I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tyler Cowen at the Mercatus Center last December. Here’s our conversation.
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Timestamps
0:00 - We’re discovering talent quicker than ever
5:14 - Being in San Francisco is more important than ever
8:01 - There is such a thing like a winning organization
11:43 - Talent and conformity on startup and big businesses
19:17 - Giving money to poor people vs talented people
22:18 - EA is fragmenting
25:44 - Longtermism and existential risks
33:24 - Religious conformity is weaker than secular conformity
36:38 - GMU Econ professors religious beliefs
39:34 - The west would be better off with more religion
43:05 - What makes you a philosopher
45:25 - CEOs are becoming more generalists
49:06 - Traveling and eating
53:25 - Technology drives the growth of government?
56:08 - Blogging and writing
58:18 - Takes on Aella, Scott Alexander, Noah Smith and more
1:02:51 - The future of Portugal
1:06:27 - New aesthetics program with Patrick Collison
Transcript
Salvador 0:00
Okay, Tyler, thank you for doing this.
Tyler 0:01
Very happy to be here.
Salvador 0:04
Okay, first question. Do you think the rate of meta innovation, how we find talent, has been accelerating faster than technological innovation itself?
Tyler 0:12
I think the rate at which we are finding talent has accelerated a great deal in the last 10 years. So the internet truly becoming the thing, even though we’ve had the internet for a while, I think that’s fairly recent. And younger people truly mastering the internet also is fairly recent, I would say last 10 to 15 years. So those two developments together, I think, have meant a teenage talent we’re discovering a lot more quickly than we used to. You’re an example of that. You’re age 17, right? And here we are doing this podcast. Could this have happened without the internet?
Salvador 0:46
Not at all.
Tyler 0:49
But I even think like the internet of 20 years ago, it could not have happened. So I think it’s going to keep on going. You see it in chess, all these great young chess players. Goukash is world champion at age 18. So I’m very bullish on that development.
Salvador 1:03
And how have you discovered talent on Twitter? Because according to you, all you need to spot a highly talented person is an essay of 1,500 words and a Zoom call, so I guess if you have access to thousands of tweets of someone, you can kind of have a sense whether or not they would be talented?
Tyler 1:19
When it’s on Twitter, I think my formula is to have them discover me rather than me discover them. So I’m not very famous, but I’m somewhat well known. And people I might be interested in, I think they’ll come across me. And then it’s up to them to come forward. And I will meet them, discover them, chat with them, read something they did. But usually the initiative comes from them. They’ll send me a link, something they wrote or whatever. And that works pretty well.
Salvador 1:48
And do you think overall staying anonymous on Twitter, do your favorite accounts are anonymous or do they come with more benefits?
Tyler 1:54
I don’t like anonymous accounts. So I like the context of knowing who it is. Also the people who stay anonymous, there’s some reason for that, right? So a lot of them will self-destruct intellectually because they feel they’re not accountable for their views and they become crazier and crazier. Others are people who have a real job, but they’re afraid to let on who they are. It just feels like an unstable mental equilibrium to me, so I don’t know. The accounts I really like, I know who they are, the world knows too. It might be a pretext of anonymity. So like Roon, he’s anonymous. But everyone, not everyone, but people know who he is. I’m not going to say. He’s open about working at OpenAI and if you want to find out, there he is.
Salvador 2:47
Yeah, like Gwern.
Have you met any anonymous account that his tweets were super good but in real life they were just very dumb or it didn’t seem to match?
Tyler 2:55
No, I think if you can be smart on Twitter, you’re just flat out smart and you will seem smart. I’ve never met such a person where they seemed dumb. Can’t think of that.
Salvador 3:08
Okay, why do you think the labor market is so bad at spotting talent?
Tyler 3:12
Well, when you say the market’s bad at it, you have to ask compared to what. But part of the problem is this: if you spot talent, you have to invest resources, and the talent probably won’t work for you. So the profit incentive to spot that talent can be fairly weak, especially younger talent. You spot a brilliant 16 year old and say you’re a company, that person’s unlikely to work for you, maybe in a few areas like AI, there’s only a few major companies. You develop a relationship with them or some of the VC companies. But for the most part, you’re relying on what you might call volunteers. And it takes time, energy, effort, and attention, and a lot of it doesn’t happen. I think that’s the market failure, the difficulty of internalizing the gains.
Salvador 3:56
But do you think the market even cares about spotting talent? Because it seems like at one point, you’re just hiring a worker and you don’t really care if they have that much insights or if they have original work of their own. You just want them to do the work you’re assigning them.
Tyler 4:12
I think the market cares a lot. Now it depends on the type of job, so if it’s cashier in a supermarket, you want someone first of all who shows up, which you cannot take for granted, someone who won’t steal from the till, which you cannot take for granted, and third, you want someone who can actually do the job. But if you go to say Whole Foods, which is a high quality, pretty successful supermarket chain, their cashiers are pretty uniformly good, so they put a lot of effort into that and whatever formulas they use seem to work, and when I go to Whole Foods, I really pretty much know I’ll have a good experience at the cashier. A lot of their people are immigrants, they’re from poorer countries, they seem really quite smart to me. And I talk to them a little, and I think, like, you’re undervalued, why don’t you work for me? But they don’t quite exactly have the training where they could do something useful for me, and it doesn’t happen. But they are very good cashiers, they’re very smart people, I think, as a class.
Salvador 5:11
Would you say places like San Francisco with a lot of talent and ambition become less relevant with time because you can just go on the internet, on Twitter and connect with super talented people no matter where they are?
Tyler 5:24
This is may be counterintuitive, but it seems to me the returns to location have only been going up. The returns to being in San Francisco are high and rising. And maybe AI, it encapsulates and can express general knowledge, but it does not contain secret knowledge or knowledge of very particular matters of time and place that are not in print anywhere or on video. So just being there is worth way more, you see this in real estate prices. And I expect this trend to continue, San Francisco in particular. Like what’s new in AI? If you’ve never been there, it’s very hard to know. If you go there some number of times a year, you can keep somewhat current. And that’s, for me, worth a lot.
Salvador 6:08
So I think you say in the complacent class that San Francisco is the best place in the world if you have a vision and want to work hard to achieve it. So that was eight years ago. Do you still think that?
Tyler 6:21
Absolutely, all the more so, the Bay Area, a bit more than just the city, but that general area. And with the rise of AI, which had not really happened when I wrote complacent class, that’s become a lot stronger, and a lot more of it is in the city itself than when I wrote those words. It used to be a bit more like Santa Rosa, or we then called it Facebook, Apple, or outside the city, but the city itself is really rising now. And when we have all these liquidity events, the home prices will go crazy. They’re already crazy, right?
Salvador 6:53
What about Austin? Like it seems there are so many prospects around Austin. Is Austin the new San Francisco in some way?
Tyler 7:00
I don’t think so, I think it’s distant, I wouldn’t even say it’s second. It’s a great place, I love going there. I like the people, but no, it’s not close. And it’s not gaining on the Bay Area either. Some people moved there during pandemic, a lot of them moved back. Same with Miami. Those cities are doing fine. They’re great places of their own, but they’re not becoming second tier San Francisco’s, maybe Austin a little.
