back to indexTyler Cowen: Economic Growth & the Fight Against Conformity & Mediocrity | Lex Fridman Podcast #174
Chapters
0:0 Introduction
1:50 Economics
3:42 Nuclear war
10:29 The American dream
17:42 Capitalism: pros and cons
24:16 Is competition good for the world?
26:19 Free market
27:24 Anarchy
29:50 Ayn Rand
34:31 The case for big business
38:57 Clubhouse
44:1 Loneliness
46:14 Eric Weinstein and economic growth
50:34 Communism
53:25 Putin
58:55 China
63:48 UBI
67:43 Disagreement with Eric Weinstein
71:35 Money, Bitcoin, and Ethereum
79:46 WallStreetBets
83:42 MIT
91:10 UFO sightings
98:29 Contemporary art is misunderstood
105:32 Mexican food is the best in the world
110:22 Jiro Dreams of Sushi
114:25 Book recommendations
116:41 Advice for young people
120:19 Love
126:1 Mortality
127:52 Meaning of life
00:00:00.000 |
The following is a conversation with Tyler Cohen, 00:00:10.300 |
Author of many books, including The Great Stagnation, 00:00:13.460 |
Average is Over, and his most recent, Big Business, 00:00:32.680 |
Linode, ExpressVPN, SimpliSafe, and Public Goods. 00:00:37.380 |
Check them out in the description to support this podcast. 00:00:41.020 |
As a side note, given Tyler's culinary explorations, 00:00:45.180 |
let me say that one of the things that makes me sad 00:01:09.700 |
and yet, if I were to eat one piece of chocolate, 00:01:12.520 |
the odds are high that I would end up eating the whole box. 00:01:15.960 |
This is definitely something I would like to fix 00:01:18.200 |
because some of the amazing artistry in this world 00:01:29.380 |
with Joe Rogan and John Donaher late at night in Austin, 00:01:35.700 |
and I was distinctly aware of the magic of that experience, 00:01:47.140 |
and here is my conversation with Tyler Cohen. 00:01:50.060 |
Would you say economics is more art or science 00:01:58.100 |
- Economics is interesting because it's all of the above. 00:02:11.020 |
It's an art in the sense that the models are not very exact. 00:02:15.900 |
that occasionally propositions are falsified. 00:02:28.580 |
economics is sometimes able to formulate very simple, 00:02:36.100 |
general models of how our human society will function 00:02:41.740 |
But it seems impossible or almost way too optimistic 00:02:51.620 |
can describe behavior of billions of human beings. 00:02:56.040 |
Well, with all the complexity that we have involved. 00:02:58.580 |
So do you have a sense there's a hope for economics 00:03:01.220 |
to have those kinds of physics-level descriptions 00:03:08.080 |
Or is it just our desperate attempts as humans 00:03:12.980 |
than rigorous and serious and actually predictable 00:03:20.540 |
- I don't think economics will ever be very predictive. 00:03:24.160 |
It's most useful for helping you ask better questions. 00:03:29.420 |
Well, game theory never predicted USA and USSR 00:03:35.060 |
But trying to think through the logic of strategic conflict, 00:03:39.480 |
it's just a much more interesting discussion. 00:03:44.540 |
speaking of the Soviet Union and United States, 00:03:48.780 |
are you surprised that we haven't destroyed ourselves 00:03:58.960 |
that perhaps allows us to ask better questions, 00:04:02.360 |
but it seems to have actually described the reality 00:04:16.880 |
- I think we will destroy each other with those weapons. 00:04:26.720 |
I'm a little surprised it came as close as it did. 00:04:31.000 |
realizing it might have just been a flock of birds 00:04:33.080 |
or it wasn't a first strike attack from the USA, 00:04:42.920 |
And it may not be USA and China, USA and Russia, whatever. 00:04:55.560 |
And I've argued at best we have 700 or 800 years, 00:05:03.040 |
- Well, maybe it's like a Poisson arrival process, right? 00:05:18.760 |
- So the Poisson process description doesn't take 00:05:24.360 |
So another way to consider is repeated games, 00:05:29.720 |
So is there something about us, our human nature 00:05:33.440 |
that allows us to fight against probability, reduce? 00:05:40.920 |
the more we're able to figure out how to avoid trouble. 00:05:49.320 |
or paper deadlines, the closer you get to a deadline, 00:05:53.480 |
and get your shit together and actually get stuff done. 00:05:56.200 |
- I'm really not so negative on human nature. 00:06:02.880 |
But if you just ask, are there outliers in history? 00:06:05.240 |
Like was there a Hitler, for instance, obviously. 00:06:12.280 |
doesn't per se care about his own destruction, 00:06:16.480 |
- So your sense is fundamentally people are good, 00:06:19.340 |
but outliers-- - A trembling hand equilibrium 00:06:28.520 |
which is mostly what we've seen, even between enemies. 00:06:32.480 |
But every now and then someone does something crazy 00:06:44.680 |
that the crazier the person, the less likely they are, 00:06:52.960 |
Meaning like, this is the kind of proposition, 00:06:56.520 |
I had the discussion with my dad as a physicist about this, 00:06:59.620 |
where he thinks that, like if you have a graph, 00:07:15.040 |
But evil meaning, sort of you can argue that, 00:07:19.680 |
not even the evil of Hitler we're talking about, 00:07:26.480 |
he probably deluded himself and the people around him 00:07:29.560 |
to think that he's actually doing good for the world, 00:07:33.200 |
By evil, I mean more like, almost like terrorists, 00:07:35.760 |
to where they want to destroy themselves and the world. 00:07:44.800 |
to deliver that kind of mass scale destruction. 00:08:08.180 |
But that's why you need to let the clock tick. 00:08:18.880 |
So bureaucracy in that regard is great, right? 00:08:43.000 |
- And there might be destructive technologies 00:08:44.960 |
that don't have such a high cost of production 00:08:50.760 |
Like cyber attacks or artificial intelligence, 00:09:01.680 |
obliterate any city on Earth and everyone in it dies. 00:09:08.480 |
But you can make it happen just by willing it. 00:09:11.000 |
How many months does it take before that happens? 00:09:19.440 |
'cause you can consider how many millionaires there are, 00:09:46.680 |
- It's why we should be nice to the wealthy too, right? 00:09:53.960 |
We should stop that 'cause that doesn't inspire 00:09:57.120 |
the other future Bill Gates is to be nice to the world. 00:10:02.000 |
But your sense is the cheaper it gets to destroy the world, 00:10:09.780 |
I don't think literally every human will die, 00:10:16.400 |
It's then just hard to predict what comes next. 00:10:21.600 |
that probably has to be something more like an asteroid 00:10:26.120 |
And those are purely exogenous for the time being at least. 00:10:43.360 |
The rest is details, but I grew up in Moscow, Russia. 00:10:52.160 |
but it's always symbolized to me a place of opportunity 00:10:55.840 |
where everybody could build the most incredible things, 00:11:00.840 |
especially in the engineering side of things. 00:11:10.160 |
that's my version of the American ideal, the American dream. 00:11:14.120 |
Do you think the American dream is still there? 00:11:19.140 |
Do you think, what do you think of that notion in itself? 00:11:33.600 |
If you look at which groups are the highest earners, 00:11:37.400 |
it is individuals from India and individuals from Iran, 00:11:50.360 |
also on the grounds of religion, yet they've done it. 00:12:08.640 |
For about, I think 40 years, it's been fairly constant, 00:12:21.040 |
because look, go to the beginning of the 20th century, 00:12:37.400 |
I'm not sure we should blame the modern world 00:12:43.400 |
But look, the general issue of who gets into Harvard 00:12:50.760 |
Is there too little opportunity for the bottom, 00:12:58.800 |
And in that sense, the American dream is clearly ailing, 00:13:04.520 |
for blacks, for women, for many other groups. 00:13:12.120 |
and the difficulty of how hard it is to move up in society 00:13:16.880 |
is unequal often, and that's the injustice of society. 00:13:23.180 |
is that over time, it becomes better and better. 00:13:30.740 |
and it keeps progressing in that kind of way. 00:13:35.240 |
But ultimately, there's always the opportunity, 00:13:39.940 |
to create something truly special, to move up, 00:13:42.820 |
to be president, to be a leader in whatever the industry 00:13:51.540 |
The value of joining that American English language 00:13:55.180 |
network is much higher today than it was 30 years ago, 00:14:00.340 |
