Hacker News Reader

Comment by armitron | Hacker News Reader

Dwarkesh is your run-of-the-mill vapid influencer idiot. Fridman on the other hand, when in the presence of greatness, knows to STFU and listen.

View on HN

There's definitely something to be said for giving interesting people a platform to express their views unconditionally. Unfortunately, that can also be a very dangerous thing. I have been less and less impressed over the years with Lex's approach here.

I'm personally very glad that Dwarkesh isn't like that. He's not perfect, but I think he's doing a way better job than other podcasters in the field right now.

“The presence of greatness” - ugh.

I have been told the Fridmans association with MIT is mostly a lie.

Not sure if this is true, maybe someone who went to MIT around the same time can shed some light on this?

I'm a random dude on the Internet, but my partner completed her PhD at MIT. While there I knew and knew of a few PhD grads who worked at MIT in some non-tenure-track role (postdoc, staff researcher, etc). Typically for a couple years and then they get a better-paying or more permanent job. But several remained "affiliated" in some way. They kept their MIT website/email, some in academia continued to collaborate to some extent. Things like that. But AFAIK they weren't getting a paycheck from MIT. And it's somewhere between neat and genuinely professionally valuable to be affiliated w/ a prestigious university, so I don't blame them for claiming affiliation. My best guess is he's "affiliated" in a similar way.

His Zelensky interview suggests otherwise

It's interesting that's the only interview when he challenged someone.

That's quite incredible. I had noticed that Fridman never challenges anybody. As a separate point, I never watched his interview with Zelensky because I read a headline somewhere about that interview that made me sick. I guess he did challenge somebody finally. Disgusting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com