Salvador 7:25
Do you think that could ever happen? Like a city suppressing San Francisco?
Tyler 7:31
If California does this billionaire’s wealth tax of 5%, that would give some other places a shot. Even then, I don’t think it would happen. California would have to blow its lead. I don’t think it will simply evolve into something else. Now, eventually, every place does that. Like what’s Florence today? It’s a lovely city, but it’s not an important place, or Rome, for that matter. So eventually, it’s lost. But it does not feel close to me, that event.
Salvador 8:01
Interesting. So I’m always struck by soccer teams that are in the top of the charts during decades and decades. And I wonder if you think it’s more about the team being very rich and being able to hire super talented players from other clubs, or if they actually need to be good at growing talent and have a good academy, otherwise it would be unsustainable?
Tyler 8:25
I know very little about soccer, but I know more about basketball. And for basketball, I think the quality of the general manager and possibly owner and coach matter a great deal. And they have to really care about winning. A lot of teams, in fact, just have a share of the TV contract. They get money automatically. They want to keep their costs down. And no one really cares to do better than that. And those teams don’t do better than that. Like the Washington basketball team, the Wizards, they’ve been bad for decades, pretty much. And it’s not about to change. There is such a thing as a winning organization like Houston and Dallas pretty consistently put together good teams. Obviously those players retire, get injured, but three to five years later they’re back again with another good team, Miami Heat. Those are winning organizations and you can feel it and sense it in them.
Salvador 9:16
So is it about having a good structure to grow talent?
Tyler 9:19
And it helps to have a larger market. So if you’re the Memphis Grizzlies, Memphis is quite a small city. They haven’t done very well much. They have a little bit. They have less revenue, ticket sales matter less, their local TV contract is worth more. It’s not the end of the story, but they’re at a noticeable disadvantage. Players don’t want to go there because if you’re in New York or LA, your shoe contract is worth more, you’re exposed to major media more.So small city also hurts, even when you have good management.
Salvador 9:52
How crucial do you think it is for one to develop its talent to be in the US? So I remember when we had the Zoom call for the Emergent Ventures grant, I asked you for advice and you said that I should try to keep living in the US. Like how crucial do you think it is for, for example, me to stay in the US?
Tyler 10:14
Depends what you want to do. But I would say in over half of all areas of endeavor, it’s very important to be in the United States to hit a top level of achievement. Now there are plenty of things where you can excel in Europe. Even then I don’t think Portugal is a big enough country to be the place to be. But the UK, Germany, Switzerland, France, in many areas you can do very, very well there. In your case, unless you’re natively fluent in something like French or German, it’s really US or UK if you want to be highly successful.
Salvador 10:52
And if I don’t go to either of those countries, do you think I might risk losing my ambition or just become more conformist?
Tyler 11:03
That’s what usually happens. Now again, some areas are exceptions. Say you want to be a politician, that more or less restricts you to Portugal. There are in fact plenty of people in every country, including Portugal, who have the ambition to be prime minister in the legislature. And if you compete in that arena, you won’t lose your ambition because your peers will have the same ambition. But there are not that many people in Portugal who stay in Portugal who aspire to be the greatest economist of all time. You just can’t do it there, you’ll leave. But if you’re in an area like politics, you can stay in Portugal and you absolutely will not lose your ambition, but most sectors you would.
Salvador 11:42
Do you think the startup benefits more from being good at identifying talent than a big company? Because presumably if you work in a startup, every employee is very fundamental in the shape the company will take, or if it will take shape. But at the big company at the same time, you already have the resources to do what you want.
Tyler 12:03
Talent is very important for each, but in very different ways. A few of the big company, say it’s Coca-Cola, you need people who fit the culture of that company. So Coca Cola’s been around a long time. There’s plenty of competition in their markets. People have actually started drinking much less literal Coca Cola, and they like all these weird sweet and fruity drinks. And Coca Cola adjusted, and they’re still a big deal and very profitable because they had talent. People who fit your culture and who will keep you on track. It’s not less important, but it’s very different than you need miracle workers who are employee number four and bring your company from nothing to something that exists. Very different set of tasks.
Salvador 12:48
Would you say that most super talented young people would choose to spend their time in a startup and risk not transform into something big or just go to a straight big company?
Tyler 13:00
Most people prefer to work in the big company. Most people are happier working in the big company. It’s a form of less ambition, but still in a big company you can do quite well and rise up through the ranks. And if after 17 years you end up as some kind of top manager at Coca Cola, you live in Atlanta, it’s a great life. So nothing against it at all. But it’s a different sort of ambition, right? You’re a cog in a machine. You’re changing the world collectively, but not directly and individually so much.
Salvador 13:33
Interesting. So would you choose, if every super talented young people you choose for them to go to a startup or a big company, what do you think brings them more life experience in the long term?
Tyler 13:46
I think it’s in the midst of changing. So seven years ago, I would have said startup, but I think we’re seeing a shift toward big companies. And you look at AI, well, where is good AI work being done? Well, a lot of it’s being done at Google, which is a very large company. There’s a lot going on at Meta, which is a very large company. OpenAI is becoming a large company. Anthropic, I predict, is becoming a very large company. And the way to have impact in the most impactful area is probably to work in those places and not do a startup. There’s something about the compute you need, the testing and evaluation you need that is harder to do at small scale. Companies such as Mercor have succeeded at it. But I’d give, at the moment, an edge to the larger companies. That can change too, but for now, yes.
Salvador 14:38
In what ways does a company benefit from having conformist workers?
Tyler 14:43
You need a common culture. Once your company’s around for a while, that’s your moat. Because whoever innovative your product was, eventually people copy it. Is Pepsi better than Coke? Is Coke better than Pepsi? You debate it, blind taste tests. Pepsi often wins. Coca Cola is still a bigger deal. And there’s something about how well do your people work together that is very difficult to maintain over time. People want to carve out turf and fight wars against each other, they lose track of the mission. It just takes so much work and diligence and inspiration to keep people on that same common track. It’s an issue. We’re here at Mercatus, 130 employees. It’s not a very large number, but to keep people in Mercatus cooperative, which I think we’ve done pretty well, but it’s a never ending thing you need to work on. Never ending. In a way, it just gets harder.
Salvador 15:43
Would you say that a startup benefits more from having less conformist workers than a big company?
Tyler 15:51
It depends on the sector. When you say startup, most people think tech, new product, software. And in those areas, you very often need non conformists. But most startups are quite ordinary things. It could be a restaurant. It could be a shoe store. And in those cases, you probably want more or less the conformists. Maybe you need one new idea, but after that, you just want execution. And then again, you’re looking to the conformists.
Salvador 16:17
Why do you want less conformist people in the tech sector?
