locked in, it's why I'm trying to get into Linux phones over Android (problems with privacy/built in bloat/adware).

As far as an environment for VR like the meta verse, my opinion I think it's a niche right now, guess depends who's around you/your circles. Maybe it's not as rare. Maybe in the future everyone will have a headset like everyone has a phone.

I'm not super against FB though, I found my family (separated long time ago) through their platform so I am grateful for that.

Wow! He said he's going to interview putin! that made my heart skip.... Fuck zuck, i wanna watch that one.

Yeah, that one might get pushed back a bit...

I'm afraid if Russia lose the war, Putin may not be available.

I like Lex but his awe for Putin turns me off big time, Putin is intelligent (to leverage and maintain power), no doubt, but he’s a thug after all, a thug who became one of the world’s richest men by embezzlement pretty much.

> Putin is intelligent, no doubt

Russia was a super power with some of the best engineers in the world. Today it needs to use war to keep another Slav country on its side. Even the UK keeps the commonwealth in place even with very diverse countries that used to be forced colonies.

To not have a conscience does not make you intelligent. Russia should be economically and socially way more developed that it currently is. To sell gas is not high tech.

If you listen to a lot of his podcasts, this is actually his way of willing the circumstance into being, or that's been my interpretation. He used to talk about it as something he aspires to, but more recently has been referencing as something like an inevitable intersection along his trajectory.

It's easy to poke fun at Mark because he's mega rich and can come off a little stiff, but he's pretty interesting to listen when he's speaking without a script.

Here's Mark when he was 21 giving a lecture at Harvard's CS50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFFs9UgOAlE

It's also possible for be interesting at one point in their life, and as the world around them changes together with their own mind changes, they fall into the category of not being interesting anymore. Or, similarly to many crazy world leaders, they can become "interesting" in the sense of how evil and crazy they sound when they talk about their ideas.

That's a good point, people can definitely become uninteresting. I'd say he's still interesting, but more guarded which is uninteresting... If that makes sense

I like Mark but I don't personally use any Meta products.

Is that because meta products use you?

How so?

(With apologies to Noël Coward) Facebook is for investing in, not being on.

well the problem is not that he is stiff or rich but that he is evil. 'They "trust me". Dumb Fucks.'

Honestly when I hear Zuck speak in interviews, I constantly pick up on the sense that this is someone who wants to be liked by the audience he is engaging with. You can pick up on it in the CS50 lecture (he's kinda trying to sound very anti corporate). You pick up on it in this interview

"They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks" in the context of his age, just sounds like a young adult trying to be edgy in an online chat.

Aren't we all, humans

It sucks that the Lex podcast has maybe the best guests of any podcast out there right now and he's such a terrible interviewer. Seriously, give me this guest list with Rogan on the other side any day of the week.

that's why he gets the best guests. He doesn't make it about him. It's like "here, I'm giving you a platform and I will interject only occasionally. "

That's a part of his facade. He is good at listening, which he has picked up from Rogan

> He is good at listening, which he has picked up from Rogan

How so? I stopped listening to his podcasts because he often does not listen very closely and completely misjudges what a guest says.

Meh. What's Joe Rogan gonna ask somebody like Jim Keller or Yann Lecun? Does he know enough about either of their respective fields to even frame an interesting question beyond "do you smoke weed?" or "Should people get the COVID vaccine?", "who will be the next UFC lightweight champion?", etc.

Don't get me wrong here: I am a huge Rogan fan. And some Fridman guests would, IMO, be great with Rogan as well (Zuck, for example). But a lot of Fridman's guests are into some pretty deep, esoteric, technical domains that I don't think would fit with Rogan, unless he has a lot of technical knowledge/background of which I am unaware.

Lex equally didn't have much to say to Jim Keller. There was a bit of back and forth but it just felt pointless (all programmers should know what a branch predictor is, especially ones about to interview Jim Keller!) Or a bit childish: at one I think Fridman asks him what his greatest achievement is in a slightly corny way, and Keller just remarks that he has children.

