Tyler Cowen: Economic Growth and the Fight Against Conformity and Mediocrity
音乐与艺术政治与社会技术与编程心理与人性商业与创业
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🎙️ 完整对话（3035 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Tyler Cohen,
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an economist at George Mason University
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and co creator of an amazing economics blog
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called Marginal Revolution, author of many books,
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including The Great Stagnation, Average Is Over
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and his most recent Big Business,
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A Love Letter to an American Antihero.
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He's truly a polymath in his work,
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including his love for food,
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which makes this amazing podcast
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called Conversations with Tyler really fun to listen to.
Tyler Cowen (00:30.880)
Quick mention of our sponsors,
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Linode, ExpressVPN, Simplisafe and Public Goods.
Tyler Cowen (00:37.380)
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
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As a side note, given Tyler's culinary explorations,
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let me say that one of the things that makes me sad
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about my love hate relationship with food
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is that while I've found a simple diet,
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plain meat, veggies, that makes me happy in day to day life,
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I sometimes wish I had the mental ability
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to moderate consumption of food
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so that I could truly enjoy meals
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that go way outside of that diet.
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I've seen my mom, for example,
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enjoy a single piece of chocolate
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and yet if I were to eat one piece of chocolate,
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the odds are high that I would end up eating the whole box.
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This is definitely something I would like to fix
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because some of the amazing artistry in this world
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happens in the kitchen and some of the richest
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human experiences happen over a unique meal.
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I recently was eating cheeseburgers
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with Joe Rogan and John Donahue late at night in Austin,
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talking about jiu jitsu and life
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and I was distinctly aware of the magic of that experience.
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Magic made possible by the incredibly
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delicious cheeseburgers.
Tyler Cowen (01:44.460)
This is the Lex Friedman podcast
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and here is my conversation with Tyler Cohen.
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Would you say economics is more art or science
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or philosophy or even magic?
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What is it?
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Economics is interesting because it's all of the above.
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To start with magic, the notion that you can
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make some change and simply everyone's better off,
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that is a kind of modern magic
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that has replaced old style magic.
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It's an art in the sense that the models are not very exact.
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It's a science in the sense that occasionally
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propositions are falsified.
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Are a few basic things we know
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and however trivial they may sound,
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if you don't know them, you're out of luck.
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So all of the above.
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But from my outsider's perspective,
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economics is sometimes able to formulate very simple,
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almost like E equals MC squared,
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general models of how our human society will function
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when you do a certain thing.
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But it seems impossible or almost way too optimistic
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to think that a single formula
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or just a set of simple principles
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can describe behavior of billions of human beings
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with all the complexity that we have involved.
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So do you have a sense there's a hope for economics
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to have those kinds of physics level descriptions
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and models of the world?
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Or is it just our desperate attempts as humans
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to make sense of it even though it's more desperate
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than rigorous and serious and actually predictable
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like a physics type science?
Tyler Cowen (03:20.540)
I don't think economics will ever be very predictive.
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It's most useful for helping you ask better questions.
Tyler Cowen (03:27.260)
You look at something like game theory.
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Well, game theory never predicted USA and USSR
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would have a war, would not have a war.
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But trying to think through the logic of strategic conflict,
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if you know game theory,
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it's just a much more interesting discussion.
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Are you surprised that we,
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speaking of the Soviet Union and the United States
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and speaking of game theory,
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are you surprised that we haven't destroyed ourselves
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with nuclear weapons yet?
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Like that simple formulation
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of mutually assured destruction,
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that's a good example of an explanation
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that perhaps allows us to ask better questions.
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But it seems to have actually described the reality
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of why we haven't destroyed ourselves
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with these ultra powerful weapons.
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Are you surprised, do you think
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the game theoretic explanation is at all accurate there?
Tyler Cowen (04:16.880)
I think we will destroy each other with those weapons.
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Eventually.
Tyler Cowen (04:20.760)
Eventually.
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Look, it's a very low probability event.
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So I'm not surprised it hasn't happened yet.
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I'm a little surprised it came as close as it did.