Tyler 16:21
It used to be the case, still largely the case, that you need to work insanely hard and a conformist person won’t do that. And you need people who can imagine the future being quite different than it is in their sector. And you need non-conformists for that. But again, if the startup is a shoe store, you don’t need people to imagine the future being totally different. You just need people who can imagine that they can sell shoes pretty well. And that’s more or less going to be the conformists. Then like Mercatus, I’d say we need a balance of conformists and nonconformists. And I think we’re pretty good at that. But the idea people are largely nonconformist. But a lot of the execution people, like your event staff, you don’t necessarily want crazy people on your event staff.
Salvador 17:01
So it depends on the job you are trying to assign them?
Tyler 17:10
And a lot of companies have this mix of both. Like the ideas people will be more non conformist and the executors, again this can vary, but they’re more likely to where you want conformity.
Salvador 17:22
I see. Where do you and Malcolm Gladwell differ when it comes to talent?
Tyler 17:27
Where do we disagree? I’m not sure I know all his views. In his book on talent, he stresses practice a great deal. I don’t disagree with what he wrote, but I think he undersells genetics a bit, at least implicitly. So it’s not quite a disagreement, but it’s a difference of emphasis. But Malcolm is himself an amazing talent, a very underrated talent, one of the smartest people I’ve met. And he’s done a great job throughout his life picking great talents to work with, like publishers, agents, production companies. So he’s a great judge of talent too.
Salvador 18:05
When you look at the academia, why does it seem that professors in America are way more likely to produce original work and have ideas on their own and write books or blogs than when compared to professors in Europe?
Tyler 18:19
We pay people much more and your ability to move if you do well is much higher. So if you’re in Europe, even now it’s hard to cross national borders. The countries are smaller. In Germany, you’re technically a civil servant and you’re on a bureaucratic pay scale. And that’s poison for ambition. And there’s just a lot of paperwork associated with many of those jobs. US is getting worse in this regard. And in terms of immigration in the academic market, a talented academic can just get a visa to come here. It’s not hard at all. It’s like we have open borders for academic scientists. So we attract the best, we pay the most, we have the single biggest market. China is now a rival, but they’re not a rival for attracting people. Like if you’re a great researcher from Switzerland, you probably still don’t want to go to China. It’s just a worse life than coming to the US.
Salvador 19:13
I wonder if you think it’s more important to give money to poor people or to talented people like you do through Emergent Ventures. Because if you give money to talented people, that might just completely outweigh giving money to the poor people. Because the person you invested in might even become a billionaire and give tons to the poor. But at the same time, it doesn’t seem like the average person can really invest in people like that?
Tyler 19:37
I believe in what I call a barbell strategy. You want to do both. It’s people in the middle you shouldn’t give much to. They’re not poor enough to really need it. And they’re maybe not talented enough to do something astonishing and wonderful. You’re never going to be sure the money you give to talented people. What will be done with it? The person might be awesome, but then you ask, well, they might have succeeded anyway, right? You’ll never really know if you made a difference. Poor people, even then it’s hard to know you made a difference. I’d say when you give money to poor people, mostly you’re buying them what I call consumption insurance. So if something very bad happens, they have something to fall back upon. But you’re not elevating them out of poverty. And you need to approach it somewhat realistically. There’s a lot of evidence on this. But my own efforts personally, I help out some very poor people in Mexico and Ethiopia. And then I put a lot of time into trying to help out very talented people. And say like the lower middle class, I’m not much interested in helping them at all.
Salvador 20:37
Do you take the EA 10 % pledge?
Tyler 20:40
No. My wife and I, send a lot of our money to poor countries. And my work for Emergent Ventures is volunteer labor. So in opportunity cost terms, it would be more than 10%. But no, I don’t give 10 % of my money away in that manner.
Salvador 21:00
It seems like Emergent Ventures attracts a lot of effective altruists. Do you think effective altruists as a whole are very talented?
Tyler 21:07
In the past, effective altruism has been a great place to find super talented young people. It was a set of ideas, it brought them together. It was attractive. It was a broadly optimistic view of the world that you can actually improve things. I think that’s important. So I’ve been a fan of it for those reasons, even though I don’t agree with every single one of the doctrines. I agree with a lot of it. Their attitude toward talent, it was different than mine. I think maybe they’re changing a bit. A lot of effective altruism has been focused on projects rather than people. So they’ll say, we know like mosquito bed nets save a lot of lives, so we’re going to spend a lot of money on mosquito bed nets. I think that’s made good sense from a group such as, they used to be called Open Philanthropy, now they’re renamed as Coefficient Giving, because they had a lot of money and could do that at some decent scale. I don’t have resources anything close to what they have. So my hope for leverage is to get really talented people, find them at hingey moments in their lives, often when they’re young, and have them turn into people who will have major impact.
Salvador 22:18
So you don’t think EA is still at fault for smart people?
Tyler 22:22
I think less, EA is less of a coherent movement. Unfortunately, when everything happened with Sam Bankman Fried, EA took a reputational knock, which I consider to be unfair. And EA events are not the attraction they once were. But when you meet all these people who are, they now use the phrase, I’m EA adjacent, they’re still great people, but they’re just a lot more diffused. They self-identify less clearly. That was probably inevitable, but it’s been a noticeable change.
Salvador 22:51
Do think the movement will ever die?
Tyler 22:55
Look, effective altruism we had in the early 19th century with Jeremy Bentham and arguably in the 18th century with Pecaria. It sort of went away. It’ll always come back, maybe with different names. So no, I don’t think it will ever really go away. It makes some basic sense. Again, you don’t have to agree with all of it. But the idea that you should not give money away mindlessly, but you try to calculate maximum impact, that idea will always have appeal.
Salvador 23:22
Do you think humanity benefits more from having smart people or good hearted people in the long term?
Tyler 23:30
I think it’s a multiplicative model. You need first and foremost people who are determined and who stay the course. And then they need to be smart and some of them need to be good-hearted. A lot of them can be bastards in reality. But some have to be good-hearted. And you need all those things to come together to get anywhere. So it’s not really an either or, you need both.
Salvador 23:51
If rich people give money to the poor, does that make society overall more rich or more poor?
Tyler 23:59
It’s a good thing for the poor, and I don’t think it much harms the rich. But I would just say it’s very difficult to give money away effectively. In many ways, it’s easier to earn money than to give it away effectively.
Salvador 24:11
What do you mean?
Tyler 24:13
If you simply give money to anyone, whether it’s the poor or not, whether it’s academics, a lot of them just don’t use it very well, or they don’t invest in it properly, or they give it away to their friends, or they squander it. The money my wife and I send to Mexico and Ethiopia, they’re actually families we know a bit and who behave responsibly. But not everyone is in position where they know some poor families in rural Mexico and Ethiopia.
Salvador 24:40
So you don’t trust the EA effective charities?
Tyler 24:43
Well, I’m sure there are good ones, but it’s hard to know from a distance. And I would trust my own judgment over other people’s judgment.
Salvador 24:52
What’s the best explanation of why Europe’s rich don’t give as much away when compared to America’s rich?
