#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?