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Comment by syspec | Hacker News Reader

It's good, but man he is pompous. Every question anyone asks is answered some form of "your question is stupid"

That's simply not true. I've spent hundreds of hours listening to his AMAs and he's remarkably good at taking questions that might be confused or poorly worded and respectfully answering the best interpretation of what the person asked.

He does have an approach to certain questions to say that it's the wrong question to ask. For example, to "why does the universe exist?" he would say that the question presupposes that everything needs an explanation for why it exists, and the universe is not that kind of thing. This is actually super common in philosophy, but I could see it coming across as pompous to someone who had never heard an answer like that before. He's not saying that the question is stupid, he's saying that it literally doesn't have an answer.

I've never once gotten that impression from him

Are you confusing Caroll with someone else? I've listened to many of his podcasts and talks. Never heard hims say anything like that.

That is really interesting. To me he does sound very pompous. I still like him, but he treats most questions like the person should be ashamed of having asked something so foolish.

Different interpretations of the same personality I suppose.

I don't have a great sample size but I've never thought he was being dismissive or implying something was a stupid question or someone should be ashamed of asking. However I do still think he sounds pompous, purely as a matter of the way he speaks. It's the pace, the cadence, and how he hangs on or stresses certain syllables and words. It's a recognizable style, not unique to him. Leonard Susskind has a similar one, though I'd say not as extreme. You get a more extreme form listening to various philosophers. (An example as parody here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leQ1bczMu7c) It usually doesn't bother me, as I can filter out the information from the presentation, but I still notice something. Reading is better than listening in part for not needing that layer of filtering.

That makes sense. There is a certain honesty to it, not to throttle your speech for tact’s sake. He expresses the level of confidence he has.

I think it's coming from when he gets a question about speculative physics.

The of course anything is possible, we just don't know, but it's highly unlikely.

It was really good through the pandemic and then he got a bit caught up in discussing politics, when I was just there for the quantum physics. (Was around the time after he picked up his new physics/philosophy position and moved towns)

He was very influential in pushing me to favour Many Worlds over Copenhagen, and his interviews with people like David Deutsch were gold. Might have to check out what he's doing these days.

Surely there's no connection between quantum physics and politics...

the fact that he takes layman's physics questions at all is proof that he is not pompous.

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