While Lex gets interesting people on his podcast, he seems to focus so much on "beauty" in his interviews that nothing substantive ever gets said. He's constantly asking "what do you find to be the most beautiful about X?" and asking other highly speculative and un-substantive questions. I wish he would ask questions aimed and allowing the interviewer to spend the most time delivering high yield information. This is meant as constructive feedback not as mere complaining.
Lex is a softie that loves love and asks some disarming softball questions with the goal of giving the reader a window into the mind of the guest instead of rehashing points from keynotes/awards speeches. I admire that dedication in this age of internet beef and it's likely part of why he has an endless stream of qualified guests.
What would you count as delivering “high yield information”? Why does finding out what people find beautiful not qualify? I think that this kind of emotional content is quite valuable and interesting.
I don't think it's necessarily a matter of "interesting" but whether it's an ideal way to showcase these guests (which I surmise is what outlace is trying to get at). The guests he's had on his podcasts is astounding, no doubt about that. But suppose you knew nothing about Susskind/Kahneman/Knuth/Stroustrup/etc's prior work and listened to these podcasts, could you have deduced (given the conversation/questions asked) the mountain of work they'd produced to be worthy of their accolades in the first place? I don't think I could've and in some way that's a letdown and a bit of a missed opportunity. In the end it's Lex's podcast and he should have w/e conversations he wants with his guests. That's alright too.
If a man is concerned with abstract ideas then perhaps that's all he contributes to the world. Some people want to see things a certain way and will sacrifice their lives for seeing it that way, that's the beauty of life, people are free to choose the good, the beautiful, and the true or any combination of each which is their own beauty, truth, or good in whatever order they choose it. No one can step in are correct them if they think they are wrong, it's not their right. It's the right of people to choose to live a certain way and to experience the world in whichever way it's handed to them with whatever premises that they have in their minds.
Take for instance a starving artist. In art it's in fact the case this this is common:
Some artists due to their state may for instance cut off their ears like Pablo Picasso. This is a common co-occurrence with art. Society has done nothing to alleviate this problem in that other than a few recognized artists, the large morass go completely unsupported and fall into obscurity. In fact when society tries to rehabilitate such artists they attempt to do some by giving them remedial jobs that do not do justice to their perspective or talent, but such is the fate of the artist in that either they get market recognition or they fall into their own obscurity and may not even be known in their lifetimes.
Another relevant thing I learned about recently is that Dali was apparently considered massive sellout by his peers and seems to have gotten so famous thanks to a strategic move to America.
