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Comment by Mizza | Hacker News Reader

Even though I've enjoyed a lot of the Lex interviews in the past, I think this is really exploitative. A man with bipolar disorder is having a major manic episode and everybody is shoving microphones in front of him and getting upset when what he says sounds crazy.

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As a casual listener of Lex's podcasts, my position is now to ignore him unless a good reason for this guest right now can be made clear. I can imagine Lex himself talking about openness and diversity etc but this just reeks of opportunism.

That’s what it is.

Lex comments that he doesn’t care about the “clickbait” and that he likes Kayne as an artist, but he spends 85+% of the interview talking about the famous Kayne tweet. It’s nothing more than cashing a check on the back of a man who is suffering a public mental breakdown.

I've only watched Lex's episode with Carmack and I just don't understand the appeal. It was like listening to a junior frontend dev stumble around programming topics with buzzwords. Maybe I just watched one episode and got a bad taste, but the questions weren't great and somehow Carmack still was able to give interesting answers.

I assume approaching his guests as a layman allows his viewers to scratch the surface of tech/science/topics potentially inaccessible to people outside of the normal scope.

I like Lex, he's very open and wears his heart on his sleeve, he gets good answers sometimes because he's fearless with the questions he asks. His first intrview with Jim Keller is my fav ever and changed my life perspective after some of the gold Lex gets out of him. But yeah his programming knowledge seems very limited, same level as most Machine Learning engineers with science backgrounds.

That wasn’t a great one, but there are better ones

I agree. There is something gross about gleefully watching a person self-destruct. Reminds me a lot of what was done to Brittany Spears.

I've listened to it and I have the opposite opinion. Lex is the one interviewer in this episode who has treated Kanye like a human being and not like a click generator.

100% agree. Totally irresponsible move to interview Kanye West. It's borderline parasitic. There's no intellectual value in pretending someone's psychotic delusions are valid discourse. Lex should take the interview down.

I'm vaguely reminded of all those Charlie Sheen interviews from years ago when was self-destructing from drug abuse, and we all just laughed.

He once said he has bipolar disorder. He now says things that sound crazy to me. Therefore he is having a manic episode.

The problem with this reasoning is that people can say things that sound crazy without it being a symptom of a mental disorder.

Yes, Ye and his family could be repeatedly lying or mistaken. At some point, you have to draw a concluson from incomplete evidence.

I am very familiar with bipolar people and how they act when they are manic - unable to answer questions directly, rambling thought, believe entities are speaking to them, they are "chosen", infectious energy, not taking care of their personal appearance, it goes on.. I'm 100% certain this is mania. He even says he stopped taking his pills during the interview.

Many people have noted his behavior seems very similar to someone in a manic episode. While this isn't bulletproof evidence and shouldn't be taken as such, I think it's worth something. There's definitely something off about him, that doesn't mean he has no responsibility but I think it's telling the reaction

I assume it drives engagement.

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