Give me Sean Carroll then. Lex spends too much of his interviews talking about himself or his feelings on some matter. Seriously, I couldn’t care less about Lex’s feelings on the subject - what makes Joe and Sean so good is the ability to ask questions, listen, empathize, and contextualize information from the guest. Joe’s worst episodes and the things people hate him for are when he strays from that formula and says something dumb, but he’s world class at interviewing otherwise.

Sean Carroll is my favorite interview podcaster. Maybe it's my physics bias but his guests are often from very different areas and he still finds good questions, keeps a humble attitude of wanting to understand, and doesn't take up too much room. The discussions stay on topic and often go pretty deep.

I enjoy Lex, but I doubt he's going to ask and stick to tough questions (I haven't watched this one yet). Rogan might not ask technical questions, but he's more skilled at probing the topics many have concerns about. Such as "fact checking" and censorship.

Rogan might not ask technical questions, but he's more skilled at probing the topics many have concerns about. Such as "fact checking" and censorship.

Sure, and that's why I said I think Zuck would be a good guest for Rogan. What I'm objecting to is the idea that the entirety of Fridman's guest list would be better interviewed by Rogan. Some, perhaps. All? I am very skeptical of that position. That's all I'm saying.

I listened to Lex and you're right, Zuck was a nice guest for him. He asked somewhat tricky questions and Zuck could give reasonable answers that maybe could have only happened with Lex.

Thats is a bit of a problem though. When Zuck was asked what should be done he easily threw it back at Lex to answer. Lex went onto a meandering non-committal path trying to work out how to not offend and sound smart. Lex is too easy to manipulate.

Lex's main weakness is that he wants Love and is unwilling to prioritize Truth. He is agreeable and young.

I am worried that he'll get his interview with Putin.

Apples and oranges.

I think Lex is a fine interviewer considering his background, and short time podcasting. Can you provide examples of him being a terrible interviewer?

https://youtu.be/lOz3wDhGA3Y

https://www.reddit.com/r/britishcolumbia/comments/sz8acp/t50...

He talks too much about what he thinks about a topic. Listen to literally any episode of the podcast, happens all the time. Worst thing to do as an interviewer.

> Can you provide examples of him being a terrible interviewer?

https://www.youtube.com/c/lexfridman

"What is love?"

He asks the same questions and gets the same answers for half of every interview. People are going to give you a variation of the same answer for 'what is the meaning of life,' and it gets old after a couple interviews. He's also fairly opinionated and repeats the same opinions over and over.

Yeah I used to listen to every episode but now I pretty much have stopped. Same with Rogan. I just keep getting dejavú. Didn’t I hear this exact line of conversation already 5 times? Camus is really cool and Twitter would be better with more love ..

And as others have said he has pet theories or opinions he always has to throw out there and almost never gets a response on. insert rant about aliens - yeah I guess that’s possible(?)

why would anybody like Zuckerberg want to interview with Rogan? Lex is highly educated, well-spoken and knows about interview topics in depth

Elon is richer and more educated than zucker and he still went on the Rogan show. It's the first time I'm hearing about zucker being on another tier of "sophistication" lol

I used to get similarly frustrated at Lex’s interviewing style compared to say, Sean Carol’s (mindscape podcast). I realized that Lex isn’t really doing interviews; he’s having guests on to converse and shoot the shit with. He will regularly talk about his own ideas and bounce them off the guests, which is quite atypical.

However if you think of it as getting to listen to two friends just chatting or having a beer, it can make for interesting content. Shift your mindset and it might be more enjoyable.

Then I’m still frustrated that better interviewers don’t get to talk to these people.

But it would be a totally different conversation. Sean Carrol and Lex have both interviewed Wolfram, same discussion but done in a different way. I quite like that sometimes you get to hear Lex actually work through the implications or understanding of what the interviewee claims, rather than just being a listener.

Sean isn't just a listener. He'll directly challenge his guest (politely of course) on flaws in their arguments.

But in that specific example (Wolfram on both podcasts), Carrol asked questions that clearly demonstrated a deep understanding of not only the subject matter (he is a theoretical physicist comfortable with advanced mathematics after all), but he also probed Wolfram on areas where his theory might be challenged. Lex did more of an 'everyman's' take on that conversation, which is fine, but certainly not at Carrol's level.