Tyler Cowen (04:29.500)
You know, you're general thinking,
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realizing it might've just been a flock of birds
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or it wasn't a first strike attack from the USA.
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We got very lucky on that one.
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But if you just keep on running the clock
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on a low probability event, it will happen.
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And it may not be USA and China,
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USA and Russia, whatever.
Tyler Cowen (04:47.160)
You know, it could be the Saudis and Turkey.
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And it might not be nuclear weapons,
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it might be some other destruction.
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Bio weapons.
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But it simply will happen is my view.
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And I've argued at best we have 700 or 800 years
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and that's being generous.
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A worst?
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How long we got?
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Well, maybe it's like a post on arrival process, right?
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So tiny probability could come any time.
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Probably not in your lifetime.
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But the chance presumably increases
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the cheaper weapons of mass destruction are.
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So the Poisson process description doesn't take
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in consideration the game theoretic aspect.
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So another way to consider is repeated games,
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iterative games.
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So is there something about our human nature
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that allows us to fight against probability?
Tyler Cowen (05:37.260)
Reduce, like the closer we get to trouble,
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the more we're able to figure out how to avoid trouble.
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The same thing is for when you take exams
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or you go and take classes,
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the closer or paper deadlines,
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the closer you get to a deadline,
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the better you start to perform
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and get your shit together and actually get stuff done.
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I'm really not so negative on human nature.
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And as an economist,
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I very much see the gains from cooperation.
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But if you just ask, are there outliers in history?
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Like was there a Hitler, for instance?
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Obviously.
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And again, you let the clock tick,
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another Hitler with nuclear weapons,
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doesn't per se care about his own destruction,
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it will happen.
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So your sense is fundamentally people are good,
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but outliers happen.
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A trembling hand equilibrium is what we would call it.
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Trembling hand equilibrium?
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That the basic logic is for cooperation,
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which is mostly what we've seen, even between enemies.
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But every now and then someone does something crazy
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and you don't know how to react to it.
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And you can't always beat Hitler.
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Sometimes Hitler drags you down.
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To push back, is it possible
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that the crazier the person, the less likely they are,
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and in a way where we're safe,
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meaning like, this is the kind of proposition,
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I had the discussion with my dad as a physicist about this,
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where he thinks that like if you have a graph,
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like evil people can't also be geniuses.
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So this is his defense why evil people
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will not get control of nuclear weapons,
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because to be truly evil.
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But evil meaning sort of, you can argue that,
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not even the evil of Hitler we're talking about,
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because Hitler had a kind of view of Germany
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and all those kinds of, there's like,
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he probably deluded himself and the people around him
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to think that he's actually doing good for the world,
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similar with Stalin and so on.
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By evil, I mean more like almost like terrorists
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to where they wanna destroy themselves and the world.
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Like those people will never be able to be
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actually skilled enough to do,
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to deliver that kind of mass scale destruction.
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So the hope is that it's very unlikely
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that the kind of evil that would lead to extinctions
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of humans or mass destruction is so unlikely
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that we're able to last way longer than some 100, 800 years.
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Is that?
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It's very unlikely.
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In that sense, I accept the argument,
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but that's why you need to let the clock tick.
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It's also the best argument for bureaucracy.
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To negotiate a bureaucracy,
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it actually selects against pure evil
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because you need to build alliances.
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So bureaucracy in that regard is great, right?
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It keeps out the worst apples.
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But look, put it this way,
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could you imagine 35 years from now,
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the Osama bin Laden of the future
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has nukes or very bad bio weapons?
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It seems to me you can.
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And Osama was pretty evil.
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And actually even he failed, right?
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But nonetheless, that's what the 700 or 800 years
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is there for.
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And there might be destructive technologies
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that don't have such a high cost of production
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or such a high learning curve.
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Like cyber attacks or artificial intelligence,
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all those kinds of things.
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Yeah.
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I mean, let me ask you a question.
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Let's say you could as an act of will,
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by spending a million dollars,
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obliterate any city on earth and everyone in it dies.
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And you'll get caught and you'll be sentenced to death,
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but you can make it happen just by willing it.
