I interview Tyler Cowen about learning, history, and investing in ideas. Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Timestamps

00:00 - Introduction
00:07 - If there were 10 Tyler Cowens
01:10 - Learning curve: ages 14 to late 20s
06:17 - Cracking cultural codes
13:58 - Public intellectuals as investors in ideas
17:16 - Evergreen fields: AI, China, India, Mexico
27:46 - Nuclear war: 70% probability prediction
33:04 - What college students miss
35:58 - Mistakes Gen Z is making
42:12 - Hyperlexia: reading fast as genetic advantage
48:19 - Mentorship
54:27 - Common mistakes mentees make

Transcript

[00:00] Parker Conley

Tyler Cowen needs no introduction. Tyler Cowen, welcome.

[00:04] Tyler Cowen

Parker, thank you for having me on.

[00:06] Parker Conley

If there were 10 Tyler Cowen’s, how would they spend their time differently than you spend your time now? How would your production function of 10 Tyler Cowens be different?

[00:16] Tyler Cowen

Maybe they’d be in Gerardian competition with each other and only the strongest would emerge alive because they’d be competitors. But assuming they could cooperate, I’d like to send one on a long tour of Vietnam, just cross that country, like using two months. Send another to explore the islands of Indonesia. Maybe a third would learn some other languages. A fourth would spend more time mentoring. And the other five, I don’t know, just like lock them in a closet somewhere.

[00:47] Parker Conley

So this is not about building an empire or anything more leisure time is what you’d optimize for or something like this?

[00:53] Tyler Cowen

Well, I don’t consider it leisure time. I consider, quote, unquote, working as more leisurely than traveling around. So traveling is hard, right? It’s rewarding. But the real leisure is when you’re sitting on your sofa writing.

[01:07] Parker Conley

I would say I see in your four, when you were 14 to your late 20s, you mentioned that that was the period of your life where learning had its highest returns. Could you speak more about, like, the nature of this learning curve here? How do you feel like you were learning differently in that period of your life during, compared to now?

[01:30] Tyler Cowen

Well, that’s true for social science, obviously. When I’m like 2, 3 years old, I’m learning a lot, but that’s a different issue. But I think there’s a point before which you just can’t learn that much. So if I read the newspaper when I’m like age 8, I don’t know how much it means to me, but definitely by ages 13, 14, it all means a lot. I really started like reading newspapers and things like that at age 10, and I absorbed a great deal. And it was all new, right? By definition. So at some point, truly new ideas are harder to find. And I would say by the time I hit my late twenties, it’s much harder. And you know, you see this even in music. So I think I discovered like James Brown, maybe I was 30. That was a big deal for me. But it’s hard to keep on discovering people of that import when you’re 40. Like you, new ones are created. You know, there’s Nirvana, there’s My Bloody Valentine, whatever. But you just can’t like, go back in time and find the next Beethoven because you already know the Beethovens. So I think for a lot of People by the time they hit 30, there’s certain thresholds they’ve attained in terms of learning.

[02:47] Parker Conley

What do you think are the benefits of reading the news versus not? I hear various people say that maybe to counter the mainstream habit of reading a lot of news, that one should not read the news and maybe they should just read quarterlies once he once every quarter or something like this. Or.

[03:05] Tyler Cowen

How you can stay away from the drama. Right, sure, true. So you’re doing for me some form of violence to yourself by not reading. But look, I know some people, they get very depressed when they read the news. I was speaking to friend of my wife’s the night before and she says if she reads the news, it’s emotionally too much for her and I understand that. I’m not that way. But probably she shouldn’t read the news. But if you can handle it, I don’t know why you would read anything else. In a way like if there were more news, I would read more. You can randomly ask GPT, like what’s up in Cambodia? And generate some new news. I think that’s a good thing to do actually.

[03:49] Parker Conley

Then how should one spread one’s time? One could spend time reading things like wisdom texts or great books or philosophy or things like this compared to the news. Should one allocate most of their time to things like the news? Or what should the ratio be of news to more evergreen sort of sources of information?

[04:05] Tyler Cowen

I don’t know. My attitude was always, I need to read all those things. And like, if people don’t read as fast as I do or they face other constraints, they have young kids, whatever. You just have to do what interests you because there’s higher compound returns when you stay involved through, you know, these pretty selfish reasons that you’re enjoying it. So that would in general be. My advice is figure out what you’re going to stick with.

[04:32] Parker Conley

I see. In terms of learning, you mentioned in one interview that you can always learn more math and statistics. This was sort of a pithy comment. I’m curious if you could unpack it more like which fields does this apply to? If I’m going to entrepreneurship, should I learn math and statistics or it will be useless for me. And maybe you’re speaking more as an economist or academic in that respect.

[04:58] Tyler Cowen

Well, possibly use useless for you. It depends what your business is. But there’s things, say in econometrics that are new relative to when I studied the field. So something like difference in differences. Differences and differences I would try to learn by YouTube. It’s not a thing I work on, but I want to learn it. It’s quite important in economics, and I’ll talk to people about it, and then I’ll use YouTube. So I don’t know if it’s practical value for me, but I’m just curious, like, what are these people doing? And so I try to learn something about it. Math. I think I’ve hit a point where the marginal math I don’t know is a bit hard, and I’m not really doing that. So, like, whatever I don’t know in differential equations seems to me not worth it, and I don’t think I’ll ever learn it. But for stats, there’s a lot more I could learn, and it would still be useful in some way.

[05:55] Parker Conley

I see. I see. What does it feel like to crack a cultural code? You talk about cultural codes and cracking them. Does it feel like passive osmosis? Like you’re sort of being socialized into a group? Is it sort of explicit thinking and you’re sort of like a sociologist developing a theory? Is it something in between to do or something else entirely?

[06:17] Tyler Cowen

Well, you never really crack it, right? That’s sort of like an inside joke to cracking the code. You can crack an actual code, like Alan Turing did. But cultural codes, they always mystify you. You can ask better questions. You can understand something rather than nothing. You just walk away with some vivid impressions, and that’s what you’re hoping for. But you can do those things with some reading, some time, some travel. And I think the marginal returns to doing that are just very, very high. Like, once I went to Yemen and I spent a week there, still a total mystery to me. And at the time, like, not one person could speak English. I spoke to no one. But still I’m like, wow, I’m in Yemen. And I saw. Felt like a very medieval place. The men all carried daggers, the women were all veiled. The men were all chewing, you know, khat, that narcotic drug. I came away baffled, but, like, I know what I’m baffled about, at least.

[07:17] Parker Conley

Yeah, I’ve traveled relatively little to Rome once and to Canada recently and throughout the States. Is there any way you could speak to me about the benefits of travel? I’ve asked this to many people. What am I missing by not have. Having traveled extensively?

[07:33] Tyler Cowen

Well, it’s the ultimate puzzle, right? You’re trying to figure things out. You’ll never succeed. You learn a lot of history. You understand current affairs much better if it’s a relevant country. Certainly Canada and Rome would count as Relevant and it’s just fun. And you know, I’m very interested in food. You get to eat these wonderful dishes. But I like to have a sense of history. And if you don’t go places, I find it hard to really internalize like some narrative or vision as to whatever happened there. But you see Rome, then you read about the Roman Empire and you’ve seen continuing bits of it. That’s pretty amazing. It’s a thrill for me.

[08:17] Parker Conley

What do you feel like the benefits of learning about history are for you?

[08:21] Tyler Cowen

I just want to know it. You know, it’s an end in and of itself to know what humans have done, like for your business. It’s not going to help you. And if you’re not interested, you know, just don’t do it. But humans are what are interesting, right? And the future, it only comes when it comes. That’s like reading the news. And the past has infinite riches, so why not explore them? I guess is my attitude.

[08:48] Parker Conley

I see. I see. One could say like, maybe it helps you predict political situations or something like this, or recognize the current political climate or.

[08:56] Tyler Cowen

I think it does. A little has merit, but like a little.

[08:59] Parker Conley

Yeah.

[09:00] Tyler Cowen

It mainly cautions you about over predicting, I would say, which is useful. But you can know a lot about the past and still not be good at predicting the future. But again, you just get a sense of where things came from and the world becomes a bit more intelligible and you’re like, you feel greater comfort with it, or at least I do. And you know, you’re in Arizona now, like you can just fly to northern Mexico. It’s got to be like less than an hour flight. It’s gorgeous there. The food is incredible. You compare like Mexicans there to Mexicans in your state. What’s different? It’s. It’s very interesting to me. I flew to Hermosillo once, which has got to be pretty close to you. Some of the best food I’ve had in my whole life. And it was cheap. Like, why shouldn’t I go to Helmucillo? And then when I read about northern Mexico in the news, I have these images. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but I love it. I’m never going to stop until I have to.

[10:03] Parker Conley

I see. Okay, I’ll consider it. What is your favorite cultural code?

[10:09] Tyler Cowen

Well, I’ve been to Mexico more than any other country. Some of that is simply that it’s close, but it is a long standing love of mine. The sense of drama there, how many individual stories you interact with. The mix of sort of cheery and depressive. It’s some of my favorite food. I like how the different regions vary. I find most of it is actually pretty safe, contrary to reputation. The weather I like, so it has many pluses for me. But you know, I lived in Germany, I lived in New Zealand. Those have to be favorites. There are very few places I’ve gone, if any, where I’m just not interested. Probably I can’t think of anywhere. In fact, even when I went to Braunschweig in West Germany way back when, which is ugly and dull, but it’s like, okay, here’s what a dull German city’s like. And that was something too.

[11:06] Parker Conley

I see. I somewhat approach these questions from like a means to an end. I’m learning this to get this out of or something. You talk about having interests and curiosity and this sort of thing. I’m curious tracking your intellectual history from like your early teens and onward. The things that were interesting to you in your early teens, say, I don’t know, economics or philosophy. Are those subjects still as interesting to you today? Or do some of them. Do you hit diminishing returns and no longer interested in. Have you discovered new fields that are interesting to you?

[11:41] Tyler Cowen

Well, I’m still interested, but I would say there are diminishing returns. So as new economic ideas are developed, I’ll be first in line to read them or hear them. But the pace has really slowed down, I think since about 1990. So yes, that for me is much less interesting. Philosophy maybe has a bigger dilemma. I would say there’s less progress in philosophy than economics, but again, I’m there super eager. There’s a lot of just refinements of things and pieces and books written, you know, for peer review, for promotion. It’s not really that earth shattering and even a lot of philosophers will admit this. Things like Nozick, Rawls, Kripke, Quine were really phenomenal. I was very excited and interested. Parfit, of course there’ll be more to come, but right now it seems pretty slow. Maybe I’m just not seeing it or hearing about it, but I believe it’s slow.

[12:42] Parker Conley

How do you relate to anthropology and sociology as fields?

[12:46] Tyler Cowen

I think they’re great fields, but it’s not always rewarding to read them. The best thing to do is to go out and do it, which for me is doing it by travel. So that’s how I express my interest in those fields, is by doing them, not by reading them that much. They’re fine to read. You learn things, they contain empirical knowledge but again, better to do it yourself, cook your own meal.

