> Lex Fridman is a computer scientist and AI researcher at MIT, podcaster, and online public personality. His topics of research include artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction and machine learning at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). [1][2][3]
Can anyone provide a summary of the discussion with Joe Rogan?
This is a pretty light on math/AI podcast in the series of podcasts between Rogan and Fridman. Some small talk about Boston Dynamics and Elon Musk, but more discussion surrounding Renzo Gracie and Wim Hof (sp?), if I'm recalling correctly.
It was not my favorite discussion between the two, but they did touch on the Russian education system, which was kind of interesting. I enjoy Rogan when he has scientists and comedians on as he usually lets them talk on the subjects they are interested in, but Lex Fridman seemed to want to discuss the Topics that Rogan was interested in, which was a little disappointing.
Thanks. I'm sure this is worth listening to, but it's a much larger investment in time than reading over a transcript.
Having tried the automated transcription services on my own podcast, I know that they suck. You have to pay someone to at least fix them up, if not just transcribe the whole thing from scratch. So I'm not blaming anyone for not having a transcript immediately.
How would having a transcript save you time? Wouldn't it take more or less the same amount of time (+/- 25%) to read through the transcript? Would you rather CTRL+F for a few terms? Or just quickly glance through it?
Asking, because I'm interested in the podcast space overall.
I'm not the original poster, but I have bad hearing and exclusively read transcripts over listening to podcasts - can't tell you how many times I've been grateful when podcasters provide even a partial list of transcripts for episodes. Speed-reading is also a lot faster overall versus simple listening.
This lack of transcripts really surprises and frustrates me. Wasnt Berkeley forced to take down its videos unless they added captioning? I guess it’s because they’re taxpayer funded right? But Twitter was also getting flack for introducing video without the accessibility of captions, but for a company that can afford $100 million to buy one podcast, why can’t they be compelled to provide transcripts?
This description of Lex Fridman's research is generous. If you listen to his own podcast (previously called the Artificial Intelligence podcast, now the Lex Fridman Podcast), you'll find that he has a knack for missing the deeper insights of guests discussing those very fields of research.
It's unfortunate that as he's become more popular his interviews have become increasingly self-indulgent and vapid.
Maybe it's to appeal to a wider audience, however I think more likely it's just a negative consequence of fame. With a lack of honest feedback you start to buy into your own bullshit, thinking that every personal idea you have is some profound philosophical insight, rather than the type of affected navel-gazing done by people who fancy themselves public intellectuals.
I could never make it through any of the podcasts he’s been on because of this. It’s always weird hearing him brought up and described as a genius. He isn’t dumb, but genius is a huge stretch IMO.
>I can’t vote for that guy. I’d rather vote for Trump than [Biden]. I don’t think he can handle anything. You’re relying entirely on his cabinet. If you want to talk about an individual leader who can communicate, he can’t do that. And we don’t know what the f— he’ll be like after a year in office.’
Joe Rogan repeating outright lies about Biden being senile and incapable of communication in order to justify voting for a man he himself has called dangerous and a moron. What do you call a person who proclaims he's voting for a dangerous moron?
Is that quote really your smoking gun evidence that Rogan is Republican or Republican-supporting? Try and replace the names with people who don't have a political charge attached, and try to honestly assess whether it's such an outrageous thing to say.
He didn't say he would vote Trump and there's no evidence that he did. He was simply commenting that Biden was in decline, which was and is increasingly there for everyone to observe, and is highly concerning for a person who holds the most powerful office in the world.
You can disagree that his cognitive impairment disqualifies him from being president, fine, but to make that kind of comment is just not deserving of the outrage, and clearly the media whipped it up and perpetuated it in order to keep us all clicking and arguing.
Half the US didn't vote for Republicans its more like 47% overwhelmingly tilted towards white men especially those with no educational achievement.
Looking back over the last 41 years at least of my life as a white man I would have been substantially better off if white men couldn't vote. It's embarrassing and yes these people including neighbors, some family even are bad people willing to bed down with nazis.
I'm saying that objectively people who are privileged by existing broken systems and people who are uneducated both make bad choices.
If we made college free I would absolutely be OK with making completing a degree a prerequisite to being allowed to vote along with an IQ test every 10 years excluding people under 90 and a pop quiz on current events where people who couldn't answer such questions as who their senators are would see their vote go straight in the trash.
Excluding people who are lazy, stupid, or ignorant would result in a better decision making process. None of this is politically possible.
