Tyler Cowen

2019–2026

“I didn't agree with that post. If you look at labor market data, the returns to IQ as it translates into wages, they're amazingly low. They're pretty insignificant. People who are very successful, they're very smart, but they're people who have say eight or nine areas where they're like, on a scale of 1 to 10, there are nine. Like they have one area where they're just like an 11 and a half on a scale of 1 to 10. And then on everything else, they're an eight to a nine and have a lot of determination. And that's what leads to incredible success. And IQ is one of those things, but it's not actually that important. It's the bundle, and the bundles are scarce. And then the bundles interacting with the rest of the world. Like just try going to a mid-tier state university and sit down with the committee designed to develop a plan for using artificial intelligence in the curriculum. And then come back to me and tell me how that went, and then we'll talk about bottlenecks.”

2024–2026 · changed view

“Yeah, that's what I think it will be like again. Great stagnation is over. We'll go back to those earlier rates of change, transform a lot of the world, mostly a big positive. A lot of chaos disrupted institutions along the way. That's my prediction.”

2019–2026 · changed view

“Absolutely. Yeah, and here that is either acceptable or even admired, or to be a loner. And since so many people are outsiders and that we're all immigrants, is selecting for people who left something behind, we're willing to leave behind their families, we're willing to undergo a certain brutality of switch in their lives, makes us a nation of weirdos. And weirdos are creative. Yeah, and Denmark is not a nation of weirdos. It's a wonderful place, you know, great for them. Ideally you want part of the world to be fully weirdos and innovating, and the other part of the world to be a little kind of chicken, risk-averse, and enjoy the benefits of the innovation, and to give people these smooth lives and six weeks off and free ride. And everyone's like, oh, American way versus European way, but basically they're complements.”

2019–2026 · changed view

“I don't think economics will ever be very predictive. It's most useful for helping you ask better questions. You look at something like game theory: well, game theory never predicted USA and USSR would have a war, would not have a war, but trying to think through the logic of strategic conflict, if you know game theory, it's just a much more interesting discussion.”

2019–2026 · changed view

“My basic rule is to read as much as possible. A lot of books are sent to my house, so I order on Amazon. On a weekday I might get five to ten review copies, and I look at each and every one, and I read some of those. I love to reread classics. The earlier parts of my life, I spent a much higher percentage of my reading reading the kinds of books that would be in the back section of Harold Bloom's The Western Canon. Most of those I've read, say, two to five times. And then I read what my friends write. I spend a great amount of time on Twitter, and I love to print out, say, economics working papers and read those. And then I take books on trips. I'm about to take a trip, and I just keep on reading, basically.”

2021–2026 · changed view

“That said, as a philosopher I disagree with her on most things, and I did even, like, as a boy when I was reading her. I read Plato before Rand, and in a Socratic dialogue there's all these different points of view being thrown around, yeah, and whomever it is you agree with, you understand the wisdom is in the coming together of the different points of view. Yeah, and she doesn't have that.”

2026

“It does not understand. It's not conscious. It's not sentient. I'm pretty sure of that. I know some people have suggested it might now currently be conscious. I find that very very difficult to give credence to. It's a very powerful cash register in a way and the cash register is not conscious.”

2019–2026

“List of the top 10 companies by market cap almost completely turns over. Procedures for tenure on the top 50 research universities almost exactly the same. Whatever you think of those, there's something gone wrong in the sector. There's not enough experimentation with how you reward people. More schools should experiment with a different kind of tenure, or reward people more on the basis of practical impact. And again, you might object to any particular solution, but the extent to which experimentation has died at the institutional level, to me is striking.”

2026

“There will be jobs for the foreseeable future. So just the energy sector will need to grow tremendously to accommodate all of the compute we need for AI, health care, biomedical trials, taking care of old people as we age, entertainment. People still want creativity from other humans, not just from the AIs. They might want both, but they'll still want there to be, you know, a Taylor Swift, a Zakir Hussain, a Magnus Carlsen.”