[13:11] Parker Conley

I see you’ve said that you’re a highly diversified public intellectual that you don’t like bet on single ideas. In a blog post about whose entire body of work is worth reading, you mentioned historians. If they’re relatively good at being historians, they have a pretty high hit rate of having good bodies of work. There’s a sort of underlying analogy of public intellectuals as investors in ideas. I’m going to share some, I guess, investing analogies and I’d be curious to hear your thoughts as to how they map on to public intellectuals. Are you down?

[13:57] Tyler Cowen

Yeah, of course.

[14:00] Parker Conley

Are there high variance ideas and what sort of ideas or fields are more high variance?

[14:06] Tyler Cowen

Well, anytime you make a big prediction, it’s high variance, right? So if you’re proven right, there’s a big upside. If you’re proven wrong, it is true. People forget about it. But you still lost a chance at upside and you only get so many chances. So anything about the future, anything about tech, any very specific political predictions, like, oh, like every president will be like Trump from now on. Those are pretty high variants.

[14:35] Parker Conley

What are the various markets for ideas? Who’s buying ideas? If public intellectuals are sort of serving them out, where does the demand come from?

[14:45] Tyler Cowen

Well, you can get tenure, that’s common. You can write for media, you can write for substack, which can be a lot of income. Those are, you know, you can have a podcast. Those are not necessarily your ideas, but it’s you in some way. You can do consulting, you can work for a multilateral, you can advise and, or work for a government. So there’s a lot of different bidders, so to speak. Some of them don’t interest me at all. Like I’ve never wanted to work for governments.

[15:16] Parker Conley

Does the analogy of like startups and small business map on if you want to be a very successful public intellectual, do you have to have a few startups and take high risk bets on a few companies and have those succeed? Or can you? I don’t think so, no. Okay.

[15:33] Tyler Cowen

I think you can become an expert, like in a thing, and there’s some things, you know, they’re always going to matter, like immigration or the Middle east, you know, obvious list of stuff. And if you’re just smart and work hard and do some sensical things, you can become pretty well known. You don’t have to make some big bet like, oh, the government of Iran will collapse in two years. You can try that, but it’s usually unwise. Like typically you don’t actually know and you can just be an expert and that’s fine. Like look at Justin Wolfers. Like I know he’s made specific predictions, but he’s mainly known for being an expert. Not that he said this one thing that turned out to be correct. And he’s an expert about a bunch of things and he’s doing great.

[16:20] Parker Conley

Yeah. The public intellectuals that do take these high risk bets, do you think they’re usually aware of it?

[16:28] Tyler Cowen

Well, I don’t think they’re doing it cynically. Typically there may be some cases of that, but most are sincere, really believe it. I think they know what they’re doing when they say it. But again, I don’t think they’re manipulating the system to try to get ahead. I think it’s what they feel they ought to be saying. I just think they’re often overconfident in their ability to be correct, but that’s fine. Like other entrepreneurs are motivated by overconfidence. Adam Smith made that point. Maybe you are. That’s what gets you to try things. The failure rate on these ventures is pretty high and you know, that’s the way the world works.

[17:05] Parker Conley

How about me as like a consumer of ideas? Which fields ought I learn about if I, if I want some, like very evergreen fields that are going to be useful for me throughout my career?

[17:15] Tyler Cowen

Well, now it’s AI it has not been that in the past, but that will be important for the rest of my life and yours and you’ll have to know it no matter what you do. So I would say that depends who you are and what you’re going to do. But I tell a lot of people that if you learn a lot about China, India and Mexico, maybe Russia, you’re really in pretty good shape. Like that’s a lot of the world and it will always be relevant and you’re always going to meet people from those places, probably work with them. It’s just very good background for many, many things. Now if you live somewhere else, it’s going to differ, but at least India and China will not really differ. Mexico might differ.

[18:00] Parker Conley

And I’ve considered reading history books on China or Mexico or wherever. But I also understand that travel is qualitatively different.

[18:10] Tyler Cowen

Yeah, go to them. Don’t. Don’t read so much. Yeah, like read a small number of books and then interrogate GPT about what you care about concerning those places. You just read 30 books, like all these names of Chinese dynasties like this. How many people really retain that? You know, maybe for some people it’s Great. But it’s not a general recommendation. Just see a few different parts of China, India. Try cooking some dishes or whatever your interest is. Try to connect with these countries through that interest. Maybe it’s, you know, cricket or something. India. It’s a lot of ways you can do it.

[18:49] Parker Conley

I see. What is your relationship with Fernand Brattle’s work?

[18:55] Tyler Cowen

I’m a big fan of it. I read a lot of it when I was quite young. It had a big influence on me. The three volume structures of material life I found more intelligible than the Mediterranean set. Also his book, you know, the Identity of France I thought was very good. So I’m a huge fan.

[19:14] Parker Conley

I’ve been reading various like sociological ethnographic books maybe in that vein, but some more modern ones too. Are there. When will I face diminishing returns for this? And when should I go and travel and learn about different places or is reading books? I’ve been reading a book that’s sort of a community studies book and about a small rural town. When should I start the book and travel?

[19:43] Tyler Cowen

There are no diminishing returns, but you can travel and take the book on the trip. So I would just say each other downtime when you travel like books and travel are definitely compliments. I very often get more reading done on a trip than at home and people can’t really like bug you on the trip, so.

[20:04] Parker Conley

Well, there’s a modern phenomena especially of med students and also language learners using like flashcard apps like Anki. I’m not sure if you’re familiar. What do you think?

[20:18] Tyler Cowen

I’ve heard about them. I’ve never used them.

[20:21] Parker Conley

Do you have any first impressions or off the cuff takes on?

[20:26] Tyler Cowen

I suspect the good ones are quite good and useful. You know, spaced repetition as a mode of learning. There’s. There’s good evidence for that. You know, when I was like younger and learning German and Spanish I did that without apps of course.

[20:40] Parker Conley

Sure.

[20:40] Tyler Cowen

Using things like file cards and I found that useful. So if we can do it in a higher tech way, it’s probably still useful.

[20:49] Parker Conley

You daily post assorted links. How this podcast adjacently first came about was me asking if there was a. A Strawsian reading of your assorted links. Is there some specific order that you put specific links in? Is there some esoteric reading of the links? Hints are fine too.

[21:10] Tyler Cowen

Well, I like it when there’s one link that comes and the one after it is kind of commentary on the link before. And that definitely happens and I’m aware of it and I giggle. But I don’t put much effort into like rearranging the order. The order is typically the order they were sent to me or I found them. And I might sometimes switch the order of one or two just to get the giggle. But mostly it’s arising spontaneously. So I’m aware of it, but I’m not doing very much to manipulate it.

[21:41] Parker Conley

I see. It’s not like the last link is something you always think is completely incorrect or.

[21:48] Tyler Cowen

Really the order in which they come to me.

[21:51] Parker Conley

If you’re interested in so many things, why not mysticism?

[21:55] Tyler Cowen

Well, I am very interested in mysticism. I don’t practice it because I guess I don’t believe in it. But things like the Rosicrucians, Isaac Newton, Masonic symbolism, all that would be areas where, you know, I would read a fair amount. I would go visit mystic sites. It’s a somewhat loose concept, but I definitely am interested in that. But like, what’s mysticism versus religion? Some fine distinctions there. I would just say I’m interested in all of it and I’m not too concerned with drawing the lines any one specific way to.

[22:31] Parker Conley

To push you further. There’s like the interest in the history of it, the sociology of it and this. This sort of thing. Yeah. How about the practical side? Does that interest you much or is it. No, no, no.

[22:40] Tyler Cowen

If I thought it were true, I’m not sure I’d be interested in anything else. But I don’t think it’s true. And even if it is true, I don’t know how I would make progress. There’s so many mystical claims like, oh, is there esp? Does meditation bring you to this final state of whatever? Or there’s this, there’s that just as an outsider you approach this, you’ve no way of knowing where the actual gold is, so sort of give up on it.

[23:12] Parker Conley

I see, I see. Why aren’t there any widespread monastic institutions in like, modern day America?

[23:21] Tyler Cowen

Well, are we sure there are not. Universities are in some ways monastic. There are people who live as monks in the us it’s probably not very many. There’s nunneries. I know they’re shrinking. Wouldn’t surprise me if some of these made a comeback. I guess I expect they will.

[23:41] Parker Conley

Do you have any thoughts on what conditions of a country or civilization create such an institution?

[23:49] Tyler Cowen

Well, when you’re not sure how else you can make a living, that’s a big determinant. So medieval times, which are very insecure, of course, the idea that you’re a monk, you’re a nun, you’re taken care of. I think it’s very appealing. And I think on average, a lot of the other people you could speak with were very intelligent, which may. May not have been the case in your village church. Doctrine is more interesting than a lot of what you would have picked up outside of the church. It’s probably what I would have done in those times had I been born then.

[24:22] Parker Conley

Do you think they’re a sort of talent magnet at times?

[24:26] Tyler Cowen

They are medieval times, definitely. Now, are they a talent magnet, you know, in 1880? I would think very likely not now. Franz Liszt spends his last years. He dies in 1886, you know, basically in a monastery as a monk, still doing music, studying Catholic doctrine, becoming quite conservative. He was still talented, but it really depends on the time.

[24:53] Parker Conley

What did you get out of reading Stalin’s library? I think you recommended it to Durkesh, per an interview at, I think, the Progress Studies Conference.

[25:02] Tyler Cowen

Well, Stalin was more intellectual than I had thought, and it upgraded my sense of how much influence books have, if they influence even Stalin. So, you know, okay, now he had bad influences for the most part, but still, books reach so many people, and it’s an argument in favor of writing books.

[25:24] Parker Conley

Sure. In what are your thoughts, if any, on Mortimer J. Adler’s work?

[25:35] Tyler Cowen

You mean like his book how to Read a Book?

[25:37] Parker Conley

Yeah, how to Read a Book. I think he was affiliated with the. The production of the encyclopedia in some way. Yeah.

[25:46] Tyler Cowen

Book on Aristotle.

[25:47] Parker Conley

Yeah.

[25:47] Tyler Cowen

It seems to me he was very useful in getting people interested in philosophy, and that’s great. But I read some when I was young and they bored me, but they’re not for me. But they’re. It’s very good that they’re there.

[26:01] Parker Conley

He writes a lot about the great books, and I think he had some involvement in the movement. I’m curious, the books that are, like, commonly referred to as great books, how. What do you think the correlation is with them actually being great and interesting and having deep content Very, very high?

[26:20] Tyler Cowen

So if you mean the literal great book series, there’s a lot that’s missing. But everything in there, as far as I. I can remember, is a hit. Like every single one. Now, the science books, that’s trickier. Like Huygens. Do you need to read him? Like, should that be in there? I guess I wouldn’t put it in there. I’d put in something else, you know, that’s more of a text. But, man, I think they had great taste and, like, everyone’s a home run.

[26:48] Parker Conley

Are there any particular books that I can think of particular books that you would think are great, there might be too many to name. Or maybe they are a few that aren’t included in the list.

[26:59] Tyler Cowen

Oh, I’m trying. You know, Dickens Oblique House is not in there and that to me is very, very great. That would be an example of something that’s missing in a lot of economics. Right. So now Hayek, his greatest works were articles. So okay, you wouldn’t put him in great books, but there’s plenty. You know. Is John Maynard Keynes in there? I don’t think so, but I, I could be wrong.