Maybe we should just remove voting altogether and just have 20 PhDs from Harvard/Standford/Yale and MIT decide who should run the country to avoid the unwashed masses decide such an important aspect of our life.
How can people who don't even know who they are voting for until they go in a booth and see whose name has an R or a D by it possibly pick good leaders?
If in a century people are living in the carcass of civilization will we celebrate that we achieved our ruin progressively or inclusively?
Let's be real though people aren't worried about being progressive they are more apt to worried because they support a political party that could never survive without the ignorant and the stupid.
If only people with college degrees who actually made a minimal effort to follow non Facebook meme politics could vote the republicans would only be competitive vs the green party.
If only people with college degrees who actually made a minimal effort to follow non Facebook meme politics could vote, both the democrats and republicans would be different parties. The parties and their message to voters are influenced by who is voting in the first place.
Additionally, which party do you associate with calls to lower the voting age? I do not associate Republicans with this. How does this fit with your belief that allowing "only people with college degrees" would overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. Why isn't the Republican party demanding we lower the voting age to 16? Granted, neither party directly asks for this, but you can find little organizations here[1] and there[2] asking for it, and maybe the occasional individual House member[3].
Do you actually think 50% of the population couldn't get a college degree even if it was free or do you think half both desire to vote but couldn't be bothered to attend to such trivial details as who their senators are?
Only about 15% have an IQ less than 90. 85% could absolutely get a degree and pay minimal attention. Will they all? No and if only 50% of the population bothers that would in that case be on them. They would in that scenario be throwing away their own rights by declining to participate. Spending A 4 year cycle reading your facebook feed and voting for the guy you saw in between the beer commercial and the game last night isn't participation.
Literacy tests were biased in the post civil war era not only because black folks were at a substantially disadvantaged insofar as becoming literate in that era but because veterans of the civil war and their progeny were exempt as were other fellows of "good character".
That is to say it was used as an excuse to prevent black folks from voting whilst many white illiterates were welcomed into the voting booth.
My only critique is that by labelling everyone a Nazi we are washing out the Nazi label, thus enabling future establishment of the actual Nazis, because everyone will think that those future Nazis are no worse than Joe Rogans of today.
Would you please stop creating accounts like this? You've created well over a hundred of them—that's egregious and abusive. We ban such accounts. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
He doesn't identify with the Republican party, but he is a "disaffected democrat" - a group that increasingly has seen the democratic party leave them, rather than them leaving the party.
Joe may be considered right-wing by the "new democrats", who are the most vocal portions of the democratic party (the "woke" folks, even if they aren't the majority of the party currently, but they are becoming the future of the party) - this is despite Joe's views not changing much from where they were a couple decades ago. It's the party that's shifted.
It's like comedian Tim Dillon said, "I woke up one day and was asked if we should still have police and borders, and I said yes we should. Now I'm apparently a nazi." He is a comedian and this is somewhat tongue and cheek but reflects the disaffected nature and cynicism many of these folks now have for the democratic party.
This is what happens when social media algorithms controlling the entire world, let alone the USA are developed on the belief system of a small neighborhood in Silicon Valley.
Yeah, we should probably throw everyone in the oven who doesn't adhere to our worldview. /s
I sometimes wonder who the news is talking about re: fascism, but then I see it here: talking about not giving someone oxygen on HN who YOU don't agree with. Everyone must comply!!!!
My statement was as measured and calm as this one is as contrasted with you creating a throwaway exclusively to freak out and post this rabid screed with an over the top analogy, followed by a sentence with 4 exclamation points, followed by an exhortation for me to calm down.
Don't create throwaways in order to post verbal seizures.
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
We've had to ask you about this more than once before. That's not cool. Eventually we ban such accounts, and I don't want to ban you. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
just me or is Lex's research portfolio okayish at best and horrifying considering the broader cultural imapact he has? at the same time I really appreciate his self-discipline, or atleast what he claims it to be
Maybe he inflated his pedigree but he’s not really a thought leader advocating for one thing or another, he hosts a show, gets really smart people to talk for 2 or 3 hours, that’s where his talent lies: gathering an audience for the actual experts
Same with Joe, I tune into the show all the time but it’s never because I want to hear Joe’s take on the subject de jour, but because I learn a lot about the people he brings on
I think Joe Rogan is quite unhinged these days.. his shtick is to change his opinions and so on to appease to every guest he has on, in order to get them to talk and so on. But this becomes a problem when he starts to ponder to actual conspiracy theorists or people with extreme opinions without supplying disclaimers.