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How many months does it take before that happens?
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So the obvious answer is like very soon.
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There's probably a good answer for that
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because you can consider how many millionaires there are,
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how many you could look at that, right?
Tyler Cowen (09:22.740)
Right.
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I have a sense that there's just people
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that have a million dollars.
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I mean, there's a certain amount,
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but have a million dollars,
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have other interests that will outweigh
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the interest of destroying an entire city.
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Like there's a particular,
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like, I mean, maybe that's a hope.
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It's why we should be nice to the wealthy too, right?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, all that trash talking as Bill Gates,
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we should stop that
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because that doesn't inspire the other future Bill Gates
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is to be nice to the world.
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That's true.
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But your sense is the cheaper it gets to destroy the world,
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the more likely it becomes.
Tyler Cowen (10:07.460)
Now, when I say destroy the world,
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there's a trick in there.
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I don't think literally every human will die,
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but it would set back civilization
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by an extraordinary degree.
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It's then just hard to predict what comes next.
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But a catastrophe where everyone dies,
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that probably has to be something more like an asteroid
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or supernova.
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And those are purely exogenous for the time being, at least.
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So I immigrated to this country.
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I was born in the Soviet Union in Russia and...
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Which one?
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Which one?
Tyler Cowen (10:37.980)
I guess it's an important question.
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You were born in the Soviet Union, right?
Tyler Cowen (10:41.460)
Yes, I was born in the Soviet Union.
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The rest is details, but I grew up in Moscow, Russia.
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But I came to this country,
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and this country even back there,
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but it's always symbolized to me a place of opportunity
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where everybody could build the most incredible things,
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especially in the engineering side of things.
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Just invent and build and scale
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and have a huge impact on the world.
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And that's been, to me, the...
Tyler Cowen (11:11.060)
That's my version of the American ideal, the American dream.
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Do you think the American dream is still there?
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Do you think...
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What do you think of that notion in itself,
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like from an economics perspective,
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from a human perspective, is it still alive?
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And how do you think about it?
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The American dream.
Tyler Cowen (11:30.860)
The American dream is mostly still there.
Lex Fridman (11:33.540)
If you look at which groups are the highest earners,
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it is individuals from India and individuals from Iran,
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which is a fairly new development.
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Great for them, not necessarily easy.
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Both you could call persons of color,
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may have faced discrimination,
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also on the grounds of religion, yet they've done it.
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That's amazing.
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It says great things about America.
Tyler Cowen (11:56.540)
Now, if you look at native born Americans,
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the story's trickier.
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People think intergenerational mobility
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has declined a lot recently,
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but it has not for native born Americans.
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For about, I think, 40 years, it's been fairly constant,
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which is sort of good,
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but compared to much earlier times,
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it was much higher in the past.
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I'm not sure we can replicate that,
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because look, go to the beginning of the 20th century,
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very few Americans finish high school,
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or even have much wealth.
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There's not much credentialism.
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There aren't that many credentials.
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So there's more upward mobility
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across the generations than today.
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And it's a good thing that we had it.
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I'm not sure we should blame the modern world
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for not being able to reproduce that.
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But look, the general issue of
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who gets into Harvard or Cornell?
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Is there an injustice?
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Should we fix that?
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Is there too little opportunity for the bottom,
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say, half of Americans?
Tyler Cowen (12:54.340)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (12:55.460)
It's a disgrace how this country has evolved in that way.
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And in that sense, the American dream is clearly ailing.
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But it has had problems from the beginning,
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for blacks, for women, for many other groups.
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I mean, isn't that the whole challenge of opportunity
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and freedom is that it's hard,
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and the difficulty of how hard it is to move up in society
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is unequal often, and that's the injustice of society.
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But the whole point of that freedom
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is that over time, it becomes better and better.
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You start to fix the leaks, the issues,
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and it keeps progressing in that kind of way.
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But ultimately, there's always the opportunity,
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even if it's harder, there's the opportunity
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to create something truly special,
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to move up, to be president, to be a leader
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in whatever the industry that you're passionate about.