So that makes immigration returns themselves skewed. 00:14:07.220 |
I think has become much more valuable in relative terms 00:14:18.180 |
of having a globally known podcast would be much smaller. 00:14:28.600 |
I don't know if it's connected to what we're discussing here, 00:14:31.960 |
the freedom and opportunity of the American dream. 00:14:35.020 |
Or does it make any sense to you that we have so much impact 00:14:49.780 |
or is there something fundamental to the United States 00:14:55.140 |
So it's almost like what's cool, what's entertaining, 00:15:04.820 |
the philosophers, the intellectuals, the podcasts, 00:15:09.260 |
the movies, music, all that stuff, driving culture. 00:15:13.340 |
- There's something above and beyond language 00:15:16.660 |
It's a sense of entertainment really mattering, 00:15:32.740 |
Britain has its own version of this, which it does very well. 00:15:36.220 |
And not surprisingly, they're hugely influential 00:15:38.380 |
in music, comedy, most of the other areas you mentioned. 00:15:41.980 |
Canada, yes, but their best talent tends to come here. 00:15:44.880 |
But you could say it's like a broader North American thing 00:15:52.220 |
There's a sense higher education is really strong, 00:15:56.740 |
research is really strong in the United States, 00:16:01.940 |
when we zoom out, scientists aren't very cool here. 00:16:11.180 |
Maybe they would say like, they would say what, 00:16:16.620 |
And Neil deGrasse Tyson isn't exactly a scientist, 00:16:20.420 |
So there's not the same kind of admiration of science 00:16:35.080 |
- Well, you can become a celebrity scientist if you want to. 00:16:40.260 |
And we have Spock from Star Trek, who is still a big deal. 00:17:00.340 |
And again, that's going to attract a lot of top talent. 00:17:05.300 |
I know the Pfizer vaccine is sort of from Germany, 00:17:08.100 |
sort of from Turkey, but it's nonetheless being distributed 00:17:15.060 |
and ethnic Armenian immigrant through Lebanon, 00:17:17.980 |
first to Canada, then down here to Boston, Cambridge area. 00:17:21.460 |
Those are incredible vaccines and US nailed it. 00:17:36.220 |
but taking an idea and actually building the thing 00:17:38.340 |
and scaling it and being able to distribute it at scale. 00:17:51.100 |
What in your views are the pros and cons of capitalism 00:18:01.180 |
is really exist in America, but to the extent that it does. 00:18:04.780 |
- People use the word capitalism in so many different ways. 00:18:09.820 |
- The literal meaning is private ownership of capital goods, 00:18:20.840 |
Government owned water utilities seem to work as well 00:18:26.820 |
But with all those qualifications put to the side, 00:18:38.120 |
The biggest businesses tend to pay the highest wages. 00:18:49.140 |
So I am indeed mostly a fan, subject to numerous caveats. 00:18:56.300 |
What are some negative downsides of capitalism in your view? 00:19:01.300 |
Or some things that we should be concerned about 00:19:07.740 |
- Again, capitalism takes a different form in each country. 00:19:12.940 |
our weird blend of whatever you want to call it 00:19:16.120 |
has had an enduring racial problem from the beginning, 00:19:20.160 |
has been a force of taking away land from Native Americans 00:19:24.040 |
and oppressing them pretty much from the beginning. 00:19:27.180 |
It has done very well by immigrants for the most part. 00:19:35.020 |
We revel in tributarian creative destruction more. 00:19:38.980 |
So we don't just prop up national champions forever. 00:19:42.260 |
And there's a precariousness to life for some people here 00:19:45.440 |
that is less so, say in Germany or the Netherlands. 00:19:57.780 |
It's a better country in which to be a weirdo 00:20:02.380 |
But there is truly, whether from the government 00:20:06.980 |
there is less social security in some fundamental sense. 00:20:25.180 |
Is that the sense in which you're using the weirdo 00:20:27.180 |
like outside of the norm, like breaking conventions? 00:20:31.260 |
And here that is either acceptable or even admired 00:20:39.340 |
and that we're all immigrants is selecting for people 00:20:48.220 |
of switch in their lives, makes us a nation of weirdos. 00:21:04.460 |
And the other part of the world to be a little 00:21:16.580 |
And everyone's like, oh, American way versus European way, 00:21:22.340 |
I used to have this conversation with my parents 00:21:29.820 |
And they used this term, especially in Russian, 00:21:36.500 |
they would suggest, normal people don't do this. 00:21:43.520 |
But as I got older, I realized that that's a compliment 00:21:56.740 |
way that you're saying that is the American ideal. 00:21:59.860 |
Because if you want to do anything special or interesting, 00:22:02.860 |
you don't wanna be doing in one particular avenue 00:22:06.340 |
what normal people do because that won't be interesting. 00:22:16.780 |
And there's a very different Russian weirdo tradition, 00:22:25.100 |
And they have their own different kind of status 00:22:32.420 |
they stay pretty Russian, but it seems to me, 00:22:38.060 |
And the ways in which they might wanna be grumpier 00:22:52.260 |
about Grisha Perelman turning down the Fields Medal. 00:23:01.380 |
with the structure of Nobel Prizes, of these huge awards, 00:23:05.260 |
of the reputations, the hierarchy of everyone saying, 00:23:41.780 |
- Right, but I've known a lot of Nobel Prize winners, 00:23:45.260 |
and it is my sense they become less productive. 00:23:52.220 |
but if someone wants to turn their back on that 00:23:54.940 |
and keep on working, which I assume is what he's doing, 00:24:07.820 |
Grisha, if you're listening, I need to talk to you soon. 00:24:24.820 |
This kind of seems to be one of the fundamental engines 00:24:34.860 |
- What really matters is how good your legal framework is. 00:24:40.180 |
for food leads to bloody conflict all the time. 00:24:42.500 |
The animal world is quite unpleasant to say the least. 00:24:54.780 |
competition probably is gonna work very well, 00:25:09.380 |
- What aspects of life do you think we should protect 00:25:13.780 |
So is there some, you said like the rule of law, 00:25:16.580 |
is there some things we should keep away from competition? 00:25:19.740 |
- Well, the fight for territory most of all, right? 00:25:31.820 |
Serbians, Bosnians, they'll talk your ear off. 00:25:40.660 |
and I would rather we more or less stick with it. 00:25:43.220 |
If Catalonians wanna leave, they keep up with it, 00:25:57.900 |
but those kinds of policies that are less free market. 00:26:14.540 |
And it's a pretty humiliating experience often. 00:26:17.140 |
- Yeah, do you think a free market in general is possible, 00:26:28.260 |
- I don't think the term pure free market's well defined 00:26:33.020 |
The legal order has to make decisions on like 00:26:35.420 |
what is intellectual property, more important than ever. 00:26:47.860 |
No simple answers, but just saying free market 00:26:53.980 |
- So free market is an economics, I guess, idea. 00:26:56.980 |
So there's no, it's not possible for free market 00:27:00.260 |
is generate the rules that are like emergent, 00:27:05.340 |
Through private norms, through trade associations, 00:27:08.140 |
international trade is mostly done privately and by norms. 00:27:13.140 |
So it's certainly possible, but at the end of the day, 00:27:16.060 |
I think you need governments to draw very clear lines 00:27:20.020 |
to prevent it from turning into mafia run systems. 00:27:26.460 |
with other group of weirdos lately, Michael Malice, 00:27:42.620 |
where the, you know, taking free market to the full extreme 00:27:47.500 |
of basically saying there should be no government, 00:27:54.300 |
Oversight, I guess, and then everything should be fully, 00:27:57.780 |
like all the agreements, all the collectives you form 00:28:00.380 |
should be voluntary, not based on the geographic land 00:28:27.700 |
on sort of military type of stuff, on healthcare, 00:28:41.900 |
But I think the deeper point is that all societies 00:28:49.100 |
So globally, there's a kind of anarchy across borders, 00:28:53.580 |
even within federalistic systems, they're typically complex. 00:29:05.300 |
There's not per se a final arbitrator in that regard. 00:29:09.060 |
