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Notes -
Why is Lex Fridman single?
(I apologize if this is brief for a top level post. I just want the community's take on it.)
Why would you expect anyone here to know who this person is, much less have an opinion on their relationship status that is worth listening to?
I would imagine a fair number of people here know who he is. I take it you don't - he has a series of interviews on youtube where he has a variety of guests. I've only seen one or two, but found that I enjoyed his interviewing style. He manages to balance asking challenging questions with being respectful, which I enjoyed. He also apparently had a successful career as a ML researcher before that.
Now as to the other part of your question, I agree. Nobody here should be expected to know about his relationship status.
Did he? I'd check first, maybe check what ML people say on him. His MIT affiliation is .. suspect..
He doesn't have a degree from there. He teaches an unimpressive, low profile course there.
Much about the guy screams 'fraud'. Starting e.g. with his profile picture.
He's widely detested for being a huge bore, asking plain bad questions yet being inexplicably popular.
People (mostly RW, but also Greenwald) suspect he has some inexplicable algorithmic favor.
Maybe Lex, being a clever and driven status seeker figured how to do that. Beats being just another overworked techie with no status and more money than he has time to spend, I guess.
Or it could be that the reason algorithm smiles on him is that he's part of the 'containment'.
That's a theory I've mostly seen Neema Parvini push - that IDW and various seemingly dissident influencers / intellectuals like e.g. Peterson, Eric Weinstein, Bari Weiss cooperate with the less insane parts of the ruling regime. That is, they're part of a show, earning goodwill by standing up for common sense, goodwill they'd use to help smash any actual challenge to the system.
It's not that they're totally fake, or don't have things worth saying, just that they're deemed reliable enough. E.g. Peterson has a lot of interesting things to say, but he's quite shallow on history* and very much lives inside the Boomer moral universe.
Beattie on the IDW:
*I don't remember what it was but I physically cringed listening to him explaing something about 20th century European history. Basically a an American schoolkid's version of it.
After the 'toadie' disaster , the IDW/Substack angle/pivot revived her career and credibility.
https://twitter.com/turncoatd/status/1268691071342501888
(still painful to watch...)
Maybe you are right that it's an attempt at gatekeeping. I wonder why some people are so heavily promoted.
Yep, painful.
With Weinstein, Shapiro, Weiss - I don't think there's any mystery.
Israel's national security literally depends on them having supporters among elites in the US.
Of course they're going to engage in robust influence operations. Ask the ghost of Senator Fulbright about that.
One can hardly begrudge Israelis for doing what they do.
Fridman, although he's Jewish doesn't seem like one of them. Or maybe, as it's been said, he's not ripe yet so they won't try to use them. E.g. he recently got criticised by some Israeli activists for being too soft on some Muslim he interviewed who described Israel as an genocidal apartheid state, yada yada.
I'm not much certain about the gatekeeping / containment theory that posits a degree of kayfabe among pundits.
It'd fit in with how the American political system used to work, however, I just see it as a possibility.
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