Behind every human success story lies a billionaire with a heart of gold

I tend to avoid podcasts in the style of Joe Rogan, those that begin with a 15-minute long ad block selling mushroom supplements followed by hours of meandering conversation between two people who may or may not be under the influence. Who in the world has the time? So for that reason I avoided the podcast of one Dwarkesh Patel even as I occasionally linked to an article of his. I filed him mentally in the same “Avoid!” bucket as Lex Fridman — probably unfairly, as no one in the world can be as big of a mental bore as Fridman — without giving his podcast a chance. Although, judging by his writing on AI, I would not have liked the tone even if I had heard it. I remember, in fact, resisting the temptation to pan some of his more outlandish texts prophesying the rise of our LLM overlords with a tone which was as matter-of-fact as it was uncaring about human culture and society. My headphones are a direct link to my brain and I did not want that kind of world view to influence it. Well a…