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Grant Sanderson

Published podcast speaker

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29
Episodes
2
Shows
1
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0

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What Grant said.

29 transcript-backed records

01 / evaluation

You might imagine the opposite, given that the experience of a university student is often that the expert teaching them is not necessarily the best explainer of that topic, because they’re so spoiled by their expertise.

“You might imagine the opposite, given that the experience of a university student is often that the expert teaching them is not necessarily the best explainer of that topic, because they’re so spoiled by their expertise.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

03 / uncertainty

I don’t know if it was over lunch or something like that, but you have this number theorist who is just trying to understand the statistical correlation between pairs of zeros of the Riemann zeta function.

“I don’t know if it was over lunch or something like that, but you have this number theorist who is just trying to understand the statistical correlation between pairs of zeros of the Riemann zeta function.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

06 / prediction

I don’t know if it’s these step changes, but maybe it’s more on the side of engine design becoming a little bit more fluid, or coming up with the right wing shape instead of running a whole bunch of complicated CFD.

“I don’t know if it’s these step changes, but maybe it’s more on the side of engine design becoming a little bit more fluid, or coming up with the right wing shape instead of running a whole bunch of complicated CFD.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

07 / evaluation

You’ve got an institution around that, and a whole bureaucracy acting as a proxy for what we think that public good is, with a whole song and dance around how to make them correctly predict that your progress will be in the spirit of that funding.

“You’ve got an institution around that, and a whole bureaucracy acting as a proxy for what we think that public good is, with a whole song and dance around how to make them correctly predict that your progress will be in the spirit of that funding.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

08 / recommendation

My advice to any college student when they’re choosing what courses to take: care a little bit less about your preexisting interests, because they’re kind of arbitrary right now, and care a little bit more about whether the person teaching it is a good educator and someone you resonate with.

“My advice to any college student when they’re choosing what courses to take: care a little bit less about your preexisting interests, because they’re kind of arbitrary right now, and care a little bit more about whether the person teaching it is a good educator and someone you resonate with.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

09 / observation

What’s interesting is that we started doing this over a year ago, and it’s fun to see a little bit of a tone shift in the way they talk about AI between mid-2025 and where we are now in 2026.

“What’s interesting is that we started doing this over a year ago, and it’s fun to see a little bit of a tone shift in the way they talk about AI between mid-2025 and where we are now in 2026.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

10 / evaluation

With the whole AI and math project underway, as you point out, one of the reasons it’s interesting at all is that there’s a spiky frontier to AI, and math is just right there in one of the spikes. But there’s a fractal nature to that spikiness, because when you zoom into the specific progress within math, you have some things that are a lot easier than others.

“With the whole AI and math project underway, as you point out, one of the reasons it’s interesting at all is that there’s a spiky frontier to AI, and math is just right there in one of the spikes. But there’s a fractal nature to that spikiness, because when you zoom into the specific progress within math, you have some things that are a lot easier than others.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

11 / prediction

If we take that conversation between Montgomery and Dyson at the IAS that suggests some connection between the Riemann hypothesis—or the Riemann zeta-function zeros—and random matrices, that feels like the kind of thing that you could try to automate.

“If we take that conversation between Montgomery and Dyson at the IAS that suggests some connection between the Riemann hypothesis—or the Riemann zeta-function zeros—and random matrices, that feels like the kind of thing that you could try to automate.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

12 / uncertainty

For any individual is going to be based on where their life circumstances connect them into something either because he had an interest in Georgism for whatever reason. But if someone I don't know their dad runs a paper mill and they're connected to the family business in that way and realize they can plug themselves in a little bit more efficiently.

“For any individual is going to be based on where their life circumstances connect them into something either because he had an interest in Georgism for whatever reason. But if someone I don't know their dad runs a paper mill and they're connected to the family business in that way and realize they can plug themselves in a little bit more efficiently.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

13 / belief

I think you should ask people who know a lot about Go and Chess and I'd be curious to hear their opinions on it because I imagine what they would say is, if you're going to be as good at Go as AlphaGo is you’re also not doing tree search, at least exclusively.

“I think you should ask people who know a lot about Go and Chess and I'd be curious to hear their opinions on it because I imagine what they would say is, if you're going to be as good at Go as AlphaGo is you’re also not doing tree search, at least exclusively.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

14 / uncertainty

” I don't know how it would look when people get them to be getting golds at the IMO but I imagine it's something that looks a little bit like how AlphaGo is trained, where you have it play with itself a whole bunch.

“” I don't know how it would look when people get them to be getting golds at the IMO but I imagine it's something that looks a little bit like how AlphaGo is trained, where you have it play with itself a whole bunch.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

15 / belief

A good research problem that I think I think might be a good place for you to start in the next couple months” and this guy was like “Oh, okay” and he gets this research problem and he spends some months thinking about it and he comes back and then it later came to light that the professor mistook him for someone else that was someone he was supposed to be mentoring.

“A good research problem that I think I think might be a good place for you to start in the next couple months” and this guy was like “Oh, okay” and he gets this research problem and he spends some months thinking about it and he comes back and then it later came to light that the professor mistook him for someone else that was someone he was supposed to be mentoring.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

16 / belief

All of the other students in the class were very confused and I think I remember like they would come to me and I would try to offer to help them and the substitute was going around the class in these circles and basically marking off a little star for how far down the homework people were just to get a sense are they progressing.