Tyler Cowen (13:49.020)
We each have podcasts, right, in English.
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The value of joining that American English language network
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is much higher today than it was 30 years ago,
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mostly because of the internet.
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So that makes immigration returns themselves skewed.
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So going to the US, Canada, or the UK,
Tyler Cowen (14:07.180)
I think has become much more valuable in relative terms
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than, say, going to France,
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which is still a pretty well off, very nice country.
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If you had gone to France,
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your chance of having a globally known podcast
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would be much smaller.
Tyler Cowen (14:21.740)
Yeah, this is the interesting thing
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about how much intellectual influence
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the United States has.
Lex Fridman (14:28.580)
I don't know if it's connected to what we're discussing here,
Tyler Cowen (14:31.940)
the freedom and opportunity of the American dream,
Lex Fridman (14:34.980)
or does it make any sense to you
Tyler Cowen (14:37.380)
that we have so much impact on the rest of the world
Lex Fridman (14:41.300)
in terms of ideas?
Tyler Cowen (14:45.500)
Is it just simply because English
Lex Fridman (14:47.540)
is the primary language of the world,
Tyler Cowen (14:49.740)
or is there something fundamental to the United States
Lex Fridman (14:52.100)
that drives the development of ideas?
Tyler Cowen (14:55.500)
It's almost like what's cool, what's entertaining,
Lex Fridman (14:59.780)
what's like meme culture, the internet culture,
Tyler Cowen (15:06.220)
the philosophers, the intellectuals, the podcasts,
Lex Fridman (15:09.220)
the movies, music, all that stuff, driving culture.
Tyler Cowen (15:13.300)
There's something above and beyond language
Lex Fridman (15:15.140)
in the United States.
Tyler Cowen (15:16.620)
It's a sense of entertainment really mattering,
Lex Fridman (15:19.140)
how to connect with your audience,
Tyler Cowen (15:20.940)
being direct and getting to the point,
Lex Fridman (15:23.700)
how humor is integrated even with science
Tyler Cowen (15:27.260)
that is pretty strongly represented here,
Lex Fridman (15:30.300)
much more so than on the European continent.
Tyler Cowen (15:32.660)
Britain has its own version of this,
Lex Fridman (15:34.300)
which it does very well,
Lex Fridman (15:36.140)
and not surprisingly, they're hugely influential
Lex Fridman (15:38.340)
in music, comedy, most of the other areas you mentioned.
Tyler Cowen (15:41.940)
Canada, yes, but their best talent tends to come here,
Lex Fridman (15:44.820)
but you could say it's like a broader North American thing
Lex Fridman (15:47.980)
and give them their fair share of credit.
Lex Fridman (15:50.220)
What about science?
Tyler Cowen (15:52.180)
There's a sense higher education is really strong,
Lex Fridman (15:56.700)
research is really strong in the United States,
Lex Fridman (15:58.660)
but it just feels like, culturally speaking,
Lex Fridman (16:01.940)
when we zoom out, scientists aren't very cool here.
Tyler Cowen (16:07.540)
Most people wouldn't be able to name
Lex Fridman (16:09.460)
basically a single scientist.
Tyler Cowen (16:11.180)
Maybe they would say like, they would say what,
Lex Fridman (16:13.260)
like Einstein and Neil deGrasse Tyson maybe,
Lex Fridman (16:16.620)
and Neil deGrasse Tyson isn't exactly a scientist,
Lex Fridman (16:18.820)
he's a science communicator.
Lex Fridman (16:20.420)
So there's not the same kind of admiration
Lex Fridman (16:25.420)
of science and innovators as there is of like,
Tyler Cowen (16:30.060)
athletes or actors, actresses, musicians.
Lex Fridman (16:34.980)
Well, you can become a celebrity scientist if you want to.
Tyler Cowen (16:38.060)
It may or may not be best for science.
Lex Fridman (16:40.180)
And we have Spock from Star Trek, who is still a big deal,
Lex Fridman (16:44.340)
but look at it this way.
