Tyler Cowen: Economic Growth & the Fight Against Conformity & Mediocrity | Lex Fridman Podcast #174

1. 0:00 – 1:50

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University and co-creator of an amazing economics blog called Marginal Revolution, author of many books, including The Great Stagnation, Average Is Over, and his most recent, Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Antihero. He's truly a polymath in his work, including his love for food, which makes his amazing podcast called Conversations with Tyler really fun to listen to. Quick mention of our sponsors: Linode, ExpressVPN, SimpliSafe, and Public Goods. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, given Tyler's culinary explorations, let me say that one of the things that makes me sad about my love-hate relationship with food is that w- while I've found a simple diet, plain meat and veggies, that makes me happy in day-to-day life, I sometimes wish I had the mental ability to moderate consumption of food so that I could truly enjoy meals that go way outside of that diet. I've seen my mom, for example, enjoy a single piece of chocolate, and yet, if I were to eat one (laughs) piece of chocolate, the odds are high that I would end up eating the whole box. This is definitely something I would like to fix, because some of the amazing artistry in this world happens in the kitchen, and some of the richest human experiences happen over a unique meal. I recently was eating cheeseburgers with Joe Rogan and John Danaher late at night in Austin, talking about jujitsu and life, and I was distinctly aware of the magic of that experience, magic made possible by the incredibly delicious cheeseburgers. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Tyler Cowen.

2. 1:50 – 3:42

   Economics

   1. LFLex Fridman1:51

      Would you say economics is more art or science or philosophy or even magic? What is it?

   2. TCTyler Cowen1:58

      Economics is interesting because it's all of the above. To start with magic, the notion that you can make some change and simply everyone's better off, that is a kind of modern magic that has replaced old-style magic. It's an art in the sense that the models are not very exact. It's a science in the sense that occasionally propositions are falsified.

   3. LFLex Fridman2:18

      (laughs)

   4. TCTyler Cowen2:18

      There are a few basic things we know.

   5. LFLex Fridman2:20

      Yeah.

   6. TCTyler Cowen2:20

      And however trivial they may sound, if you don't know them, you're out of luck. So, all of the above.

   7. LFLex Fridman2:26

      But from my outsider's perspective, economics is sometimes able to formulate very simple, almost like E = MC squared, general models of how our human society will function when you do a certain thing. But it seems impossible or almost way too optimistic to think that a single formula or just a s- set of simple principles can describe b- behavior of billions of human beings, well, uh, with all the complexity that we have involved. So do you have, do you have a sense there's a hope for economics to, to, uh, to have those kinds of physics-level descriptions and models of the world? Or is it just our desperate attempts as humans to make sense of it, even though it's more desperate than, uh, than, uh, rigorous and serious and actually predictable, like a, like a physics-type science?

   8. TCTyler Cowen3:20

      I don't think economics will ever be very predictive. It's most useful for helping you ask better questions.

   9. LFLex Fridman3:26

      Mm.

   10. TCTyler Cowen3:27

       You look at something like game theory. Well, game theory never predicted USA and USSR would have a war, would not have a war. But trying to think through the, the logic of strategic conflict, if you know game theory, it's just a much more interesting discussion.

3. 3:42 – 10:29

   Nuclear war

   1. TCTyler Cowen3:42

   2. LFLex Fridman3:42

      Are you surprised that we, speaking of Soviet Union and U- United States and speaking of game theory, are you surprised that we haven't destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons yet? Like, that simple formulation of mutually assured destruction, that's a good example of an explanation that perhaps allows us to ask better questions, but it seems to have actually described the reality of why we haven't destroyed ourselves with these ultra-powerful weapons. Are you surprised? Do you think the game theoretic explanation is, is at all accurate there?

   3. TCTyler Cowen4:17

      I think w- we will destroy each other with those weapons.

   4. LFLex Fridman4:19

      (laughs) Eventually?

   5. TCTyler Cowen4:20

      Eventually. Look, it's a very low probability event. So I'm not surprised it hasn't happened yet.

   6. LFLex Fridman4:26

      Yeah.

   7. TCTyler Cowen4:26

      I'm a little surprised it came as close as it did, you know, your general thinking, realizing it might've just been a flock of birds or it wasn't a first-strike attack from the USA, we got very lucky on that one. But if you just keep (Lex laughs) on running the clock on a low probability event, it will happen, and it may not be USA and China, USA and Russia, whatever, you know, it could be the Saudis and Turkey.

   8. LFLex Fridman4:49

      And it might not be nuclear weapons, it might be some other destructive technology.

   9. TCTyler Cowen4:51

      Bio-weapons. But (Lex laughs) i- it simply will happen, is my view, and I've argued at best we have 700 or 800 years, and that's being generous.

   10. LFLex Fridman5:00

       At worst, how, how long we got?

   11. TCTyler Cowen5:03

       Well, maybe it's like a Poisson arrival process, right?

   12. LFLex Fridman5:06

       Okay. (laughs)

   13. TCTyler Cowen5:06

       So tiny probability, could come any time, probably not in your lifetime, but, uh, the chance presumably increases the cheaper weapons of mass destruction are.

   14. LFLex Fridman5:18

       See, the Poisson process description doesn't take into consideration the game theoretic aspect. So, another way to consider is, uh, repeated games, iterative games. So, is there something about us, our human nature that allows us to fight against probability, uh, reduce... Like, e- the closer we get to trouble, the more we're able to figure out how to avoid trouble. The same thing is for when you take exams or you go, you know, and take classes, the closer, or paper deadlines, the closer you get to a deadline, the better you start to perform, you get your shit together and actually get stuff done.

   15. TCTyler Cowen5:56

       I'm really not so negative on human nature, and as an economist, (laughs) I very much see the gains from cooperation.

   16. LFLex Fridman6:02

       Yeah.

   17. TCTyler Cowen6:02

       ... but if you just ask, "Are there outliers in history?" Like, was there a Hitler, for instance?

   18. LFLex Fridman6:07

       Yes.

   19. TCTyler Cowen6:07

       Obviously. And again, you let the clock tick. Another Hitler with nuclear weapons, doesn't per se care about his own destruction. It will happen.

   20. LFLex Fridman6:16

       So, your sense is fundamentally people are good, but outliers happen?

   21. TCTyler Cowen6:20

       A trembling hand equilibrium is what we would call it.

   22. LFLex Fridman6:23

       Trembling hand equilibrium?

   23. TCTyler Cowen6:25

       That the basic logic is for cooperation, which is mostly what we've seen, even between enemies. But every now and then, someone does something crazy and you don't know how to react to it, and you can't always beat Hitler. Sometimes Hitler drags you down.

   24. LFLex Fridman6:41

       To push back, is it possible that the crazier the person, the less likely they are, and in a way where we're- we're safe. Meaning like, th- this is the kind of proposition I've had- I had the discussion with my dad who's a physicist about this, where he thinks that, uh, uh, like if you have a graph, like evil people can't also be geniuses. So his- th- this is his defense why evil people will not get control of nuclear weapons, because to be truly evil, um, but evil meaning sort of you can argue that, uh, n- n- not even the evil of Hitler we're talking about, because Hitler had a kind of view of Germany and all those kinds of- there's like- I- he probably deluded himself and the people around him to think that he's actually doing good for the world. Similar with Stalin and so on. By evil, I mean more like almost like terrorists to where they want to destroy themselves and o- o- the world. Like those people will never a- be able to be actually skilled enough to do- to deliver that kind of mass-scale destruction. So, the hope is that it's very unlikely that the kind of evil that would lead to extinctions of humans or mass destruction is so unlikely that we're able to last way longer than 700, 800 years. Is that-

   25. TCTyler Cowen8:03

       I agree, it's very unlikely. In that sense, I accept the argument, but that's why you need to let the clock tick.

   26. LFLex Fridman8:10

       (laughs)

   27. TCTyler Cowen8:10

       It's also the best argument for bureaucracy.

   28. LFLex Fridman8:13

       Yeah.

   29. TCTyler Cowen8:13

       To negotiate a bureaucracy, it actually selects against pure evil-

   30. LFLex Fridman8:17

       Yeah.
4. 10:29 – 17:42

   The American dream

   1. TCTyler Cowen10:29

   2. LFLex Fridman10:29

      So, I immigrated to this country. I'm, um, I was born in the, the Soviet Union, in Russia, and, uh-

   3. TCTyler Cowen10:37

      Which one?

   4. LFLex Fridman10:37

      Which one? (laughs) Which-

   5. TCTyler Cowen10:38

      Again, it's an important question.

   6. LFLex Fridman10:39

      Well, which-

   7. TCTyler Cowen10:39

      You were born in the Soviet Union, right?

   8. LFLex Fridman10:41

      Yes, I was born in-

   9. TCTyler Cowen10:42

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman10:42

       ... the Soviet Union, the rest is details, but I grew up in Moscow, Russia.

   11. TCTyler Cowen10:46

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman10:47

       But I came to this country, and, uh, this country even back there, but it's always symbolized to me a place of opportunity where ev- everybody could build like, uh, build the most incredible things, especially in the engineering side of things, just invent and build and scale and have a huge impact on the world, and that's been to me the- that's my version of the American ideal, the American dream. Uh, do you think the American dream is still there? Uh, do you think- what do you think of that notion in itself, like from an economics perspective, from a human perspective? Is it still alive, and how do you think about it? The American dream.

