#104: Back To The Future – Tyler Cowen

Tyler Cowen is an economist and public intellectual par excellence.

Show notes

Selected links

• Follow Tyler: Website | Twitter | Podcast | Blog
• Stubborn Attachments, by Tyler Cowen
• Ideal Code, Real World, by Brad Hooker
• Utilitarianism and Co-operation, by Donald Regan
• Peter Thiel interview, Conversations with Tyler
• The Great Stagnation, by Tyler Cowen
• The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Benjamin Friedman
• Fully Growth, by Dietrich Vollrath
• ‘The Nobel Prize Isn’t What It Used To Be’, Bloomberg article by Tyler Cowen
• ‘Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2020‘
• Superintelligence, by Nick Bostrom
• A Tract on Monetary Reform, by John Maynard Keynes
• Indian Currency and Finance, by John Maynard Keynes
• Individualism and Economic Order, by Friedrich Hayek
• The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon

Topics discussed

• If God is dead, life is absurd and there are no rules, why shouldn’t we just commit suicide?
• Why should we care about the distant future?
• Does rule utilitarianism collapse into act utilitarianism?
• How can we make decisions at all without succumbing to moral paralysis and total uncertainty?
• Why isn’t the epistemic critique fatal to consequentialism?
• Why didn’t Tyler donate the proceeds of Stubborn Attachments to an effective charity?
• What is the Great Stagnation?
• Why was 1973 the breakpoint in western productivity growth?
• Is the Great Stagnation overdetermined?
• What metric would Tyler look at to determine whether the Great Stagnation had ended?
• When did Tyler first become cognisant of the Great Stagnation?
• Does science come before technology or does technology come before science?
• Are ideas getting harder to find?
• The Great Stagnation and zero- or negative-sum thinking.
• Should we be loyal to Earth?
• What kind of governance system would Tyler establish for a hypothetical Mars colony?
• Is the Fermi paradox closer to being resolved now that the Pentagon has released videos of UFOs?
• What does Tyler make of Dietrich Vollrath’s argument that stagnation is a sign of our success?
• How has the US Government’s handling of the pandemic affected Tyler’s Great Stagnation thesis?
• Why aren’t the US and UK doing more testing?
• Have WEIRD societies handled the pandemic worse than their non-WIERD counterparts?
• Should we view the dwindling prestige of the Nobel Prize as a symptom of stagnation?
• What did people in the past do better in terms of cultural practices?
• What does Tyler make of Larry Summers’ revival of the secular stagnation hypothesis?
• Is the demand-side story correct but for other reasons, like growing household debt?
• Is the Great Stagnation the deep cause of the US housing bubble and financial crisis?
• If it was an anti-bubble of panic that caused the housing crash, what caused the panic?
• Should central banks “lean against the wind” or “clean up after”?
• Bubbles and autism.
• Can people who aren’t on the spectrum hack their way into non-conformity?
• How should radical uncertainty make us less confident in our own tribe’s policy prescriptions?
• What’s something that John Maynard Keynes got really right?
• What’s something that Friedrich Hayek got very wrong?
• Which one of Hayek’s works would Tyler recommend?
• What are Tyler’s private feedback loops as a writer?
• Why might Peter Thiel be the smartest person Tyler knows?
• What should you infer about someone from their email response time?
• Does Tyler take notes while reading books?
• Should public intellectuals give more credit to their peers?
• Why should people abstain from alcohol?
• Why is Tom Stoppard one of the smartest people alive?
• Why is The Odyssey superior to The Iliad?
• Who does Tyler think will win the US presidential election – and who does he want to win?
• What one thing would Tyler change about the US electoral system?
• Does the US need more Girardian scapegoats?
• Why does America need more religion?
• What does America need most right now?