[27:31] Parker Conley

I see Dwark Keshe in his first podcast interview with you, you said that you think there was something like a 70% chance of a nuclear bomb going off in his lifetime. I’m a similar age as Rakesh. I’m curious if you would still stand by that prediction.

[27:50] Tyler Cowen

Maybe I would up it a tiny amount because like war in Ukraine is not over. India, Pakistan have had some dust ups. Those are not major revisions compared to how things were when I said that. But if I’m going to put the number up or down, I’d put it up a slight amount but basically stick in the same range.

[28:10] Parker Conley

Should I act accordingly? Should I like maybe avoid living in San Francisco during my lifetime? Or a major they’re not going to bomb you.

[28:18] Tyler Cowen

No, I think US you’re as safe as you’re going to get. You might avoid the Korean Peninsula or India, Pakistan. Even then I’m not sure it should change your decisions, but US is a pretty protected place to be sure.

[28:38] Parker Conley

Do you think that stands on a larger scale? Like in terms of thinking about my career path and my general life and geopolitics and how that affects that? Is living in the US a pretty safe bet or should I ditch it to some Southeast Asian community?

[28:54] Tyler Cowen

If we fall apart, a lot of the rest of the world goes down with us. Like maybe you should buy more gold you would have been planning on doing or whatever is the relevant hedge at that point in time. Like I would do that. I’m thinking of buying more gold myself. But the younger you are, the more sense it makes. The older you are, the more you’re just like eh, whatever, but look into hedges. But again, you know, say like let’s say Iran geared up with non nuclear missiles and had enough of them that they could overwhelm Israeli air defenses and they start an attack on Tel Aviv and Israel responds by nuking a city in Iran, which is a terrible event most of all for the people who die. It might be a financial crisis, but it’s not really going to affect you that much.

[29:47] Parker Conley

There are people who when upset with the administration, maybe it’s just hearsay, but travel to Canada and move to Canada. Do you think. How do you think Canada stands in terms of safety and robustness over my lifetime compared to the us?

[30:02] Tyler Cowen

Basically the same. We underwrite them. It’s a nice country. Living there is very good. I don’t like the cold. I love the food. I wouldn’t move there. The people who went I think are fools and all kind of cowards in a way. But look, good riddance, you know, they can come back anytime they want and in the meantime I think they’ll just look like fools.

[30:25] Parker Conley

Do you have any heuristics or tips for finding good books? For example, Dorkesh says the further reading on the Wikipedia page is usually pretty high quality. Or I found benefit from reading books from authors I like one book of and then maybe there’s another book that’s less highly reviewed. Reading the Goodreads pages of people I find interesting has usually been interesting. Do you have any heuristics like this that you you use?

[30:51] Tyler Cowen

None of those work for me, but I’m not trying to talk you out of them.

[30:54] Parker Conley

Okay.

[30:55] Tyler Cowen

One thing I recommend to everyone that Harold Bloom book, the Western Canon. He lists what he thinks is the Western canon and some of the non western canon in the back. Almost all of those are great reads. They’re not all easy. And then I’m often doing what I call reading in clusters. I’m not trying to pick out the best book. I want to learn about something and to learn about that thing. Like now I’m reading about South African penal system a bit. I’ll just read more books on that topic. I’m sure they’re not the best books, but it’s like podcast prep and that’s what I’m going to do. So my reading is more and more looking like that. And then there’s just what people send me review copies. Like I got three or four today and I’ll look at them just out of serendipity. And some of it I might read. Who knows what they are. Here’s one in front of me. It’s called seven how we Evolve to Live Longer. I’ll try it. Why not?

[31:52] Parker Conley

What is your relationship with review copies? I. I have never received one and I maybe get a little snippet of people receiving them through people endorsing a book on the front. What is your relationship when you receive a review copy? Do you think it’s better book on average. Do you feel a particular obligation when you receive one? What is your relationship with that?

[32:12] Tyler Cowen

A lot of them are good. I look at every one. I don’t know if I’m obliged, but I want to do it anyway. So yeah, I’ll definitely look at it. Even if I get seven or eight in a day, I’ll look at them all. I probably won’t read them all, but I’m very glad to get them. And I think that system works pretty well. It certainly works well for me.

[32:33] Parker Conley

I see this is a different topic in terms of I’m in college and you talk about college providing context for people growing up. What particular context do people maybe who spend more time on the Internet or don’t attend every class. What do they miss out on? Is it skills at being social or romantic relationships or what sort of context do people miss out on?

[33:03] Tyler Cowen

Well, all of that. The first thing college does is it takes you away from a lot of bad contexts, violence, some working class norms, poverty. You’re removed from it. That’s a huge gain right there. Like the context you don’t get dating relationships. You get to learn like new and different kinds of jerks, often from your professors. That’s important. Different personality types. You learn bureaucracy in a school because you have to deal with it. You sort of learn how competitive you are, how much patience you have, what you enjoy. You learn a lot about yourself. I don’t know if it’s an efficient system, but it’s proven surprisingly hard to beat.

[33:48] Parker Conley

Yeah, I am in college. I have a year and a half left of my computer science degree. I have sometimes struggled every semester. Do I want to continue with this degree? Do I want to work on personal projects? How should I relate to this? Should I get the degree because it looks very good on my LinkedIn that I can complete something. Should there be some margin by wish? If my business succeeds, I go work on that full time. What should my relationship with finishing?

[34:15] Tyler Cowen

Well, I don’t know. You. My guess is you should get the degree. If you had some startup idea and felt if I don’t do it now, someone else will take it and this is like the idea of my lifetime, then you might stop. But that’s rarely the case. So probably you should finish and whatever you want to do with entrepreneurship you can just do and you’ll be a bit wiser and know a bit more and you won’t be at any disadvantage. It’s not like you’re 40, right? So probably chance you’ll meet Your partner. I wouldn’t say it’s high, but it’s not trivial in that last year and a half. And you’re more orient as you’re leaving. You think a bit like, what am I going to take with me and potential partners? They’re more ready to like truly pair off so that chance is rising. Like, why flush that down the toilet?

[35:06] Parker Conley

Do you think there’s any significant difference with the modern day Ivy League universities and I go to like a public school like Arizona State University. Is there a significant context that I’m missing out on?

[35:19] Tyler Cowen

Well, I think your school is less corrupt than theirs on net. That’s good for you. But yes, you are missing out on some context by not seeing the corruption, intellectual corruption and conformity and self righteousness and political correctness and all of that. My sense, I’ve never visited your school, but I hear from many people you’re much better than average and more entrepreneurial as a school. I’m pretty sure it’s true and you get that it’s great. Enjoy it.

[35:49] Parker Conley

What do you think? My generation, the zoomers, what mistakes do you expect us to make?

[35:57] Tyler Cowen

I don’t think in terms of generations very much, but it’s striking to me the data on the number of young people who don’t seem to be trying to have sex. And that just seems to me like a huge mistake. I’m not saying do it indiscriminately, don’t do it irresponsibly, don’t do it without whatever measures of safety are appropriate, but man, it’s incredible. I never would have expected that. It’s like this earlier generation fought for some kind of sexual revolution which like admittedly went too far and now you’ve just all lost interest. I was speaking to a person, male, young, super smart, good looking, and he just said like he doesn’t date. I don’t understand that. Total mystery to me. And I think it’s a mistake.

[36:47] Parker Conley

Do you think dating is something one does is instrumentally value valuable or is it more towards like wanting to have a life partner that you recommend that? Both.

[36:57] Tyler Cowen

It just seems like it should be obvious you should be wanting to try to do it. I’m not saying it’s easy, but like it’s not so hard that it will just thwart you. You can do it, but something’s gone wrong and it’s like the man and the women both have their own version of the problem and it’s this massive coordination failure. And yes, I think it’s a big mistake. All parties Involved, or rather not involved would be a better way to put it.

[37:25] Parker Conley

What advantages do you think young people will have?

[37:29] Tyler Cowen

Well, they’re smarter. I think their values are in general quite good compared to earlier generations. They have incredible opportunities. They grow up in a world where you can be much more in touch with other cultures and countries. You can turn that into a big plus if you want to. Those are some pretty big, you know, advantages, and they’re real. I’m not one of these. Oh, the new generation is all screwed up. I worry. Mental health problems are high and rising. That’s my biggest worry. But I think there’s a lot of big pluses for young people as well.

[38:07] Parker Conley

A young person looking forward to the future with a career path of wanting to have a lot of free time and maybe luxury time and this sort of thing. What current professions or career paths would serve that goal most?

[38:26] Tyler Cowen

It depends what else you care about. I mean, you can just be a high school teacher and you’re home by 4pm and you have the summers free. It’s not really something I’d advise, but if you just want free time, different bureaucracies, you could try to get some money pretty early and do some kind of Dave Ramsey thing with compound returns. I don’t know how well that works. I don’t advise people to do it. I think find something you really enjoy and work a lot is typically what I would advise.

[38:58] Parker Conley

I see. I see. How many interesting emails do you receive a day? What is the order of magnitude? Is it single digit? Is it hundreds? In what range does the amount of interesting emails, in the sense that they’re novel, maybe you haven’t seen them before. And then maybe there’s another type of email which is just like practically relevant.

[39:23] Tyler Cowen

I would guess it’s over 100 a day, at least a weekday, somewhat lower on like a Sunday, but not 200. Just a guesstimate. That’s quite a few. I feel I have great information flows, but it can be a little hard to deal with. I don’t want it to stop. I’m very happy about it, but it’s a lot, right?

[39:44] Parker Conley

Yeah. Yeah. How does email compare to other information flows? You have like Twitter or your RSS feed or WhatsApp groups or my RSS feed has died. Yeah.

[39:56] Tyler Cowen

Which is sad, but it’s just true. I’m in a lot of very good WhatsApp groups. Those are typically people I know. And I’ll get, you know, any hour, probably a hundred messages. I don’t know. It’s a lot. You said Emails, but you add it all up, it’s even more sure. And those are often interesting. I’m a tiny bit on Signal Twitter. I scroll a lot. Yeah, a lot of stuff coming at me.

[40:25] Parker Conley

Any online forums or mostly Twitter?

[40:29] Tyler Cowen

My own blog, like my online forum, but no other one.

[40:34] Parker Conley

Yeah, yeah. How do you balance like responding to messages versus consuming messages? Are you mostly. Do you mostly produce things or do you have a high baseline for that? Or is there a whole world of Tyler Cowan of just consuming things like books and other information and what is like the ratio of the two the public Tyler Cowan of producing content versus your personal consumption habits?

[41:04] Tyler Cowen

Well, I’m not sure I followed what you’re really getting at. Yeah, I would say I read and listen to a lot that I never write about.

[41:11] Parker Conley

Yeah.

[41:12] Tyler Cowen

If that’s what you’re asking now, if you’re asking do I respond to emails? Yes, almost always. If you ask do, am I like Derek Parfit who writes these long private letters that are awesomely interesting but never come out? The answer is no. If I’m going to do something interesting, I try to turn it into a public output rather than just do something private.

[41:38] Parker Conley

I see. Yeah.