Tyler 24:59
In the United States, it’s a tradition. We have a very particular radical worldview that is in part derived from Protestantism, that you have a life mission and you ought to incur real sacrifice, including working harder to fulfill that mission. Here, there’s also a bigger tax break. And the way peer groups are formed, if you give a lot of money to something, you get on the board, you’re invited to events. You use that as a way of building out your peer group and your network in a way where in Europe it’s maybe more what high school you went to or people you’ve known all your life and the value the selfish value of being philanthropic is much higher in this large diverse country
Salvador 25:43
Often you say that if you really care about the long term future, the best thing can do is to promote economic growth. I wonder if you think the promotion of economic growth, like the creation of innovations, is more altruistic long-term when compared to some EA related approaches like donating to charity in order to reduce global poverty or trying to reduce existential risk?
Tyler 26:06
In general, I’m a bigger fan of innovation, but I would stress a lot of EA types recognize this, and they’ve tried to fund innovations, sometimes successfully. Sometimes they fund the innovations they didn’t intend to. So the people in the EA movement who are the AI doomers, they’ve actually done more to encourage AI advances than anyone else. I find that interesting.
Salvador 26:27
Why?
Tyler 26:29
You talk about how powerful something is, and the rest of the world gets excited. They don’t always buy your story about doom. But they’ll buy into part of your story about its power and they’ll want to invest a lot more money in it. And that’s exactly what happened. And then over time, the institutions that start off focused on safety, they get shaped by the imperatives of being an institution and having to raise money and maximize profit. And over time, they just become very effective companies at building and marketing AI systems, which I think is a good thing, but they’re very different from how they were when they started off. And again, the doomers have spurred this on rather than slowing it down. But I think effective altruism has plenty of room for innovation. Innovation is an ongoing game, it tends to spread to most of the world. Giving stuff away is one time, and a lot of it gets wasted. So if you can pull off an innovation, that’s definitely my priority. But it’s harder to pull off, you can always give more money to anti malaria bed nets, and you know you’ll do some good, like the bed nets work. It’s not that hard a thing. And most innovations fail. So it’s a tricky balance. You want to do some of each, I would say.
Salvador 27:41
You wrote “the true disagreements over longtermism as your most clear concerns remain foundationally rooted in our emotions and our personal temperaments”. Do you mean that no amount of data or analysis can fully resolve them because like we differ on what feels morally urgent?
Tyler 27:59
Yeah, I think people’s views are largely guided by their temperaments. Like I have pretty optimistic world views. I do think they’re correct, they’re fully sincere. But I also recognize I was born with a pretty positive temperament, which my mother tells me I exhibited early on, I was like a well-behaved child and had a lot of fun just doing different things. And so, it’s easy for me to be an optimist. And I think that really matters for where you end up. And it’s hard to talk your way out of it, even when you ought to. So if the world were somehow ending, I probably would be trying too hard to see a bright side in that. Fortunately, it’s not ending, but if it were.
Salvador 28:39
In a conversation with Dwarkesh, I think you said that we have like 700 years left. Do you still think that?
Tyler 28:51
Well, my view is this. There’s always a risk of either nuclear war or something like nuclear war with maybe different kind of weapons, but equally or more destructive. And in any given year, I think the chance of that is quite small. And that’s since I’m an optimist. I think the chance of that in a given year is smaller than most people think. But I do recognize there’s such a thing as a probability density function. And if you let enough years run, at some point, it’s going to happen. Now when I said 800 years, that was a bit tongue in cheek. It’s just a number I made up. It’s probably not going to happen soon, but I don’t think you need a million years for it to happen. I also don’t think it would end all of civilization. Some people will survive, but it would set things back very severely and maybe permanently.
Salvador 29:40
Don’t you think we should be more focused on trying to expand humanity to other planets because a lot of existential risks matter because we only are in one planet so if we destroy this planet, all humanity dies?
Tyler 29:55
As a youthful science fiction fan, I would like very much if we could do that. But it seems to me very difficult. And even Mars, which is relatively close, I think would basically kill or disable all the people who go to live there. And to survive on another planet, you need exactly the right planet. Maybe you have to live underground. There’s issues of radiation. I just don’t see it working. So there’s the upper atmosphere and under the ocean or on the ocean. Those seem more promising to me. Interesting. I don’t even know that we need them. Like, you ever go to Nevada? Like, where are you living right now?
Salvador 30:31
Omaha.
Tyler 30:32
Ok, drive 10 minutes and it’s empty, right? Yeah. So you’re like, we need Mars? I don’t know. Nebraska, there’s a lot of land there.
Salvador 30:43
So do you think Elon will ever launch a rocket to Mars?
Tyler 30:47
Absolutely, but I don’t think it will matter that much. It’ll launch a rocket, there might be people on it on a suicide mission. The'll land on Mars, it’ll be a big deal. But just like we went to the moon in 1969 and that was the end of that, I think it will be a bit similar. What’s really valuable is space, the satellite belt, property rights up in space. We’re going to put data centers in space. We may get solar powered energy from up there in space. That’s super valuable. A lot of that might happen, but that’s where the action will be, not Mars. What’s on Mars? It’s not in Nebraska. Mars doesn’t even have cows. You have great beef in Nebraska, and I should go to Mars?
Salvador 31:28
Interesting. If long-term impact is about what endures for centuries, do you think like EA people underweight the role of religion in shaping institutions?
Tyler 31:40
I’ve noticed sociologically a lot of the EA people do not think enough about culture and religion at all. Very distant from that. But I have seen in the last two, three years some noticeable shifts where they’re starting to do it more. I hope that continues. So I think they’re willing to learn on those topics, but they’re also just harder to wrap your arms around. Like we all know what it means to invest in mosquito bed nets. If you say, well, I want to invest in giving America a better culture. Okay, but what do you do the next day? Much tougher issue. And a lot of the EA groups, want to be transparent and they want to have a kind of defensibility and legibility to what they do. And that pushes them more in the direction of bed nets and less in the direction of these less tangible things. But the less tangible things are super important and they’re right now under invested in.
Salvador 32:33
So do you think if EA people start to look more at religion, they would change some of their practices?
Tyler 32:41
I don’t know, again, if you look at the talent in the EA movement, I would say a lot of it is highly analytical. And as talents, they’re not that strong in the humanities. It’s just an observational fact. So maybe they’re better off just sticking with the analytic stuff. And someone else will have to do the cultural and religious issues. But still, you’d like if there could be more crossover, right, in both directions. But maybe they’re just not good at it. Like some of the EA people, you talk to them, they just seem like they’re in quite a fog, they grew up in the rationality community. They’re very good at a certain, very narrow set of ways of thinking. They can be very effective applying those ways of thinking. Maybe that’s just their comparative advantage.
Salvador 33:24
So you’ve said before that the most important thinkers of the future will be religious.
Tyler 33:29
You can even say the present, you know, I said that a while ago. But yes, religious thinkers, absolutely.
Salvador 33:34
But, wouldn’t you expect that religion generates some pressure towards conformity and like, just seeing the fact that most religious people came from religious families says a lot about it. And the way like we get interesting stuff being done and creations being made is by having more risk taking people, therefore less conformist, therefore less religious?
