[HN Gopher] Lex Fridman Podcast #367 - Sam Altman
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Lex Fridman Podcast #367 - Sam Altman
Author : AJRF
Score : 59 points
Date : 2023-03-25 20:23 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lexfridman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lexfridman.com)
| byyll wrote:
| Check for duplicates before posting.
| paxys wrote:
| I have tried my best to get into podcasts, but am turned off by
| every single one being multiple hours long. Even though Lex is an
| outlier, the average show still has 1-2 hour episodes, sometimes
| releasing multiple times a week. I have tried my best to find
| quality ones with a 20-30 minute limit, but they don't seem to
| exist. Why is that the case? Is there really that much
| information to share? Or are they just not bothered to sit and
| edit their work? Do people really have the time to listen to all
| of them?
| lytedev wrote:
| I just listen to longer episodes in chunks, just like an
| audiobook.
| motoxpro wrote:
| There are lots of podcasts that are 20-45 mins. I don't know of
| anyone that sits in a dark room and just listens to a podcast.
| Try going for a walk or on a commute or on a plane.
|
| The long ones are the best to me because I enjoy interesting
| conversations rather than edited quick cut tiktok/twitter hot
| take style stuff.
| paxys wrote:
| If you have recommendations I'd love to know of them, but my
| search has come up empty.
|
| There's a world of difference between a 10 second TikTok clip
| and a 25 minute episode of some show. The latter used to be
| enough time to get an entire day's worth of news not too long
| ago. So I don't think that the medium fundamentally needs to
| be movie length to be effective.
|
| I suspect it's simply the case that shorter, more
| information-dense content takes a longer time to produce.
| It's a lot easier to have a 3 hour conversation with someone
| and dump it online. And I understand that there's an audience
| for just that. I do also think that there's a huge gap for
| short form podcast content waiting to be filled.
| imadierich wrote:
| [dead]
| bradleysz wrote:
| If I want an efficient method of receiving information, I read.
| If I want to listen to two people have an interesting
| conversation, or have information conveyed in a way unique to
| audio (eg. Hardcore History), I listen to a podcast. Two
| different mediums with two different appeals, imo.
|
| There's also the passivity of it. I can't read while I drive,
| but I can listen, and length doesn't really matter in these
| cases because it's a way for me to pass time as much as
| anything else.
|
| May just not be your cup of tea though!
| yedava wrote:
| I think it's a form of parasocial relationship. It's like you
| are "conversing" with someone who has the exact same tastes as
| you, which is kind of hard to come by in real life.
| jstx1 wrote:
| In general I listen to podcasts in the background while I'm
| doing something else (walking, shopping, chores etc.) so length
| isn't a problem at all because I'm not dedicating a separate
| time slot for a podcast.
|
| Lex's podcasts are a bit different because I watch them on
| youtube instead of on my podcast player because I want to skip
| around a bit and fast forward when Lex talks because I really
| don't like listening to him. I also don't listen to every one
| of his episodes for this reason, I only check them out if the
| guest is interesting enough to make the incovenience worth it.
| josephg wrote:
| > Do people really have the time to listen to all of them?
|
| Yes! People really do have time to do all sorts of long
| attention span things. Podcasts for me are a mostly-downtime
| activity. They fall into the same category of activity as
| chilling on the couch with a good book. But the advantage is I
| can be doing something else while I'm listening - like driving,
| cooking, drawing or going for a walk.
|
| You have just as many hours in your week as I do. We all need
| some downtime from time to time. I think podcasts are a
| delightful option. (If you find the right ones!)
| intalentive wrote:
| What did Sam do to his face?
| hobo_mark wrote:
| Same thing Zac Efron got, from the look of it.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Nothing, he sent a double to the interview because the Russians
| are trying to get rid of him.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Pretty long, how was it?
| arc4n0n wrote:
| There were quite a few unintentionally hilarious moments. Some
| that stick out was Sam not having seen Ex Machina and then also
| Sam using the Elon Tears interview against Elon in a kind of
| Uno reversal move. Seems to be a weird rivalry brewing.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I guess Tesla will have to train it's own assistent anyways,
| it feels natural for the robot and car.
| pugworthy wrote:
| A lot of Lex's podcasts are. His conversation with John Carmack
| is over 5 hours long.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| If you like this kind of thing, I did one a week ago.