The thing is, I know that Joe Rogan is actually politically aligned more to the left. But his cult like fanbase can't deduce his actual stance because when he has weird guests on he cannot supply disclaimers warning about their insane ideas because otherwise he would lose those connections.
I guess he's doing what's most profitable but still... quite bothersome.
To give an example, when you have someone like Alex Jones on and you make it seem like their your best friend and also don't really call out and question them about their insane ideas... then your loyal fan base will actually believe that that's your friend and will start giving that person attention and consideration too, and now you've created a bunch of conspiracy theorists.
I honestly think Joe does a great job/ tries to do a great job in almost exposing his guests by getting them to feel comfortable. I never liked his show alot, but I think that's what he's aiming for
Well, first of all I'm not an American so that may very well be why we think differently about this.
But I agree with you, except that the audience for a podcast like this may be comprised of first time watchers, kids and young adults etc. who don't know the guest yet. The reach and influence is big enough that the podcast is mainstream, which means this is almost certainly the case. But yeah, maybe Alex Jones was a bad example, Rogan regularly platforms people who are much less known but have much more insane ideas too.
We just have to be aware that what is just entertainment to us might very well be dangerous in ways we haven't really explored. I'm not advocating for censorship, I just said that maybe certain "disclaimers" are needed.
I’ll admit that the original appeal of Joe Rogan’s podcast to me was playing the new episode without knowing anything about the guest and trying to figure out if the guest actually knew what they were talking about or if they were full of shit and spinning tales. A game with myself to separate the übermensch from the charlatans.
I guess if someone grows up thinking that information is reliable just because they heard it on the radio, well, they missed out on some sage advice somewhere along the line.
60 comments
[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] thread> Lex Fridman is a computer scientist and AI researcher at MIT, podcaster, and online public personality. His topics of research include artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction and machine learning at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). [1][2][3]
Can anyone provide a summary of the discussion with Joe Rogan?
[1] https://wikitia.com/wiki/Lex_Fridman
[2] https://lexfridman.com/
[3] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wZH_N7cAAAAJ
It was not my favorite discussion between the two, but they did touch on the Russian education system, which was kind of interesting. I enjoy Rogan when he has scientists and comedians on as he usually lets them talk on the subjects they are interested in, but Lex Fridman seemed to want to discuss the Topics that Rogan was interested in, which was a little disappointing.
Having tried the automated transcription services on my own podcast, I know that they suck. You have to pay someone to at least fix them up, if not just transcribe the whole thing from scratch. So I'm not blaming anyone for not having a transcript immediately.
How would having a transcript save you time? Wouldn't it take more or less the same amount of time (+/- 25%) to read through the transcript? Would you rather CTRL+F for a few terms? Or just quickly glance through it?
Asking, because I'm interested in the podcast space overall.
Thanks.
You can also quickly scan ahead, or reread a sentence. Navigating audio is harder.
Since I can see the whole thing, it's much easier to skip down to the more interesting stuff, or realize that there isn't any.
Maybe it's to appeal to a wider audience, however I think more likely it's just a negative consequence of fame. With a lack of honest feedback you start to buy into your own bullshit, thinking that every personal idea you have is some profound philosophical insight, rather than the type of affected navel-gazing done by people who fancy themselves public intellectuals.
Lex: vaccines are good
Rogan: maybe, but they are for weak unhealthy people. I'm healthy and fit. Also, long term side-effects
Lex: but we don't know the long-term side effects of covid either
Rogan: yeah. I'll just take it like a man. Also, why nobody speaks about vitamins, exercise, why they only speak about vaccines
Joe Rogan repeating outright lies about Biden being senile and incapable of communication in order to justify voting for a man he himself has called dangerous and a moron. What do you call a person who proclaims he's voting for a dangerous moron?
He didn't say he would vote Trump and there's no evidence that he did. He was simply commenting that Biden was in decline, which was and is increasingly there for everyone to observe, and is highly concerning for a person who holds the most powerful office in the world.
You can disagree that his cognitive impairment disqualifies him from being president, fine, but to make that kind of comment is just not deserving of the outrage, and clearly the media whipped it up and perpetuated it in order to keep us all clicking and arguing.
Looking back over the last 41 years at least of my life as a white man I would have been substantially better off if white men couldn't vote. It's embarrassing and yes these people including neighbors, some family even are bad people willing to bed down with nazis.
Are you saying that the votes of uneducated people should be worth less than those of college educated people?
If we made college free I would absolutely be OK with making completing a degree a prerequisite to being allowed to vote along with an IQ test every 10 years excluding people under 90 and a pop quiz on current events where people who couldn't answer such questions as who their senators are would see their vote go straight in the trash.