[41:40] Tyler Cowen

So you read my private correspondence. Like you’d find it a bit interesting, but not really that much.

[41:48] Parker Conley

I see there. There isn’t some Tyler Cowan’s letters book that will be transformative, that will be published after your lifetime or something like this.

[41:57] Tyler Cowen

No. You’d like understand my workflow better. You’d pick up a few points, but it wouldn’t really be that interesting after a while.

[42:06] Parker Conley

I see. How do you read so fast? Did you always read so fast?

[42:11] Tyler Cowen

Yeah, I was born that way. I think I’m a hyperlexic, which is a technical term. And I never learned how to read fast and it’s a rare thing, but I’ve met other people who have it and it’s a big advantage if you have it.

[42:25] Parker Conley

Yeah. Is there any snippet into what it feels like? When do you like sub vocalize? Some people like read words out loud. Do you just look at a page and you understand the page? What does it feel like to be a hyperlexic?

[42:35] Tyler Cowen

I don’t know how it is for the other hyperlexics. I know a single digit number of them. Right. Which is some, but not that many. And you don’t vocalize much, if at all. I believe that’s true. And you can read more in chunks and you can more easily spot what you don’t need to read as well. Like oh, this page. Nothing on it for me. Let’s continue. You can do that quite well. So you read less. It’s a mistake I think to call it skimming like you’re just seeing. You don’t need to read that page. It’s some blah blah, blah that you’ve already read somewhere else. And the more you read, the more you spot this. It’s sad in a way, but it’s true.

[43:18] Parker Conley

And this is applied on what you.

[43:19] Tyler Cowen

Really ought to be reading.

[43:24] Parker Conley

Does it, what do you think? Does it come from some like better understanding of the world. Some like you’re better at processing information, some sort of intelligence. Where do you think the vast ability to read comes from? If there were some mechanistic angle to think about it?

[43:44] Tyler Cowen

Well, I think the genetic component is something to do with how quickly you can turn visual inputs into understanding that you’re just born with or not. And you probably have high visual acuity. So like if I go to a bookshelf and I’m trying to spot the title of a book, I found I’m really much better than that than most other people. Just like finding the book on the shelf. If there was some kind of game show or that’s what you did, I would do very well. Yeah, mostly innate, slash genetic, whatever. I, I don’t think it’s well understood.

[44:22] Parker Conley

Do you think it’s had strong benefits for your career?

[44:25] Tyler Cowen

Yeah, so made my career not. I mean that’s an understatement. Everything I do would not be possible without it. So if I can read 5 or 10x more quickly than someone who’s comparably well educated or similar iq just a huge advantage and they’re not really going to make up for it. And since I can read fast, my rate of return for reading more is also high. So I’m reading faster and I’m reading more and then that cumulates and it’s just very hard for people to catch up to that. It’s great.

[45:01] Parker Conley

It feels like there should be some psychometric for this like IQ or something. It’s. If it’s quite high stakes in sense of making your career, shouldn’t it be more studied?

[45:13] Tyler Cowen

Probably now there’s sufficiently few people. Like A it’s hard to study.

[45:17] Parker Conley

Okay.

[45:18] Tyler Cowen

And B, like you could study it. I don’t know how you could help people. Maybe you could help them with it. But if the main lesson is that it’s genetic, I’m not sure what you can then do.

[45:32] Parker Conley

Fair. How do you relate to. I’ve heard people comment on the robustness of personality psychology literature. And despite that, I still use things like agreeableness and conscientiousness and openness and thinking about other people. I. How do you relate to these sort of adjectives and descriptors? Do you feel like they have some sort of scientific oomph or are they mostly just good at capturing the way other people operate?

[46:03] Tyler Cowen

No, I think they have some meaning and it’s very useful when there’s another person you can share the terms with. Maybe that’s more useful than applying them solo in your imaginings. So it’s a communications language, but that said, a lot of it’s context dependent. So there’s people who will neglect tasks at work because they have to get home to feed the cat. Now, is that conscientiousness or is that the opposite of conscientiousness? There’s no point in arguing the term, but you can see it’s a bit of both. And I think much of the world is like feeding your cat but not finishing your task at work.

[46:46] Parker Conley

I see. There’s a book you posted on your blog once and that I read through some of Metzler’s philosophy between the Lines.

[46:56] Tyler Cowen

Oh, yeah, it’s a great book. Yeah, I know him. I know him and his wife.

[47:02] Parker Conley

He draws a dichotomy between historicism, which talks about historic history being conditioned. Knowledge is sort of dependent on the culture, sort of postmodern, and then also like philosophic rationalism, which gives a sense of there are like timeless truths that are present throughout history. Could you give the steel man for both of these? Could you give the most convincing argument for either one of these views?

[47:37] Tyler Cowen

I don’t know. I’m not sure what’s really at stake.

[47:39] Parker Conley

Yeah.

[47:40] Tyler Cowen

As an economist, when I hear a contrast like that, I like to turn it into a question about an empirical variable.

[47:47] Parker Conley

Okay.

[47:47] Tyler Cowen

What’s the empirical variable? That one view is estimating one way and the other view is estimating another way. And then I feel we might make progress. And expressed in terms of the generalities, it’s just not really how I think. So I. I like the idea that people talk about these big things in the abstract, but I don’t make progress with it that way.

[48:12] Parker Conley

I see.

[48:18] Tyler Cowen

The.

[48:20] Parker Conley

The final few questions I have are around mentorship. You have a book around mentorship coming out and I know you’d like to come.

[48:29] Tyler Cowen

It’s my new book. I’m writing it. I mean, it will come out, but it’s not finished. There’s no publisher. But yes, that’s my new topic.

[48:38] Parker Conley

Yeah. I’ll feel free to be very brief in your answers, depending on how you feel. But what has been in your life the most common source of finding mentors? Is it through like an introduction from a friend through say, cold outreach to someone? Is it through an institution of sorts of through conferences? If you reflect on mentors or just whatever comes to mind. Where have you found the most useful mentors?

[49:06] Tyler Cowen

A lot of it is random, through people I know. Only small conferences have ever been useful to me, like Liberty Fund. Conferences have been great for that. But big events with hundreds are worthless. I’ve never done called outreach, but in general I recommend it. I think it’s good. I’ve just circulated a lot, traveled a lot, bumped into a lot of people. There’ll be a chapter in the book, like the mentors in my life. And the chapter is growing a bit unwieldy because there’s so many of them. And I don’t want to not give credit to anyone. Maybe the chapter will be a bit too long, but I do want to cover the important ones. And there’s so many, including in the arts and music and philosophy, obviously in economics, management, all sorts of things. I’m one of the luckiest people I know for mentors, but I don’t think it can be entirely luck. I feel there’s something about me that has attracted mentors because it’s never been like cold approach sort of thing from me. It’s just happened.

[50:09] Parker Conley

A segue from this is you mentioned meeting Brian Kaplan when you were quite young and.

[50:18] Tyler Cowen

Well, he was quite young. I was like 30, I’m guessing.

[50:22] Parker Conley

Okay, interesting.

[50:23] Tyler Cowen

Maybe a little younger. That’s not quite young anymore. It’s younger than I am now, sure.

[50:29] Parker Conley

Do you have a sense of how many people like him you’ve sort of tracked throughout your life and have been friends with? And maybe you saw they were talented at one point and they are still talented. Or have most talented people in your life just popped up at one point and you weren’t aware of them when you were, say, in undergrad?

[50:48] Tyler Cowen

Well, quite a large number, really. A large number. And very often they have found me. Brian’s a great example of that. Alex Tabarrok would be another. Robin Hansen. Many, many. And it’s a great blessing to have that because you learn from those people. You also feel you’re giving something back to the world. And it’s fun, you know, Brian and I will probably have lunch tomorrow and just have a great time joking about whatever. So, yeah, it’s awesome.

[51:19] Parker Conley

Most of them just pop out rather.

[51:20] Tyler Cowen

Than like, it’s friendship, but there’s mentoring embedded forever. It’s great.

[51:27] Parker Conley

And to clarify, they weren’t people you tracked throughout your life, and most of them were people that spontaneously you sort of came across.

[51:35] Tyler Cowen

And I met Brian at some Institute for Humane Studies thing. He came up to me. He read something I wrote. He, like, wrote a rebuttal saying how wrong I was. And the piece he wrote in response was quite good. So I thought I should stay in touch with this guy. And I just liked him. And he and I still go for lunch together.

[51:59] Parker Conley

In conversation with Durkesh Patel. You say mentors only teach you a few things, but those things are so important. They give you a glimpse of what can be, and you’re oddly blind to that, even if you’re very, very smart. The example you give is a mentor that taught you you could read as many books as possible. Are there any other, like, one or two things of, like, ways mentors expanded your world?

[52:22] Tyler Cowen

Well, there’s so many examples. So, say in the arts, there’s a guy I learned a lot from. His name was. Well, still is Joe Levine. Just how well you can understand an artwork was one thing I picked up from him. That’s quite an intangible thing. But something clicks and it’s like, oh, you can really make progress in this area. It’s trivial in a way to describe it, but when you see it in a vivid manner manifested through an actual human, it has this immense power. Music, like, you know, really anything that I’m at all connected with, like, how to understand a basketball game. Learned things about that, like, from my friend Kevin Greer. You can just go on and on about this.

[53:06] Parker Conley

It you have a fondness of basketball. As I understand it, this is a little segue.

[53:13] Tyler Cowen

NBA, not basketball. Big difference here. But yes, NBA.

[53:16] Parker Conley

And you do play basketball to.

[53:19] Tyler Cowen

In.

[53:19] Parker Conley

In your free time? A little bit.

[53:20] Tyler Cowen

I played today.

[53:21] Parker Conley

Okay, that. What do you think societally, how do you think of sports as, like, an institution? And what are like, the positive externalities and the negative externalities?

[53:31] Tyler Cowen

Well, they’re fun. I think they bring people together. Mostly positive. I worry about the current trend with all this sports gambling. I think that’s quite negative. Yeah, I don’t know how to. I mean, there’s always been sports gambling. It seems much worse. I don’t know how to get back to where we were, but I would like to do that. You know, are there, like, men who just watch football on tv, neglect their families? I’m sure, like you can’t say there aren’t these negative sides. But it’s mostly voluntary and a great American business sector and it helps to define cities. And it’s great.

[54:11] Parker Conley

I see. What are to get back to the final question on mentees, what common mistakes do people make as mentees?

[54:26] Tyler Cowen

One good way to be a mentee is just to show your potential mentor that you can benefit them too. If you just come to them screaming for help, you scare them away. It doesn’t actually sound that appealing to them. So the idea of gains from trade is essential to most human relationships. And it’s true with mentors and mentees as well. I think that’s the most important point.

[54:49] Parker Conley

I see. Great. Well, I encourage people to check out this book on mentorship when it comes out. I am.

[55:02] Tyler Cowen

It’ll just be called Mentors. I don’t want some long subtitle. I’ve grown. I hope they let me keep a one word title, seven letters, Mentors, nothing more. Like what? What else can you say that isn’t just right?

[55:17] Parker Conley

Sure.

[55:18] Tyler Cowen

Search engine optimization on Amazon or something. Mentors. That’s what it’s about.

