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by AlanTuring 2352 days ago
Lex here. The amount of positive and thoughtful comments here is humbling. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Here are things I didn't realize is the role of the interviewer (my role) but I now know they are:

1. Push towards depth, because not all people go there naturally themselves.

2. Ask for clarifications if I don't understand something. This can make me sound stupid, but it's a worthy sacrifice. I will always sacrifice ego for the chance to understand something basic or hopefully fundamental. In fact, I play dumb sometimes just to force explanation of basics on which the technically deep ideas are built.

3. Disagree respectfully (at times playing devil's advocate) to give a chance to the interviewee to argue their point.

4. Speak whatever question or point I have clearly, concisely, quickly, and then shut up and listen. My role is to give the other person a break and to throw up ideas that spark their passion. I really struggle with this (especially the concise, clear part).

Thank you again for the kind words. I'll keep improving!

2 comments

Another AI person here (Stanford PhD student). I concur the philosophical stuff is mostly annoying for me -- for me it comes off as random self-satisfied pseudo-intellectual self-indulgence that makes for nice clickbaity-youtube clips but does not make for actually good conversations. The list of guests is great, but i'd prefer the conversations to me more humble and less wannabe insightful.
Sure, keep improving as much as you can. Just take care not to lose what distinguishes your podcast/style in the process!