Nassim Taleb: Idiots, You Deserve Lex Fridman
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What I've learnt from the last few years (decade?) is that you can make pretty much any claim on the internet, and you'll find an audience that agrees with that claim. If you dress up your delivery, your persona, your appearance, or even just evoke strong emotions with that claim, it'll amplify that audience. You'll find strong supporters of your claim even when evidence to the contrary is provided to them directly (sunk cost, difficulty in changing opinions because of human psyche etc).
I wonder where the Carl Sagan's and George Carlin's of this generation are. I have a sneaking suspicion that social media just doesn't allow such talent to flourish in today's world. It makes me sad to think about this and it would make me incredibly sad if that were true.
wrt to Lex Fridman, he's a dressed up persona for spouting intelligent sounding thoughts, without any actual meat or gravitas behind them. I personally rank him in the same category as Joe Rogan and any other random interviewer podcaster, who put in low effort to research content but put in a lot of effort to produce large quantities of work.
And with ad-supported social media, quantity over quality seems to be the name of the game.
Hopefully GPT4 will make the Lex Fridman's of the world replaceable more easily? I still don't think we'll get to an era of high quality content by public speakers any time ever.
Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan are the only interviews (other than maybe some ones on PBS) that I've been able to watch and recommend to peers.
Any interviewers you all like?
As for Lex Fridman, he at least sometimes has interesting guests so those podcast episodes are interesting and moreso entertaining. His questions and interviewing skills aren't bad unless he looses himself in "the beauty of life" and starts to overly romanticize. Although I don't really know anything else about him or his "research", he's a decent entertainer but I would watch his show for the guests (some) and not him.
(Not a huge fan of Lex myself, just curious if there's more to this story)
It would have been perfectly fine to just write the criticism about the emails by itself, but I guess as an author he got a bit carried away.
they don't have anyone's interest in mind except their own, or their show. they are an entertainment persona. don't waste your life away thinking you are being edified or learning anything. it is not happening. find better. or follow the people they interview on twitter, tiktok, facebook, etc.
if you are wondering, i stopped listening to them and their show with that bloop with the war in Ukraine. yes, i am aware that they have a Russian background. but i gave them the benefit of the doubt many times and that was the last straw for me. that's where i draw my line. you don't play with human lives.