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Comment by almostdigital | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that Lex is so polarizing, I personally find him a great host.

Him almost never doing research is objectively false though. He often reads books/articles/tweets written by the guests and asks about them for example.

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Yeah his style of letting guests freestyle is different than constantly challenging them on every point. It's not better or worse.

If that doesn't float your boat you can watch Carmack interviews by other people.

For me it's not that he doesn't push back, it's that he often interrupts with some trite nonsense. So the guest is getting in the details of something specific and interesting and Lex will interrupt with something he thinks is profound that's meaningless and derails the explanation. The questions he asks I find similarly frustrating - like he's not really listening, or thinking about it in any depth.

I get the sense he's constantly trying to prove how smart he is, and at least to me - it backfires badly. Hard to describe, but I guess it comes across mostly as shallow bullshit and it's tedious to listen to him despite his great guests.

> I get the sense he's constantly trying to prove how smart he is

I've listened to hundreds of hours, and I just don't get this at all. I don't think he has a selfish motive for the "interruptions". I think he's just saying what's on his mind, in a somewhat vulnerable way.

Yeah same. He might want to prove his existing knowledge (natural, to show the guest that he understands what he's talking about) but doesn't go about trying to outsmart people.

Absolutely, in so many ways he is humble enough to ask the simple questions and let the guest give his view on it

Couldn't have said it better myself. It's especially eye-rolling when he tries to inject comments or questions about how "it's all about love" straight out of nowhere. For someone with a scientific background, he sure produces a lot of fluffy nonsense, to the point where Carmack had to stop him there once or twice.

Reminded me of Jordan Peterson getting shut down by Richard Dawkins once he started going down yet another Deepak Chopra-style mystification rabbit hole.

Not so impressed by the research: I forgot the exact wording, but it took me a lot of effort to keep listening when he asked Neal Stephenson something to the effect of if he had ever heard of the metaverse.

I think I remember better now. It was Friedman discussing the notion of some iPad app that could be used to learn and educate, adapting to the user, etc. Stephenson replied that he had indeed written a whole book about it (Diamond Age).

I didn’t listen to that episode but I have to imagine that was a leading question.

Yeah, I was surprised too. I thought a technical community would appreciate the amount and breadth of technical knowledge that Lex explores with guests and allows the public domain to gain.

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