Lex Fridman (16:45.780)
Which country is most comfortable
Tyler Cowen (16:47.420)
with inegalitarian rewards for scientists,
Lex Fridman (16:50.900)
whether it's fame or money?
Lex Fridman (16:52.420)
And I still think it's here.
Lex Fridman (16:53.420)
Some of that's just the tax rate.
Tyler Cowen (16:55.380)
Some of it is a lot of America is set up
Lex Fridman (16:57.700)
for rich people to live really well.
Lex Fridman (17:00.220)
And again, that's going to attract a lot of top talent.
Lex Fridman (17:02.740)
And you ask like, the two best vaccines.
Tyler Cowen (17:05.220)
I know the Pfizer vaccine is sort of from Germany,
Lex Fridman (17:08.020)
sort of from Turkey, but it's nonetheless
Tyler Cowen (17:11.180)
being distributed through the United States.
Lex Fridman (17:13.260)
Moderna, an ethnic Armenian immigrant through Lebanon,
Tyler Cowen (17:17.860)
first to Canada, then down here to Boston, Cambridge area.
Lex Fridman (17:21.380)
Those are incredible vaccines.
Lex Fridman (17:22.820)
And US nailed it.
Lex Fridman (17:25.180)
Yeah, well, that's more almost like the,
Tyler Cowen (17:28.780)
I don't know what you would call it,
Lex Fridman (17:29.940)
engineering, the sort of scaling.
Tyler Cowen (17:32.700)
That's what US is really good at,
Lex Fridman (17:34.660)
not just inventing of ideas,
Lex Fridman (17:36.100)
but taking an idea and actually building the thing
Lex Fridman (17:38.220)
and scaling it and being able to distribute it at scale.
Tyler Cowen (17:42.580)
I think some people would attribute that
Lex Fridman (17:44.980)
to the general word of capitalism.
Tyler Cowen (17:49.580)
I don't know if you would.
Lex Fridman (17:51.260)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (17:52.100)
What in your views are the pros and cons of capitalism
Lex Fridman (17:57.500)
as it's implemented in America?
Tyler Cowen (17:59.740)
I don't know if you would say
Lex Fridman (18:00.620)
capitalism really exists in America,
Lex Fridman (18:03.140)
but to the extent that it does.
Lex Fridman (18:04.820)
People use the word capitalism in so many different ways.
Lex Fridman (18:08.380)
What is capitalism?
Lex Fridman (18:09.820)
The literal meaning is private ownership of capital goods,
Tyler Cowen (18:13.500)
which I favor in most areas.
Lex Fridman (18:15.940)
But no, I don't think the private sector
Tyler Cowen (18:17.700)
should own our F16s or military assets.
Lex Fridman (18:20.840)
Government owned water utilities seem to work
Tyler Cowen (18:23.860)
as well as privately owned water utilities.
Lex Fridman (18:26.820)
But with all those qualifications put to the side,
Tyler Cowen (18:30.980)
business, for the most part,
Lex Fridman (18:33.740)
innovates better than government.
Tyler Cowen (18:35.280)
It is oriented toward consumer services.
Lex Fridman (18:38.120)
The biggest businesses tend to pay the highest wages.
Tyler Cowen (18:41.260)
Business is great at getting things done.
Lex Fridman (18:43.660)
USA is fundamentally a nation of business
Lex Fridman (18:46.500)
and that makes us a nation of opportunity.
Lex Fridman (18:49.140)
So I am indeed mostly a fan.
Tyler Cowen (18:51.780)
Subject to numerous caveats.
Lex Fridman (18:54.000)
What's the con?
Lex Fridman (18:56.300)
What are some negative downsides of capitalism
Lex Fridman (19:00.300)
in your view or some things that we should be concerned
Lex Fridman (19:03.860)
about maybe for longterm impacts of capitalism?
Lex Fridman (19:07.740)
Again, capitalism takes a different form in each country.