   13. TCTyler Cowen11:30

       The American dream is mostly still there. If you look at which groups are the highest earners, it is individuals from India and individuals from Iran, which is a fairly new development.

   14. LFLex Fridman11:43

       Mm.

   15. TCTyler Cowen11:43

       Great for them. Not necessarily easy. Both you could call persons of color, may have faced discrimination, also on the grounds of religion, uh, yet they've done it. That's amazing. It says great things about America. Now, if you look at native-born Americans, the story's trickier. People think interjes- intergenerational mobility has declined a lot recently, but it has not.... for native-born Americans. Uh, for about, I think, 40 years, it's been fairly constant, which is sort of good. But compared to much earlier times, it was much higher in the past. I'm not sure we can replicate that because look, go to the beginning of the 20th century, very few Americans finish high school, uh, or even have much wealth. There's not much credentialism. There aren't that many credentials. So there's more upward mobility across the generations than today, and it's a good thing that we had it. I'm not sure we should blame the modern world for not being able to reproduce that. But look, the general issue of who gets into Harvard or Cornell, is there an injustice, should we fix that, is there too little opportunity for the bottom, say, half of Americans? Absolutely, it's a disgrace how this country has evolved in that way, and in that sense, the American dream is clearly ailing. But it has had problems from the beginning for Blacks, for women, for many other groups.

   16. LFLex Fridman13:07

       I mean, isn't that the whole challenge of opportunity and freedom is that it's hard and, uh, the difficulty of how hard it is to move up in society is unequal often, and that's the injustice of society. But the- the- the whole point of that freedom is that over time it becomes better and better. You start to fix, like, uh, fix the- the leaks, the issues, and it gives... That's... It keeps progressing in that kind of way, but ultimately there's always the opportunity, even if it's harder, there's the opportunity to create something truly special, to move up, to be- to be president, to be, uh, a leader in whatever the industry that you're passionate about.

   17. TCTyler Cowen13:48

       To have... We each have podcasts, right, in English.

   18. LFLex Fridman13:51

       Mm-hmm.

   19. TCTyler Cowen13:51

       The value of joining that American English language network is much higher today than it was 30 years ago-

   20. LFLex Fridman13:58

       Mm-hmm.

   21. TCTyler Cowen13:58

       ... mostly because of the internet. So that makes immigration returns themselves skewed. So going to the US, Canada, or the UK I think has become much more valuable in relative terms than, say, going to France, which is still a pretty well-off, very nice country.

   22. LFLex Fridman14:16

       (sighs)

   23. TCTyler Cowen14:16

       If you had gone to France, your chance of having a globally-known podcast would be much smaller.

   24. LFLex Fridman14:21

       Yeah. This- this is the interesting thing, uh, about how much intellectual influence the United States has. I don't know if it's, uh, connected to what we're discussing here, the- the freedom and the opportunity and the American dream or... Like, wh- does it make any sense to you that we have so much impact on the rest of the world in terms of, uh, ideas? You know, is it just simply because the English is the primary language of the world or is there something fundamental to the United States that drives the development of ideas? So- so almost like what's cool, what's entertaining, what's, uh, you know, like meme culture, the internet culture, uh, the philosophers, the intellectuals, the podcasts, the movies, music, all that stuff driving culture.

   25. TCTyler Cowen15:13

       There's something above and beyond language in the United States. It's a sense of entertainment really mattering, how to connect with your audience, being direct and getting to the point, uh, how humor is integrated even with science-

   26. LFLex Fridman15:26

       Yeah.

   27. TCTyler Cowen15:27

       ... that is pretty strongly represented here, much more, say, than on the European continent.

   28. LFLex Fridman15:32

       Mm-hmm.

   29. TCTyler Cowen15:32

       Britain has its own version of this, which it does very well, and not surprisingly, they're hugely influential in music, comedy, the- most of the other areas you mentioned.

   30. LFLex Fridman15:41

       Mm-hmm.
5. 17:42 – 24:16

   Capitalism: pros and cons

   1. LFLex Fridman17:42

      I think some people would attributed that to the- the- the general ward of capitalism. Uh, I don't know if you would. Uh, w- wha-

   2. TCTyler Cowen17:51

      Sure.

   3. LFLex Fridman17:52

      ... what, in your views, are the pros and cons of capitalism as it's implemented in America? I don't know if you would say capitalism is really exist in America but to an extent that it does.

   4. TCTyler Cowen18:04

      People use the word capitalism in- in so many different ways.

   5. LFLex Fridman18:08

      What is capitalism?

   6. TCTyler Cowen18:09

      The literal meaning is private ownership of capital goods, which I favor in most areas.... but no, I don't think the private sector should own our F-16s or military assets. Government-owned water utilities seem to work as well as privately owned water utilities. But with all those qualifications put to the side, business, for the most part, innovates better than government. It is oriented toward consumer services. The biggest businesses tend to pay the highest wages. Business is great at getting things done. USA is fundamentally a nation of business, and that makes us a nation of opportunity. So, I am indeed mostly a fan-

   7. LFLex Fridman18:51

      (laughs)

   8. TCTyler Cowen18:51

      ... subject to numerous caveats.

   9. LFLex Fridman18:54

      What's, uh, what's a con? What's, what are some negative downsides of capitalism, in your view? Or some things that, uh, we should be concerned about maybe for long-term impacts of capitalism?

   10. TCTyler Cowen19:07

       Again, capitalism takes a different form in each country. I would say in the United States, our weird blend of whatever you want to call it, has had an enduring racial problem from the beginning, has been a force of taking away land from Native Americans and oppressing them, pretty much from the beginning. Um, it has done very well by immigrants for the most part. Uh, we revel in crea- Schumpeterian creative destruction more so we don't just prop up national champions forever, and there's a precariousness to life for some people here that is less so, say, in Germany or the Netherlands.

   11. LFLex Fridman19:49

       Mm-hmm.

   12. TCTyler Cowen19:49

       We have weaker communities in some regards than, say, Northwestern Europe often would.

   13. LFLex Fridman19:54

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TCTyler Cowen19:54

       That has pluses and minuses. I think it makes us more creative. It's a better country in which to be a weirdo than, say, Germany or Denmark. But there is truly, whether from the government or from your private community, there is less social security in some fundamental sense.

   15. LFLex Fridman20:10

       On the point of weirdo, uh, what... That- that's kind of a beautiful little statement. (laughs) What, uh, what is that? I mean, that, that seems to be, uh, you know, you could think of a guy like Elon Musk and say that he's a weirdo. Is, is that the sense in which you're using the weirdo? Like, outside of the norm, like breaking conventions?

   16. TCTyler Cowen20:30

       Absolutely.

   17. LFLex Fridman20:31

       Yeah.

   18. TCTyler Cowen20:31

       And here, that is either acceptable or even admired-

   19. LFLex Fridman20:34

       Mm-hmm.

   20. TCTyler Cowen20:35

       ... or to be a loner. And since so many people are outsiders and that we're all immigrants, selecting for people who left something behind-

   21. LFLex Fridman20:43

       Yeah.

   22. TCTyler Cowen20:43

       ... were willing to leave behind their families, were willing to undergo a certain brutality of switch in their lives, makes us a nation of weirdos and weirdos are creative.

   23. LFLex Fridman20:54

       Yeah.

   24. TCTyler Cowen20:55

       And Denmark is not a nation of weirdos. It's a wonderful place, you know, great for them. Ideally, you want part of the world to be full of weirdos and innovating, and the other part of the world to be a little kind of chicken shit, risk-averse-

   25. LFLex Fridman21:09

       Mm-hmm.

   26. TCTyler Cowen21:09

       ... and enjoy the benefits-

   27. LFLex Fridman21:10

       I love it.

   28. TCTyler Cowen21:10

       ... of the innovation. And you give people these smooth lives, and six weeks off, and free ride. And everyone's like, "Oh, American way versus European way." But basically, they're compliments.

   29. LFLex Fridman21:21

       Yeah, it's fascinating. I, I, I used to have this conversation with my, uh, like parents when I was growing up and just others from the immigrant, uh, kind of flow, and they use this term, especially in Russian is, uh, you know, to criticize something I was doing that was suggest, you know, normal people don't do this. (laughs) And I used to be really offended by that, uh, but, you know, as I got older, uh, I realized that that's a kind of compliment because in, uh, in the same kind of, uh, I would say, way that you're s- you're saying that is the American ideal, because if you want to do anything special or interesting, you don't want to be doing in one particular avenue what normal people do because, uh, because then it won't be interesting. So-

   30. TCTyler Cowen22:12

       The Russians, I think, fit in very well here because the ones who come are weirdos-
6. 24:16 – 26:19

   Is competition good for the world?

   1. LFLex Fridman24:16

      uh, (laughs) back to capitalism. I got to ask you, just competition in general in this world of weirdos, is competition good for the world?... you know, this kind of, uh... It seems to be one of fundamental engines of capitalism, right? Do, do you see it as ultimately constructive or destructive for the world?

   2. TCTyler Cowen24:34

      What really matters is how good your legal framework is. So competition within nature, you know, for food, leads to bloody conflict all the time. The animal world is quite unpleasant, to say the least. If you have something like the rule of law and clearly defined property rights, which are within reason justly allocated, uh, competition probably is gonna work very well. But it's not an unalloyed good thing at all. It can be highly destructive. Military competition, right? Which actually is itself sometimes good, but it's not good per se.