Tyler 33:54
I think historically what you’re saying has been true and it’s probably still true in Europe today. But I think in America today there’s been a bit of a flip. The religious people are often the nonconformists. The formal religious structures themselves no longer exert much conformity power. Like the Catholic Church, the pope tells you what to do, everyone ignores it for the most part. The Episcopalian Church barely exists. People who are LDS, Mormons, that’s become a much more diffuse thing. Who’s a Mormon who isn’t is much looser than it used to be. So I think religious conformity as a pressure is far weaker. Secular conformity with the rise of the woke became much stronger. And the ability of Americans to use religion to find new and different ideas and justify them, I think has been pretty phenomenally positive in the last decade. Like look at Peter Thiel, whether you agree or not, well, his theory of the Antichrist, there were like some bishops who condemned Peter for talking about the Antichrist, but no one cares. They listen to Peter, they don’t listen to the bishops. Interesting ideas will come of it. That’s just a simple example.
Salvador 35:05
Why do think Europe is behind the US?
Tyler 35:07
You have state churches, those state churches still have a strong small conservative role in your societies. They’re supported by tax money. You have fewer sects in the way that America has them. You also, this is changing, but you have fewer religions. It’s less and less true as non Westerners are migrating more to Europe. But I think the forms of Islam you have are much more conformist than what’s here in the US. They’re more harmful, they’re working less well in terms of assimilation. US has more forms of Judaism that are more active here. That’s another plus. Again, some parts of Europe have that, but overall, much less than would be the case here. Hinduism, much more successful in the United States.
Salvador 35:55
So is it good that there are more religions in the US than in Europe?
Tyler 36:00
I wouldn’t say it’s unconditionally good. I would say the way it’s evolved is good. US has a better functioning labor market. We have better mechanisms for selecting the higher talented immigrants and religious immigrants. We have strict guarantees of freedom of religion, freedom of speech. And you put all that together, our recipe has worked much better.
Salvador 36:20
Interesting, so are Catholics more conformist than Protestants?
Tyler 36:25
Once that would have been true, I’m no longer sure it’s true now. I don’t know. It’s a good question. I would say the US has a quite Protestant set of Catholics compared to Western and Central Europe.
Salvador 36:38
When you look at like the GMU econ department, a lot of you seem to have came from interesting religious backgrounds. So Garrett Jones from Mormon family, Robin Hanson, who’s dad was a pastor.
Tyler 36:51
That’s right. John Nye, Catholic
Salvador 36:53
And Bryan Caplan Catholic. You have Mormon relatives..
Tyler 36:57
No, nothing. Catholic family, my parents were both anti-clerical and non-believers.
Salvador 37:03
Okay, is there any believer within you or are all…
Tyler 37:07
No, I’m very, very far from that. It’s just a...
Salvador 37:10
And what about the GMU econ professors are there any believer?
Tyler 37:14
I don’t think there are many and I’m never quite sure. There might be some, but you’d be looking to find them is how I would put it.
Salvador 37:24
So do you think like it’s just random that some of you came from interesting religious backgrounds or is there like an explanation of people that born in religious families and then became secular are, I don’t know, more interesting?
Tyler 37:40
It makes you less conformist. And some of us, Robin Hanson in particular, still have very religious ideas. So Robin’s whole upload thing, it’s really about the resurrection, which is a secular version of an idea where he used to believe in the religious version. So I tease Robin about this all the time. Bryan Caplan, in some ways, he’s still a Catholic moral theologian, like Aristotle, Aquinas, Rand. Commonalities between that and certain Catholic views, Aquinas in particular. So these things leave traces.
Salvador 38:12
Would you like to believe in religion?
Tyler 38:15
Only if it’s true. The sense of security it gives people, I feel I have anyway, just through life circumstances. I’m not looking to believe, for instance. I think people on average, they’re better off if they believe, they feel better, they feel less fear, they have a sense of community, they belong to something, higher purpose. I don’t feel I need religion for any of those things. But I’m not anti clerical the way my parents were. I think on the margin, religion tends to be good for people, not bad for people.
Salvador 38:45
And do think most people truly believe their religion or they just like going to church and having the community and don’t think too much about whether the book is true or not?
Tyler 38:56
It’s something in between. They don’t not believe it. But they don’t very actively believe the details of it either. They have a general sense there’s a God. If it’s Christianity, they feel Christianity is a good thing. If it’s Judaism, Judaic history, culture, society, community is a good thing. And then they start from there and they don’t necessarily think too long and hard about, you know, what’s the nature of the Trinity or, you know, when is the Pope speaking ex cathedra, whatever. They let a lot of that slide, and they’re willing to admit it might be wrong, but they still think, like, on net it’s a positive good thing.
Salvador 39:32
Do you agree with them? That it’s a positive thing?
Tyler 39:34
At the margin, yeah, I think the US and much of the world would be better off with more religion. I’m not sure in Niger, West Africa would be better off with more religion, but the wealthy countries in the world would be.
Salvador 39:48
Have you ever been to a life church?
Tyler 39:51
Life church? You mean church?
Salvador 39:54
No, there’s a church named Live. I went like two weeks ago, a friend took me there and it was just, I mean, I’m not a believer, but it was amazing. Just a community and it’s like a kind of a rock concert…
Tyler 40:09
I’ve been to things like this. And the music is bad, that’s my objection
Salvador 40:15
I think I’m gonna start going there every Sunday, but it’s not because I believe that it is true, but I just think it’s good and it makes me feel good about myself and I have the community, all people are super nice.
Tyler 40:28
You’ll learn things and you’ll meet people. There’s no reason not to go if you can get there.
Salvador 40:32
And one of the things when a pastor asked me why I’m not religious, I asked them like, what’s the difference between believing in God or believing in UFOs or in a conspiracy theory or there’s life in Jupiter? How do they distinguish that? Do you have any answer?
Tyler 40:49
Well, it’s going to depend on the religion. But in many religions, faith plays this very important role in distinguishing between things you should and should not believe in. And a lot of the things you shouldn’t believe in, say, by a Christian Protestant sect might be considered a form of demon. Like if you believe in UFOs, it’s like saying you believe in demons. Now, some of them welcome this and say, the demons are here. You know, this is a reflection of our religious belief. But a lot of them would just say, you’re believing in something dangerous. Don’t go there, keep your belief firm in Christ and the Trinity and Christ is the Son of God and our Savior. And they want to discourage this kind of multiplication of semi sacred entities. It’s one thing to me that’s always been interesting about Ross Douthat, Ross is nominally Catholic, grew up in some kind of strange Protestant sect due to his mother. And his current beliefs are a weird mix of things. And he’s quite willing to ponder like fairies, demons, all these intermediate beings. They’re pretty welcome in his cosmology. He might be agnostic about them, but he’s certainly not dismissive.
Salvador 41:56
Have you ever been persuaded by any of his arguments?
Tyler 42:00
He and I had a two hour podcast, we did it in this room. So you can listen to the podcast and if you think I was persuaded. But no, I still don’t believe. I had a good time talking about the ideas. I did learn many things, but I still don’t, I’m not closer to belief.
