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Comment by lfkdev | Hacker News Reader

Also out of the loop, my current opinion is that Fridman himself and his interviews are always really great and interesting.

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To put it succintly, he's the Joe Rogan of IQ 100-115 people.

Ignoring the arrogance that, the network effects of his podcast is incredible. I don't know of another podcast that gets the kind of guest list lex does. But you're right, his questions are often quite (pseudo-intellectual?) he's got a thing for "are we living in a simulation"

> he's got a thing for "are we living in a simulation"

The 'simulation' argument is actually very persuasive if you look into it. Quoted below from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis:

[Begin quote.]

Bostrom's trilemma argues that one of three unlikely-seeming propositions is almost certainly true:

1. "The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or

2. "The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero", or

3. "The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one."

The trilemma points out that a technologically mature "posthuman" civilization would have enormous computing power; if even a tiny percentage of them were to run "ancestor simulations" (that is, "high-fidelity" simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable from reality to the simulated ancestor), the total number of simulated ancestors, or "Sims", in the universe (or multiverse, if it exists) would greatly exceed the total number of actual ancestors.

Bostrom goes on to use a type of anthropic reasoning to claim that, if the third proposition is the one of those three that is true, and almost all people live in simulations, then humans are almost certainly living in a simulation.

[End quote.]

* Note I don't care at all about Friedman and have listened to exactly one of his podcasts (Carmack).

I think I misrepresented the point there a little. It's not the fundamental question per se but something he asks every one of his guests, and comes off alil 3am teenage philosopher.

I don't mean to bash him too much though, I think it's hard interviewing experts in areas they have spent their whole lives in and not to feel less informed in comparison.

Any one you can suggest for the 116-130 people?

It's not a tech podcast, but I enjoy Hermitix. They are mostly interviews with authors of philosophy/literary studies books. Probably the only "podcaster" that I will listen to on a regular basis.

https://www.youtube.com/@hermitixpodcast

+1 for hermitix -- funny to see it come up on HN!

The extensive archive of BBC's "In Our Tine" covers a lot of interesting ground.

Not sure exactly how that maps to IQ ranges, but worth checking out anyway.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Dw1c7rxs6DmyK0pMR...

Joe Rogan

not really, Joe Rogan pre pandamic was still the best interviewer in my openion of smart people.

the problem with smart people is that they know that they're smart and so they won't stop talking or driving the conversation.

Joe Rogan, pre pandamic / spotify deal was humble enough and would just invite people and let them talk, it was way more informative and less echo champery style of conversation ... I can't stand listening to this guy.

I watched his interview with John Carmack and I couldn't stand him. Carmack was super knowledgeable and professional, Friedman looked almost bored and not really interested - also wasn't able to follow up on some of the things Carmack was saying. Just struck me as not the best interviewer for that interview - I'm impressed Carmack decided to sit through the whole thing.

Carmack is just really good at talking about things he knows about/cares about, it doesn't matter what the venue is.

Find an episode on a topic you’re a subject matter expert in - you’ll quickly realize how overconfident and misinformed he is more generally.

I find his style suffocating, he mostly likes to talk about himself, and hear himself say bullshit, and same with the interviewed person, some times even cutting 'em off

Agreed, although normally the focus is on the interviewee, and they will quickly correct him.

Uh yeah I mean I know what you’re talking about - he does defer to the interviewee (and they are often wrong as well, like in the Elon interview).

Moreso I’m referring to the LessWrong/Reddit/HN/Twitter internet-lore format which he borrows from and leans into. Many of his questions are deep on the surface but ultimately more about sensationalism (even if that means a bad faith read of the problem).

Also, at times I suspect interviewees pre-negotiate certain things for him to see in a positive manner. Like in this last episode, thanking Sam for open sourcing GPT eval - ignoring that GPT-4’s basic architecture description wasn’t even released; a big “fuck you” to researchers hoping to do any sort of replication or peer review.

You can't expect an interviewer to be expert in every topic they cover.

Isn't the whole point of an interview to let the interviewee get their point across and clear up any misinformation?

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