[55:24] Parker Conley

Yeah. And it sounds like, and my impression of this as mentors being valuable to me in my life, that such a thing is pretty high leverage even given AI.

[55:36] Tyler Cowen

And the especially given AI, your mentors will be all the more important. Like every open job, there’ll be thousands of perfectly written application letters and who can recommend you vouch for you will matter more than ever before. It’s already the case, I would say, but certainly all the more so a few years from now.

[55:56] Parker Conley

Yes, this makes sense to end things up. Where can people reach you or find you after this podcast?

[56:05] Tyler Cowen

Well, they can google my name. Tyler Cowan. My podcast is called Conversations with Tyler. The blog is called Marginal Revolution. On Twitter, I’m Tyler Cowan. I have a homepage that’s badly out of date and in chaos, but it’s there. Those are some places you could start. I have an online education site called Marginal Revolution University and I have a whole bunch of books on Amazon.

[00:00] Parker Conley
Tyler Cowen needs no introduction. Tyler Cowen, welcome.

[00:04] Tyler Cowen
Parker, thank you for having me on.

[00:06] Parker Conley
If there were 10 Tyler Cowen's, how would they spend their time differently than you spend your time now? How would your production function of 10 Tyler Cowens be different?

[00:16] Tyler Cowen
Maybe they'd be in Gerardian competition with each other and only the strongest would emerge alive because they'd be competitors. But assuming they could cooperate, I'd like to send one on a long tour of Vietnam, just cross that country, like using two months. Send another to explore the islands of Indonesia. Maybe a third would learn some other languages. A fourth would spend more time mentoring. And the other five, I don't know, just like lock them in a closet somewhere.

[00:47] Parker Conley
So this is not about building an empire or anything more leisure time is what you'd optimize for or something like this?

[00:53] Tyler Cowen
Well, I don't consider it leisure time. I consider, quote, unquote, working as more leisurely than traveling around. So traveling is hard, right? It's rewarding. But the real leisure is when you're sitting on your sofa writing.

[01:07] Parker Conley
I would say I see in your four, when you were 14 to your late 20s, you mentioned that that was the period of your life where learning had its highest returns. Could you speak more about, like, the nature of this learning curve here? How do you feel like you were learning differently in that period of your life during, compared to now?

[01:30] Tyler Cowen
Well, that's true for social science, obviously. When I'm like 2, 3 years old, I'm learning a lot, but that's a different issue. But I think there's a point before which you just can't learn that much. So if I read the newspaper when I'm like age 8, I don't know how much it means to me, but definitely by ages 13, 14, it all means a lot. I really started like reading newspapers and things like that at age 10, and I absorbed a great deal. And it was all new, right? By definition. So at some point, truly new ideas are harder to find. And I would say by the time I hit my late twenties, it's much harder. And you know, you see this even in music. So I think I discovered like James Brown, maybe I was 30. That was a big deal for me. But it's hard to keep on discovering people of that import when you're 40. Like you, new ones are created. You know, there's Nirvana, there's My Bloody Valentine, whatever. But you just can't like, go back in time and find the next Beethoven because you already know the Beethovens. So I think for a lot of People by the time they hit 30, there's certain thresholds they've attained in terms of learning.

[02:47] Parker Conley
What do you think are the benefits of reading the news versus not? I hear various people say that maybe to counter the mainstream habit of reading a lot of news, that one should not read the news and maybe they should just read quarterlies once he once every quarter or something like this. Or.

[03:05] Tyler Cowen
How you can stay away from the drama. Right, sure, true. So you're doing for me some form of violence to yourself by not reading. But look, I know some people, they get very depressed when they read the news. I was speaking to friend of my wife's the night before and she says if she reads the news, it's emotionally too much for her and I understand that. I'm not that way. But probably she shouldn't read the news. But if you can handle it, I don't know why you would read anything else. In a way like if there were more news, I would read more. You can randomly ask GPT, like what's up in Cambodia? And generate some new news. I think that's a good thing to do actually.

[03:49] Parker Conley
Then how should one spread one's time? One could spend time reading things like wisdom texts or great books or philosophy or things like this compared to the news. Should one allocate most of their time to things like the news? Or what should the ratio be of news to more evergreen sort of sources of information?

[04:05] Tyler Cowen
I don't know. My attitude was always, I need to read all those things. And like, if people don't read as fast as I do or they face other constraints, they have young kids, whatever. You just have to do what interests you because there's higher compound returns when you stay involved through, you know, these pretty selfish reasons that you're enjoying it. So that would in general be. My advice is figure out what you're going to stick with.

[04:32] Parker Conley
I see. In terms of learning, you mentioned in one interview that you can always learn more math and statistics. This was sort of a pithy comment. I'm curious if you could unpack it more like which fields does this apply to? If I'm going to entrepreneurship, should I learn math and statistics or it will be useless for me. And maybe you're speaking more as an economist or academic in that respect.

[04:58] Tyler Cowen
Well, possibly use useless for you. It depends what your business is. But there's things, say in econometrics that are new relative to when I studied the field. So something like difference in differences. Differences and differences I would try to learn by YouTube. It's not a thing I work on, but I want to learn it. It's quite important in economics, and I'll talk to people about it, and then I'll use YouTube. So I don't know if it's practical value for me, but I'm just curious, like, what are these people doing? And so I try to learn something about it. Math. I think I've hit a point where the marginal math I don't know is a bit hard, and I'm not really doing that. So, like, whatever I don't know in differential equations seems to me not worth it, and I don't think I'll ever learn it. But for stats, there's a lot more I could learn, and it would still be useful in some way.

[05:55] Parker Conley
I see. I see. What does it feel like to crack a cultural code? You talk about cultural codes and cracking them. Does it feel like passive osmosis? Like you're sort of being socialized into a group? Is it sort of explicit thinking and you're sort of like a sociologist developing a theory? Is it something in between to do or something else entirely?

[06:17] Tyler Cowen
Well, you never really crack it, right? That's sort of like an inside joke to cracking the code. You can crack an actual code, like Alan Turing did. But cultural codes, they always mystify you. You can ask better questions. You can understand something rather than nothing. You just walk away with some vivid impressions, and that's what you're hoping for. But you can do those things with some reading, some time, some travel. And I think the marginal returns to doing that are just very, very high. Like, once I went to Yemen and I spent a week there, still a total mystery to me. And at the time, like, not one person could speak English. I spoke to no one. But still I'm like, wow, I'm in Yemen. And I saw. Felt like a very medieval place. The men all carried daggers, the women were all veiled. The men were all chewing, you know, khat, that narcotic drug. I came away baffled, but, like, I know what I'm baffled about, at least.

[07:17] Parker Conley
Yeah, I've traveled relatively little to Rome once and to Canada recently and throughout the States. Is there any way you could speak to me about the benefits of travel? I've asked this to many people. What am I missing by not have. Having traveled extensively?

[07:33] Tyler Cowen
Well, it's the ultimate puzzle, right? You're trying to figure things out. You'll never succeed. You learn a lot of history. You understand current affairs much better if it's a relevant country. Certainly Canada and Rome would count as Relevant and it's just fun. And you know, I'm very interested in food. You get to eat these wonderful dishes. But I like to have a sense of history. And if you don't go places, I find it hard to really internalize like some narrative or vision as to whatever happened there. But you see Rome, then you read about the Roman Empire and you've seen continuing bits of it. That's pretty amazing. It's a thrill for me.

[08:17] Parker Conley
What do you feel like the benefits of learning about history are for you?

[08:21] Tyler Cowen
I just want to know it. You know, it's an end in and of itself to know what humans have done, like for your business. It's not going to help you. And if you're not interested, you know, just don't do it. But humans are what are interesting, right? And the future, it only comes when it comes. That's like reading the news. And the past has infinite riches, so why not explore them? I guess is my attitude.

[08:48] Parker Conley
I see. I see. One could say like, maybe it helps you predict political situations or something like this, or recognize the current political climate or.

[08:56] Tyler Cowen
I think it does. A little has merit, but like a little.

[08:59] Parker Conley
Yeah.

[09:00] Tyler Cowen
It mainly cautions you about over predicting, I would say, which is useful. But you can know a lot about the past and still not be good at predicting the future. But again, you just get a sense of where things came from and the world becomes a bit more intelligible and you're like, you feel greater comfort with it, or at least I do. And you know, you're in Arizona now, like you can just fly to northern Mexico. It's got to be like less than an hour flight. It's gorgeous there. The food is incredible. You compare like Mexicans there to Mexicans in your state. What's different? It's. It's very interesting to me. I flew to Hermosillo once, which has got to be pretty close to you. Some of the best food I've had in my whole life. And it was cheap. Like, why shouldn't I go to Helmucillo? And then when I read about northern Mexico in the news, I have these images. I don't think it's for everyone, but I love it. I'm never going to stop until I have to.

[10:03] Parker Conley
I see. Okay, I'll consider it. What is your favorite cultural code?

[10:09] Tyler Cowen
Well, I've been to Mexico more than any other country. Some of that is simply that it's close, but it is a long standing love of mine. The sense of drama there, how many individual stories you interact with. The mix of sort of cheery and depressive. It's some of my favorite food. I like how the different regions vary. I find most of it is actually pretty safe, contrary to reputation. The weather I like, so it has many pluses for me. But you know, I lived in Germany, I lived in New Zealand. Those have to be favorites. There are very few places I've gone, if any, where I'm just not interested. Probably I can't think of anywhere. In fact, even when I went to Braunschweig in West Germany way back when, which is ugly and dull, but it's like, okay, here's what a dull German city's like. And that was something too.

[11:06] Parker Conley
I see. I somewhat approach these questions from like a means to an end. I'm learning this to get this out of or something. You talk about having interests and curiosity and this sort of thing. I'm curious tracking your intellectual history from like your early teens and onward. The things that were interesting to you in your early teens, say, I don't know, economics or philosophy. Are those subjects still as interesting to you today? Or do some of them. Do you hit diminishing returns and no longer interested in. Have you discovered new fields that are interesting to you?

[11:41] Tyler Cowen
Well, I'm still interested, but I would say there are diminishing returns. So as new economic ideas are developed, I'll be first in line to read them or hear them. But the pace has really slowed down, I think since about 1990. So yes, that for me is much less interesting. Philosophy maybe has a bigger dilemma. I would say there's less progress in philosophy than economics, but again, I'm there super eager. There's a lot of just refinements of things and pieces and books written, you know, for peer review, for promotion. It's not really that earth shattering and even a lot of philosophers will admit this. Things like Nozick, Rawls, Kripke, Quine were really phenomenal. I was very excited and interested. Parfit, of course there'll be more to come, but right now it seems pretty slow. Maybe I'm just not seeing it or hearing about it, but I believe it's slow.

[12:42] Parker Conley
How do you relate to anthropology and sociology as fields?

[12:46] Tyler Cowen
I think they're great fields, but it's not always rewarding to read them. The best thing to do is to go out and do it, which for me is doing it by travel. So that's how I express my interest in those fields, is by doing them, not by reading them that much. They're fine to read. You learn things, they contain empirical knowledge but again, better to do it yourself, cook your own meal.