I did enjoy both, but mostly because Wolfram did most of the talking. Even with Lex's less-targeted/knowledgeable questions, Wolfram knew how to steer the answer to what he thought the actual question should have been.

I don't quite agree there. Carrol clearly has a deep understanding of physics while Lex doesn't and was able to probe in deeper ways on that front, but the opposite is true when it comes to an understanding of computation.

Lex was very interested in the universal substrate rewrite analogy to a turing machine and all of the implications of that, while Sean kind of glossed over that.

Carrol seems to be the overall more educated of the two, but at the same time has a more sophomoric understanding of the theory of computation.

Come to think of it, overall it seems to be a weak spot amongst well known physicists, Wolfram excepted.

Didn't listen to Lex Friedman's interview with Wolfram but I thought the Mindscape episode with Wolfram was excellent. Sean Carol is obviously deeply knowledgable about the subject at hand and managed to ask interesting, penetrating questions without being adversarial and making Wolfram defensive.

What? Lex is my -favorite- interviewer. People say he's robotic and whatnot, but if you watch his face, eyes, and gestures...you can tell he thinks deeply about every single thing he is about to say. He is, unlike Rogan, generally knowledgeable enough already to make comments or ask questions. And he doesn't try to 'gotcha'. To me it's just watching two incredibly bright people speak casually, which I guess isn't everyone's forte, but is very enjoyable.

Too high of a percentage of Lex’s podcasts are his feelings and when be starts to get ranty. I also hate when Joe does that but it’s WAY less often. Lex needs to learn the shut up and let his amazing guests direct the discussion.

If knowledge is a barrier, then give me Sean Carroll with this guest list.

You might just be watching a little too much Lex... I'd get burnt out on just about anything if I watch enough of it.

Just skip forward when he does that. It's so easy to cut down these 2-3 hour podcasts into smaller episodes that fit your interests.

I always have the sense that Lex thinks himself several tiers more intelligent than he actually is. So most of the interviews I have this cringe facepalm feeling which is distracting. Joe Rogan is super self deprecating which helps counter that feeling.

Thanks for pointing this out as I share the same opinion regarding Lex. For me personally it‘s that his behavior during his podcasts doesn’t match up to the intellectual shallowness of his questions and thinkings which drives me a bit crazy, e.g. a deep concerned look, a long pause and then.. an obvious statement or something along this line

That’s a good description. I feel that I recognize all the times I’m supposed to be impressed by him, but it falls flat every time because he’s either stating the obvious or just wrong.

Yes, I've been somewhat baffled by the suggestion that Lex is some kind of boy genius. I find many of his questions incredibly inane (asking "What is the most beautiful idea in mathematics?" over and over again). I keep watching because the guests are great, but I don't think much of Lex's ability to really engage with their ideas.

Ah I totally agre. “what is love?” “how does math express love?”, “how do we get AI to understand love?”. It’s fucking annoying.

> I always have the sense that Lex thinks himself several tiers more intelligent than he actually is.

Another podcast talker with a bad case of unwarranted self-importance is Sam Harris, sometimes he takes his head out of his ass but only for short periods.

I hate to admit it, but I tend to agree. In my opinion, Lex has actually gotten worse as he has done more interviews. Now, he seems to feel comfortable taking up huge chunks of the conversation with incoherent non-sequiturs. He tends to do better when the topic is math/AI related (due to his knowledge) and does worse the farther the topic is from that narrow focus.

Rogan started off bad, but he became an excellent interviewer up until the last 2 years or so. I listened to a few podcasts of his from pre-2020 recently, and there's a clear difference in quality.

Rogan has annoying quirks, favorite anecdotes, and tangents, but as you said, his core interviewing skills are top-notch. Lex has always been robotic and socially awkward; forcing new questions or topic jumps just as the guest gets into an interesting flow.

Rogan practices his comedic speeches all the time before standup and works as a UFC commentator. You really can't beat him at that game, Lex it seems is not even trying to be good at it, it's too bad but I can't stand to listen to him.

I'm also curious how Lex managed the get the calibre of guests he did right off the bat.