So you want a good anarchy rather than a bad anarchy. 00:29:13.060 |
You want to squish your anarchy into the right corners. 00:29:15.980 |
And I don't think there's a theoretical answer 00:29:25.740 |
You'd certainly want to make a lot of improvements. 00:29:31.660 |
But to just dump on the anarchist system is the point. 00:30:00.100 |
and just, you know, Ayn Rand comes up as a person, 00:30:04.340 |
as a philosopher, throughout many conversations, 00:30:11.140 |
It's always weird to me when somebody arouses a philosophy 00:30:17.740 |
Does she make, do you understand, first of all, 00:30:41.700 |
or she would put, I guess, the virtue of selfishness. 00:30:46.540 |
- Ayn Rand was a big influence on me growing up. 00:30:56.220 |
and good lives and wealth is something we ought 00:31:08.820 |
That said, as a philosopher, I disagree with her 00:31:15.700 |
I read Plato before Ayn Rand, and in a Socratic dialogue, 00:31:24.140 |
you understand the wisdom is in the coming together 00:31:46.500 |
I think the secret to Ayn Rand is that she was Russian. 00:31:49.260 |
I'd love to have her on my podcast if she were still alive. 00:31:57.920 |
And she is much more Russian than she seems at first. 00:32:01.660 |
Even purging people from the objectivist circles. 00:32:04.420 |
It's like how Russians, especially female Russians, 00:32:17.780 |
but if she is and she comes onto your podcast, 00:32:34.860 |
What she really likes in the music and literature and why. 00:32:40.260 |
her view of relations between the sexes in Russia, 00:32:45.020 |
why she still carries through the old Russian vision 00:32:48.300 |
in her fiction, this extreme sexual dimorphism, 00:32:53.860 |
To me is a uniquely, at least Eastern European vision, 00:32:59.420 |
And that's in her, that's her actual real philosophy, 00:33:16.300 |
where it's not, that certainty is almost the thing 00:33:37.180 |
that the wisdom is in the coming together of ideas. 00:33:52.260 |
- Like in my view, "Boswell's Life of Johnson," 00:33:56.980 |
It's in essence a co-authored work, "Boswell and Johnson." 00:33:59.980 |
It's one of the greatest philosophy books ever, 00:34:02.740 |
though it is commonly regarded as a biography. 00:34:16.060 |
a lot of the greatest works are in a kind of dialogue form. 00:34:25.020 |
And yes, it's drama, but it's also philosophy, Shakespeare. 00:34:30.540 |
- In your book, "Big Business," speaking of Ayn Rand, 00:34:35.380 |
"Big Business, a Love Letter to an American Antihero," 00:34:49.100 |
for many reasons, but who is it that saved us? 00:34:56.220 |
They upped their delivery game more or less overnight 00:35:03.700 |
direct delivery food, whether it's DoorDash or Uber Eats 00:35:07.420 |
or using Whole Foods through Amazon shipping. 00:35:12.260 |
Switching over our entire higher educational system, 00:35:21.260 |
but their performance rate has been remarkably high. 00:35:24.820 |
So if you just look at resources, competence, incentives, 00:35:33.260 |
as early as they did, sending a message like, 00:35:41.700 |
and having all the testing set up in advance. 00:35:47.820 |
and throughout the broader course of American history, 00:35:52.700 |
- Can we engage in a kind of therapy session? 00:35:56.220 |
I'm often troubled by the negativity towards big business, 00:36:07.260 |
how we remove that, or maybe first psychoanalyze it, 00:36:12.940 |
It feels like, you know, once we've gotten wifi on flights, 00:36:17.940 |
on airplane flights, people started complaining 00:36:29.540 |
and then start complaining about little details. 00:36:50.620 |
and yet the biggest thing that people talk about 00:36:57.380 |
They essentially use the platform to complain 00:37:11.040 |
or the removal of Donald Trump from the platform 00:37:13.100 |
is a bad thing, but it feels like we don't talk about 00:37:16.340 |
the positive impacts at scale of these technologies. 00:37:19.660 |
Is there, can you explain why, and is there a way to fix it? 00:37:36.660 |
and one insult, you're more bothered by the insult 00:37:48.440 |
where it's all kind of messages going back and forth, 00:37:50.580 |
and you're really bugged by the messages you don't like. 00:37:56.200 |
It's not only taken out on big business, to be clear. 00:38:09.840 |
If you poll people, the military still polls quite well, 00:38:14.580 |
but people are very disillusioned with many things, 00:38:17.040 |
and the Martin Gury thesis, that because of the internet, 00:38:52.700 |
Let's praise the people who are getting something done. 00:38:57.780 |
- As an economic thinker, as a writer, as a podcaster, 00:39:11.260 |
which is another service where people use voice. 00:39:13.640 |
So the only thing you do is just hear each other. 00:39:23.580 |
And there's an intimacy to voice-only communication 00:39:30.860 |
which feels like something that won't last for some reason. 00:39:40.860 |
of what's happening right now with Clubhouse? 00:40:04.940 |
So audio per se is not necessarily to my advantage. 00:40:08.200 |
I don't speak or listen faster than other people. 00:40:10.800 |
In fact, I'm a slower listener 'cause I like 1.0, 00:40:18.760 |
- Yeah, it's interesting because you mentioned podcasts 00:40:25.480 |
The podcasts are recorded and so I can skip things. 00:40:30.040 |
Like I can skip commercials or I can skip parts 00:40:40.120 |
there's a magic to the fact when you have a lot of people 00:40:49.240 |
And you can't skip it or you can't fast forward. 00:40:55.200 |
Nevertheless, there's a tension between that, 00:41:05.580 |
where Elon Musk can ask the CEO of Robinhood, Vlad, 00:41:10.200 |
about like, "Hey, somebody holding a gun to your head. 00:41:18.280 |
there's been a recent conversation with Bill Gates 00:41:23.940 |
and had basically a regular interview on the platform 00:41:27.900 |
without allowing the possibility of the magic of the chaos. 00:41:36.980 |
and for many other people who are exceptionally productive 00:41:39.580 |
in other places, but there's still nevertheless a magic 00:41:42.660 |
to the chaos that can be created with live conversation 00:41:47.860 |
- Maybe what it's perfect for is the tribute. 00:41:50.140 |
So they had an episode recently that I didn't hear, 00:41:59.460 |
You want different people appearing and stepping up 00:42:03.780 |
And Clubhouse is 110% perfect for that, the tribute. 00:42:12.580 |
I think there was a time when somebody arranged 00:42:15.740 |
a conversation with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on stage. 00:42:27.920 |
but it was still magical to have these people 00:42:33.420 |
It's so frictionless to have two major figures 00:42:39.480 |
in world history just jump on a Clubhouse stage. 00:42:48.800 |
But there's also the problem that in particular, 00:42:52.880 |
it's like Biden would have a similar problem. 00:42:55.920 |
It's like, they're just not into new technology. 00:42:58.360 |
So it's very hard to catch the Kremlin up to, 00:43:02.900 |
But to catch them up to Clubhouse, you have to have the, 00:43:07.300 |
Elon Musk has a sense of the internet, the humor, 00:43:10.900 |
that you have to have in order to use a new app 00:43:21.860 |
That magic of have two big personalities just show up. 00:43:34.660 |
and they're seeking for that human connection 00:43:37.500 |
that we usually get elsewhere through our work. 00:43:44.560 |
So it is a pandemic thing, but I think it will persist. 00:43:49.880 |
to more of the world, Clubhouse will still offer that. 00:44:00.880 |
- Yeah, from an artificial intelligence perspective, 00:44:05.840 |
have a sense that there is a deep loneliness in the world, 00:44:16.640 |
It feels like there's like an iceberg of loneliness 00:44:26.900 |
with whom you can have a deep interaction enough 00:44:29.500 |
to where they can help you to understand yourself 00:44:36.440 |
Like I have a sense that artificial intelligence systems 00:44:40.660 |
but humans, I think, crave that from other humans 00:44:49.460 |
Like Clubhouse is an example that allows that. 00:44:52.220 |
- Are touring bots gonna out-compete Clubhouse? 00:44:54.900 |
Like why not sort of program your own session? 00:44:59.860 |
and say, "Here's the kind of conversation I want." 00:45:04.540 |
And it may not be as good as Elon and Vladimir Putin, 00:45:09.580 |
- Yeah, and one of the things that's missing, 00:45:14.900 |