   3. LFLex Fridman25:09

      What, what, what aspects of life do you think we should protect from com- competition? So is there some... You said, like, the rule of law. Is there some things we should, uh, keep away from competition?

   4. TCTyler Cowen25:19

      Well, the fight for territory most of all, right?

   5. LFLex Fridman25:22

      So violence?

   6. TCTyler Cowen25:22

      Internationally.

   7. LFLex Fridman25:23

      Anything that involves v- like actual physical violence?

   8. TCTyler Cowen25:25

      Right. And it's not that I think the current borders are just. I mean, go talk to Hungarians, Romanians, they'll... You know, Serbians, Bosnians, they'll talk your ear off. And some of them are probably right, but at the end of the day, we have some kind of international order and I would rather we more or less stick with it. If Catalonians want to leave, they keep up with it, you know, let them go but...

   9. LFLex Fridman25:48

      What about space of, like, healthcare? This is where you get into a tension of, like, between capitalism and kind of, uh, more s- Uh, I don't wanna use socialism, but those kinds of policies, they're less, uh, free market. Uh-

   10. TCTyler Cowen26:02

       I think in this country healthcare should be much more competitive. So you go to hospitals, doctors, they don't treat you like a customer. Uh, they treat you like an idiot or like a child or-

   11. LFLex Fridman26:12

       Yeah.

   12. TCTyler Cowen26:12

       ... someone with third-party payment, and it's a pretty humiliating experience often.

   13. LFLex Fridman26:18

       Yeah.

7. 26:19 – 27:24

   Free market

   1. LFLex Fridman26:19

      Yeah. Do you think a free market in general, uh, is possible? Like a pure free market? And is that a good goal to, to, uh, strive for?

   2. TCTyler Cowen26:28

      I don't think the term pure free market's well-defined because you need a legal order. The legal order has to make decisions on, like, what is intellectual property?

   3. LFLex Fridman26:37

      Mm-hmm.

   4. TCTyler Cowen26:37

      More important than ever. There's no benchmark that, like, represents the pure free market way of doing things.

   5. LFLex Fridman26:43

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TCTyler Cowen26:43

      Uh, what will penalties be? How much do we put into law enforcement? No simple answers, but just saying free market doesn't pin down what you're gonna do on those all-important questions.

   7. LFLex Fridman26:54

      So p- free market is a... is an economics, I guess, idea, so there's no... It's, it's not possible for free market to generate the rules? They're, like, emergent, like self-governing?

   8. TCTyler Cowen27:03

      It generates a lot of them, right, through private norms, through trade associations. International trade is mostly done, uh, privately-

   9. LFLex Fridman27:12

      Mm-hmm.

   10. TCTyler Cowen27:12

       ... and by norms. So it's certainly possible, but at the end of the day I think you need governments to draw very clear lines to prevent it from turning into mafia-run systems.

8. 27:24 – 29:50

   Anarchy

   1. TCTyler Cowen27:24

   2. LFLex Fridman27:24

      You know, I've been hanging out with the c- with other group of weirdos, uh, lately. Michael Malice who's, uh, who espouses to be an anarchist, anarchism, which is like, I, I think intellectually just a (laughs) fascinating set of ideas, uh, where the... You know, taking free market to the full extreme of basically saying there should be no, no government. What is it? Uh, oversight, I guess, and then everything should be fully m- Like all the agreements, all the collectives you form should be, um, voluntary not based on the geo- geographic land you were born on, and so on. Do you think that's just a giant mess? (laughs) Like, do you think it's possible for an anarchist society to work where it's, um... You know, the... in a dist- in a fully distributed way people agree with each other not just on financial transactions but, you know, on, um, on s- their personal security, on sort of military type of stuff, uh, on healthcare, on education, all those kinds of things? And where does it break down?

   3. TCTyler Cowen28:35

      Well, I wouldn't press a button to say, "Get rid of our current Constitution," which I view as pretty good and quite wise. But I think the deeper point is that all societies are in some regards anarchistic.

   4. LFLex Fridman28:47

      Yes.

   5. TCTyler Cowen28:47

      And we should take the anarchists seriously. So globally there's a kind of anarchy, uh, across borders. Even within federalistic systems, they're typically complex. There's not a clear transitivity necessarily of who has the final say over what, uh, just the state vis-a-vis its people. There's not per se a final arbitrator in that regard. So, you want a good anarchy rather than a bad anarchy.

   6. LFLex Fridman29:12

      (laughs)

   7. TCTyler Cowen29:13

      You want to squish your anarchy into the right corners, and I don't think there's a theoretical answer how to do it.

   8. LFLex Fridman29:19

      Yeah.

   9. TCTyler Cowen29:19

      But you start with a country. Like, is it working well enough now, this country? You'd say mostly. You'd certainly want to make a lot of improvements, and that's why I don't wanna press that get rid of the Constitution button. But to just dump on the anarchists is to miss the point. Always try to learn-

   10. LFLex Fridman29:35

       Yeah.

   11. TCTyler Cowen29:35

       ... from any opinion, you know, and what in it is true.

   12. LFLex Fridman29:39

       I, I'm just, like, uh, marveling at the, at the poetry of saying that we should squish our anarchy into the right corners. (laughs) Love it. Okay, uh, I gotta ask,

9. 29:50 – 34:31

   Ayn Rand

   1. LFLex Fridman29:50

      I've been, uh, talking with, uh... Uh, since we're doing a whirlwind introduction to all of economics, uh, I've been talking to a few Objectivists recently and just... You know, uh, Ayn Rand comes up as a, as a person, as a philosopher throughout many conversations. A lot of people really despise her, a lot of people really love her. It's always weird to me when, uh, somebody arouses... a philosophy or a human being arouses that much emotion in either direction. Uh, does she make... Uh, do you understand, first of all, that level of emotion? And what are your thoughts about Ayn Rand and her philosophy Objectivism? Is it useful at all, uh, to think about this kind of formulation of, uh, rational self?... interest, if I could put it in those words, or I guess more negatively the, the selfishness, or she would put, I guess, the virtue of selfishness.

   2. TCTyler Cowen30:46

      Ayn Rand was a big influence on me growing up. The book that really mattered for me was Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

   3. LFLex Fridman30:52

      Hmm.

   4. TCTyler Cowen30:53

      The notion that wealth creates opportunity and good lives, and wealth is something we ought to valorize and give very high status. It's one of her key ideas, I think it's completely correct, I think she has the most profound and articulate statement of that idea. That said, as a philosopher, I disagree with her on most things, and I did even like as a boy when I was reading her. I read Plato before Ayn Rand, and in a Socratic dialogue there's all these different points of view being thrown around.

   5. LFLex Fridman31:21

      Yeah.

   6. TCTyler Cowen31:22

      And whoe- whomever it is you agree with, you understand the wisdom is in the coming together of the different points of view.

   7. LFLex Fridman31:28

      Yeah.

   8. TCTyler Cowen31:28

      And she doesn't have that, so I... Altruism can be wonderful in my view, humans are not actually that rational, self-interest is often poorly defined. To pound the table and say, "Existence exists," I wouldn't say I disagree, but I'm not sure that it's a very (laughs) meaningful statement. I think the secret to Ayn Rand is that she was Russian, I'd love to have her on my podcast if she were still alive, I'd only ask her about Russia, which she mostly never talked about after writing We The Living, and she is much more Russian than she seems at first, even like purging people from the objectivist circles. It's like how Russians, especially female Russians, so often purge their friends. It's weird, all the parallels.

   9. LFLex Fridman32:11

      So you, you're saying, so yes, so I, um, assuming she's still not around, uh, but if she is and she comes into your podcast, see, can you dig into that a little bit? Do you mean like the per- her personal, uh, demons around the social and economic, uh, Russia of the time, the, the, when she escaped, which-

   10. TCTyler Cowen32:33

       The traumas she suffered there.

   11. LFLex Fridman32:34

       Yeah.

   12. TCTyler Cowen32:34

       What she really likes in the music and literature and why.

   13. LFLex Fridman32:37

       Music and literature, huh?

   14. TCTyler Cowen32:38

       And getting deeply into that, her view of relations between the sexes in Russia, how it dif- differs from America, why she still carries through the old Russian vision in her fiction-

   15. LFLex Fridman32:49

       Yeah.

   16. TCTyler Cowen32:49

       ... this extreme sexual dimorphism, but with also very strong women-

   17. LFLex Fridman32:53

       Yeah.

   18. TCTyler Cowen32:53

       ... to me is a uniquely, at least Eastern European, uh, vision, mostly Russian I would say.

   19. LFLex Fridman33:00

       Yeah.

   20. TCTyler Cowen33:00

       And that's in her, that's her actual real philosophy, not this table pounding (laughs) "Existence exists."

   21. LFLex Fridman33:06

       Yeah.

   22. TCTyler Cowen33:06

       And that's not talked about enough.

   23. LFLex Fridman33:07

       Yeah.

   24. TCTyler Cowen33:07

       She's a Russian philosopher.

   25. LFLex Fridman33:09

       Yeah. Like she-

   26. TCTyler Cowen33:10

       Or Soviet, whatever you want to call it.

   27. LFLex Fridman33:12

       And if she wasn't so certain, she could've been a Dostoevsky where it's not... that, that certainty is almost a thing that, uh, brings her the adoration of, uh, millions but also the hatred of millions. (laughs)

   28. TCTyler Cowen33:25

       She became a cult figure-

   29. LFLex Fridman33:26

       Yeah.