Excluding people who are lazy, stupid, or ignorant would result in a better decision making process. None of this is politically possible.
Your proposal would send to the trash the votes of 90% of black people. How progressive...
> Only 16 percent of Latinos and 10 percent of African-Americans were able to correctly identify one senator from his or her home state
> 77 percent of Americans between 18 and 34 could not name one senator in his or her home state
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/poll-millennials-stat...
Maybe we should just remove voting altogether and just have 20 PhDs from Harvard/Standford/Yale and MIT decide who should run the country to avoid the unwashed masses decide such an important aspect of our life.
If in a century people are living in the carcass of civilization will we celebrate that we achieved our ruin progressively or inclusively?
Let's be real though people aren't worried about being progressive they are more apt to worried because they support a political party that could never survive without the ignorant and the stupid.
If only people with college degrees who actually made a minimal effort to follow non Facebook meme politics could vote the republicans would only be competitive vs the green party.
Additionally, which party do you associate with calls to lower the voting age? I do not associate Republicans with this. How does this fit with your belief that allowing "only people with college degrees" would overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. Why isn't the Republican party demanding we lower the voting age to 16? Granted, neither party directly asks for this, but you can find little organizations here[1] and there[2] asking for it, and maybe the occasional individual House member[3].
1: https://www.fairvote.org/lower_the_voting_age
2: https://www.youthrights.org/blog/young-democrats-of-america-...
3: https://meng.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/meng-rein...
Only about 15% have an IQ less than 90. 85% could absolutely get a degree and pay minimal attention. Will they all? No and if only 50% of the population bothers that would in that case be on them. They would in that scenario be throwing away their own rights by declining to participate. Spending A 4 year cycle reading your facebook feed and voting for the guy you saw in between the beer commercial and the game last night isn't participation.
That is to say it was used as an excuse to prevent black folks from voting whilst many white illiterates were welcomed into the voting booth.
https://americanhistory.si.edu/democracy-exhibition/vote-voi...
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I don't think it's about politics, Joe Rogan is just very low SNR unless you're tuning in to a particular guest.
Joe may be considered right-wing by the "new democrats", who are the most vocal portions of the democratic party (the "woke" folks, even if they aren't the majority of the party currently, but they are becoming the future of the party) - this is despite Joe's views not changing much from where they were a couple decades ago. It's the party that's shifted.
It's like comedian Tim Dillon said, "I woke up one day and was asked if we should still have police and borders, and I said yes we should. Now I'm apparently a nazi." He is a comedian and this is somewhat tongue and cheek but reflects the disaffected nature and cynicism many of these folks now have for the democratic party.
https://www.economist.com/international/2021/06/12/social-me...
I sometimes wonder who the news is talking about re: fascism, but then I see it here: talking about not giving someone oxygen on HN who YOU don't agree with. Everyone must comply!!!!
Perhaps you need to calm down?
Don't create throwaways in order to post verbal seizures.
Note these, from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
We've had to ask you about this more than once before. That's not cool. Eventually we ban such accounts, and I don't want to ban you. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the guidelines and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Same with Joe, I tune into the show all the time but it’s never because I want to hear Joe’s take on the subject de jour, but because I learn a lot about the people he brings on
The thing is, I know that Joe Rogan is actually politically aligned more to the left. But his cult like fanbase can't deduce his actual stance because when he has weird guests on he cannot supply disclaimers warning about their insane ideas because otherwise he would lose those connections.
I guess he's doing what's most profitable but still... quite bothersome.
To give an example, when you have someone like Alex Jones on and you make it seem like their your best friend and also don't really call out and question them about their insane ideas... then your loyal fan base will actually believe that that's your friend and will start giving that person attention and consideration too, and now you've created a bunch of conspiracy theorists.
And anyone who wants to limit my freedom to listen to bloviating conspiracy theorists is no American in my book
But I agree with you, except that the audience for a podcast like this may be comprised of first time watchers, kids and young adults etc. who don't know the guest yet. The reach and influence is big enough that the podcast is mainstream, which means this is almost certainly the case. But yeah, maybe Alex Jones was a bad example, Rogan regularly platforms people who are much less known but have much more insane ideas too.
We just have to be aware that what is just entertainment to us might very well be dangerous in ways we haven't really explored. I'm not advocating for censorship, I just said that maybe certain "disclaimers" are needed.
I guess if someone grows up thinking that information is reliable just because they heard it on the radio, well, they missed out on some sage advice somewhere along the line.