Salvador 42:17
Okay. Would you agree that one of the advantages of being a non believer or secular is that you’re more naturally skeptic? You’re more skeptic of believing in ideologies and more suspicious of dogmas.
Tyler 42:32
I don’t think it’s an advantage. I know so many secular people, like socialism becomes the dogma, woke becomes the dogma, or it could be libertarianism for that matter. But they cling to their other dogmas more fiercely. One of the arguments for religion is just there’s a place you can stuff your dogmatism into beliefs about the Trinity, and then the rest of you is free to be open minded, because you’ve taken care of your dogmatism. You’ve sent it somewhere where it doesn’t really matter that much for a lot of decisions.
Salvador 43:05
So you’ve described yourself in the past as a philosopher who happens to study economics can you explain? Isn’t it like inverse?
Salvador 43:13
Well, maybe it’s both, but I read a lot of philosophy early on. I almost decided to become a philosopher. A lot of my economics is philosophically oriented. Just as a marker, I think I have at least as many pieces in top-tier philosophy journals as in economics journals. Now, that’s unusual, but it’s a kind of evidence, right? Maybe just the categories aren’t that useful would be another way to put it. I was speaking a bit tongue in cheek when I said that, but I also meant it. I tend to think pretty philosophically and when I’m in the role of podcast host if I were mainly an economist I actually couldn’t do it at all.
Salvador 43:51
Who’s your favorite philosopher?
Tyler 43:53
Well, Plato, if you count everyone, I love Derek Parfit and his work. More recently, Robert Nozick and his work. Those would be recent favorites, Quine, just to name a few.
Salvador 44:06
You write in your book, Big Business, that the CEOs are the modern equivalent of successful philosophers and that in reality there is no job that is as philosophical. Can you expand on that?
Tyler 44:18
If you’re CEO, you need to deal with the question, what do people really want from your product? It’s a pretty deep question, in fact. It’s hard to get it right. What motivates people at work? How do I motivate them? It’s really not just about money at all. That’s a very deep question. It’s hard to get it right. Just those two questions alone make you a philosopher. Then there’s questions, well, how much should we invest in following every law, which no company does with full strictness, right? And it’s not even possible. That’s also a philosophical question so you’re faced with large scale significant philosophical questions every day all day long that to me makes you a philosopher no matter what the product
Salvador 45:01
Is that why you say Patrick Collison is one of the best philosophers alive?
Tyler 45:04
Yeah, absolutely, and Stripe has been successful. Now Patrick also thinks about philosophy in the narrower, more explicit sense, but the other counts too.
Salvador 45:13
So do you think the persona of a CEO has shifted from the one of a specialist to the one of a generalist? Or it was always like a generalist persona?
Tyler 45:22
It’s changed a lot with time. So CEOs have more and more become generalists who coordinate their companies and spend a lot of time interfacing with the public, with government, setting the image of the company. 30, 40 years ago, it was much more likely the CEO was, “the person who ran the company”. That is today less likely to be true, much less likely.
Salvador 45:48
What happened, why is it less likely?
Tyler 45:50
Companies are bigger and more complex. No one knows enough to run the company. The demands on your time and attention for government, public relations, communicating the vision, forming the vision, the mission, those are all much more pressing. And the CEO has to do those. whether the title is COO or not, but something like that, someone else literally running the company is a bigger and bigger thing. And that’s just a vision of labor.
Salvador 46:20
Interesting. So like thinking about history, we have the Enlightenment and the Renaissance, where people are generalists, then with the Industrial Revolution we became specialists, and now it seems like we’re becoming generalists again…
Tyler 46:32
The CEOs are. You as an individual may or may not be…
Salvador 46:37
So you don’t agree that society overall is becoming more generalist?
Tyler 46:40
There’s more room for generalists, that’s true, but the people who specialize specialize more and more. So it’s again this barbells thing that you get both trends at once. And it’s people stuck in the middle who are doing less well. You either need to be a really good specialist who does one thing better than other people or an excellent generalist.
Salvador 46:59
If civilization still exists 1000 years from now, who do you think might be remembered from today? Or do think someone who will be remembered from today?
Tyler 47:07
Good question. Probably no one. If I think who’s remembered from a thousand years ago, I would say it’s no one. Now, that’s an odd pick. Like exactly a thousand years, you’re hitting on a time period where things were not going that well. But very, very few people, I think. Very few.
Salvador 47:28
Do you have any bet?
Tyler 47:30
Well, if Mars becomes a thing, it will be Elon Musk. But for reasons we already discussed, I would bet against that. But at least it’s possible, right? Like, Elon has a chance.
Salvador 47:39
Do you think he still believes it?
Tyler 47:41
I don’t know Elon. I’ve never talked to him. I suppose I think he believes it, but that’s not based on much that’s firm.
Salvador 47:48
Okay. What about a book from today or from the past that might be remembered?
Tyler 47:55
Nothing from today. Obviously there’s books from the past you can go see what we remember it’s less than a thousand years ago but I would say Canterbury Tales and Dante’s inferno we still remember those are what you would call the post antiquity books you could name some others but they’d be too obvious picks.
Salvador 48:16
What about the Bible?
Tyler 48:18
Well that’s not post antiquity there’s plenty from early on. Plato, Aristotle from the Roman Cicero, Bible, other sacred texts that are plenty remembered, the Ramayana, go on and on and on. But then you have this break point and those things won’t be forgotten, but after antiquity ends, it takes a long time before you get to things that are remembered again. I guess Beowulf counts as post antiquity. I’m not sure how well remembered that is, but I’ll say like Jocerdonte are clearly somewhat remembered.
Salvador 48:55
Interesting. So do think the Bible will also be remembered 1000 years from now?
Tyler 48:57
Absolutely, and it’s a wonderful book and there’s still going to be Jews, Christians. Yeah, it’s not coming away.
Salvador 49:05
If there were two versions of you, one that has never traveled and one that has never read a book, which one of them would end up closer to who you are today?
Tyler 49:15
I guess the one who’s never traveled. But again, it’s the multiplicative model thing that doing both multiplies the value of each. I know a lot, not a lot, but I know a reasonable number of people who read a fair amount. And I don’t think they’ve traveled much, or if they traveled, they didn’t really travel and explore. A business trip or their parents dragged them when they were 10. You can see what those people are like and they’re still pretty smart but they’re limited in some fundamental ways.
Salvador 49:48
What’s the difference between what you learn and your overall insights when you go to a place, say, for a week to travel versus when you go to a place for a year to live?
Tyler 49:57
Well, when you go for a year or two, you realize how little you understand. When you go for a week, you think you understand a bunch of things. But the value of going only for just one day is immense. The place becomes real to you. Maybe you understand nothing. But when you then later read about it, you have mental and emotional touchstones and things fall into place much better. Like I was recently in Tbilisi, Georgia, just for a day and I couldn’t tell you I understand any single thing but my goodness, my sense of it is so advanced compared to not long ago when I’d never been there at all.