   30. TCTyler Cowen33:26

       ... in a somewhat Russian-like manner.
10. 34:31 – 38:57

    The case for big business

    1. LFLex Fridman34:31

       (laughs) In your book, Big Business, speaking of Ayn Rand, Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Antihero, you make the case for, uh, the benefit that large businesses bring to society. Can you explain?

    2. TCTyler Cowen34:45

       If you look at, say, the pandemic, which has been a catastrophic event, right? For, for many reasons, but who is it that saved us? So Amazon has done remarkably well, they upped their delivery game more or less overnight with very few hitches, I've ordered hundreds of Amazon packages, direct delivery food, whether it's DoorDash or Uber Eats or using, you know, Whole Foods through Amazon Shipping, again it's gone remarkably well. Switching over our entire higher educational system basically within two weeks to Zoom.

    3. LFLex Fridman35:17

       Mm-hmm.

    4. TCTyler Cowen35:18

       Zoom did it. I mean, I've had a Zoom outage, but their performance rate has been remarkably high. So if you just look at resources, competence, incentives, who's been the star performers? The NBA even just canceling the season as early as they did, sending a message like, "Hey people, this is real." And then pulling off the bubble with not a single found case of COVID and having all the testing set up in advance.

    5. LFLex Fridman35:45

       C-

    6. TCTyler Cowen35:45

       Big business has done very well lately and throughout the broader course of American history, in my view, has mostly been a hero.

    7. LFLex Fridman35:53

       Can, can we engage in a kind of therapy session? Uh, in, (laughs) in... I, I'm often troubled by the negativity towards big business, and, uh, I wonder if you could help figure out how we remove that or maybe s- first psychoanalyze it and then how we remove it. It, it, uh, it feels like, you know, once we've gotten Wi-Fi on flights, on airplane flights, uh, people start complaining about how shitty the connection is, right?

    8. TCTyler Cowen36:27

       Yes.

    9. LFLex Fridman36:27

       They take it for granted (laughs) immediately-

    10. TCTyler Cowen36:29

        Yeah.

    11. LFLex Fridman36:29

        ... and then start complaining about little details. Uh, another example that's more, that's closer to like, especially s- uh, as a, as a aspiring entrepreneur, is closer to the things I'm thinking about, is Jack Dorsey with Twitter.... you know, to me, Twitter has enabled an incredible platform of communication, and yet the biggest thing that people talk about is not how incredible this platform is. Uh, they essentially use the platform to complain about the censorship of a few individuals, uh, as opposed to how amazing it is. Now, you should also... You should talk about how shitty the wifi is and how censorship or the removal of Donald Trump from the platform is a bad thing. But it feels like we don't talk about the positive impacts at scale of these technologies. Is there... Can you explain why, and is there a way to fix it?

    12. TCTyler Cowen37:24

        I don't know if we can fix it. I think we are beings of high neuroticism for the most part-

    13. LFLex Fridman37:29

        (laughs) Yeah.

    14. TCTyler Cowen37:29

        ...as a personality trait. Not everyone-

    15. LFLex Fridman37:31

        Yeah.

    16. TCTyler Cowen37:31

        ...but most people. And as a complement to that, if someone says 10 nice things about you and one insult, you're more bothered by the insult than you're pleased by the nice things.

    17. LFLex Fridman37:41

        Yeah. Yeah.

    18. TCTyler Cowen37:41

        Especially if the insult is somewhat true. So, you have these media, these vehicles, Twitter is one you mentioned, where there's all kind of messages going back and forth and you're really bugged by the messages you don't like. Most people are neurotic to begin with. It's not only taken out on big business, to be clear. So, Congress catches a lot of grief, and-

    19. LFLex Fridman38:02

        Yeah.

    20. TCTyler Cowen38:02

        ...some of it they deserve, yes. Uh, religion is not attacked the same way, but religiosity is declining. If you poll people, the military still polls quite well, but people are very disillusioned with many things. And the Martin Gurri thesis, that because of the internet you just see more of things, and the more you see of something, whether it's good, bad, or in between, the more you will find to complain about, I suspect, is the fundamental mechanism here. I mean, look at Clubhouse, right? It's-

    21. LFLex Fridman38:32

        Yes.

    22. TCTyler Cowen38:32

        To me, it's a great service. May or may not be, like, my thing, but gives people this opportunity. No one makes you go on it. And all these media articles, like, "Oh, is Clubhouse gonna wreck things?" You know, "Are they gonna break things?" New York Times is complaining. Of course, it's their competitor as well.

    23. LFLex Fridman38:47

        Yeah.

    24. TCTyler Cowen38:48

        I'm like, give these people a chance. Like, talk it up. You may or may not like it. Like, let's praise the people who are getting something done, very Ayn Randian point.

11. 38:57 – 44:01

    Clubhouse

    1. TCTyler Cowen38:57

    2. LFLex Fridman38:57

       As an economic thinker, as a writer, as a podcaster, what do you think about Clubhouse? As, what do you think about.... Okay, let me, let me, let me, uh, just throw my feeling about it. I used to use Discord, which is another service where people use voice, so the only thing you do is just hear each other. There's no face. You just see a little icon. That's the essential element of, uh, Clubhouse, and there's an intimacy to voice-only communication that's hard, that didn't make sense to me, but it was just what it is. Which feels like something that won't last (laughs) for some reason. Maybe it's the cyn-

    3. TCTyler Cowen39:35

       Yeah.

    4. LFLex Fridman39:35

       ... cynical view, but what's your sense, uh, wha- is, uh, about this mag-, the intimacy of what's happening right now with Clubhouse?

    5. TCTyler Cowen39:43

       I've greatly enjoyed what I've done, but I'm not sure it's for me in the long run, for two reasons.

    6. LFLex Fridman39:48

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TCTyler Cowen39:48

       First, if you compare it to doing a podcast, podcasting has greater reach than Clubhouse. So, I would rather put time into my podcast. But then also, my, like, core asset, so to speak, is I'm a very fast reader. So audio per se, is not necessarily to my advantage.

    8. LFLex Fridman40:08

       Mm-hmm.

    9. TCTyler Cowen40:08

       I don't speak or listen faster than other people. In fact, I'm a slower listener 'cause I like 1.0, not 1.5x. So, I should spend less time on audio and more time reading and writing.

    10. LFLex Fridman40:18

        Yeah. It's interesting because you, like, you mentioned podcasts and audiobooks. I, you know, the, the podcasts are recorded and so I can skip things. Like, I can skip commercials. Uh, or I can skip parts where it's like, "Ugh, this part is boring." With live conversations, especially when... There's a magic to the fact when you have a lot of people participating in that conversation. But, you know, some people are like, "Ugh, this topic." They're going into this thing and you can't skip it, or you can't fast-forward, you can't go one, uh, 1.5x or 2x. You can't speed it up. Nevertheless, there's a tension between that, so that's the productivity aspect, with the actual magic of live communication where anything can happen. Where Elon Musk can ask the CEO of Robinhood, Vlad, about like, "Hey, is somebody, like, holding a gun to your head? Is something shady going on?" The magic of that. That's also my criticism of, like, uh, there's been a recent conversation with Bill Gates that, uh, he went on platform of, uh, and had a, basically a regular interview on the platform without allowing the possibility of the magic of the chaos.

    11. TCTyler Cowen41:31

        Yeah.

    12. LFLex Fridman41:31

        Like, uh, so I'm not, I'm not exactly sure. It- it's probably not the right platform for you and for many other people who are exceptionally productive in other places, but there's still nevertheless a magic to the chaos that can be created with live conversation that gives me pause.

    13. TCTyler Cowen41:47

        Maybe what it's perfect for is the tribute. So, they had an episode recently that I didn't hear, but I heard it was wonderful. It was anecdotes about Steve Jobs.

    14. LFLex Fridman41:55

        Mm-hmm.

    15. TCTyler Cowen41:56

        That, you can't do one-to-one, right? And you don't want control. You want different people appearing and stepping up and saying their bit.

    16. LFLex Fridman42:03

        Yeah.

    17. TCTyler Cowen42:03

        And Clubhouse is 110% perfect for that, the tribute.

    18. LFLex Fridman42:08

        I love that, the tribute. But there's also the possibility, I think, uh, there was a time when somebody arranged a conversation with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on stage, right? I remember that happened a long time ago. Um, and, you know, it was very formal. You know, it, it could've probably gone better, but it was still magical to have these people that obviously, like, had a bunch of tension throughout their history. There's... It's so frictionless to have two major figures-... in world history just jump on in a Clubhouse stage?

    19. TCTyler Cowen42:42

        Putin and Elon Musk-

    20. LFLex Fridman42:43

        Putin and Elon Musk.

    21. TCTyler Cowen42:44

        ... and see what happens.

    22. LFLex Fridman42:45

        And then that's exactly it. So there's a language barrier there, there's also the, the problem that, in particular, it's like, uh, like Biden would have a similar problem, is like they're just not into new technology, so it's very ha- hard to catch the Kremlin up to, first of all, Twitter-

    23. TCTyler Cowen43:03

        Right.

    24. LFLex Fridman43:03

        ... uh, but to catch them up to Clubhouse you have to have the... Elon Musk has a sense of the internet, the humor, and the memes, and all that kind of stuff that you have to have in order to, to like use a new app and figure out like the timing, the beat, w- what is this thing about. You know, s- so that- that's the challenge there, but that's exactly it. That, that magic of have two big personalities just show up, and I, I, I wonder if it's just a temporary thing that we're going through with the pandemic where people are just lonely, and they're seeking for that human connection that we usually gels- get elsewhere through our work.