I understand he was some kind of MIT whizkid, but I don't know much about him beyond that.

All his degrees are from Drexel University. He goes to lengths to hide, or at least obfuscate, that fact.

Source: went to school with him.

Then he got a postdoc at MIT.

you don't 'get a postdoc'. It's not a degree. It's a job you get that requires a PhD. It's a form a purgatory until you can get a real academic job.

The goal of a post doc is to continue to do research work where you're the first position on publications to pad your CV to the point where it looks impressive enough when you're out giving job talks for tenure track positions.

If you have a very strong PhD thesis, produced a lot of good work during your PhD and made enough connections, you can skip that step.

and that discredits him somehow?

Well he did stop doing anything that you could classify as research, and decided to become a youtube talk-show host instead.

It's almost as if he was there just long enough to associate his name with the school as an ends to impress dumb people.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=wZH_N7cAAAAJ...

he's had his name on publications over the past few years while still doing the podcast

last position and chi pablum

A postdoc is not a PhD but it can also be competitive in good places. Very hard to skip that step these days unless you're a superstar, even in CS. But it doesn't really matter. Are you trying to discredit him in some way? It's actually even more impressive he got to where he got without a degree from a top school. He needed to work harder than others.

His connections (his dad is a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering) had more to do with that than hard work.

Getting out of purgatory was also competitive.

"Right off the bat"? He started uploading interviews to Youtube 7 years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/c/lexfridman/videos?view=0&sort=da&f...

I guess people like listening to him. Who cares where he went to school.

His father is a first-class scientist with lots of connections, that certainly helped with access (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3rHlt_wAAAAJ&hl=en)

Funny, I think the same of Rogan. Give both their guest lists to Tyler Cowen.

https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1496906468695724036

I’m not sure if he’s extremely naive or completely delusional.

If you are very familiar with his podcasts you know it's the former. Naive genius is kind of his niche

He mentioned in the past several times he had the connections with Putin entourage. In current situation I imagine It will be really hard to pull off but who knows.

Why do you say that? He managed to get Elon Musk and other heavy hitters on before hardly anyone was aware of who Lex was. Whose to say what the limits are.

Why would Putin talk to some random guy in the middle of the Ukraine war?

dude has a wonderful habit of blocking anyone he deems remotely "negative" on Twitter

Very interesting. I've never interacted with him on social media, but have experienced people who were spreading the "we know less than we think and let's be humble" vibe be very quick to block when commenting something not 100% laudatory.

Why wouldn't you? I unfollow every person on Instagram who remotely causes me mild irritation. It ain't worth fuck all. You're doing something wrong if you actively seek out negativity.

He's that manager from The Office, personified.

The middlemen have to be clueless. That's just how it works.

How does he even get all these people to come on his podcast?

Joe Rogan's fame. And Eric Weinstein before Eric went crazy

If you think Eric went crazy, he went crazy a long time before you heard of him. He's been pretty consistent.

This is interesting. There was a time when I became aware of Eric Weinstein via Joe Rogan and Eric seemed to be pointing to things I'd recognized and couldn't name, and other things I hadn't recognized but could see when he pointed them out to me.

It felt enlightening: here's a concealed underlying pattern that I have now unconcealed for you.

Then after that, and after starting his own podcast, and after coming out with his own Theory of Everything ("Geometric Unity"), things shifted: Eric refused to publish a paper or proofs that could be scrutinized, what he did publish was labeled by professionals as "not even wrong" (i.e. not cogent enough to dispute), he insisted he taught himself guitar during lockdown (when he had been playing for years before), etc.

It felt like two different versions of someone: one you could trust was forthright (whether right or wrong about something), and another who would say things he knows aren't true out of ego/vanity or... out of something? But something to benefit Eric, not something to benefit the audience.

This felt like a shift to me.

I always wonder if the Weinstein brothers can even be in the same room. Seems their egos may be too big to be together in an enclosed space.

They did a podcast episode together, which Eric ended up prefacing with context for the audience, since he realized he did a lot of interrupting and, arguably, semi-bullying during the conversation.