Salvador 50:34
In what sense do you learn by eating different foods? Does it help you crack cultural codes when you eat a food, a typical food of a country?
Tyler 50:44
If you only eat the food, I don’t know how much you learn, but when you read about the food and its history, you learn about their supply chains, you learn about their economic geography, you learn about their history of agriculture, trade, colonization, when that was the case. When you talk to the people who make the food, typically you’re talking to non-elites, which is a useful corrective to what a lot of us end up doing on these trips, which is talking to other elites, you’re often talking more to women or grandmothers or cooks. That’s another useful corrective. And it gives you a destination in many places, like gives it more of quest like feeling. We’re going there for this meal or we’re going to go to Oaxaca and eat in these certain food stalls. And that gives a structure to your trip that makes the non-food parts of the trip better and more instructive. That’s what I would say. You need a quest for a trip, why are you going? And the quest can be a little bit made up or imagined, but it will make your whole trip better. Like you want to see some person, you want to eat some meal, you want to see some church, whatever. I think it’s important for the whole trip, not just for the thing you see.
Salvador 51:57
Did you ever went to a place just because of the food?
Tyler 52:01
Only because of food? I think Malaysia is a great country to visit only for the food. It’s pleasant, it’s safe, people speak English, I like it. But there’s not that much to see and do there that’s special. It could be the world’s best food or it’s in the top, top tier. I want to go back there, but I wouldn’t say it’s top of my list because for me it is mainly the food. People are very friendly there.
Salvador 52:27
Is it necessarily bad that we time a lot of businesses and are less innovative because the best workers get pulled into a small number of companies? Should we expect that we have less innovations from having a few big businesses than from having a lot of average, medium businesses?
Tyler 52:47
Well, these things are clustered and I think you want to build up the cluster. And if you look at, you know, say the Italian Renaissance, the early Renaissance, it was incredible in painting and not nearly as exceptional in music. So maybe we pulled some talent into painting and sculpture and away from music. You’ve just got to do it. Like when you find something that’s working, double down, triple down, keep on doing it. You’re not going to have a fully diverse set of achievements anyway. Maybe there’s a few places like 19th century Paris, late 19th century, early 20th century Vienna, where it’s quite broad based, but that’s really the exception.
Salvador 53:25
Does technology drives the growth of government? Because presumably every major innovation from now on, and AI included, has not only the prospects of significantly benefiting humanity and the human experience, but also of destroying civilization therefore, we need more regulation to make sure it doesn’t go through a dangerous path.
Tyler 53:48
I don’t know if it means more government or less government. So AI will provide a lot of services cheaply. Legal advice, medical advice. I don’t know if the regulations in those areas will go away, but they might be made irrelevant. It’s also possible that we need certain types of laws to set liability for AI property rights. Can AIs have a bank account? To limit dangers, internalize externalities. I don’t know yet if it will mean more government or less government. Maybe there’s just fewer government workers because things are done by AI. A lot of government work is quite routine. If a government workforce shrank like by 4x, it’s not the same as less government because there’s more work being done. I don’t know. I think about this a lot, but I don’t think I have good answers.
Salvador 54:37
Do you think major innovations from now on will also have this safety component like we see with AI where we have people working on the safety side, making sure it doesn’t go through a dangerous path?
Tyler 54:51
Yes, biological innovations, we have that already. We’ll need more of it. The more we do with genomics, there’s different safeguards you need to think about. And I think more interdependence lies in our future with AI and biology in particular. Quantum computing, I don’t know if that will really work and be a practical matter, but that could change cryptography quite a bit, internet commerce. But like the regulations will come late. We’ll be faced with the crises for the regulations in that area in particular. A lot of this stuff will come so quickly. We’ll be scrambling to catch up with it. Like we won’t be ready. Our governments are pretty clueless about most of these areas. And voters are not demanding much action either. They’re vaguely suspicious of AI, but they’re not demanding any particular set of laws.
Salvador 55:42
Should we worry that our governments are clueless?
Tyler 55:45
They’re always clueless, but when there are big new changes, it matters more than other times. So we should worry. But in some ways, maybe it’s good that they’re clueless because they have no choice but to let it happen. I guess that’s my view. But I don’t want them clueless forever. I’m glad they’re clueless for now. But the clock is ticking and the time is coming where they shouldn’t be clueless anymore.
Salvador 56:06
Why do you think blogging requires so much like this big body of knowledge from knowing a lot about different fields? In the sense that bloggers are more likely to just go and search and get a thoughtful picture from a lot of fields in order to write about the problem they are trying to solve.
Tyler 56:28
I’m not sure blogging rewards that in particular. I would say if you want to blog for 23 years running, that’s what you need to stay fresh or interesting. But most bloggers, they blog what they know. Maybe they blog for six months. It’s some value to them, and then they stop. And they don’t need that at all. So most blogging is not like what I’ve been doing. I’m very much the outlier.
Salvador 56:52
In your conversation with Patrick Collison a couple years ago, you said that you would like to see more blogs focus on a single issue, on a single problem. Why do you think that’s so important? Do think people would read them as well?
Tyler 57:04
There’s just a lot that’s under discussed. So Brian Potter has done this very effectively with construction physics. A lot of that is about the cost of construction, which is a major problem. It’s not neglected anymore, in large part because of Brian. That’s been great. Ruxandra from Romania, she’s blogging clinical trials, a major problem. It’s not her only topic, but it’s her main topic. She’s, I think, having a real impact, so I’m delighted to see both of those things happening. I’d love for there to be a lot more.
Salvador 57:35
Have you ever been tempted to stop writing for the free press and magazines and just write on Marginal Revolution or on your personal substack? Like Paul Krugman did.
Tyler 57:46
No, I I write the blog anyway. Keep in mind those other people pay me, no one pays me to write on my blog. But I also like working with editors. New York Times, Bloomberg, Free Press, I’ve always had great editors. That’s important. And you reach very different audiences writing for these other outlets. And I like that I’ve written for different outlets. And now it’s the Free Press where I’ve been very happy and I’ve had great editing and they have great reach. So no, I don’t think I’m going to change that.
Salvador 58:18
Okay. I’m gonna name some bloggers and famous Twitter personalities and I’d like to hear like your take on them. First, Aella?
Tyler 58:30
She’s very smart, a fantastic writer, quite an important figure. Some people hate her. I think you have to distinguish between approving different things she does and what you think of her as a thinker. And she’s a great and important thinker. I’ve met her a bunch of times. I don’t know her, but I like her as a person from the interactions I’ve had.”
Salvador 58:56
Scott Alexander?
Tyler 58:59
Scott has written an incredible series of essays and blog posts over what is now quite a few years. He’s been remarkably influential in the Bay Area, has built up the rationality community, has this one huge blind spot on AI risk, which he just won’t treat scientifically. Other than that, he’s done great stuff.
Salvador 59:18
Noah Smith?
Tyler 59:20
When he started, I disagreed with him a lot. He just has worked so hard and he’s just gotten better and better and better. I love reading him. I think he’s very often right. He has great influence and he’s really mastered what he should be doing in a way based on this continual ongoing ruthless self-improvement.