So long-term memory is what current AI systems don't have, 00:45:21.180 |
Forget the words, it's like sharing the highs 00:45:32.860 |
really close relationships, is going through some shit. 00:46:02.380 |
but Texas and California are not gonna break off. 00:46:05.500 |
I mean, they're big enough where they could do it, 00:46:14.100 |
Do you think, some people have talked to Eric Weinstein, 00:46:26.260 |
is based on the assumption that we're gonna grow forever, 00:46:31.020 |
Do you think economic growth will continue indefinitely, 00:46:37.220 |
- I've long been in agreement with Eric, Peter Thiel, 00:46:42.020 |
Robert Gordon and others that growth has slowed down. 00:46:47.460 |
"The Great Stagnation," appropriately titled. 00:46:50.660 |
But the last two years, I've become much more optimistic. 00:46:57.780 |
mRNA vaccines and medicine is a big deal already. 00:47:09.060 |
that's now in stage three trial, it probably works. 00:47:18.340 |
there's suddenly this surge of breakthroughs. 00:47:20.660 |
I would say many of them rooted in superior computation 00:47:35.980 |
- He's not at, he hasn't gained, that's really interesting. 00:47:46.180 |
in the kind of things that computation has unlocked for us 00:47:49.620 |
in terms of, like it could be a wellspring of innovation 00:48:01.620 |
to where it could be a wellspring of innovation. 00:48:04.340 |
- But you're very close to it in your own work. 00:48:07.760 |
The work you're doing would not have been possible 00:48:11.300 |
- But the question is, how much does that work enable 00:48:17.640 |
some version of driverless vehicles will be a thing. 00:48:20.700 |
I'm not sure when, you know much better than I do. 00:48:23.380 |
Maybe only partially, but that too will be a big deal. 00:48:28.220 |
that sort of the Peter Thiel School area of ideas 00:48:36.180 |
How many parts of our lives can technology integrate 00:48:47.740 |
Not replace, but like, you know, make it digital 00:48:52.740 |
and thereby enable computation to improve it, right? 00:49:06.020 |
- There was a New York Times symposium in April, 00:49:13.620 |
And the most optimistic answer was in four years. 00:49:41.060 |
but it enabled the rise of various dictators. 00:49:44.660 |
So the new technologies now, whatever exactly they may be, 00:49:51.620 |
not that I think they're all gonna slow to a trickle. 00:49:59.860 |
It was the first of the stagnation books, in fact. 00:50:11.220 |
I'm not sure that's exactly the right prediction, 00:50:14.500 |
like 2030, but I think we're actually gonna beat that. 00:50:20.980 |
on top of the world for the rest of the century, 00:50:22.980 |
in terms of its economic growth, impact on the world, 00:50:27.400 |
scientific innovation, all those kinds of things. 00:50:44.460 |
we talked about Ayn Rand and her Russian roots. 00:50:58.220 |
Is there anything about its ideas that you find compelling, 00:51:08.060 |
The words mean many things to different people. 00:51:10.780 |
You could argue my life as a tenured professor 00:51:24.900 |
decentralized set of incentives that were destructive 00:51:30.600 |
It wasn't even central planning, much less communism. 00:51:34.260 |
So Paul Craig Roberts and Polanyi were correct 00:51:44.060 |
and being very good at a whole bunch of things, 00:51:47.060 |
but in terms of progress, innovation, and consumer goods, 00:51:56.380 |
but that's what I think of the system the Soviets had, 00:52:00.420 |
and it required an ever-increasing pile of lies 00:52:04.840 |
that both alienated people but created an elite 00:52:12.300 |
or even thought they were doing better by being crooks 00:52:18.740 |
Like, you would have a higher standard of living 00:52:27.900 |
And that, of course, did not prove sustainable. 00:52:31.180 |
- And so it's, what is it, a momentum, a bureaucracy, 00:52:34.940 |
where you lose control of the original vision, 00:52:58.900 |
of the information and the prices and quantities 00:53:14.400 |
Well, I'm perhaps no more an expert than Ayn Rand. 00:53:19.580 |
It's more personal than it is scholarly or historic. 00:53:34.040 |
where you could argue he took a little break. 00:53:39.960 |
- And it's still possible now with the new constitution 00:53:44.920 |
that he could hold power for longer than Stalin, 00:53:59.260 |
as an economist, as a human being, about Russia? 00:54:05.980 |
As you know, the Russian economy, starting, what, 00:54:24.240 |
Since then, pretty recently, they've had a bunch of years 00:54:26.460 |
of negative four to 5% growth in a row, which is terrible. 00:54:31.460 |
The economy is way too dependent on fossil fuels, 00:54:37.660 |
You need a concordance across economic power, 00:54:51.140 |
from almost the beginning, has never been able to have that, 00:54:55.140 |
that ultimately, his incentives are to steer the system 00:54:58.500 |
where the economic power is in a small number of hands 00:55:06.580 |
in living standards anymore, ever, the way it's set up now, 00:55:15.060 |
and that is really quite structural, what has gone wrong. 00:55:20.380 |
And then on top of that, you can have an opinion of Putin, 00:55:23.420 |
but you've gotta start with those structural problems, 00:55:28.740 |
but he had all those good years in the beginning, 00:55:30.820 |
so the number of Russians, say, who live here, 00:55:33.420 |
or in Russia, who love Putin and it's sincere, 00:55:36.580 |
they're not just afraid of being dragged away, 00:55:41.480 |
Yeah, I'm really torn on, Putin's approval rating, 00:55:49.060 |
and I'm torn in whether that has to do with the fact 00:56:03.200 |
a genuine love of Putin, appreciation of what Putin has done 00:56:15.960 |
anyone discussed by the press, no matter who they are, 00:56:21.520 |
- If you're discussed by the press, you don't look good. 00:56:24.720 |
Tech company executives are learning this, right? 00:56:28.440 |
So in that sense, I think the rating is artificially high, 00:56:32.280 |
but I don't, by any means, think it's all insincere, 00:56:36.120 |
but that high popularity, I view as bearish for Russia. 00:56:44.280 |
It's nice to see free speech, even if it's full of hate. 00:56:54.360 |
It seems difficult to be an entrepreneur in Russia. 00:57:21.720 |
if you wanna be the next Bill Gates or Elon Musk 00:57:25.240 |
or Steve Jobs or whatever, you come to America. 00:57:34.120 |
Is it history, is it structural problems of today? 00:57:57.760 |
And so you have these small number of PowerPoints 00:58:03.120 |
and not really so keen to encourage the others 00:58:06.200 |
who ultimately would pull the balance of political power 00:58:13.400 |
And the return of interest in Orthodox Church and all that, 00:58:37.160 |
they can show up and blend in, super talented, 00:58:42.320 |
especially if they're from one of the two major cities, 00:58:51.280 |
and that keeps the whole thing up and running 00:58:54.800 |
- Yeah, what do you make of the other big player, China? 00:59:09.520 |
They seem to be much better at encouraging entrepreneurs. 00:59:15.680 |
but what do you make of the entire Chinese system? 00:59:18.360 |
Why does it work as well as it does currently? 00:59:24.360 |
And what are its threats to the United States 00:59:49.480 |
they've still done much worse, not even close. 00:59:55.120 |
or I hesitate to cite democracy as an unalloyed good 01:00:07.080 |
but they've managed as actually the Soviets did 01:00:21.000 |
But they moved from a totalitarian system to an oligarchy 01:00:24.600 |
where the CCP is actually, at least for a while, 01:00:35.560 |
I don't know how long that streak will continue 01:00:38.380 |
with one person so much now holding authority 01:00:45.840 |
The selection pressures for the next generation 01:00:48.160 |
of high-level CCP members probably become much worse. 01:00:58.800 |
Well, we're gonna kind of hold Jack Ma on this island 01:01:02.640 |
and he can only issue like weird hello statements. 01:01:24.000 |
- Is there ideas from China or from anywhere in general 01:01:37.140 |
Is there some interesting ideas of large-scale government, 01:01:56.800 |
dismantled what was called the iron rice ball. 01:02:02.320 |
a lot of the welfare system, a lot of the guaranteed jobs. 01:02:12.960 |
but people think of China as having a government 01:02:23.520 |
I don't mean speech, but by a lot of metrics, 01:02:25.800 |