But then again they are brothers, and Eric was/is angry about the way he perceives Bret to have been mistreated by Academia. During the episode he encourages Bret to be as outwardly angry and to agree with Eric's conclusions about these systems of control that mistreated Bret.

Thanks for putting it so well. There are certainly some concepts that haven't been talked about in the public discourse and are true, the most important probably being the Russel-conjugation. And he's always been a bit whacky, but that was his thing, that we should be more tolerant towards whacky people and I still think this is true. But at some point Eric went from whacky to crazy and it kind of breaks my heart.

> What is Russell Conjugation?

https://tomdehnel.com/what-is-russell-conjugation/

> Russel used the following examples to describe the phenomenon:

> • I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.

> • I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.

> • I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.

> Russell Conjugations don’t always have to follow the “I, you, they” formula either. In fact, you’re more likely to encounter them in more subtle ways:

> • A politician you support reconsidered the matter in light of new evidence, but the politician you don’t support flip-flopped.

> • You negotiated boldly, but your coworker wasn’t being a team player.

> • Your own child is self-assured, but the neighbor’s son is a brat.

Eric Weinstein has been crazy since day 0. He was better at hiding it years ago (when he started The Portal)

Lex is a good interviewer. I started watching his MIT AI class videos years ago. He had a good skill of inviting interesting people to the classes. He also seems very media savvy. I often don’t have time for complete interviews so I sometimes look out for his shorter clips on YouTube.

He is also one of the most boring interviewers on youtubes, he's great to listen if you have insomnia and want to fall asleep. To be fair Lex deserves some lenience because English isn't his native language, but I'm still surprised that his podcast got so popular that it has.

To me, he does a great job of letting the ideas of the guest be the main focus.

I don't want to hear him tell jokes or try to be a comedian.

He agrees with whatever the guest says, no matter how stupid whatever the guest said is. This makes the interviews unbearably boring to me. The interviewer should challenge the guest, so we can learn something from the interview.

Replying to my own comment:

I just listened to the Zuckerberg interview. It got so much better in the last third when both of them seemed more relaxed. Too bad they didn’t break through to something more like friendship earlier. I have never seen Zuckerberg look so relaxed as in the last 20 minutes.

Low risk (due to him not challenging people in ways that could expose them), and high impact, I'd say.

He is essentially a highbrow fluffer. The weakest kind of "intellectual" interviewer imaginable.

Sometimes it works well (e.g. the Jim Keller eps), often not. I have a feeling this will be one of those times where it doesn't work.

I think he has a very desirable core demographic of young technologists

Mix that with him being popular, well connected, and generally well respected, I can see why big names in tech would be eager to go on his podcast

I think it's because he's genuinely interested in what they have to say, and busy people like Zuckerberg / Musk actually have 2-3 hours of content/ideas they want to get out to the world. They could go on a crappy cable news show for 5 minutes, but they'd rather talk about it for 3 hours in depth.

BTW I believe Joe Rogan popularized this format (with some influence from Howard Stern and others, yes Howard Stern changed). For example, Rogan's interview with Snowden is quite good. He just lets him talk for 3 hours. Where else is Snowden going to get that? (in addition to the big audience, the format is a draw)

(Joe Rogan has been controversial recently, but consider the asymmetry of him considering a subject publicly for 3 hours, while his attackers are posting 30 second clips on Twitter. Not saying he's right or wrong about anything, just that there's a huge asymmetry, and that people who are genuine and have decent attention spans should notice.)

There are of course the more basic reasons like having a book to promote, and the fact that Lex tends not challenge them on controversial issues.

Also, many of the guests have watched 3 hour interviews by others, and probably learned something, and want to do the same. There's definitely a viral / network effect to booking guests.

-----

I really liked this interview by a farmer, chef, and CEO of meat raised holistically:

Anya Fernald: Regenerative Farming and the Art of Cooking Meat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew8U43IXTfk

It's very technical and practical. And I think it shows he is spreading interesting ideas independent of whether the person is well known. So the well known people who have ideas are attracted to that.

-----

Actually this reminds me that I remember there was a good podcast by a guy in Silicon Valley who was just getting started, and had a pretty strong Indian accent? Nevertheless he was genuine and James Gosling and several other well known folks went on. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It was probably 2-3 years ago. I'd like to find that podcast again. As far as I remember it was mostly on a website.