    25. TCTyler Cowen43:40

        But they'll stay lonely, in my opinion.

    26. LFLex Fridman43:42

        You think so?

    27. TCTyler Cowen43:43

        I do. So it is a pandemic thing, but I think it will persist, and the idea of wanting to be connected to more of the world, Clubhouse will still offer that. And all the mental health issues out there, a lot of people have broken ties and they will still be lonely post-vaccines.

12. 44:01 – 46:14

    Loneliness

    1. TCTyler Cowen44:02

    2. LFLex Fridman44:02

       Yeah, I, um, from an artificial intelligence perspective (laughs) uh, have a sense that there is like a deep loneliness in the world, that all of us are really lonely. Like we don't even acknowledge it, even people in happy relationships. It feels like there's like an iceberg of loneliness in all of us, like seeking to be understood, like deeply understood. Understanding our... Like having somebody with whom you can have a deep interaction enough to where you can, they can help you to understand yourself and they also understand you. Like I have a sense that artificial intelligence systems can provide that as well, but humans, I think, crave that from other humans in, in ways that we perhaps don't acknowledge. And I th- I have a hope that technology will enable that more and more, like Clubhouse is an example that allows that.

    3. TCTyler Cowen44:52

       Are Turing bots gonna out-compete Clubhouse? Like why not pro- sort of program your own session? You'll just talk into your device and say, "Here's the kind of conversation I want," and it will create the characters for you. And it may not be as good as Elon and Vladimir Putin, but it will be better than ordinary Clubhouse.

    4. LFLex Fridman45:09

       Yeah, and one of the things that's missing is not just conversation, it's, it's memory. So long-term memory is what current AI systems don't have, is sharing an experience together. Forget the words, it's like sharing the highs and the lows of life together, and the systems around us remembering that, remembering we've been through that. Like that's the thing that creates really close relationships is going through some shit, like going through struggle. If you survive together, there's something really difficult, that bonds you with other humans.

    5. TCTyler Cowen45:42

       And this is related to immigration and the American dream.

    6. LFLex Fridman45:46

       In what way? Just-

    7. TCTyler Cowen45:47

       The people who have come to this country, however weird and different they may be, they or their ancestors at some point probably have shared this thing, right? US is not gonna split up. It may get more screwed up as a country-

    8. LFLex Fridman46:02

       (laughs)

    9. TCTyler Cowen46:02

       ... but Texas and California are not gonna break off.

    10. LFLex Fridman46:05

        Yeah.

    11. TCTyler Cowen46:05

        I mean, they're big enough where they could do it, but it's just never gonna happen.

    12. LFLex Fridman46:08

        We've been through too much together.

    13. TCTyler Cowen46:10

        Yeah. (laughs)

    14. LFLex Fridman46:12

        (laughs) . Ah, that's a hopeful message.

13. 46:14 – 50:34

    Eric Weinstein and economic growth

    1. LFLex Fridman46:14

       Do you think, uh, you know, some people I've talked to, Eric Weinstein, you've talked to Eric Weinstein, uh, he has a sense that growth, uh, you know, like the, the, the entirety of the American system is based on the assumption that we're gonna grow forever, the e- the economy's gonna grow forever. Do you think, uh, uh, economic growth will continue indefinitely or will we stagnate?

    2. TCTyler Cowen46:38

       I've long been in agreement with Eric, Peter Thiel, uh, Robert Gordon, and others that growth has slowed down. I argue that in my book, The Great Stagnation, uh, appropriately titled, but the last two years I've become much more optimistic. I've seen a lot of breakthroughs in green energy, in battery technology, mRNA vaccines in medicine is a big deal already, it will repair our GDP and save millions of lives around the world. Uh, there's an anti-malaria vaccine that's now in stage three trial, it probably works, CRISPR to defeat sickle cell anemia. Just space, area after area after area, there's suddenly this surge of breakthroughs, I would say many of them rooted in superior computation and ultimately Moore's Law and access to those computational abilities. So I'm much more optimistic than, say, the last time I spoke to Eric.

    3. LFLex Fridman47:31

       (laughs)

    4. TCTyler Cowen47:32

       I don't know, he, he moves all the time in his views. I don't know where he's at now.

    5. LFLex Fridman47:36

       He's not at, he hasn't gained... That's really interesting. So your little drop of optimism comes from like, uh, there might be a, a fundamental shift in the kind of things that computation has unlocked for us in terms of... Like, it could be a wellspring of innovation that can, that, uh, uh, enables growth for a long time to come. Like Eric has not quite connected to the computation aspect yet to where it could be a, a wellspring of innovation. And-

    6. TCTyler Cowen48:04

       But you're very close to it in your own work.

    7. LFLex Fridman48:06

       Yes.

    8. TCTyler Cowen48:06

       I don't have to tell you that. The work you're doing would not have been possible not very long ago.

    9. LFLex Fridman48:11

       But the question is, how much does that work enable continued growth for decades to come? That's-

    10. TCTyler Cowen48:16

        For all their problems, some version of driverless vehicles will be a thing, I'm not sure when, you know much better than I do, maybe only partially, but that too will be a big deal.

    11. LFLex Fridman48:26

        Well, one of the open questions that's sort of the Peter Thiel school of, uh, area of ideas is how much can be converted to technology? How much c- how many parts of our lives can technology integrate and then innovate? Like c- can it replace, uh, healthcare? C- c- you know, c- c- can it replace the legal system, can it replace government? Not replace but like, you know, uh, make it digital?... and thereby enable computation to improve it, right? That's the open question. Because many aspects of our lives are still not really that, uh, digita- digitized.

    12. TCTyler Cowen49:06

        There was a New York Times symposium in April, which is not long ago, and they asked the so-called Experts, "When are we gonna get vaccines?" And the most optimistic answer was, "In four years."

    13. LFLex Fridman49:16

        Yeah.

    14. TCTyler Cowen49:17

        And obviously, we beat that by a long mile. So, I think people still haven't woken up.

    15. LFLex Fridman49:23

        Yeah.

    16. TCTyler Cowen49:23

        You mentioned my tiny drop of optimism, but it's a big drop of optimism.

    17. LFLex Fridman49:27

        (laughs) Is it, is it a waterfall yet? I mean, is it, is it just ... (laughs)

    18. TCTyler Cowen49:30

        Well, here's my pessimism, whenever there are major new technologies, they also tend to be used for violence, directly or indirectly.

    19. LFLex Fridman49:37

        Yeah.

    20. TCTyler Cowen49:37

        Radio, Hitler. Not that he hit people over the head with radios, but it enabled the rise of various dictators.

    21. LFLex Fridman49:44

        Yeah.

    22. TCTyler Cowen49:44

        So, the new technologies now, whatever exactly they may be, they're gonna cause a lot of trouble.

    23. LFLex Fridman49:50

        Yeah.

    24. TCTyler Cowen49:50

        And that's my pessimism, not that I think they're all gonna slow to a trickle.

    25. LFLex Fridman49:54

        When was the stagnation book? Two-

    26. TCTyler Cowen49:56

        2011.

    27. LFLex Fridman49:57

        2011?

    28. TCTyler Cowen49:58

        Yes. It was the first of the stagnation books, in fact.

    29. LFLex Fridman50:02

        (laughs) It's- it's very interesting, uh-

    30. TCTyler Cowen50:05

        But even then, I said, "This is temporary." And I was predicting it would be gone in about 20 years time.
14. 50:34 – 53:25

    Communism

    1. LFLex Fridman50:35

       Got it. Um, speaking on being bullish on America, the opposite of that is, um, you know, we talked about capitalism, we talked about Ayn Rand and her Russian roots. What do you think about communism? Why doesn't it work? (laughs) What, um, uh, is it the implementation? Is there anything about its ideas that you find compelling or is it just a fundamentally flawed system?

    2. TCTyler Cowen51:06

       Well, communism is like capitalism. The words mean many things to different people.

    3. LFLex Fridman51:10

       Yes.

    4. TCTyler Cowen51:10

       You could argue my life as a tenured professor comes closer to communism-

    5. LFLex Fridman51:14

       (laughs)

    6. TCTyler Cowen51:14

       ... than anything the human race has seen and I would argue it works pretty well.

    7. LFLex Fridman51:18

       Yeah. (laughs)

    8. TCTyler Cowen51:19

       But look, if you mean the Soviet Union, it devolved pretty quickly to a kind of decentralized set of incentives that were destructive rather than value maximizing. It wasn't even central planning, much less communism. So Paul Craig Roberts and Polanyi were correct in their descriptions of the Soviet system. Think of it as weird mixes of barter and malfunctioning incentives and being very good at a whole bunch of things, but in terms of progress, innovation, and consumer goods, it really being quite a failure. Uh, and now, I wouldn't call that communism, but that's what I think of the system the Soviets had and it required an ever increasing pile of lies that both alienated people, but created an elite that by the end of the thing no longer believed in the system itself-

    9. LFLex Fridman52:11

       Mm-hmm.

    10. TCTyler Cowen52:12

        ... or even thought they were doing better by being crooks than by just, say, moving to Switzerland and being an upper middle class individual. Like, you would have a higher standard of living by Gorbachev's time. Not Gorbachev, but if you're number 30 in the hierarchy, you're better off as a middle class person in Switzerland, and that, of course, did not prove sustainable.