| https://youtu.be/vYhtYjXNBCU It'll be interesting to diff the two
| and see where we diverge.
|
| Any progress on automatic transcriptions? Seems like Whisper
| should be able to give a readable version of both. This one's a
| bit hard to listen to since it's not a YouTube link, which means
| you can't use your phone for other purposes for two hours.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Idk about ios, but this works on android
| https://youtubevanced.com/
|
| Ad free, plays videos in background and after closing screen
| korm wrote:
| That link is fake, whoever downloads from there better
| compare checksums, because God knows what they may put in
| that APK.
|
| The real website is vancedapp.com but the project is
| discontinued. Revanced on GitHub (only) is continuing
| development.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I meant the Lex Friedman podcast. Can that play this too?
|
| Maybe there's an option to download the audio off safari
| somehow, but it doesn't seem like it through any of the
| standard controls.
| lxgr wrote:
| It's a normal podcast (RSS feed and everything, not
| exclusive to any big platform to my knowledge), so you can
| listen to it on your favorite podcast app!
| cosentiyes wrote:
| it's also on youtube:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Guz73e6fw
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Thank you!
| longitudinal93 wrote:
| Most decent apps will allow you to speed up. Try dialing it up
| until you hit your personal maximum transmission rate.
| jstx1 wrote:
| He seems to think the world can absorb higher programmer
| productivity without destroying jobs. It's still one person's
| opinion but it was nice to hear.
| chubot wrote:
| That seems pretty clear to me? The web made programmers
| drastically more productive, and it coincided with a huge
| increase in both total employment and salaries, not a decrease.
|
| For example, I first used Google in summer 2000 at a college
| internship, one where I flailed and didn't really know how to
| program. In high school and even college I could write code,
| but not anything real. (The CS program I went to was good, but
| focused on CS).
|
| I think my programming skill and productivity took off when I
| had access to the web, and more people posted content to the
| web.
|
| It really is like an external brain. Tim Berners-Lee isn't
| wrong; we just take it for granted now (and large parts of it
| have been ruined by advertising.)
|
| And this is from a person who read the MS-DOS manual from front
| to back when I was a teenager. I also installed a Borland C
| compiler from a bunch of floppy disks, yet never really managed
| to write much of a C program.
|
| So Google (in addition to education) made me much more
| productive, and StackOverflow attests that it has made millions
| of programmers similarly more productive. But yet I lived
| through a huge programmer tech boom in San Francisco for over a
| decade -- increasing staff, increasing salaries, etc.
|
| What would be different about 2023?
|
| It seems clear that the demand to build things will just get
| larger, just as it got larger from 2000 to now. There seems to
| be a "fixed pie" fallacy in the opposite view.
| jstx1 wrote:
| > What would be different about 2023?
|
| Why would it be the same? Think about it from first
| principles instead of assuming that what happened in the past
| will keep happening in the future. If there's a ceiling to
| the demand for programming work and we're near that ceiling,
| and you then increase the productivity of all programmers,
| the number of jobs will have to go down.
|
| Is there a ceiling for demand and are we near it? I don't
| know. But the argument that stackoverflow and search made
| things better and so it goes for GPT-4 isn't thought out very
| well.
| Zetice wrote:
| I think, overall, interview podcasts are some of the worst (and
| popular) ways to convey information that we as humans have come
| up with.
| jstx1 wrote:
| They're bad because the goal isn't to convey information in an
| efficient way.
|
| Think of it as a conversation that you can listen in on if you
| want to.
| xeromal wrote:
| This is a great way to phrase it.
| Zetice wrote:
| But that's terrible, because it _seems_ like a good way to
| learn about OpenAI. It _presents_ as if you can listen to
| this to gain insight into how OpenAI operates.
|
| But you can't. What you get is a hour long PR fluff piece
| about a man related to OpenAI. But you listen anyway, and
| because it's appearing as this useful thing, your normal
| skepticism guards are down. So you swallow what could be
| abject nonsense.
|
| And _that 's_ why they're Bad, not bad.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Think about it as learning how Sam thinks about things
| rather than how OpenAI operates. There is an unbelievable
| amount of info in the conversation.
| Zetice wrote:
| But I don't think you get that, what you get is how Sam
| presents as thinking. Very, wildly different.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Exactly right
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(page generated 2023-03-25 23:01 UTC)