Salvador 59:43
Matthew Yglesias?
Tyler 59:45
Matt, I’ve always liked a lot in his various incarnations. Now that politically he’s more centrist or even on the right in some issues makes me happy. But I loved Matt even in his strict blogger days when he’d like blog about the wizards or movies or... He’s just a very, very smart person as his father is. And he’s always interesting. And he’s like this American treasure.
Salvador 1:00:09
Roon?
Tyler 1:00:12
I love Roon. I only met him once. He seemed very nice. He’s one of my favorite people on Twitter. He works for OpenAI, so that to me is already a big plus right there. Yeah, I’d like to get to know Roon better. Only positives from what I’ve seen.
Salvador 1:00:31
Razib Khan?
Tyler 1:00:33
I met Razib, I think, once, maybe twice briefly. I wouldn’t say I know him. I believe he’s blogging very high quality material on genetics. I’m not sure I’m able to judge it. It has the sniff test of being high quality, and he covers a lot of things other people don’t cover. It seems to me quite valuable.
Salvador 1:00:44
Richard Hanania?
Tyler 1:00:46
Richard is a long and complicated story. I like where Richard has ended up, and he’s one of the most influential classical liberals. He’s super smart. He’s very willing to be disagreeable, which is usually but not always a strength for him. I hope now he doesn’t get caught in the trap of just repeating his current point, which to be clear, I agree with. But he’s like against the right-wing populists. But I’m a little bored with that, and I’m waiting for his next thing.
Salvador 1:01:27
Samo Burja?
Tyler 1:01:29
I know Samo, I had lunch with him some number of years ago and seen him a bunch of times since. I think his substack newsletter is very good. It’s super well informed. There’s a few calls he got wrong, but he is willing to think outside the box and he’s one of the people you can and should read to actually get different perspectives that are nonetheless backed up by a lot of information.
Salvador 1:01:56
Scott Aaronson?
Tyler 1:01:58
I’ve met Scott a bunch of times. He’s one of the best bloggers. I cannot judge his contributions on the technical side, but I believe they’re thought of very highly. Just one of the smartest people and seems to have good judgment. And it’s a great thing for the world that Scott is out there.
Salvador 1:02:16
Zvi?
Tyler 1:02:18
I know Zvi. He’s very, very smart. I think he is caught up in this one mood of the world is going to end, which I think is quite wrong. And it skews a lot of what he does. But he writes the best surveys on AI. And maybe you need to be a bit caught up to be motivated for the surveys to be that good and that useful. So I get his stuff. And in fact, I usually read it, which is the highest praise, right? I tried to talk him out of his mood, but I’ve totally failed.
Salvador 1:02:51
I’m curious to know what you think about Portugal?
Tyler 1:02:54
I’ve been to Portugal four times, twice to Lisbon, once to Porto, and once to Tavera. We call it Lagos. All of those are incredible places. It’s a very underrated country to visit. I think the food is superb and original, and you can’t really get good versions of it easily elsewhere. Architecture phenomenal. In Lisbon, I love the main art museum and also the Gulbenkian. I like just wandering through smaller Portuguese towns. Tavira and the tiles is incredible. I worry a lot of the country’s dying and depopulating and too old. And like half of it won’t be Portuguese people within my lifetime. It’ll be like British retirees and migrants. And it will be kind of dead. So I’m not sure the country has a future at all, but I think it’s a fantastic place and I love going and I’ll go back again I guess to Braga and Coimbra forgive my pronunciation but that’s how we say them people are so nice I like the sound of the language I can even sort of read the language through Spanish so I don’t feel helpless there
Salvador 1:04:09
Do you have a lot of emerging ventures grantees who came from Portugal?
Tyler 1:04:13
No, Vasco...you...There might be someone else, but that’s all that comes to mind. So everyone go to portugal there’s at least three great parts of the country probably more and it’s easy to get around it safe enough like there’s no downside to going it’s pretty affordable it’s cheaper than most of the rest of Europe.
Salvador 1:04:35
Do think it’s a good place to live in?
Tyler 1:04:40
If you’re retired or young, very young, if you’re a kid or retiree, it’s the best place in the world. In between, what’s your job? I don’t know. I’m then, you less bullish on it. But like the quality of the place is incredibly high. I just don’t know what you can do there with all this shrinkage and ageing.
Salvador 1:05:01
How would you fix it?
Tyler 1:05:02
I don’t think you can fix it. Now, if current Portuguese couples all decided to have three kids it would be fixed automatically. I just don’t see that happening. But like the fix is easy. We know the technology, right?
Salvador 1:05:23
So you don’t vote. I’m wondering if “civic responsibility” takes a different shape when it comes to you because like for the average person, like voting is the only thing they can do in order to influence politics. But your blog is read by millions and I mean, I don’t know, you probably don’t impact policies, but I’m sure you impact a lot of opinions.
Tyler 1:05:51
I’ve impacted a number of policies, often through indirect means that I would not necessarily speak about. But I’ve played a role as an advisor in a whole bunch of things. So I’m doing my civic duty, and I feel voting would diminish my civic duty. It would make me stupider. I would start taking sides. And often, I genuinely don’t know which side to vote for in many elections. Some elections I feel I know, but a lot of times I don’t know, and if I’m not sure and it’s going to make me stupider and I have other things I can do, including with that time, there you go.
Salvador 1:06:27
So two days ago you launched this aesthetics program with Patrick Collison. What’s the larger vision behind it? What’s the motivation?
Tyler 1:06:37
To make the world more interested in beauty again, in inspiration. And if you go, say, to Portugal, the older buildings in most parts are just incredible. And we’ll still go to see them. I’ll travel from the US to go see them. The newer buildings, not only Portugal, but they’re quite unexceptional. You might even say they’re ugly. So why is that? I want people to do more to answer that question, address it, and change it. It strikes me as in a wealthy diverse world, entirely reasonable set of expectations, but someone needs to act on it. And that’s what we’re doing with this project.
Salvador 1:07:13
Is it serving the same big goal as progress studies or is it just fundamentally different?
Tyler 1:07:21
No, aesthetics is a hugely important part of progress. And a purely mechanical material vision of progress studies, I’m convinced, will fail. That the Enlightenment comes from the Renaissance, which had a strong interest in beauty and drew beauty from the ancient world and the best of medieval times, was critical to everything that followed. And I would say the Industrial Revolution came first to aesthetics and only later to industry.
Salvador 1:07:47
So you agree with the view that people are happier when they are in beautiful places, wherever that might be?
Tyler 1:07:54
They’re probably happier, but that’s not what motivates me. Just the beauty itself motivates me. It’s probably good for happiness, but that is not even my sales pitch. We should care about beauty for its own sake.
Salvador 1:08:06
Tyler, thank you!
Tyler 1:08:07
It has been great chatting. Let’s do this again sometime and thank you for coming out. And also hope to see you in Portugal someday, I want to go back and see the rest of the country.
Salvador 1:08:17
That would be amazing. Thank you.
