Comment by chubot
2 days ago
Yes, and I found Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein to be very credible on Lex Fridman:
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson: Politics, Trump, AOC, Elon & DOGE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTPSeeKokdo
I like when the right and left can actually talk to each other -- solutions are more likely to emerge that way.
They had a meta-discussion of the fact that Fridman has been "coded" by the left (Thompson and Klein firmly representing the left).
I get that, because Fridman can be so uncritical that it can rise to the level of shilling.
But I also find it curious that many on the left won't sit for 3 hours with him. In contrast, Thompson and Klein sat for 3 hours, which shows me that they have something to say which stands up to scrutiny.
They have something to say that doesn't have to be carefully boxed into 30 or 60 minutes of talking points.
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Related: even though Fridman can be annoyingly uncritical, I think this also serves the purpose of journalism. Because he gets the primary sources to talk freely.
For example, IMO this part an interview with Demis Hassabis is revealing. He asks if they're worried they will run out of high quality training data:
https://youtu.be/-HzgcbRXUK8?t=3931
From my perspective, Hassabis gives a mealy-mouthed answer about generating synthetic data of the right distribution, and then they change the subject. I would bet there's a lot more to it than that. If they had a good angle of attack, I feel like he'd be more excited to talk about it, and say something more substantive.
I guess you can argue that he's being cagey to not reveal anything to competition, but it seems like a real point of concern to me.
The rest of the interview is talking about AGI time frames and similar sales talk. Whereas my takeaway is that there's significant worry that LLMs are limited by training data, because they interpolate from it (rather than extrapolating), and are inefficient at using it.
Fridman is on the other end of the spectrum I'm describing.
You said heavily processed and barely-reported
If you want to say Fridman's content is "barely-reported", i.e. he barely does journalism, then I won't really argue.
But the interviews are NOT heavily processed, and that's precisely why some on the left won't sit with him. (But not Thompson and Klein, because they actually have something to say.)
So ironically, it kinda balances out. Being credulous attracts guests who talk almost as if they are off the record
I'm not making a value judgement. There are analysts and opinion writers I enjoy reading and get a lot of value from. But hosting a podcast interview with someone is basically the opposite of shoe-leather reporting. I guess if you did "stitch incoming" every couple minutes and cut to Fridman calling someone else to have conversations with other sources about whatever claim his primary guest just made, you'd be getting closer.
My point is: some of the prevailing take on HN about journalism probably comes from the fact that we tend to pay much more attention to the Fridmans and much less to shoe-leather reporters.
That's all!
Much later: a funny thing I could point out here is that the same thing I'm saying about Fridman also applies to Ezra Klein, Thompson's "Abundance" co-author --- I like Klein a lot!
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Someone "interviewing" a pundit by letting them speak for 3 hours contributes very little to our understanding of reality. We might understand a bit more about the pundit's opinions, which can be entertaining, and could theoretically be valuable, but rarely is.
Someone actually looking for facts about reality would be far more useful and valuable to society. Not that we reward that sort of thing.
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> ...and that's precisely why some on the left won't sit with him. (But not Thompson and Klein, because they actually have something to say.)
Im sorry but what evidence do you have to support such a claim?