Ah found it, shame it's not active: https://mappingthejourney.com/

So if I take the time to watch this am I in for a two hours of generic feel-good "avoid the subject-matter" non-answers?

Yes.

One thing that did stick out was when they both acknowledged the interview was scheduled for 5-6 hours. One wonders how much revealing conversation didn't make it past the lawyers' approval.

Pretty sure that was a joke. His podcasts are usually ~2 hours in length.

Uncut

I’m stoked for VR to gain more adoption so I can hang with my friends who live across the country.

That’s the killer app for me - a platform that all my friends use so we can have spontaneous casual hang outs!

that's a great idea! let's call it something simple, like just "Hangouts"

Then to solve adoption, let's make it a website so people can visit it without installing anything!

And maybe if it could be spearheaded by a large company like Google, that'd be even better!

Personally I'd love a service where I could drop in and out of one of these "Google Hangouts" throughout the day, maybe even made accessible by removing the complexity of VR, seeing my friends' cameras would be good enough for me :)

The internet is stupid because writing letters is perfectly good. The metaverse might be boring but it’s not nearly as boring as those who can’t use their imagination even a little.

I know it’s bad form to reply to snark with snark but I can’t help myself. If there was no market for this in the age of video chat - why do people still fly anywhere? Why am I excited when my friends come to town?

Unfortunately this is not how Google hangouts works! No one hangs out there, you have to schedule a call.

There needs to be a reason to hang out. Maybe I’m playing a game or watching sports front row or working on my golf swing in VR, then I see a friend come online and voila we link up!

Interesting interview. I can’t help but correlate the timing with such a drop in Meta’s stock price.

I thought he wanted to interview Putin on the topic of how technology is going to make the world a place of love and understanding.

Best part of the interview was when Mark asked Lex what he'd do if he were in Facebook's position of dealing with misinformation and free speech.

_________________________________________

Mark: I mean, well, how would you handle this if you were in my position?

Lex: It's very, very, very, very difficult. I would more speak about how difficult the choices are and be transparent about what the hell do you do with this? Ask the exact question you just asked me, but to the broader public. Like okay, yeah, you guys tell me what to do. So crowdsource it.

And then the other aspect is when you spoke really eloquently about the fact that there's this going back and forth, and now there's a feeling like you're censoring a little bit too much. I would try to be ahead of that feeling. I would now lean towards freedom of speech and say "we are not the ones that are going to define misinformation." Let it be a public debate.

Let the ideas stand. And I actually place the responsibility on the poor communication skills of scientists. They should be in the battlefield of ideas, and everybody who is spreading information against the vaccine - they should not be censored. They should be talked with, and you should show the data. You should have open discussion, as opposed to rolling your eyes and saying "I'm the expert. I know what I'm talking about." No, you need to convince people. It's a battle of ideas. So that's the whole point of freedom of speech. It's the way to defeat ideas - is with good ideas, with speech.

So the responsibility here falls on the poor communication skills of scientists. Thanks to social media (scientists are not communicators), they have the power to communicate. Some of the best stuff I've seen about COVID from doctors is on social media. It's a way to learn, to respond really quickly, to go faster than the peer review process. And so they just need to get way better at that communication. And also by better, I don't mean just convincing. I also mean speak with humility. Don't talk down to people. All those kinds of things.

And as a platform, I would step back a little bit, not all the way of course, because there's a lot of stuff that can cause real harm as we talked about, but you lean more towards freedom speech, because then people - from a brand perspective - wouldn't be blaming you for the other ills of society, which there are many. The institutions have flaws. The political divide, obviously - politicians have flaws, that's news. The media has flaws that they're all trying to work with. And because of the central place of Facebook in the world, all of those flaws somehow kind of propagate to Facebook, and you're sitting there, as Plato the philosopher, have to answer to some of the most difficult questions being asked of human civilization.

So I don't know, maybe this is an American answer though, to lean towards freedom of speech.

How has this not been flagged as Russian propaganda?

One robot interviews another. Who will pass the Turing Test? Lex has access like no other. Such a great interviewer.