[13:11] Parker Conley
I see you've said that you're a highly diversified public intellectual that you don't like bet on single ideas. In a blog post about whose entire body of work is worth reading, you mentioned historians. If they're relatively good at being historians, they have a pretty high hit rate of having good bodies of work. There's a sort of underlying analogy of public intellectuals as investors in ideas. I'm going to share some, I guess, investing analogies and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts as to how they map on to public intellectuals. Are you down?

[13:57] Tyler Cowen
Yeah, of course.

[14:00] Parker Conley
Are there high variance ideas and what sort of ideas or fields are more high variance?

[14:06] Tyler Cowen
Well, anytime you make a big prediction, it's high variance, right? So if you're proven right, there's a big upside. If you're proven wrong, it is true. People forget about it. But you still lost a chance at upside and you only get so many chances. So anything about the future, anything about tech, any very specific political predictions, like, oh, like every president will be like Trump from now on. Those are pretty high variants.

[14:35] Parker Conley
What are the various markets for ideas? Who's buying ideas? If public intellectuals are sort of serving them out, where does the demand come from?

[14:45] Tyler Cowen
Well, you can get tenure, that's common. You can write for media, you can write for substack, which can be a lot of income. Those are, you know, you can have a podcast. Those are not necessarily your ideas, but it's you in some way. You can do consulting, you can work for a multilateral, you can advise and, or work for a government. So there's a lot of different bidders, so to speak. Some of them don't interest me at all. Like I've never wanted to work for governments.

[15:16] Parker Conley
Does the analogy of like startups and small business map on if you want to be a very successful public intellectual, do you have to have a few startups and take high risk bets on a few companies and have those succeed? Or can you? I don't think so, no. Okay.

[15:33] Tyler Cowen
I think you can become an expert, like in a thing, and there's some things, you know, they're always going to matter, like immigration or the Middle east, you know, obvious list of stuff. And if you're just smart and work hard and do some sensical things, you can become pretty well known. You don't have to make some big bet like, oh, the government of Iran will collapse in two years. You can try that, but it's usually unwise. Like typically you don't actually know and you can just be an expert and that's fine. Like look at Justin Wolfers. Like I know he's made specific predictions, but he's mainly known for being an expert. Not that he said this one thing that turned out to be correct. And he's an expert about a bunch of things and he's doing great.

[16:20] Parker Conley
Yeah. The public intellectuals that do take these high risk bets, do you think they're usually aware of it?

[16:28] Tyler Cowen
Well, I don't think they're doing it cynically. Typically there may be some cases of that, but most are sincere, really believe it. I think they know what they're doing when they say it. But again, I don't think they're manipulating the system to try to get ahead. I think it's what they feel they ought to be saying. I just think they're often overconfident in their ability to be correct, but that's fine. Like other entrepreneurs are motivated by overconfidence. Adam Smith made that point. Maybe you are. That's what gets you to try things. The failure rate on these ventures is pretty high and you know, that's the way the world works.

[17:05] Parker Conley
How about me as like a consumer of ideas? Which fields ought I learn about if I, if I want some, like very evergreen fields that are going to be useful for me throughout my career?

[17:15] Tyler Cowen
Well, now it's AI it has not been that in the past, but that will be important for the rest of my life and yours and you'll have to know it no matter what you do. So I would say that depends who you are and what you're going to do. But I tell a lot of people that if you learn a lot about China, India and Mexico, maybe Russia, you're really in pretty good shape. Like that's a lot of the world and it will always be relevant and you're always going to meet people from those places, probably work with them. It's just very good background for many, many things. Now if you live somewhere else, it's going to differ, but at least India and China will not really differ. Mexico might differ.

[18:00] Parker Conley
And I've considered reading history books on China or Mexico or wherever. But I also understand that travel is qualitatively different.

[18:10] Tyler Cowen
Yeah, go to them. Don't. Don't read so much. Yeah, like read a small number of books and then interrogate GPT about what you care about concerning those places. You just read 30 books, like all these names of Chinese dynasties like this. How many people really retain that? You know, maybe for some people it's Great. But it's not a general recommendation. Just see a few different parts of China, India. Try cooking some dishes or whatever your interest is. Try to connect with these countries through that interest. Maybe it's, you know, cricket or something. India. It's a lot of ways you can do it.

[18:49] Parker Conley
I see. What is your relationship with Fernand Brattle's work?

[18:55] Tyler Cowen
I'm a big fan of it. I read a lot of it when I was quite young. It had a big influence on me. The three volume structures of material life I found more intelligible than the Mediterranean set. Also his book, you know, the Identity of France I thought was very good. So I'm a huge fan.

[19:14] Parker Conley
I've been reading various like sociological ethnographic books maybe in that vein, but some more modern ones too. Are there. When will I face diminishing returns for this? And when should I go and travel and learn about different places or is reading books? I've been reading a book that's sort of a community studies book and about a small rural town. When should I start the book and travel?

[19:43] Tyler Cowen
There are no diminishing returns, but you can travel and take the book on the trip. So I would just say each other downtime when you travel like books and travel are definitely compliments. I very often get more reading done on a trip than at home and people can't really like bug you on the trip, so.

[20:04] Parker Conley
Well, there's a modern phenomena especially of med students and also language learners using like flashcard apps like Anki. I'm not sure if you're familiar. What do you think?

[20:18] Tyler Cowen
I've heard about them. I've never used them.

[20:21] Parker Conley
Do you have any first impressions or off the cuff takes on?

[20:26] Tyler Cowen
I suspect the good ones are quite good and useful. You know, spaced repetition as a mode of learning. There's. There's good evidence for that. You know, when I was like younger and learning German and Spanish I did that without apps of course.

[20:40] Parker Conley
Sure.

[20:40] Tyler Cowen
Using things like file cards and I found that useful. So if we can do it in a higher tech way, it's probably still useful.

[20:49] Parker Conley
You daily post assorted links. How this podcast adjacently first came about was me asking if there was a. A Strawsian reading of your assorted links. Is there some specific order that you put specific links in? Is there some esoteric reading of the links? Hints are fine too.

[21:10] Tyler Cowen
Well, I like it when there's one link that comes and the one after it is kind of commentary on the link before. And that definitely happens and I'm aware of it and I giggle. But I don't put much effort into like rearranging the order. The order is typically the order they were sent to me or I found them. And I might sometimes switch the order of one or two just to get the giggle. But mostly it's arising spontaneously. So I'm aware of it, but I'm not doing very much to manipulate it.

[21:41] Parker Conley
I see. It's not like the last link is something you always think is completely incorrect or.

[21:48] Tyler Cowen
Really the order in which they come to me.

[21:51] Parker Conley
If you're interested in so many things, why not mysticism?

[21:55] Tyler Cowen
Well, I am very interested in mysticism. I don't practice it because I guess I don't believe in it. But things like the Rosicrucians, Isaac Newton, Masonic symbolism, all that would be areas where, you know, I would read a fair amount. I would go visit mystic sites. It's a somewhat loose concept, but I definitely am interested in that. But like, what's mysticism versus religion? Some fine distinctions there. I would just say I'm interested in all of it and I'm not too concerned with drawing the lines any one specific way to.

[22:31] Parker Conley
To push you further. There's like the interest in the history of it, the sociology of it and this. This sort of thing. Yeah. How about the practical side? Does that interest you much or is it. No, no, no.

[22:40] Tyler Cowen
If I thought it were true, I'm not sure I'd be interested in anything else. But I don't think it's true. And even if it is true, I don't know how I would make progress. There's so many mystical claims like, oh, is there esp? Does meditation bring you to this final state of whatever? Or there's this, there's that just as an outsider you approach this, you've no way of knowing where the actual gold is, so sort of give up on it.

[23:12] Parker Conley
I see, I see. Why aren't there any widespread monastic institutions in like, modern day America?

[23:21] Tyler Cowen
Well, are we sure there are not. Universities are in some ways monastic. There are people who live as monks in the us it's probably not very many. There's nunneries. I know they're shrinking. Wouldn't surprise me if some of these made a comeback. I guess I expect they will.

[23:41] Parker Conley
Do you have any thoughts on what conditions of a country or civilization create such an institution?

[23:49] Tyler Cowen
Well, when you're not sure how else you can make a living, that's a big determinant. So medieval times, which are very insecure, of course, the idea that you're a monk, you're a nun, you're taken care of. I think it's very appealing. And I think on average, a lot of the other people you could speak with were very intelligent, which may. May not have been the case in your village church. Doctrine is more interesting than a lot of what you would have picked up outside of the church. It's probably what I would have done in those times had I been born then.

[24:22] Parker Conley
Do you think they're a sort of talent magnet at times?

[24:26] Tyler Cowen
They are medieval times, definitely. Now, are they a talent magnet, you know, in 1880? I would think very likely not now. Franz Liszt spends his last years. He dies in 1886, you know, basically in a monastery as a monk, still doing music, studying Catholic doctrine, becoming quite conservative. He was still talented, but it really depends on the time.

[24:53] Parker Conley
What did you get out of reading Stalin's library? I think you recommended it to Durkesh, per an interview at, I think, the Progress Studies Conference.

[25:02] Tyler Cowen
Well, Stalin was more intellectual than I had thought, and it upgraded my sense of how much influence books have, if they influence even Stalin. So, you know, okay, now he had bad influences for the most part, but still, books reach so many people, and it's an argument in favor of writing books.

[25:24] Parker Conley
Sure. In what are your thoughts, if any, on Mortimer J. Adler's work?

[25:35] Tyler Cowen
You mean like his book how to Read a Book?

[25:37] Parker Conley
Yeah, how to Read a Book. I think he was affiliated with the. The production of the encyclopedia in some way. Yeah.

[25:46] Tyler Cowen
Book on Aristotle.

[25:47] Parker Conley
Yeah.

[25:47] Tyler Cowen
It seems to me he was very useful in getting people interested in philosophy, and that's great. But I read some when I was young and they bored me, but they're not for me. But they're. It's very good that they're there.

[26:01] Parker Conley
He writes a lot about the great books, and I think he had some involvement in the movement. I'm curious, the books that are, like, commonly referred to as great books, how. What do you think the correlation is with them actually being great and interesting and having deep content Very, very high?

[26:20] Tyler Cowen
So if you mean the literal great book series, there's a lot that's missing. But everything in there, as far as I. I can remember, is a hit. Like every single one. Now, the science books, that's trickier. Like Huygens. Do you need to read him? Like, should that be in there? I guess I wouldn't put it in there. I'd put in something else, you know, that's more of a text. But, man, I think they had great taste and, like, everyone's a home run.

[26:48] Parker Conley
Are there any particular books that I can think of particular books that you would think are great, there might be too many to name. Or maybe they are a few that aren't included in the list.

[26:59] Tyler Cowen
Oh, I'm trying. You know, Dickens Oblique House is not in there and that to me is very, very great. That would be an example of something that's missing in a lot of economics. Right. So now Hayek, his greatest works were articles. So okay, you wouldn't put him in great books, but there's plenty. You know. Is John Maynard Keynes in there? I don't think so, but I, I could be wrong.

[27:31] Parker Conley
I see Dwark Keshe in his first podcast interview with you, you said that you think there was something like a 70% chance of a nuclear bomb going off in his lifetime. I'm a similar age as Rakesh. I'm curious if you would still stand by that prediction.