economically, we have a lot more government than they do. 01:02:28.880 |
So what one means here by government, private control, 01:02:32.720 |
I don't think you can just add up the numbers 01:02:36.760 |
They've been fantastic at building infrastructure in cities 01:02:40.800 |
in ways that will attract people from the countryside. 01:02:44.040 |
And furthermore, they more or less enforce a meritocracy 01:02:59.800 |
you will be elevated and sent to a very good school, 01:03:05.160 |
And they do that and they mean that very consistently. 01:03:23.560 |
- That moves people from the rural to the big city 01:03:30.480 |
- And when they get there, they're taken seriously. 01:03:32.280 |
Jack Ma was riding a bicycle teaching English 01:03:42.360 |
- Or in America, it's way too much a credentialist society. 01:03:45.480 |
- As we were talking about, even with the Nobel Prize. 01:03:48.600 |
- But what do you think about these large government 01:03:53.160 |
- The one version of UBI that makes the most sense to me 01:04:00.680 |
If their parents screw up, you shouldn't blame the kid 01:04:04.980 |
I believe in something like UBI for kids, maybe just cash. 01:04:19.000 |
You might have to move to North Dakota to work, 01:04:33.080 |
Japan and the US, US at least for manufacturing, 01:04:49.500 |
But for now, we had rising wages in the Trump years 01:05:04.260 |
for many people, and that's a social problem. 01:05:10.460 |
is the right answer to that very real problem. 01:05:13.520 |
- Well, that's also, I like the UBI for kids. 01:05:45.420 |
some of the technology we see, like the internet, 01:06:07.200 |
UBI, if it's at a high level, will make that worse. 01:06:26.320 |
to find the thing that alleviates your loneliness. 01:06:33.320 |
If I give you a million dollars or a billion dollars, 01:06:41.640 |
Will you be more motivated to find the thing you love, 01:07:02.760 |
- But a lot of the great creators did not have huge cushions, 01:07:18.640 |
who have creatively been important as novelists. 01:07:22.000 |
They might have continued to run the family business, 01:07:25.980 |
but Van Gogh was not heir to a great family fortune. 01:07:30.760 |
- It's sad that cushions get in the way of progress. 01:07:36.800 |
- So it's the same point about prizes, right? 01:07:39.760 |
- Inheriting too much money is like winning a prize. 01:07:54.120 |
Is there some ideas that you guys battle it out on? 01:07:58.120 |
Is it the stagnation question that you mentioned? 01:08:00.560 |
- That's one of them, but here's at least two others. 01:08:08.040 |
So I'm just talking about a time slice, Eric, right? 01:08:13.000 |
Like I heard him on Clubhouse three nights ago, 01:08:20.080 |
about the impact of immigration on US science. 01:08:37.040 |
She was from Hungary and was ridiculed and mocked. 01:08:49.800 |
So Eric is all worried, like mathematicians coming in, 01:08:52.880 |
they're discouraging native US citizens from doing math. 01:09:08.680 |
- I would give anyone with a plausible graduate degree 01:09:17.120 |
It makes so strange that the best people that come here 01:09:22.640 |
then when we kick them out, it doesn't make any sense. 01:09:43.120 |
And they're poor, and they have decent education, 01:09:50.120 |
and convert a Belarus passport to a green card? 01:09:53.520 |
Open borders for Belarus, it's my new campaign slogan. 01:10:02.000 |
What's the second thing you disagree with, Eric? 01:10:10.240 |
but he is suspicious of trade in a way that I am not. 01:10:14.840 |
I do understand what's called the China shock 01:10:17.320 |
has been a big problem for the US middle class. 01:10:25.960 |
I think free trade is very much a good thing. 01:10:29.200 |
Eric, I'm not sure he'll say it's not a good thing, 01:10:42.880 |
You want vaccine production in your own country, 01:10:46.960 |
They have enough money, no one will send them vaccines. 01:10:58.080 |
to produce all US manufactured vaccines in India. 01:11:02.000 |
They have the technologies, obviously lower wages. 01:11:15.820 |
So you need to keep some vaccine production in your country. 01:11:20.120 |
It's an exception to free trade, not to the logic. 01:11:29.380 |
But look, it would be cheaper to do so, right? 01:11:42.880 |
What do you think about, what the hell is money? 01:11:48.820 |
And the recent excitement around cryptocurrency 01:12:01.100 |
the philosophical discussion of the nature of money. 01:12:15.540 |
Go back to medieval times, bills of exchange. 01:12:23.360 |
What about metals that were considered legal tender 01:12:32.480 |
is the natural state of affairs for human beings. 01:12:38.860 |
Now crypto per se, I think Bitcoin has taken over 01:12:56.860 |
I am deeply uncertain about the less of crypto, 01:13:04.500 |
of using it for transactions in ways where I'm not sure 01:13:13.340 |
I'm not sure the retail demand really is there 01:13:16.220 |
once it is regulated like everything else is. 01:13:18.520 |
I would say I'm 40/60 optimistic on those forms of crypto. 01:13:26.020 |
they fail than succeed, but I take them very seriously. 01:13:42.300 |
and now has crossed $50,000 for a single Bitcoin. 01:13:54.260 |
If people decide it's worth a million dollars, 01:13:58.580 |
Like you said, isn't the ultimate state of money confusion, 01:14:11.540 |
Now a good Warhol could be worth over 50 million. 01:14:14.980 |
That's an incredible rate of price appreciation. 01:14:42.380 |
But they're not basically money, nor is Bitcoin. 01:14:48.900 |
I would think is likely to fall, if anything. 01:14:51.300 |
- So you don't think there'll be some kind of phase shift? 01:14:55.420 |
for one of the main mechanisms of transactions? 01:15:13.840 |
You have smart people trying to make, say, Ether 01:15:18.300 |
much more effective as a currency than Bitcoin, 01:15:21.540 |
and there's certainly a decent chance they will succeed. 01:15:26.660 |
I mean, with smart contracts, with NFTs as well, 01:15:33.380 |
that are plugging into the human psyche somehow, 01:15:38.260 |
Money seems to be this viral thing, our ideas of money, 01:15:47.700 |
Like there's network effects that just take over. 01:16:01.860 |
It's like these celebrities can have a huge ripple effect 01:16:13.820 |
I don't know, Donald Trump, The Rock, whoever else, 01:16:17.580 |
can actually define the currencies that we use? 01:16:29.260 |
So right now, every baseball player has a baseball card. 01:16:34.120 |
their cards can end up worth a fair amount of money. 01:16:37.540 |
- And that's stable, we've had it for many decades. 01:16:42.860 |
they sign a contract with Topps or whatever company. 01:16:46.180 |
Now, could you imagine celebrities, baseball players, 01:16:53.000 |
Absolutely, and you're somewhat seeing that right now, 01:16:55.960 |
as you mentioned, artists with these unique works 01:16:59.340 |
But I'm not sure those are macroeconomically important. 01:17:05.180 |
that people have fun with, again, I say bring it on. 01:17:12.100 |
that challenge fiat monies, which actually work very well. 01:17:16.300 |
Yesterday, I sent money to a family in Ethiopia 01:17:29.420 |
my primitive dinosaur bank, BB&T, Mid-Atlantic Bank, 01:17:35.380 |
charted by the Fed, regulated by the FDAC and the OCC. 01:17:47.420 |
once you take into account all of the last mile problems. 01:17:53.460 |
People are not sitting around bitching about it. 01:18:00.700 |
where there's no evidence for that whatsoever, 01:18:03.300 |
that, to me, is a sign they're not thinking clearly 01:18:11.860 |
that are really exciting that don't want to address 01:18:30.860 |
and the user experience and all those kinds of-- 01:18:36.060 |
- And it's not, that's taken for granted, I think. 01:18:56.860 |
is similar competition is facing cryptocurrency. 01:19:00.340 |
Like you have to actually present a killer app reason 01:19:05.340 |
to switch from fiat currency to Ethereum or to whatever. 01:19:11.780 |
- And the Biden people are going to regulate crypto. 01:19:17.020 |
So something like DeFi, I fully get why that is cheaper, 01:19:32.340 |
I would rather see it given greater tolerance. 01:19:48.860 |
Another thing that recently happened that shook the world, 01:19:53.220 |
and at least me from the outsider perspective, 01:19:56.900 |
make me question what I do and don't understand 01:20:03.540 |