    11. LFLex Fridman52:31

        And so it's, uh, what is it? A momentum of bureaucracies, something like that, it just builds up where you lose control of the, the original vision and that naturally happens? It's just people-

    12. TCTyler Cowen52:40

        And you can't use normal profit and loss and price incentives, so you get all prices, or most prices set too low, right? Shortages everywhere, people trade favors. You have this culture of bartered bribes, sexual favors, or, you know, family friends, and-

    13. LFLex Fridman52:55

        Yeah.

    14. TCTyler Cowen52:55

        ... you get more and more of that and you, over time, lose more and more of the information and the prices and quantities and practices and norms you had, and that sort of slowly decays, and then by the end, no one is believing in it. That would be my take. But again, you're, you're the expert here.

    15. LFLex Fridman53:12

        Oh, the- (laughs) the Russian scholar? (laughs) Well, I- I'm perhaps no more an expert than Ayn Rand. Uh, it's more personal than it is scholarly, uh, or historic.

15. 53:25 – 58:55

    Putin

    1. LFLex Fridman53:25

       So Stalin held power for 30 years. Uh, Vladimir Putin has held power for 21 y- years, but you could argue he took a little break. Uh-

    2. TCTyler Cowen53:36

       But not much. (laughs)

    3. LFLex Fridman53:38

       (laughs)

    4. TCTyler Cowen53:38

       He was still holding power, I think.

    5. LFLex Fridman53:40

       And it's still possible now with the new, uh, uh, constitution, that he could hold power from- longer than Stalin, 30- longer than 30 years. What do you think about the man, the state of affairs in Russia, um, in general, the system they have there? Is there something interesting to you as an economist, as a human being, about Russia today?

    6. TCTyler Cowen54:02

       Everything is interesting. I mean, here- here would be-

    7. LFLex Fridman54:04

       (laughs)

    8. TCTyler Cowen54:04

       ... part of my take. As you know, the- the Russian economy starting, what? 1999, 2000, has really quite a few years of super excellent growth, and Putin is still riding on that.

    9. LFLex Fridman54:17

       Mm.

    10. TCTyler Cowen54:17

        It more or less coincides with his rise as the truly focal figure on the scene. Uh, since then, pretty recently, they've had a bunch of years of negative 4 to 5% growth in a row, which is terrible. The economy is way too dependent on fossil fuels. But the structural problem is this, you need a concordance across economic power, social power, political power. They don't have to be allocated identically, but they have to be allocated consistently. And the Russian system under Putin, from almost the beginning, has never been able to have that.... that ultimately, his incentives are to steer the system or the economic power is in a small number of hands in a non-diversified way. The system won't deliver sustainable gains and living standards anymore, ever, the way it's set up now. That with fossil fuel prices go up, they'll have some good years, for sure, uh, and that is really quite structural, what has gone wrong. And then on top of that, you can have an opinion of Putin, but you've got to start with those structural problems, and that's why it's just not gonna work, but he had all those good years in the beginning, so the number of Russians, say, who live here or in Russia, who love Putin, and it's sincere, they're not just afraid of being, you know, dragged away. Like, that's a real phenomenon. Uh-

    11. LFLex Fridman55:41

        Yeah, I'm really torn on, you know, uh, Putin's approval rating, real approval rating seems to be very high, and I'm torn in whether that's has to do with, uh, the fact that there is, um, control of the press or if it's, uh, which is the people I talk to who are in Russia, family and so on, a genuine love of Putin, appreciation of what Putin has done and is going to do with Russia. And-

    12. TCTyler Cowen56:10

        But a lot of that would go away if the press were freer, I think.

    13. LFLex Fridman56:13

        Yes. Well, it's-

    14. TCTyler Cowen56:14

        Singapore realizes this. Anyone discussed by the press, no matter who they are, people in Singapore have done a great job.

    15. LFLex Fridman56:20

        Yes.

    16. TCTyler Cowen56:21

        Uh, but if you're discussed by the press, you don't look good. Tech company executives are learning this, right? It's just, like, a rule.

    17. LFLex Fridman56:28

        (laughs)

    18. TCTyler Cowen56:29

        So, in that sense, I think the rating is artificially high, but I don't, by any means, think it's all insincere, but that high popularity I view as bearish for Russia.

    19. LFLex Fridman56:39

        Mm.

    20. TCTyler Cowen56:39

        I would feel better about the country if people were more pissed off at him.

    21. LFLex Fridman56:43

        Yeah, that's right. It's nice to see free speech, even if it's full of hate. (laughs) Uh, I am also troubled on the scientific side and entrepreneurial side. It seems difficult to be an entrepreneur in Russia. Uh, like, it's not even, uh, in terms of rules, it's- it's just culturally, the people I speak to, it- it's not easy to build a business, to, uh... No, it's not easy to even dream of building a business in Russia. That's just not part of the culture, part of the conversation. You know, it's almost like the conversation is, "If you wanna, if you wanna be the next Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or whatever, you come to America." That's the sense they have.

    22. TCTyler Cowen57:30

        Yeah.

    23. LFLex Fridman57:30

        And I don't-

    24. TCTyler Cowen57:31

        History matters.

    25. LFLex Fridman57:33

        Is- is hist- is it history or just structural problems of today? What do you... I mean-

    26. TCTyler Cowen57:37

        It's all the same thing. So, a history of hostility to commerce, which, of course, the old USSR is gone, but a lot of the attitudes remain, a lot of the corruption remains. You have this legacy distribution of wealth from the auctioning off of the assets, which is not conducive to some kind of broadly egalitarian democracy. And so you have these small number of power points-

    27. LFLex Fridman58:00

        Yeah.

    28. TCTyler Cowen58:00

        ... that try to control information and wealth, and not really so keen to encourage the others who ultimately would pull the balance of political power away from the very wealthy and from Putin, and they support that culture, and the return of interest in, like, Orthodox Church and all that, it's all part of the same piece, I think, 'cause the old Orthodox Church is not that pro-commerce, you'd have to say, but it's traditionalist, it's pro-family. Those are safer ideas, and then there's such a great safety valve, the most ambitious, smartest people, like, they probably will learn English, they sort of can look like they belong in all sorts of other countries, they can show up and blend in, super talented, they've probably had an excellent education, especially if they're from one of the two major cities, but even if not so, even from Siberia, and they go off, they leave, they're not a source of opposition, and that keeps the whole thing up and running for another generation.

    29. LFLex Fridman58:54

        Yeah.

16. 58:55 – 1:03:48

    China

    1. LFLex Fridman58:55

       Uh, what do you make of the other, the other big, uh, player, China? Uh, they seem to have a very different, messed up, but also-

    2. TCTyler Cowen59:06

       (laughs)

    3. LFLex Fridman59:07

       ... functioning system. They seem to be much better at encouraging entrepreneurs. They are choosing winners, but, like, what do you make of the entire Chinese system? Uh, like, why does it work as well as it does currently? What are your concerns about it, and, uh, what are its threats to the United States or, uh, possible, you know... So, what is it that you said, like, wisdom is when two ideas come together.

    4. TCTyler Cowen59:34

       Yeah.

    5. LFLex Fridman59:34

       Is there some possible benefits of, uh, these kinds of ideas coming together?

    6. TCTyler Cowen59:40

       It's amazing what China has done, but I would say, to put it in perspective, if you compare them to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, they've still done much worse.

    7. LFLex Fridman59:51

       Hmm.

    8. TCTyler Cowen59:52

       Not even close.

    9. LFLex Fridman59:53

       Yes.

    10. TCTyler Cowen59:53

        And that's both living standards, or I hesitate to say democracy as an unalloyed good in and of itself, but there's more freedom in all those other places.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:00:02

        Yes.

    12. TCTyler Cowen1:00:02

        By a lot. So, China has all these problems of history, but they've managed, as actually the Soviets did in the middle of the 20th century, one of the two great mass migrations from the countryside to cities, which boosts productivity enormously and will sustain totalitarian systems, but they moved from a totalitarian system to an oligarchy-

    13. LFLex Fridman1:00:24

        Mm-hmm.

    14. TCTyler Cowen1:00:24

        ... where the CCP is actually, at least for a while, hey, have been really good at governing, have made a lot of really good decisions. You have to admit that. I don't know how long that streak will continue. With one person so much now holding authority in a more extreme manner, the selection pressures for the next generation of high-level CCP members-

    15. LFLex Fridman1:00:50

        Mm-hmm.

    16. TCTyler Cowen1:00:50

        ... probably become much worse. You have this general problem of the state-owned enterprises losing relative productivity compared to the private sector. Well, we're gonna kind of-... hold Jack Ma on this island, and he can only issue, like, weird hello statements. It kind of smells bad to me. I don't feel that it's about to crash, uh-

    17. LFLex Fridman1:01:12

        But long-term-

    18. TCTyler Cowen1:01:12

        ... but I don't see them supplanting America as like the world's number one country. I think they will muddle through and have very serious problems. But there's enough talent there, they will muddle through.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:01:24

        Is there ideas from China or from anywhere in general of large-scale role of government that you find might be useful? Like, Andrew Yang recently ran on a platform of UBI, right? Uh, universal basic income. Is there, um, some interesting ideas of large-scale government, uh, sort of welfare programs at scale that, um, you find interesting?