[27:50] Tyler Cowen
Maybe I would up it a tiny amount because like war in Ukraine is not over. India, Pakistan have had some dust ups. Those are not major revisions compared to how things were when I said that. But if I'm going to put the number up or down, I'd put it up a slight amount but basically stick in the same range.

[28:10] Parker Conley
Should I act accordingly? Should I like maybe avoid living in San Francisco during my lifetime? Or a major they're not going to bomb you.

[28:18] Tyler Cowen
No, I think US you're as safe as you're going to get. You might avoid the Korean Peninsula or India, Pakistan. Even then I'm not sure it should change your decisions, but US is a pretty protected place to be sure.

[28:38] Parker Conley
Do you think that stands on a larger scale? Like in terms of thinking about my career path and my general life and geopolitics and how that affects that? Is living in the US a pretty safe bet or should I ditch it to some Southeast Asian community?

[28:54] Tyler Cowen
If we fall apart, a lot of the rest of the world goes down with us. Like maybe you should buy more gold you would have been planning on doing or whatever is the relevant hedge at that point in time. Like I would do that. I'm thinking of buying more gold myself. But the younger you are, the more sense it makes. The older you are, the more you're just like eh, whatever, but look into hedges. But again, you know, say like let's say Iran geared up with non nuclear missiles and had enough of them that they could overwhelm Israeli air defenses and they start an attack on Tel Aviv and Israel responds by nuking a city in Iran, which is a terrible event most of all for the people who die. It might be a financial crisis, but it's not really going to affect you that much.

[29:47] Parker Conley
There are people who when upset with the administration, maybe it's just hearsay, but travel to Canada and move to Canada. Do you think. How do you think Canada stands in terms of safety and robustness over my lifetime compared to the us?

[30:02] Tyler Cowen
Basically the same. We underwrite them. It's a nice country. Living there is very good. I don't like the cold. I love the food. I wouldn't move there. The people who went I think are fools and all kind of cowards in a way. But look, good riddance, you know, they can come back anytime they want and in the meantime I think they'll just look like fools.

[30:25] Parker Conley
Do you have any heuristics or tips for finding good books? For example, Dorkesh says the further reading on the Wikipedia page is usually pretty high quality. Or I found benefit from reading books from authors I like one book of and then maybe there's another book that's less highly reviewed. Reading the Goodreads pages of people I find interesting has usually been interesting. Do you have any heuristics like this that you you use?

[30:51] Tyler Cowen
None of those work for me, but I'm not trying to talk you out of them.

[30:54] Parker Conley
Okay.

[30:55] Tyler Cowen
One thing I recommend to everyone that Harold Bloom book, the Western Canon. He lists what he thinks is the Western canon and some of the non western canon in the back. Almost all of those are great reads. They're not all easy. And then I'm often doing what I call reading in clusters. I'm not trying to pick out the best book. I want to learn about something and to learn about that thing. Like now I'm reading about South African penal system a bit. I'll just read more books on that topic. I'm sure they're not the best books, but it's like podcast prep and that's what I'm going to do. So my reading is more and more looking like that. And then there's just what people send me review copies. Like I got three or four today and I'll look at them just out of serendipity. And some of it I might read. Who knows what they are. Here's one in front of me. It's called seven how we Evolve to Live Longer. I'll try it. Why not?

[31:52] Parker Conley
What is your relationship with review copies? I. I have never received one and I maybe get a little snippet of people receiving them through people endorsing a book on the front. What is your relationship when you receive a review copy? Do you think it's better book on average. Do you feel a particular obligation when you receive one? What is your relationship with that?

[32:12] Tyler Cowen
A lot of them are good. I look at every one. I don't know if I'm obliged, but I want to do it anyway. So yeah, I'll definitely look at it. Even if I get seven or eight in a day, I'll look at them all. I probably won't read them all, but I'm very glad to get them. And I think that system works pretty well. It certainly works well for me.

[32:33] Parker Conley
I see this is a different topic in terms of I'm in college and you talk about college providing context for people growing up. What particular context do people maybe who spend more time on the Internet or don't attend every class. What do they miss out on? Is it skills at being social or romantic relationships or what sort of context do people miss out on?

[33:03] Tyler Cowen
Well, all of that. The first thing college does is it takes you away from a lot of bad contexts, violence, some working class norms, poverty. You're removed from it. That's a huge gain right there. Like the context you don't get dating relationships. You get to learn like new and different kinds of jerks, often from your professors. That's important. Different personality types. You learn bureaucracy in a school because you have to deal with it. You sort of learn how competitive you are, how much patience you have, what you enjoy. You learn a lot about yourself. I don't know if it's an efficient system, but it's proven surprisingly hard to beat.

[33:48] Parker Conley
Yeah, I am in college. I have a year and a half left of my computer science degree. I have sometimes struggled every semester. Do I want to continue with this degree? Do I want to work on personal projects? How should I relate to this? Should I get the degree because it looks very good on my LinkedIn that I can complete something. Should there be some margin by wish? If my business succeeds, I go work on that full time. What should my relationship with finishing?

[34:15] Tyler Cowen
Well, I don't know. You. My guess is you should get the degree. If you had some startup idea and felt if I don't do it now, someone else will take it and this is like the idea of my lifetime, then you might stop. But that's rarely the case. So probably you should finish and whatever you want to do with entrepreneurship you can just do and you'll be a bit wiser and know a bit more and you won't be at any disadvantage. It's not like you're 40, right? So probably chance you'll meet Your partner. I wouldn't say it's high, but it's not trivial in that last year and a half. And you're more orient as you're leaving. You think a bit like, what am I going to take with me and potential partners? They're more ready to like truly pair off so that chance is rising. Like, why flush that down the toilet?

[35:06] Parker Conley
Do you think there's any significant difference with the modern day Ivy League universities and I go to like a public school like Arizona State University. Is there a significant context that I'm missing out on?

[35:19] Tyler Cowen
Well, I think your school is less corrupt than theirs on net. That's good for you. But yes, you are missing out on some context by not seeing the corruption, intellectual corruption and conformity and self righteousness and political correctness and all of that. My sense, I've never visited your school, but I hear from many people you're much better than average and more entrepreneurial as a school. I'm pretty sure it's true and you get that it's great. Enjoy it.

[35:49] Parker Conley
What do you think? My generation, the zoomers, what mistakes do you expect us to make?

[35:57] Tyler Cowen
I don't think in terms of generations very much, but it's striking to me the data on the number of young people who don't seem to be trying to have sex. And that just seems to me like a huge mistake. I'm not saying do it indiscriminately, don't do it irresponsibly, don't do it without whatever measures of safety are appropriate, but man, it's incredible. I never would have expected that. It's like this earlier generation fought for some kind of sexual revolution which like admittedly went too far and now you've just all lost interest. I was speaking to a person, male, young, super smart, good looking, and he just said like he doesn't date. I don't understand that. Total mystery to me. And I think it's a mistake.

[36:47] Parker Conley
Do you think dating is something one does is instrumentally value valuable or is it more towards like wanting to have a life partner that you recommend that? Both.

[36:57] Tyler Cowen
It just seems like it should be obvious you should be wanting to try to do it. I'm not saying it's easy, but like it's not so hard that it will just thwart you. You can do it, but something's gone wrong and it's like the man and the women both have their own version of the problem and it's this massive coordination failure. And yes, I think it's a big mistake. All parties Involved, or rather not involved would be a better way to put it.

[37:25] Parker Conley
What advantages do you think young people will have?

[37:29] Tyler Cowen
Well, they're smarter. I think their values are in general quite good compared to earlier generations. They have incredible opportunities. They grow up in a world where you can be much more in touch with other cultures and countries. You can turn that into a big plus if you want to. Those are some pretty big, you know, advantages, and they're real. I'm not one of these. Oh, the new generation is all screwed up. I worry. Mental health problems are high and rising. That's my biggest worry. But I think there's a lot of big pluses for young people as well.

[38:07] Parker Conley
A young person looking forward to the future with a career path of wanting to have a lot of free time and maybe luxury time and this sort of thing. What current professions or career paths would serve that goal most?

[38:26] Tyler Cowen
It depends what else you care about. I mean, you can just be a high school teacher and you're home by 4pm and you have the summers free. It's not really something I'd advise, but if you just want free time, different bureaucracies, you could try to get some money pretty early and do some kind of Dave Ramsey thing with compound returns. I don't know how well that works. I don't advise people to do it. I think find something you really enjoy and work a lot is typically what I would advise.

[38:58] Parker Conley
I see. I see. How many interesting emails do you receive a day? What is the order of magnitude? Is it single digit? Is it hundreds? In what range does the amount of interesting emails, in the sense that they're novel, maybe you haven't seen them before. And then maybe there's another type of email which is just like practically relevant.

[39:23] Tyler Cowen
I would guess it's over 100 a day, at least a weekday, somewhat lower on like a Sunday, but not 200. Just a guesstimate. That's quite a few. I feel I have great information flows, but it can be a little hard to deal with. I don't want it to stop. I'm very happy about it, but it's a lot, right?

[39:44] Parker Conley
Yeah. Yeah. How does email compare to other information flows? You have like Twitter or your RSS feed or WhatsApp groups or my RSS feed has died. Yeah.

[39:56] Tyler Cowen
Which is sad, but it's just true. I'm in a lot of very good WhatsApp groups. Those are typically people I know. And I'll get, you know, any hour, probably a hundred messages. I don't know. It's a lot. You said Emails, but you add it all up, it's even more sure. And those are often interesting. I'm a tiny bit on Signal Twitter. I scroll a lot. Yeah, a lot of stuff coming at me.

[40:25] Parker Conley
Any online forums or mostly Twitter?

[40:29] Tyler Cowen
My own blog, like my online forum, but no other one.

[40:34] Parker Conley
Yeah, yeah. How do you balance like responding to messages versus consuming messages? Are you mostly. Do you mostly produce things or do you have a high baseline for that? Or is there a whole world of Tyler Cowan of just consuming things like books and other information and what is like the ratio of the two the public Tyler Cowan of producing content versus your personal consumption habits?

[41:04] Tyler Cowen
Well, I'm not sure I followed what you're really getting at. Yeah, I would say I read and listen to a lot that I never write about.

[41:11] Parker Conley
Yeah.

[41:12] Tyler Cowen
If that's what you're asking now, if you're asking do I respond to emails? Yes, almost always. If you ask do, am I like Derek Parfit who writes these long private letters that are awesomely interesting but never come out? The answer is no. If I'm going to do something interesting, I try to turn it into a public output rather than just do something private.

[41:38] Parker Conley
I see. Yeah.

[41:40] Tyler Cowen
So you read my private correspondence. Like you'd find it a bit interesting, but not really that much.

[41:48] Parker Conley
I see there. There isn't some Tyler Cowan's letters book that will be transformative, that will be published after your lifetime or something like this.

[41:57] Tyler Cowen
No. You'd like understand my workflow better. You'd pick up a few points, but it wouldn't really be that interesting after a while.

[42:06] Parker Conley
I see. How do you read so fast? Did you always read so fast?

[42:11] Tyler Cowen
Yeah, I was born that way. I think I'm a hyperlexic, which is a technical term. And I never learned how to read fast and it's a rare thing, but I've met other people who have it and it's a big advantage if you have it.