a large number of individuals getting together 01:20:05.740 |
on the internet and having a large-scale impact 01:20:13.460 |
we're going to play a fun game, it might cost you money, 01:20:24.260 |
but I don't think it's of macroeconomic importance. 01:20:26.860 |
And the price of those stocks in the medium term 01:20:43.620 |
like from centralized power to distributed power. 01:21:21.220 |
Okay, but macroeconomically, it's not fundamental. 01:21:24.900 |
Okay, I was going to say, I hope you're right, 01:21:33.740 |
- I think that chaos is somewhat real, to be clear. 01:21:40.620 |
not through manipulating, you know, GameStop or AMC. 01:21:50.740 |
they tend to make every micro story fit the narrative. 01:21:54.020 |
And this micro story, like it fits the narrative, 01:21:56.220 |
but it doesn't mean its importance fits the narrative. 01:21:58.980 |
That's how I would kind of dissect the mistake 01:22:16.420 |
- You're probably right that it allows us to be weirder 01:22:29.220 |
- Like say we're weird and somewhat neurotic to begin with, 01:22:32.300 |
but the only messages we get are Dwight D. Eisenhower 01:22:37.580 |
Like that's gonna keep us within certain bounds 01:22:43.860 |
And the internet you can connect to not just QAnon, 01:22:49.740 |
But in good and bad ways, it makes us weirder. 01:23:01.500 |
And then it has a whole lot of ebbs and flows, 01:23:16.740 |
'cause you can research any weird opening on the internet, 01:23:26.020 |
And to figure out which are like the weird chess openings 01:23:28.340 |
and which are fundamental to the new and growing weirdness. 01:23:36.900 |
It's like this itself, this fun, weird guessing game, 01:23:52.460 |
there's a natural institutional resistance to the weird. 01:23:58.220 |
it's difficult to hire weird faculty, for example. 01:24:01.820 |
- You want to hire and give tenure to people that are safe, 01:24:11.020 |
are the ones that push the science forward usually. 01:24:17.860 |
- It's another area where Eric and I disagree. 01:24:20.540 |
As I interpret him, he thinks academia is totally bankrupt. 01:24:34.220 |
that end up better than where they started off. 01:24:43.180 |
UChicago, you wouldn't call it up and coming, 01:24:49.900 |
The biggest problem to me is the rank, absurd conformism 01:24:57.140 |
maybe in the top 40, but not in the top dozen, 01:24:59.980 |
that are just trying to be like a junior MIT, 01:25:04.900 |
And they're the most dogmatic enforcers of weirdness 01:25:30.980 |
more like Caltech, or the older Caltech all the more. 01:25:40.640 |
- Yeah, but so the problem with MIT, for example, 01:25:43.700 |
is the mediocrity is really enforced on the junior faculty. 01:25:48.700 |
So like the people that are allowed to be weird, 01:25:52.660 |
or actually they just don't even ask for permissions anymore 01:26:00.360 |
I find this podcast, I like talking to tech people, 01:26:06.220 |
and I find the young faculty to be really boring. 01:26:08.740 |
- They are, they're the most boring of faculty. 01:26:11.140 |
- Their work is interesting technically, technically, 01:26:26.420 |
who knows how to play the role of boring and fitting in. 01:26:31.420 |
And then on the side, he does the weird shit. 01:26:35.380 |
But they're not, they're far and few in between, 01:26:37.380 |
which I'd love to figure out a way to shake up that system 01:26:52.460 |
more than the formal departments do at the junior level. 01:27:03.580 |
'cause I think the best ideas still do come from the, 01:27:25.720 |
There are no numbers put on a blackboard, right? 01:27:31.060 |
- You have however many subscribers to your podcast 01:27:38.820 |
- But I'm not in the department of the humanities. 01:28:01.060 |
but there's a disproportionate number of emails I'm getting 01:28:10.880 |
like a meeting about why are all your ideas bad? 01:28:20.400 |
Why don't we kick Stanford's ass or Google's ass, 01:28:24.320 |
more importantly, in deep learning and machine learning 01:28:28.280 |
What CSAIL, for example, used to be a laboratory 01:28:31.620 |
is a laboratory for artificial intelligence research, 01:28:45.780 |
- Diversity talk has oddly become this new mechanism 01:28:52.340 |
So it's almost like this conformity mechanism 01:29:03.280 |
- But the humanities have innovated through podcasts, 01:29:05.640 |
including yours and mine, and they're alive and well. 01:29:08.700 |
All the bad talk you hear about the humanities 01:29:12.560 |
in universities, there's been this huge end run 01:29:15.160 |
of innovation on the internet, and it's amazing. 01:29:18.520 |
I never thought of, I mean, this is humanities. 01:29:23.400 |
- It's like you've been speaking prose all one's life 01:29:28.160 |
- Yeah, I am actually part of the humanities department 01:29:31.880 |
I did not realize this, and I will fully embrace it 01:29:39.080 |
Done some excellent things, done a lot of very bogus things, 01:29:51.520 |
I mean, they had their issues with Jeffrey Epstein 01:29:57.000 |
there's a, I've actually gone through a shift 01:30:06.320 |
one, at the very first, it was seen as a distraction. 01:30:09.600 |
Second, it was a source of almost a kind of jealousy, 01:30:15.320 |
when junior faculty outshines the senior faculty. 01:30:19.000 |
- And now it's more like, oh, okay, this is a thing. 01:30:29.560 |
and whatever this is, it doesn't have to be podcasting, 01:31:00.200 |
so we have multiple hats on here as we're speaking. 01:31:05.800 |
but that's like complaining about the podcasters, right? 01:31:18.520 |
that we should take UFO sightings more seriously. 01:31:22.280 |
- So that's one of the things that I've been inundated with, 01:31:37.740 |
of extraterrestrial life, of life out there in the universe. 01:32:05.020 |
- The data from the Navy, to me, seem quite serious. 01:32:11.920 |
I don't pretend that I have the technical abilities 01:32:16.820 |
but there are numerous senators at the very highest of levels 01:32:21.120 |
former heads of CIA, Brennan, I talked to him, 01:32:28.440 |
He basically said that was the single most likely explanation 01:32:37.280 |
these senators, or Hillary Clinton for that matter, 01:32:51.260 |
And that is sociological data I take very seriously. 01:32:55.800 |
I have not seen a debunking of the technical data, 01:32:59.660 |
which is eyewitness reports, and images, and radar. 01:33:15.140 |
- Yeah, there's one of the problems with UFO sightings 01:33:18.520 |
is that because of people with good equipment, 01:33:26.640 |
just really shitty equipment collecting data. 01:33:28.940 |
And so you have the blurry Bigfoot kind of situation 01:33:35.720 |
as opposed to, I mean, there's a bunch of people, 01:33:40.200 |
Avi Loeb from Harvard talking about Amua Amua, 01:33:49.640 |
to do the data collection don't want to help out. 01:33:57.800 |
where the scientists ignore that this is happening, 01:34:00.720 |
and there's the masses of people who are curious about it. 01:34:04.080 |
And then there's the government that's full of secrets 01:34:19.800 |
some exciting possibilities that they should be, 01:34:46.760 |
They figure out a bunch of things that can't be, 01:34:57.280 |
Is it people from the Earth's future coming back in time? 01:35:05.000 |
then they're like, well, what we've got left is aliens. 01:35:12.480 |
You can talk yourself into a lot of mistaken ideas that way. 01:35:16.040 |
The positive evidence that it's aliens is still quite weak. 01:35:20.480 |
The positive evidence that it's a puzzle is quite huge. 01:35:24.080 |
- And whatever the solution to the puzzle is, 01:35:30.580 |
or maybe even trivial, but that's weird in its own way, 01:35:40.000 |
the debunking that I've seen of these kinds of things 01:35:43.840 |
are less explorations and solutions to the puzzle 01:35:52.840 |
- And Avi, as you mentioned to him on your podcast with him, 01:36:11.320 |
You know, I know I can't judge Avi's arguments. 01:36:16.040 |
I'm too stupid to understand how good his argument 01:36:20.760 |
- And like you said, ultimately, in the argument, 01:36:24.680 |
in the meeting of that debate is where we find the wisdom. 01:36:38.960 |
Like there's a, as opposed to arguing against her ideas, 01:37:03.340 |
about our trust in institutions and governments and so on 01:37:09.000 |