I'm wondering if he's somehow going to get Putin to sit down and talk. If anyone could, it seems to be Lex Fridman.

Zelensky seems more likely.

Wouldn't surprise me if he had God on his podcast one day. I understand why people go on JRE, it's a huge platform. What's surprising is the quality of guests Fridman gets on his podcast, even when the podcast was relatively small. Who is this guy?

It's not surprising once you watch

I think he was at MIT working on AI stuff? So lots of connections from there.

same top commment on reddit, youtube and hacker-news - internet is pathetic

It’s almost as if humans think similar things n unique thoughts really aren’t as unique. Hmmmm

haha.. my disappointment was more around why there is no meaningful discussion in any of the forums - did all anyone get from a 2 hour long interview with one of the brightest minds and most successful person of our times, is that he looks and acts like a robot ? Just because he has a billion dollars it is considered cool to bash his physical features and get upvoted.

The first 30 minutes are exhausting corp speech it’s like Facebook is his only character trait.

Well it is all he's ever done.

Does it stop being like that? I turned it off and stopped watching because I got tired of hearing about how great the "metaverse" will be.

It does later on. A lot of it still touches fb/meta, but I found the chapters about "advice for young people" and "the meaning of life" to be quite interesting. It's a side of him that you don't really see anywhere else or think about. I'd recommend the watch.

FYI: Lex Fridman mentioned on multiple podcasts how much he admires Putin, and how one of his life goals is to interview him. Which apparently will happen soon.

He also didn't condemn the invasion, just basically said that "war is bad", as if both sides are equally to blame.

OH no!

I like Lex, but I dont understand why he has such a hard-on for dictators. I suppose he believes in the goodness of people.

>Lex Fridman mentioned on multiple podcasts how much he admires Putin

I think that is a distortion of Lex's opinions.

Completely.

Admiration for Putin is frankly despicable.

Why him specifically? People admire Trump and Obama and they have both sanctioned drone strikes that killed civilians too.

How naive to assume that there is even remotely a comparison. Get back to me when journalists and activists are assassinated

Are you implying that lives lost from the drone strikes are somehow less worthy than those of journalists and activists? Or is it the degree of closeness to the murders? (not trying to troll, genuinely interest since you did not disagree with drone strikes killing humans)

No, I'm saying that the crimes are different and that to me one is far worse. Drone strikes and civilian casualties are the consequences of America's counter terrorism efforts. Putin having journalists, activists assassinated in his country because they criticize his dictatorship is state terrorism. You can disagree with every aspect of America's foreign policy. Civilian casualties are tragic, and collateral damage is bad. But murdering your own citizens to silence free speech is far more outrageous to me.

I don't think that's an honest characterization of what Lex actually said about Putin. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but my impression is that Lex has a fascination for the capacity of humans to do both good and evil, and I think it's obvious from this point alone why he would have a strong desire to speak to Putin face to face.

I think there would be a lot of value in the world seeing him interview Putin. Not because of admiration, but because of what that interview could teach us about human nature.

Also, note that it's possible for someone to have highly admirable traits, such as intelligence, and highly despicable traits, such as evil, at the same time. Therefore it's possible to both hate and admire someone, for different reasons. Or rather, to both admire and hate different aspects of a person at the same time.

interest != admiration. If you watch and talk about Mindhunter it doesn't mean you admire serial killers.

Is there any video player which allow to blur some parts of the video in real time (I don't want go through editing). One hour is way too much for me (yes, 2x for me) and I'd still like to see Lex's reactions?

YouTube has chapters that you can skip to

What do you mean blur?

If you’re watching in a web browser you can always open an inspector and add a css rule to the video player “filter: blur(2px)” but I feel like that’s not what you’re asking :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/thefighterandthekid/comments/o3zpt9...

Linking to someone else on the internet saying "I don't like this" isn't all that interesting. For one, we already do that here.

The problem I have with this is that both the reddit post, and all or most of the comments, all seem to levy non-specific criticism against Lex. Non-specific criticism is not helpful, and it borders on the ad hominem. I'd be much more interested in seeing debate and discussion of specific ideas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com