alt Hacker NewsI think the end of this post misses the point of Ezra Klein's interviews. You can listen to him podcast about podcasting, and he explains very clearly what his goals are when he talks to someone. He's an interviewer, not a debater. His goal is to guide the person he's talking to critical places that explain their own world view, not to win an argument with them or get them to admit that they're making up a silly anecdote like they don't know their address, because thats counter productive the the goal of helping his audience understand their viewpoint. I listened to this, I marked what a ridiculous metaphor that was, and how inapplicable it is the to topic of learning math, and didn't need Ezra to call it out.
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> His goal is to guide the person he's talking to critical places that explain their own world view
Doing that well should inevitably involve challenging your guest's framing of certain issues. As an absurd example, if you ask the guest why they spin around 3 times when they stand up and they say, "better that than doing three somersaults", you would be doing your audience a huge disservice by asking your guest how they assess the relative difficulty of spins versus somersaults.
Why Jensen Huang thinks a fabulously wealthy person not knowing their own address is analogous to a child not learning basic math skills would be, in my opinion, much more interesting and informative of his viewpoint than the actual point he was trying to make.
> He's an interviewer, not a debater.
It could be argued the role of an interviewer is to present and understand the interviewee and their views, to dig deep into their unique knowledge.
An interview which is just “it’s sunny outside, isn’t it” isn’t a very good interview, and neither is one where the interviewee says “I genuinely believe there is a portal to heaven and hell in the butthole of my pet chicken” and the interviewer moves to the next question without a followup.
You don’t need to debate a guest to challenge their views.
> I listened to this, I marked what a ridiculous metaphor that was, and how inapplicable it is the to topic of learning math, and didn't need Ezra to call it out.
A good interviewer wouldn’t just “call it out” to the audience, they would ask the interviewee to expand on the topic. They would put themselves in the shoes of their viewers (who the interview is for) and ask what is interesting to them.
That's not an interview, that's at best stenography and at worse sycophancy.
If, for example, an interviewee said in all seriousness "I want to shoot all dogs and make the poor eat their babies" would you expect the interviewer to go go "Hmmm very interesting. Why do you think that?"
No.
It is vital that interviewers challenge the subject. Especially when they say something profoundly ludicrous or disturbing. Otherwise they might has well just be in PR.