That there's a kind of suspicion that the US government 01:37:12.680 |
and governments in general are hiding stuff from us 01:37:25.760 |
There aren't some alien men being held underground. 01:37:34.940 |
is government cannot bring itself to any new belief 01:37:44.820 |
They're more puzzled than they want to admit to us, 01:37:50.260 |
They shouldn't just be out panicking people in the streets. 01:37:54.700 |
it's a bit like approving the AstraZeneca vaccine. 01:37:57.620 |
Like which does work and they haven't approved it. 01:38:00.960 |
When is our government actually, if only internally, 01:38:10.880 |
And I just don't know if we have that capability 01:38:13.560 |
kind of mentally to sound like Eric Weinstein 01:38:30.000 |
Why do you think we humans long to create art? 01:38:34.800 |
Human society in general and just the human mind? 01:38:38.080 |
- Well, most of us don't really long to create art, right? 01:38:49.960 |
- I think, I don't know, 10% of humans roughly, 01:39:13.220 |
It's a different notion of working through a problem. 01:39:17.100 |
Like you and I enjoy working through analytic problems. 01:39:21.000 |
For me, economics, for you, AI and other areas, 01:39:39.280 |
If you paid me like 500 bucks to spend an hour painting, 01:39:51.920 |
- And would not be proud or happy with the result. 01:40:00.240 |
- Do you think you're suppressing some deep, I mean-- 01:40:07.320 |
as you played the guitar, and that I greatly enjoyed, 01:40:11.560 |
But it helped me appreciate music much, much more. 01:40:44.840 |
but you can learn a lot about them without ever being good, 01:40:53.200 |
what do you, I apologize for the absurd question, 01:40:58.760 |
and maybe moving piece of art you've encountered 01:41:07.560 |
I would say the two winners by a clear margin 01:41:21.640 |
Historical context or just purity, the creation itself? 01:41:30.400 |
it's that you're already primed for a lot, right? 01:41:42.200 |
they're the two greatest artworks for doing that. 01:41:56.480 |
within the broader court of critical opinion. 01:41:58.960 |
Now in painting, I think the most I was ever blown away 01:42:07.160 |
And it's in Vienna in the Kunsthistorisches Museum. 01:42:13.320 |
It just stunned me because I'd seen reproductions 01:42:32.320 |
But that would be like historically the one I would pick. 01:42:35.480 |
- What do you make in the context of those choices? 01:42:39.680 |
And I apologize if I'm not using the correct terminology 01:42:44.680 |
but art that maybe goes another level of weird 01:42:50.520 |
outside of the art that you've kind of mentioned 01:42:52.920 |
and breaks all the conventions and rules and so on 01:42:59.400 |
that doesn't make sense in the same way that David might. 01:43:09.200 |
is to think contemporary art or music for that matter 01:43:23.280 |
But there's a very large community of super smart, 01:43:26.200 |
well-educated people who spend their lives with it, 01:43:34.240 |
And to think that somehow they're all frauds, 01:43:40.080 |
just like Love House may or may not be your thing, 01:43:47.960 |
I do kind of have the conceited response of thinking like, 01:43:54.080 |
- Yeah, so the interesting thing is, as with most- 01:44:02.240 |
But when it comes to contemporary artistic creations, 01:44:13.840 |
I've heard him say derogatory things about some of it. 01:44:16.200 |
Doesn't mean he doesn't love some other parts of it. 01:44:18.760 |
- So I wonder if there's just a higher learning curve, 01:44:22.360 |
a steeper learning curve for contemporary art. 01:44:24.840 |
Meaning like it takes more work to appreciate the stories, 01:44:28.680 |
the context from which they're like thinking about this work. 01:44:32.480 |
It feels like in order to appreciate the art, 01:44:35.520 |
contemporary, certain pieces of contemporary art, 01:44:37.720 |
you have to know the story better behind the art. 01:44:51.760 |
You show them Vermeer or Rembrandt, they don't get it. 01:44:56.400 |
But just like a wall of color, they're in love with it. 01:45:04.760 |
The entry barriers are super high or super low, 01:45:09.360 |
- But you would challenge saying that there's a lot 01:45:22.400 |
of human thought out there, and it's part of the humanities. 01:45:25.600 |
And yes, there are people who also don't like podcasts, 01:45:37.040 |
of the human experience today on this humanities podcast. 01:45:42.600 |
Another absurd question, say this conversation 01:45:57.240 |
We can also travel to other parts of the world. 01:45:59.360 |
- Well, we have to travel because my preferred last meal 01:46:08.600 |
- The best restaurant around here is called Mama Chang's, 01:46:11.320 |
and it's in Fairfax, and it's food from Wuhan, actually. 01:46:23.080 |
I would fly to Hermosillo in Northern Mexico, 01:46:38.840 |
but I've spent a lot of time in those places. 01:46:46.720 |
- Of course, but the point is that scarcity still holds. 01:46:50.040 |
So I want one more dose of the food from Hermosillo. 01:46:57.240 |
that at least nominally is just like the Mexican food 01:47:05.440 |
But again, nominally, it's the part of Mexican food 01:47:08.200 |
that made it into the US, was then transformed. 01:47:16.240 |
because you have to rethink all these things you know, 01:47:29.280 |
It's this longstanding tradition, dirt cheap. 01:47:33.000 |
And the thing to do there is just sweet talk a taxi driver 01:47:59.920 |
- So well, you can break the food down part by part. 01:48:03.960 |
the beef there will be dry aged, just out in the air. 01:48:21.640 |
there's quite a large number of chilies you can get. 01:48:26.080 |
but it's just like a different thing, the chilies. 01:48:33.720 |
not corn territory, which is itself interesting. 01:48:44.760 |
Non-pasteurized cheeses are legal in all parts of Mexico, 01:48:52.920 |
in a way that here, again, it's just against the law. 01:49:09.320 |
The chilies, I don't think the onions really matter much. 01:49:22.360 |
The food chain is not relying on refrigeration, 01:49:25.320 |
and this is one thing Russia and US have in common. 01:49:28.680 |
We were early pioneers in food refrigeration, 01:49:31.600 |
and that made a lot of our foods worse quite early, 01:49:34.280 |
and it took us a long time to dig out of that 01:49:38.880 |
You've had an extensive rail system in Russia, 01:49:44.320 |
which makes it easier to freeze and then ship. 01:49:57.120 |
>> And there's no brain drain out of cooking, 01:50:06.800 |
but there's so many other things to pull people away, 01:50:09.640 |
but in Mexico, there's so much talent going into food, 01:50:14.120 |
which would be another candidate for last meal questions, 01:50:18.280 |
>> Oh, India, let's not even get started on India. 01:50:22.200 |
>> There's a million things we could talk about here, 01:50:25.440 |
but you've written about your dreams of sushi. 01:50:36.760 |
What do you make of that kind of obsessive pursuit 01:50:46.800 |
but it's a bit like the Beatles' "White Album," 01:50:48.440 |
which people think is simple and not overproduced. 01:50:51.520 |
It's in a funny way their most overproduced album, 01:50:57.280 |
It's really hard to produce music to the point 01:51:03.140 |
Like "Let It Be" album, has some great songs, 01:51:13.020 |
It's not that good, it doesn't sound that good. 01:51:15.660 |
"White Album," like the best half, like "Dear Prudence," 01:51:21.180 |
It's not simple, back in the USSR, super complex. 01:51:31.520 |
You try to refine it to make it appear super simple, 01:51:46.540 |
of doing the same thing over and over and over again. 01:52:01.440 |
to like a stoic minimalism or something like that. 01:52:05.320 |
- I'm happy they do it, but I actually feel bad about it. 01:52:16.840 |
"Wouldn't you be happier if you did something else?" 01:52:23.500 |
- That might be something that a weird mind would think. 01:52:37.880 |
They just spent five years tapping at rhythms 01:52:40.440 |
before they're allowed to touch their instruments. 01:52:54.920 |
like every single day is full of surprises, I would say. 01:52:58.500 |
I did martial arts for a long time, I do martial arts. 01:53:03.320 |
And I've always loved kind of the Russian way of drilling 01:53:16.960 |
thousands and thousands and thousands of times. 01:53:23.640 |
is you get to start to appreciate the tiniest of details 01:53:29.440 |