    20. TCTyler Cowen1:01:51

        Well, keep in mind, the current version of the Chinese Communist Party, post-Mao, dismantled what was called the iron rice bowl.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:01:59

        Mm-hmm.

    22. TCTyler Cowen1:02:00

        So it took apart the healthcare protections, a lot of the welfare system, a lot of the guaranteed jobs. So the economic rise of China coincided with the weakening of welfare.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:02:10

        Mm-hmm.

    24. TCTyler Cowen1:02:10

        I'm not saying that's causal per se, but people thi- think of China as having a government that takes care of everyone. It's very far from the truth.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:02:19

        Mm-hmm.

    26. TCTyler Cowen1:02:19

        And by a lot of metrics, I don't mean control over people's lives, I don't mean speech, but by a lot of metrics, economically, we have a lot more government than they do.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:02:28

        Mm-hmm.

    28. TCTyler Cowen1:02:29

        So what one means here by like government, private control, I don't think you can just add up the numbers and get a simple answer.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:02:36

        Mm-hmm.

    30. TCTyler Cowen1:02:36

        They've been fantastic at building infrastructure in cities in ways that will attract people from the countryside, and furthermore, they more or less enforce a meritocracy in this sense. Like if you're a- a kid of a rich guy, you'll get unfair privilege.
17. 1:03:48 – 1:07:43

    UBI

    1. LFLex Fridman1:03:48

       But what do you think about these large government programs like UBI?

    2. TCTyler Cowen1:03:53

       The one version of UBI that makes the most sense to me is the Mitt Romney version, UBI for kids.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:03:59

       Uh-huh.

    4. TCTyler Cowen1:03:59

       Like, kids are vulnerable. If their parents screw up, you shouldn't blame the kid or make the kid suffer. I believe in something like UBI for kids. Maybe just cash. Uh, but if you don't have kids, even with AI, my sense is at least in the world we know, you should be able to find a way to adjust. You might have to move, you know, to North Dakota to- to work, uh, you know, next to fracking say. Um, but look, before the pandemic, the two most robot-intensive societies, Japan and the US, US at least for manufacturing, uh, were at full employment.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:04:38

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TCTyler Cowen1:04:38

       So maybe there's some far off day where there's literally no work, John Lennon in Imagine, it's piped, you know, everywhere, and then we might revisit the question.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:04:49

       Yeah.

    8. TCTyler Cowen1:04:49

       But for now we, you know, we had rising wages, uh, in the Trump years and full employment. So I don't see that-

    9. LFLex Fridman1:04:55

       You don't see automation as a threat that fundamentally like shakes our society?

    10. TCTyler Cowen1:05:00

        It's a threat in the following sense. The new technologies are harder to work with for many people.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:05:05

        Yeah.

    12. TCTyler Cowen1:05:05

        And that's a social problem. But I'm not sure a universal-

    13. LFLex Fridman1:05:09

        Yeah.

    14. TCTyler Cowen1:05:09

        ... basic income is the right answer to that very real problem.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:05:13

        Well, that's also, I- I like the UBI for kids. (laughs) It's also, uh, your definition or the line, the threshold, for what is vulnerable and what is basic human nature. For going back to Russia, you know, life is suffering. Uh, uh, that, you know, struggle is a part of life and perhaps sort of changing, maybe the, what defines the 21st century is having multiple careers and adjusting and learning and-

    16. TCTyler Cowen1:05:39

        Right.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:05:39

        ... e- evolving. And, uh, some of the technology, uh, in terms of, uh, you know, some of the technology we see, like the in- n- internet, allows us to, uh, make those pivots easier. You know, allows later life education possible. It- it makes it possible. I don't know. Uh-

    18. TCTyler Cowen1:06:01

        In your earlier point about loneliness being this fundamental human problem-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:06:04

        Yes.

    20. TCTyler Cowen1:06:04

        ... which I would agree with strongly, UBI, if it's at a high level, will make that worse. I mean, say UBI were higher enough you could just sit at home, um, people are not gonna be happy. They don't actually want that.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:06:18

        Yeah.

    22. TCTyler Cowen1:06:18

        And we've relearned that in the pandemic.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:06:21

        Yeah, the flip side, the hope with UBI is you have a little bit more freedom to find the thing that alleviates your loneliness. That's the idea. So it's a- it's kind of an open question. If I give you a million dollars or a billion dollars, will you pursue the thing you love? Will you be, will you be more motivated to purs- to find the thing you love, to do the thing you love, or will you be lazy and lose yourself in the sort of daily activities that don't actually bring you joy but, g- you know, pacify you in some kind of way where you can, you just let the day slip by? That's- that's the open question.

    24. TCTyler Cowen1:07:02

        But a lot of the great creators did not have huge cushions.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:07:05

        Right.

    26. TCTyler Cowen1:07:05

        Whether it was Mozart or James Brown or-... the great painters in history-

    27. LFLex Fridman1:07:10

        Yeah.

    28. TCTyler Cowen1:07:10

        ... they- they had to work pretty hard. And if you look at heirs to great fortunes, maybe I'm forgetting someone, but it's hard to think of any who have creatively been important as novelists or... They might have continued to run the family business.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:07:25

        Yeah.

    30. TCTyler Cowen1:07:26

        But, you know, van Gogh was not heiress, not heir to a great family fortune.
18. 1:07:43 – 1:11:35

    Disagreement with Eric Weinstein

    1. LFLex Fridman1:07:43

       We mentioned Eric, uh, Eric Weinstein. I know you agree on a bunch of things. Is there some beautiful, fascinating, insightful disagreement that you have that has yet to be resolved with him? Is there some ideas that you guys battle- battle- battle it out on? Is it the stagnation question that you mentioned?

    2. TCTyler Cowen1:08:00

       That's one of them, but here's at least two others.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:08:03

       (laughs)

    4. TCTyler Cowen1:08:05

       But I would stress, Eric is always evolving, so I'm just talking about a time slice Eric, right?

    5. LFLex Fridman1:08:10

       (laughs)

    6. TCTyler Cowen1:08:10

       I don't know where he's at right now.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:08:12

       Yeah.

    8. TCTyler Cowen1:08:13

       Like I heard him on Clubhouse three nights ago, but that was three nights ago.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:08:16

       Yeah. (laughs)

    10. TCTyler Cowen1:08:17

        But I think he's far too pessimistic about the impact of immigration on US science.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:08:23

        Hmm.

    12. TCTyler Cowen1:08:23

        He thinks it has displaced US scientists, which I think that is partly true. I just think we've gotten better talent. I'm like, "Bring it on. Double down."

    13. LFLex Fridman1:08:32

        Hmm.

    14. TCTyler Cowen1:08:33

        And look at Karikó, you know, who basically came up with mRNA vaccines. She was from Hungary, and uh, was ridiculed and mocked. She couldn't get her papers published. She stuck at it. Uh, an American might not have been so stubborn 'cause we have these cushions. So Eric is all worried, you know, like mathematicians coming in, they're discouraging native US citizens from doing math. I'm like, bring in the best people. If we all end up in other avocations, absolutely fine by me.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:09:04

        Does it trouble you that we kick them out after they get a degree often?

    16. TCTyler Cowen1:09:08

        I would give anyone with a plausible graduate degree a green card, universally.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:09:13

        Yeah. That's, I- I agree with that. It makes no sense. It makes it so strange that the best people that come here suffer here, create awesome stuff here, then we kick them out. Doesn't make any sense.

    18. TCTyler Cowen1:09:24

        Here's another view I have. I call it open borders for Belarus.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:09:27

        (laughs)

    20. TCTyler Cowen1:09:29

        Now Russia's a big country. I would gladly like increase the Russian quota-

    21. LFLex Fridman1:09:33

        Yeah.

    22. TCTyler Cowen1:09:33

        ... by 3X, 4X, 5X. Like I... Not 20%, but a big boost. But Belarus-

    23. LFLex Fridman1:09:40

        (laughs)

    24. TCTyler Cowen1:09:40

        ... small country.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:09:41

        Yeah.

    26. TCTyler Cowen1:09:41

        Like, why can't...

    27. LFLex Fridman1:09:43

        Yeah.

    28. TCTyler Cowen1:09:43

        And they're poor-

    29. LFLex Fridman1:09:44

        Yeah.

    30. TCTyler Cowen1:09:44

        ... and they have decent education, and a lot of talent there. Why can't we just open the door-
19. 1:11:35 – 1:19:46

    Money, Bitcoin, and Ethereum

    1. LFLex Fridman1:11:35

       Let me, uh, completely shift topics on something that's fascinating-

    2. TCTyler Cowen1:11:38

       It's all the same topic, but great.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:11:41

       Everything is interesting. (laughs) Uh, what do you think about, what the hell is money? And, uh, uh, the recent, uh, the recent excitement around cryptocurrency that, um, brings to the forefront, uh, the philosophical discussion of the nature of money. Are you bullish on cryptocurrency? Are you excited about it? What does it make you think about how the nature of money is changing?

    4. TCTyler Cowen1:12:11

       No one knows what money is. Probably no one ever knew.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:12:15

       (laughs)

    6. TCTyler Cowen1:12:15

       Go back to medieval times, bills of exchange. Were they money? Maybe it's just a semantic debate. Gold, silver, what about copper coins? What about metals that were considered legal tender but not always circulating?

    7. LFLex Fridman1:12:27

       Yeah.