[42:25] Parker Conley
Yeah. Is there any snippet into what it feels like? When do you like sub vocalize? Some people like read words out loud. Do you just look at a page and you understand the page? What does it feel like to be a hyperlexic?

[42:35] Tyler Cowen
I don't know how it is for the other hyperlexics. I know a single digit number of them. Right. Which is some, but not that many. And you don't vocalize much, if at all. I believe that's true. And you can read more in chunks and you can more easily spot what you don't need to read as well. Like oh, this page. Nothing on it for me. Let's continue. You can do that quite well. So you read less. It's a mistake I think to call it skimming like you're just seeing. You don't need to read that page. It's some blah blah, blah that you've already read somewhere else. And the more you read, the more you spot this. It's sad in a way, but it's true.

[43:18] Parker Conley
And this is applied on what you.

[43:19] Tyler Cowen
Really ought to be reading.

[43:24] Parker Conley
Does it, what do you think? Does it come from some like better understanding of the world. Some like you're better at processing information, some sort of intelligence. Where do you think the vast ability to read comes from? If there were some mechanistic angle to think about it?

[43:44] Tyler Cowen
Well, I think the genetic component is something to do with how quickly you can turn visual inputs into understanding that you're just born with or not. And you probably have high visual acuity. So like if I go to a bookshelf and I'm trying to spot the title of a book, I found I'm really much better than that than most other people. Just like finding the book on the shelf. If there was some kind of game show or that's what you did, I would do very well. Yeah, mostly innate, slash genetic, whatever. I, I don't think it's well understood.

[44:22] Parker Conley
Do you think it's had strong benefits for your career?

[44:25] Tyler Cowen
Yeah, so made my career not. I mean that's an understatement. Everything I do would not be possible without it. So if I can read 5 or 10x more quickly than someone who's comparably well educated or similar iq just a huge advantage and they're not really going to make up for it. And since I can read fast, my rate of return for reading more is also high. So I'm reading faster and I'm reading more and then that cumulates and it's just very hard for people to catch up to that. It's great.

[45:01] Parker Conley
It feels like there should be some psychometric for this like IQ or something. It's. If it's quite high stakes in sense of making your career, shouldn't it be more studied?

[45:13] Tyler Cowen
Probably now there's sufficiently few people. Like A it's hard to study.

[45:17] Parker Conley
Okay.

[45:18] Tyler Cowen
And B, like you could study it. I don't know how you could help people. Maybe you could help them with it. But if the main lesson is that it's genetic, I'm not sure what you can then do.

[45:32] Parker Conley
Fair. How do you relate to. I've heard people comment on the robustness of personality psychology literature. And despite that, I still use things like agreeableness and conscientiousness and openness and thinking about other people. I. How do you relate to these sort of adjectives and descriptors? Do you feel like they have some sort of scientific oomph or are they mostly just good at capturing the way other people operate?

[46:03] Tyler Cowen
No, I think they have some meaning and it's very useful when there's another person you can share the terms with. Maybe that's more useful than applying them solo in your imaginings. So it's a communications language, but that said, a lot of it's context dependent. So there's people who will neglect tasks at work because they have to get home to feed the cat. Now, is that conscientiousness or is that the opposite of conscientiousness? There's no point in arguing the term, but you can see it's a bit of both. And I think much of the world is like feeding your cat but not finishing your task at work.

[46:46] Parker Conley
I see. There's a book you posted on your blog once and that I read through some of Metzler's philosophy between the Lines.

[46:56] Tyler Cowen
Oh, yeah, it's a great book. Yeah, I know him. I know him and his wife.

[47:02] Parker Conley
He draws a dichotomy between historicism, which talks about historic history being conditioned. Knowledge is sort of dependent on the culture, sort of postmodern, and then also like philosophic rationalism, which gives a sense of there are like timeless truths that are present throughout history. Could you give the steel man for both of these? Could you give the most convincing argument for either one of these views?

[47:37] Tyler Cowen
I don't know. I'm not sure what's really at stake.

[47:39] Parker Conley
Yeah.

[47:40] Tyler Cowen
As an economist, when I hear a contrast like that, I like to turn it into a question about an empirical variable.

[47:47] Parker Conley
Okay.

[47:47] Tyler Cowen
What's the empirical variable? That one view is estimating one way and the other view is estimating another way. And then I feel we might make progress. And expressed in terms of the generalities, it's just not really how I think. So I. I like the idea that people talk about these big things in the abstract, but I don't make progress with it that way.

[48:12] Parker Conley
I see.

[48:18] Tyler Cowen
The.

[48:20] Parker Conley
The final few questions I have are around mentorship. You have a book around mentorship coming out and I know you'd like to come.

[48:29] Tyler Cowen
It's my new book. I'm writing it. I mean, it will come out, but it's not finished. There's no publisher. But yes, that's my new topic.

[48:38] Parker Conley
Yeah. I'll feel free to be very brief in your answers, depending on how you feel. But what has been in your life the most common source of finding mentors? Is it through like an introduction from a friend through say, cold outreach to someone? Is it through an institution of sorts of through conferences? If you reflect on mentors or just whatever comes to mind. Where have you found the most useful mentors?

[49:06] Tyler Cowen
A lot of it is random, through people I know. Only small conferences have ever been useful to me, like Liberty Fund. Conferences have been great for that. But big events with hundreds are worthless. I've never done called outreach, but in general I recommend it. I think it's good. I've just circulated a lot, traveled a lot, bumped into a lot of people. There'll be a chapter in the book, like the mentors in my life. And the chapter is growing a bit unwieldy because there's so many of them. And I don't want to not give credit to anyone. Maybe the chapter will be a bit too long, but I do want to cover the important ones. And there's so many, including in the arts and music and philosophy, obviously in economics, management, all sorts of things. I'm one of the luckiest people I know for mentors, but I don't think it can be entirely luck. I feel there's something about me that has attracted mentors because it's never been like cold approach sort of thing from me. It's just happened.

[50:09] Parker Conley
A segue from this is you mentioned meeting Brian Kaplan when you were quite young and.

[50:18] Tyler Cowen
Well, he was quite young. I was like 30, I'm guessing.

[50:22] Parker Conley
Okay, interesting.

[50:23] Tyler Cowen
Maybe a little younger. That's not quite young anymore. It's younger than I am now, sure.

[50:29] Parker Conley
Do you have a sense of how many people like him you've sort of tracked throughout your life and have been friends with? And maybe you saw they were talented at one point and they are still talented. Or have most talented people in your life just popped up at one point and you weren't aware of them when you were, say, in undergrad?

[50:48] Tyler Cowen
Well, quite a large number, really. A large number. And very often they have found me. Brian's a great example of that. Alex Tabarrok would be another. Robin Hansen. Many, many. And it's a great blessing to have that because you learn from those people. You also feel you're giving something back to the world. And it's fun, you know, Brian and I will probably have lunch tomorrow and just have a great time joking about whatever. So, yeah, it's awesome.

[51:19] Parker Conley
Most of them just pop out rather.

[51:20] Tyler Cowen
Than like, it's friendship, but there's mentoring embedded forever. It's great.

[51:27] Parker Conley
And to clarify, they weren't people you tracked throughout your life, and most of them were people that spontaneously you sort of came across.

[51:35] Tyler Cowen
And I met Brian at some Institute for Humane Studies thing. He came up to me. He read something I wrote. He, like, wrote a rebuttal saying how wrong I was. And the piece he wrote in response was quite good. So I thought I should stay in touch with this guy. And I just liked him. And he and I still go for lunch together.

[51:59] Parker Conley
In conversation with Durkesh Patel. You say mentors only teach you a few things, but those things are so important. They give you a glimpse of what can be, and you're oddly blind to that, even if you're very, very smart. The example you give is a mentor that taught you you could read as many books as possible. Are there any other, like, one or two things of, like, ways mentors expanded your world?

[52:22] Tyler Cowen
Well, there's so many examples. So, say in the arts, there's a guy I learned a lot from. His name was. Well, still is Joe Levine. Just how well you can understand an artwork was one thing I picked up from him. That's quite an intangible thing. But something clicks and it's like, oh, you can really make progress in this area. It's trivial in a way to describe it, but when you see it in a vivid manner manifested through an actual human, it has this immense power. Music, like, you know, really anything that I'm at all connected with, like, how to understand a basketball game. Learned things about that, like, from my friend Kevin Greer. You can just go on and on about this.

[53:06] Parker Conley
It you have a fondness of basketball. As I understand it, this is a little segue.

[53:13] Tyler Cowen
NBA, not basketball. Big difference here. But yes, NBA.

[53:16] Parker Conley
And you do play basketball to.

[53:19] Tyler Cowen
In.

[53:19] Parker Conley
In your free time? A little bit.

[53:20] Tyler Cowen
I played today.

[53:21] Parker Conley
Okay, that. What do you think societally, how do you think of sports as, like, an institution? And what are like, the positive externalities and the negative externalities?

[53:31] Tyler Cowen
Well, they're fun. I think they bring people together. Mostly positive. I worry about the current trend with all this sports gambling. I think that's quite negative. Yeah, I don't know how to. I mean, there's always been sports gambling. It seems much worse. I don't know how to get back to where we were, but I would like to do that. You know, are there, like, men who just watch football on tv, neglect their families? I'm sure, like you can't say there aren't these negative sides. But it's mostly voluntary and a great American business sector and it helps to define cities. And it's great.

[54:11] Parker Conley
I see. What are to get back to the final question on mentees, what common mistakes do people make as mentees?

[54:26] Tyler Cowen
One good way to be a mentee is just to show your potential mentor that you can benefit them too. If you just come to them screaming for help, you scare them away. It doesn't actually sound that appealing to them. So the idea of gains from trade is essential to most human relationships. And it's true with mentors and mentees as well. I think that's the most important point.

[54:49] Parker Conley
I see. Great. Well, I encourage people to check out this book on mentorship when it comes out. I am.

[55:02] Tyler Cowen
It'll just be called Mentors. I don't want some long subtitle. I've grown. I hope they let me keep a one word title, seven letters, Mentors, nothing more. Like what? What else can you say that isn't just right?

[55:17] Parker Conley
Sure.

[55:18] Tyler Cowen
Search engine optimization on Amazon or something. Mentors. That's what it's about.

[55:24] Parker Conley
Yeah. And it sounds like, and my impression of this as mentors being valuable to me in my life, that such a thing is pretty high leverage even given AI.

[55:36] Tyler Cowen
And the especially given AI, your mentors will be all the more important. Like every open job, there'll be thousands of perfectly written application letters and who can recommend you vouch for you will matter more than ever before. It's already the case, I would say, but certainly all the more so a few years from now.

[55:56] Parker Conley
Yes, this makes sense to end things up. Where can people reach you or find you after this podcast?

[56:05] Tyler Cowen
Well, they can google my name. Tyler Cowan. My podcast is called Conversations with Tyler. The blog is called Marginal Revolution. On Twitter, I'm Tyler Cowan. I have a homepage that's badly out of date and in chaos, but it's there. Those are some places you could start. I have an online education site called Marginal Revolution University and I have a whole bunch of books on Amazon.

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