People who go to monasteries to meditate talk about this, 01:53:33.280 |
is when you just sit in silence and don't do anything, 01:53:37.420 |
you start to appreciate how much complexity and beauty 01:53:43.080 |
Like you can spend the whole day joyously thinking 01:53:53.160 |
your full weird self about the tiniest details of life. 01:54:11.240 |
that some percent of people are like that, but most are not. 01:54:22.080 |
- Well, with all the food talk, you made me hungry. 01:54:24.480 |
What books, three or so books, if any come to mind, 01:54:37.360 |
or you just drew some insights from throughout your life? 01:54:47.600 |
Another is Ayn Rand, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal. 01:54:56.260 |
which is about how decentralized mechanisms can work, 01:55:20.680 |
So the price of copper goes up all around the world. 01:55:32.700 |
And this one event creates this one tiny change 01:55:37.160 |
in information, it gets into your AI work very directly. 01:55:41.280 |
And how much complexity that one change engenders 01:55:47.200 |
how the different pieces of the price system fit together. 01:55:58.060 |
but for many things, we solve that AI problem. 01:56:00.960 |
I learned, I was I think 13, maybe 14 when I read Hayek. 01:56:04.840 |
- Yeah, the distributed nature of things there. 01:56:07.400 |
- And it's like your work on human attention, 01:56:13.880 |
- And how many of the advances of modern civilization 01:56:16.560 |
you need to understand as a response to that constraint. 01:56:23.160 |
- It's reprinted in a lot of books at this point. 01:56:34.580 |
There are open access versions of it through Google. 01:56:42.200 |
- Again, one of those profound looking over the ocean, 01:56:46.160 |
maybe sitting on a porch, maybe with a drink of some kind, 01:56:49.700 |
and a young kid comes by and asks you for advice. 01:57:03.120 |
what advice would you give to a young person today 01:57:14.760 |
or just a life, which is probably more important than career. 01:57:22.040 |
but here are my two generic pieces of advice. 01:57:29.080 |
Like say you want to learn about contemporary art. 01:57:39.120 |
but you want a mentor to help you frame them, 01:57:40.800 |
take you around to some art, talk about it with you. 01:58:00.280 |
Is there a lot of damage to be done from a bad mentor? 01:58:06.000 |
and in fact, it's quite hard to maintain them. 01:58:15.440 |
but there's a good chance you'll learn something. 01:58:22.600 |
He edited the book called "The Essential Stalin." 01:58:28.200 |
Was he like as a Stalinist, a good mentor for me, 01:58:43.760 |
That's what I took from him, among other things. 01:58:47.720 |
Daniel Kahneman, as somebody just popped into mind, 01:58:54.320 |
exceptionally good collaborators throughout his life, 01:58:57.120 |
there's not many bright minds that find collaborators. 01:59:17.540 |
- Like what you want from a better known person, 01:59:39.000 |
which can include in a WhatsApp group online, 01:59:43.880 |
they're talking about the thing you care about, 01:59:51.780 |
and you care what you think about each other, 02:00:06.600 |
- The Florentine artists, of course there's drama, 02:00:08.560 |
and small groups tend to split up, which is fine, 02:00:16.880 |
that was not done in small groups in some way. 02:00:19.920 |
- So speaking of loss of beautiful relationships, 02:00:31.680 |
What's the role of love, friendship, family in life? 02:00:37.000 |
In a successful life, or just life in general? 02:00:42.200 |
- There are multiple layers of understanding that question. 02:00:44.920 |
So kind of the lowest layer is the Darwinian answer. 02:00:48.720 |
If we weren't this way, we wouldn't have been successful 02:00:54.520 |
It's important to realize that's far from complete. 02:00:57.680 |
Sort of the highest understanding would be poetic, 02:01:00.040 |
like read John Keats, or many other love poets. 02:01:03.720 |
- So who do I go to to learn about love in terms of poets? 02:01:12.600 |
- Yeah, let's go Russian literature for a second. 02:01:18.640 |
What's your connection, what's your love in Russia? 02:01:26.440 |
but more concretely, my wife was born in Moscow. 02:01:38.360 |
I'm not her biological father, but I genuinely raised her. 02:01:45.520 |
- My father-in-law-- - So you're basically Russian. 02:02:14.540 |
So I absorbed something Russian from him as well. 02:02:34.200 |
- You mentioned Keats and that higher version, 02:02:39.760 |
- That it's the highest form of human connection, 02:02:42.400 |
and it's intoxicating, and it's part of building a life, 02:02:46.920 |
and most of us are very, very strongly drawn to it. 02:02:55.560 |
You mentioned you lost-- - But ask a Russian. 02:03:05.280 |
- What's your favorite Bruce Springsteen song? 02:03:14.160 |
Though it's very fashionable to think the earlier 02:03:21.160 |
But the quality of the songs, to me, "Born to Run" 02:03:33.120 |
- And perfectly produced in a Phil Spector kind of way. 02:03:40.600 |
- "Thunder Road," "Jungle Land," "10th Avenue Freezeout." 02:03:45.360 |
- Yeah, Bruce is-- - "Meeting Across the River." 02:03:48.920 |
- I really like, I like when he goes into love, personally. 02:03:57.820 |
- That's a very good song, "Dancing in the Dark." 02:04:00.380 |
A lot of the later work, I find the percussion 02:04:02.460 |
becomes too simple and kind of too white, somehow. 02:04:08.140 |
And it's still good work, he's super talented, 02:04:13.100 |
But when it all bursts open into the open road, 02:04:25.880 |
- I wonder what he's like live when he was young, right? 02:04:37.400 |
- I think what I like best from him is quite studio. 02:04:41.240 |
He certainly played well, I don't fault his performance. 02:04:52.160 |
But I was underwhelmed, because Led Zeppelin, 02:04:56.700 |
is much more of a studio band than you think at first. 02:05:05.980 |
when I'm alone and there's like a melancholy feeling. 02:05:20.060 |
- Yeah, well, you're almost worthy of Russia. 02:05:35.960 |
there's this beautiful, like there's a old girls' diner 02:05:44.720 |
- A thickness to culture in that part of the world. 02:05:51.960 |
And when you see like Russian characters on "The Sopranos," 02:05:56.720 |
even though there are these complete outlines. 02:06:01.880 |
You've, you mentioned you lost your father-in-law last week. 02:06:14.900 |
- I don't think about my own mortality that much, 02:06:25.520 |
is not knowing how the human story turns out. 02:06:32.880 |
read like a Wikipedia page called "The Rest of Human History" 02:06:45.120 |
And here's what happened between now and then. 02:06:58.840 |
They have a one or two sentence description of the human, 02:07:05.080 |
if there's a lot of intelligent civilizations out there 02:07:08.080 |
that in the big encyclopedia that describes the universe, 02:07:11.040 |
humans will only have one sentence, maybe two. 02:07:16.000 |
- But it's the only one I can read and understand, right? 02:07:18.640 |
And it may be hard to understand the human one 02:07:24.600 |
- Like how many years from now will reading Wikipedia 02:07:43.560 |
like we think language is fundamental to cognition, 02:07:47.400 |
or something totally different that we'll plug in. 02:07:55.840 |
do you think there'll be a section on the meaning of it? 02:08:11.640 |
- I don't know, links to a lot of other sections? 02:08:17.440 |
about the meaning of life that have that much meaning. 02:08:27.240 |
So like it's there in Wikipedia in some bigger sense. 02:08:30.680 |
But I don't wanna read the page on the meaning. 02:08:43.320 |
- It probably has, well, I actually gone to that page. 02:08:46.040 |
It does in fact have a lot of links to other pages. 02:08:52.520 |
The meaning of life is just a bunch of self-referential 02:09:07.520 |
Thank you so much for wasting all of this time with me. 02:09:10.080 |
It was one of the greatest conversations I've ever had. 02:09:12.840 |
- My pleasure and delighted to finally have met you 02:09:16.860 |
- Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tyler Cohen 02:09:25.960 |
Check them out in the description to support this podcast. 02:09:29.600 |
And now let me leave you with some words from Adam Smith. 02:09:38.520 |
"from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes 02:09:45.920 |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.