    8. TCTyler Cowen1:12:28

       What about credit? So, being confused about moneyness is the natural state of affairs for human beings. And if there's more of that, I'd say that's probably a good thing. Now crypto per se, I think Bitcoin has taken over a lot of the space held by gold.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:12:45

       Mm-hmm.

    10. TCTyler Cowen1:12:45

        That to me seems sustainable. Uh, I'm not short Bitcoin. I don't have some view that the price has to be different than the current price, but I know it changes every moment. Uh, I am deeply uncertain about the less of crypto, which seems connected to ultimate visions of using it for transactions-

    11. LFLex Fridman1:13:06

        Mm-hmm.

    12. TCTyler Cowen1:13:07

        ... in ways where I'm not sure whether it be, you know, prediction markets or DeFi. I...... I'm not sure the retail demand really is there once it is regulated like everything else is. I would say I'm 40/60 optimistic on those forms of crypto. That is, I think it's somewhat more likely they fail than succeed, but I take them very seriously.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:13:29

        So, we're talking about it becoming one of the main currencies in the world, that's what we're discussing?

    14. TCTyler Cowen1:13:33

        That I don't think will happen.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:13:35

        So, but- but the reality is that Bitcoin used to be in the single digits of a dollar, and now has crossed $50,000 for a single Bitcoin, uh, do you think it's possible it reaches something like a million dollars?

    16. TCTyler Cowen1:13:51

        I don't think we have a good theory of the value of Bitcoin. If people decide it's worth a million dollars, it's worth a million dollars.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:13:57

        But isn't that money? Like you said, isn't the ultimate state of money confusion (laughs) or however beautiful you put it?

    18. TCTyler Cowen1:14:03

        It's like valuing an Andy Warhol painting. So when Warhol started off, probably those things had no value-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:14:08

        Yeah.

    20. TCTyler Cowen1:14:08

        ... the sketches, early sketches of shoes. Uh, now a good Warhol could be worth over $50 million.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:14:14

        Yeah.

    22. TCTyler Cowen1:14:15

        That's an incredible rate of price appreciation. Bitcoin is seeing a similar trajectory. I don't pretend to know where it will stop-

    23. LFLex Fridman1:14:23

        (laughs)

    24. TCTyler Cowen1:14:23

        ... but it's about trying to figure out, well, what do people think of Andy Warhol? He could be out of fashion in a century. Maybe yes, maybe no. Uh, but you don't think about Warhols as money. They perform some money-like functions, you can even use them as collateral-

    25. LFLex Fridman1:14:40

        Mm-hmm.

    26. TCTyler Cowen1:14:40

        ... for, like, deals between gangs, but they're not basically money, nor is Bitcoin, and the transactions velocity of Bitcoin, I would think is likely to fall, if anything.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:14:51

        So you don't think there will be some kind of phase shift where it will become adopted and become mainstream for the tran- for, for the main, for one of the main mechanisms of transactions?

    28. TCTyler Cowen1:15:00

        Bitcoin, no. Now, you know, Ether has some chance at that. I would bet against it, but I wouldn't give you a definitive no.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:15:06

        And you would put it at zero.

    30. TCTyler Cowen1:15:07

        Bitcoin is too costly. It- it may be fine to hold it, like gold, but gold is also costly. Uh, you have smart people trying to make, say, Ether, much more effective as a currency than Bitcoin-
20. 1:19:46 – 1:23:42

    WallStreetBets

    1. TCTyler Cowen1:19:46

    2. LFLex Fridman1:19:46

       What do you make of WallStreetBets? Another thing that recently happened that sh- shook the world and, uh, at least me from the outsider perspective, made me question what I do and don't understand about our economic system, (laughs) which is a bunch of different, uh, a bun- a large number of individuals getting together on the internet and having a large-scale impact on the markets.

    3. TCTyler Cowen1:20:10

       If you tell a group of people and coordinate them through the internet, "We're gonna play a fun game. It might cost you money. But you're gonna make the headlines. And there's a chance you'll screw over some billionaires and hedge funds," enough people will play that game.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:20:22

       Yes.

    5. TCTyler Cowen1:20:23

       So that game might continue, but I don't think it's of macroeconomic importance.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:20:26

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TCTyler Cowen1:20:27

       And the price of those stocks in the medium term will end up wherever it ought to be.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:20:33

       So these are little outliers from a macroeconomics perspective. They're, they're not going to... Th- these are not signals of a shifting power, like from, from centralized power to distributive power. These aren't some fundamental changes in the way our economy works. It's just-

    9. TCTyler Cowen1:20:50

       I think of it as a new brand of esports, maybe more fun-

    10. LFLex Fridman1:20:53

        (laughs)

    11. TCTyler Cowen1:20:53

        ... than the old brand.

    12. LFLex Fridman1:20:55

        Ah.

    13. TCTyler Cowen1:20:55

        Which is fine, right? It's like, push the anarchy into the corners where you want it.

    14. LFLex Fridman1:20:59

        (laughs)

    15. TCTyler Cowen1:20:59

        It doesn't bother me. But I think people are seeing it as more fundamental than it is. It's a new esport-

    16. LFLex Fridman1:21:06

        Yeah.

    17. TCTyler Cowen1:21:06

        ... more fun for many, but more expensive than the old esports.

    18. LFLex Fridman1:21:10

        (laughs)

    19. TCTyler Cowen1:21:11

        Like chess is a new esport.

    20. LFLex Fridman1:21:12

        Yeah.

    21. TCTyler Cowen1:21:12

        Super cheap, not as fun as like, you know, sending hedge funds to their doom, but like-

    22. LFLex Fridman1:21:18

        (laughs)

    23. TCTyler Cowen1:21:18

        ... what would you expect?

    24. LFLex Fridman1:21:19

        The, the poetry of that, I love it. Okay. Uh, but macroeconomically, it's not, it's not fundamental. Okay. I was gonna say, I hope you're right, 'cause I'm uncomfortable with the chaos of the masses this creates, but, uh, I also-

    25. TCTyler Cowen1:21:33

        I think that chaos is somewhat real, to be clear.

    26. LFLex Fridman1:21:36

        Yes.

    27. TCTyler Cowen1:21:37

        But it will matter through other channels, not through manipulating, you know, GameStop or-

    28. LFLex Fridman1:21:44

        Yeah.

    29. TCTyler Cowen1:21:44

        ... AMC. So, y- you're seeing the real macro phenomenon. When people see a real macro phenomenon, they tend to make every micro story fit the narrative.

    30. LFLex Fridman1:21:53

        Mm-hmm.
21. 1:23:42 – 1:31:10

    MIT

    1. LFLex Fridman1:23:42

       We... Exactly. And you, and, uh, I mean, as Eric talks about, uh, on the science side of things, I mean, I said, uh, like at MIT, especially in the machine learning field, there's a natural institutional resistance to the weird. It's very, as they talk about, it's, it's, it's difficult to hire weird faculty, for example.

    2. TCTyler Cowen1:24:01

       Correct.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:24:01

       You want to hire, you want to hire and give tenure to people that are safe and not weird. And that's one of the concerns, is like, it seems like the weird people are the ones that push the science forward usually.

    4. TCTyler Cowen1:24:13

       Right.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:24:14

       And so, like, how do you, how do you balance the two? It's not obvious, because it's-

    6. TCTyler Cowen1:24:18

       It's another area where Eric and I disagree. As I interpret him, he thinks academia is totally bankrupt.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:24:24

       Yeah.

    8. TCTyler Cowen1:24:24

       And I think it's only partially bankrupt. (laughs)

    9. LFLex Fridman1:24:27

       (laughs) How do we fix it? 'Cause I, I'm, I'm with you. I'm opt- I'm bullish on academia.

    10. TCTyler Cowen1:24:32

        You need up-and-coming schools that end up better than where they started off, and MIT was once one of them.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:24:38

        Yes.

    12. TCTyler Cowen1:24:38

        Now they're... Not in every area. In some areas, they have become the problem.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:24:42

        Yep.

    14. TCTyler Cowen1:24:43

        U Chicago, you wouldn't call it up and coming, but it's still different, and that's great. Let's hope they manage to keep it that way. Uh, the biggest problem to me is the rank absurd conformism at kind of second-tier schools, maybe in the top 40 but not in the top dozen, that are just trying to be like a junior MIT-

    15. LFLex Fridman1:25:02

        Mm-hmm.

    16. TCTyler Cowen1:25:02

        ... but it's mediocre and copycat, and they're the most dogmatic enforcers of weirdness that like... Harvard is more open than those second-tier schools.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:25:11

        Oh, okay.

    18. TCTyler Cowen1:25:11

        And those second-tier schools are pretty good typically, right?

    19. LFLex Fridman1:25:14

        Yeah. But the mediocrity is enforced there.

    20. TCTyler Cowen1:25:17

        Correct.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:25:18

        Yeah.

    22. TCTyler Cowen1:25:18

        Very strictly. And the homogenization pressures, "Look, try and, you know, climb the rankings by another three places-"

    23. LFLex Fridman1:25:24

        Yeah.

    24. TCTyler Cowen1:25:24

        "... and be a little closer to MIT, though you'll never touch them."

    25. LFLex Fridman1:25:27

        Yeah.

    26. TCTyler Cowen1:25:27

        That, to me, is very harmful. And you'd rather they be more like Chicago, more like Caltech...... or the other Caltech all the more. Like, pick some model, be weird in it, you might fail. That's socially better.

Episode duration: 2:09:57