“All of the other students in the class were very confused and I think I remember like they would come to me and I would try to offer to help them and the substitute was going around the class in these circles and basically marking off a little star for how far down the homework people were just to get a sense are they progressing.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

17 / belief

One of them, as I was emphasizing, I think you just lose touch with what it's like not to know stuff or what it's like to be a student and so maintaining that kind of connection so that I don't become duller and duller over time feels important.

“One of them, as I was emphasizing, I think you just lose touch with what it's like not to know stuff or what it's like to be a student and so maintaining that kind of connection so that I don't become duller and duller over time feels important.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

18 / belief

Even the ones who we think of as like very, very pure mathematicians in the sense that a lot of their most famous results are pure math like Gauss, actually a lot his output was also centered on very practical problems, Maybe since then is when you start to get an era of something more like pure mathematicians.

“Even the ones who we think of as like very, very pure mathematicians in the sense that a lot of their most famous results are pure math like Gauss, actually a lot his output was also centered on very practical problems, Maybe since then is when you start to get an era of something more like pure mathematicians.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

19 / belief

You have one coconut or nine coconuts like you have a sense of that. But if you ask what number is halfway between one and nine, those groups will answer three whereas you or I or people in our world would probably answer five and because we think on this very linear scale.

“You have one coconut or nine coconuts like you have a sense of that. But if you ask what number is halfway between one and nine, those groups will answer three whereas you or I or people in our world would probably answer five and because we think on this very linear scale.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

20 / prediction

I think we're maybe at a phase where there's room for that to become a much more fluid process such that rather than having these small little bits of friction like you've got to set up the environment, and you got to link it in the notebook, you've got to find the right libraries, that there's something that feels as fluid as when you are good at algebra and you're just at a whiteboard kind of noodling it out.

“I think we're maybe at a phase where there's room for that to become a much more fluid process such that rather than having these small little bits of friction like you've got to set up the environment, and you got to link it in the notebook, you've got to find the right libraries, that there's something that feels as fluid as when you are good at algebra and you're just at a whiteboard kind of noodling it out.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

21 / commitment

Basically I had been toying around with just a personal programming project in my last year of college that was the beginnings of what is now the animation tool I work with.

“Basically I had been toying around with just a personal programming project in my last year of college that was the beginnings of what is now the animation tool I work with.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

23 / evaluation

I don't know if this answers your question, but I would reemphasize that what's probably most important to getting people to actually learn something is not the explanation or the quality of explanations available because since the printing press that has not been true.

“I don't know if this answers your question, but I would reemphasize that what's probably most important to getting people to actually learn something is not the explanation or the quality of explanations available because since the printing press that has not been true.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

24 / preference

You want explanations to be online but the word education derives from the same root as the word educe, to bring out, and I really like that as a bit of etymology because it reminds you that the job of an educator is not to like take their knowledge and shove it into the heads of someone else the job is to bring it out.

“You want explanations to be online but the word education derives from the same root as the word educe, to bring out, and I really like that as a bit of etymology because it reminds you that the job of an educator is not to like take their knowledge and shove it into the heads of someone else the job is to bring it out.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

25 / preference

Whereas, if you do something that's almost unreasonably niche and also you're not expecting it to blow up it's like one you're not going to be disappointed, it's like outstanding when a thousand people view it as opposed to being disappointing and then two, you might be making something that is the best possible version of that content for the audience who watches it because no one else is making that for them because it's too narrow a target.

“Whereas, if you do something that's almost unreasonably niche and also you're not expecting it to blow up it's like one you're not going to be disappointed, it's like outstanding when a thousand people view it as opposed to being disappointing and then two, you might be making something that is the best possible version of that content for the audience who watches it because no one else is making that for them because it's too narrow a target.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

26 / evaluation

If I try to reflect on my own history with what I'm doing now I think I didn't appreciate early on how much potential energy I had simply from being a student in college where there's just a bunch of ways of thinking about things, or empathy with new learners, or just cool concepts right?

“If I try to reflect on my own history with what I'm doing now I think I didn't appreciate early on how much potential energy I had simply from being a student in college where there's just a bunch of ways of thinking about things, or empathy with new learners, or just cool concepts right?”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

27 / observation

Your watching both of those gives a little link between them, or maybe you and a ton of other people watching both of them gives a little link between such that once I watch video A, B is potentially nominated in that phase because it's recognized that there's a lot of co-watching.

“Your watching both of those gives a little link between them, or maybe you and a ton of other people watching both of them gives a little link between such that once I watch video A, B is potentially nominated in that phase because it's recognized that there's a lot of co-watching.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

28 / evaluation

In so far as it doesn't have more of an impact or more of a reach it's maybe just because people don't know about it or don't have an easy means of accessing something that recommends to them like the really good innovations happening in the world of textual explanations in the way that youtube has this recommending engine that tries its hardest to get more of these things in front of people.

“In so far as it doesn't have more of an impact or more of a reach it's maybe just because people don't know about it or don't have an easy means of accessing something that recommends to them like the really good innovations happening in the world of textual explanations in the way that youtube has this recommending engine that tries its hardest to get more of these things in front of people.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast

29 / evaluation

I'm pretty sure the abstract idea of a number is important for all of us but I don't think it's immediately obvious. It's more that it shapes the way we think, I'm not sure if it actually changes the way we live.

“I'm pretty sure the abstract idea of a number is important for all of us but I don't think it's immediately obvious. It's more that it shapes the way we think, I'm not sure if it actually changes the way we live.”
Speaker
Grant Sanderson
Publisher
Dwarkesh Podcast
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