Tyler Cowen (19:10.860)
I would say in the United States,
Lex Fridman (19:12.940)
our weird blend of whatever you want to call it
Tyler Cowen (19:16.120)
has had an enduring racial problem from the beginning,
Lex Fridman (19:20.160)
has been a force of taking away land
Tyler Cowen (19:22.740)
from Native Americans and oppressing them
Lex Fridman (19:25.460)
pretty much from the beginning.
Tyler Cowen (19:30.180)
It has done very well by immigrants for the most part.
Lex Fridman (19:35.020)
We revel in championitarian creative destruction more.
Lex Fridman (19:38.960)
So we don't just prop up national champions forever.
Lex Fridman (19:42.260)
And there's a precariousness to life for some people here
Tyler Cowen (19:45.440)
that is less so say in Germany or the Netherlands.
Lex Fridman (19:48.980)
We have weaker communities in some regards
Tyler Cowen (19:51.780)
than say Northwestern Europe often would.
Lex Fridman (19:54.460)
That has pluses and minuses.
Tyler Cowen (19:55.860)
I think it makes us more creative.
Lex Fridman (19:57.780)
It's a better country in which to be a weirdo
Lex Fridman (1:00:00.620)
but there's more freedom in all those other places by a lot.
Lex Fridman (1:00:04.020)
So China has all these problems of history,
Lex Fridman (1:00:07.100)
but they've managed, as actually the Soviets did
Lex Fridman (1:00:09.580)
in the middle of the 20th century,
Tyler Cowen (1:00:12.300)
one of the two great mass migrations
Lex Fridman (1:00:14.020)
from the countryside to cities,
Tyler Cowen (1:00:15.780)
which boosts productivity enormously
Lex Fridman (1:00:18.220)
and will sustain totalitarian systems,
Lex Fridman (1:00:21.020)
but they moved from a totalitarian system to an oligarchy
Lex Fridman (1:00:24.620)
where the CCP is actually, at least for a while,
Tyler Cowen (1:00:29.140)
hey, have been really good at governing,
Lex Fridman (1:00:31.140)
have made a lot of very good decisions.
Tyler Cowen (1:00:33.740)
You have to admit that.
Lex Fridman (1:00:35.580)
I don't know how long that streak will continue
Tyler Cowen (1:00:38.420)
with one person so much now holding authority
Lex Fridman (1:00:43.420)
in a more extreme manner.
Tyler Cowen (1:00:45.820)
The selection pressures for the next generation
Lex Fridman (1:00:48.140)
of high level CCP members probably become much worse.
Tyler Cowen (1:00:52.620)
You have this general problem of the state owned enterprise
Lex Fridman (1:00:55.260)
is losing relative productivity
Tyler Cowen (1:00:57.100)
compared to the private sector.
Lex Fridman (1:00:58.780)
Well, we're gonna kind of hold Jack Ma on this island
Lex Fridman (1:01:02.620)
and he can only issue like weird hello statements.
Lex Fridman (1:01:06.140)
It kind of smells bad to me.
Tyler Cowen (1:01:08.660)
I don't feel that it's about to crash,
Lex Fridman (1:01:10.900)
but I don't see them supplanting America
Tyler Cowen (1:01:14.740)
as like the world's number one country.
Lex Fridman (1:01:17.300)
I think they will muddle through
Lex Fridman (1:01:19.260)
and have very serious problems,
Lex Fridman (1:01:21.740)
but there's enough talent there they will muddle through.
Tyler Cowen (1:01:24.020)
Is there ideas from China or from anywhere in general
Lex Fridman (1:01:26.620)
of large scale role of government
Lex Fridman (1:01:29.340)
that you find might be useful?
Lex Fridman (1:01:30.500)
Like Andrew Yang recently ran on a platform,
Tyler Cowen (1:01:33.780)
UBI, right, Universal Basic Income.
Lex Fridman (1:01:37.140)
Is there some interesting ideas of large scale
Tyler Cowen (1:01:43.500)
government sort of welfare programs at scale
Lex Fridman (1:01:47.580)
that you find interesting?
Tyler Cowen (1:01:51.700)
Well, keep in mind the current version
Lex Fridman (1:01:54.260)
of the Chinese Communist Party post now dismantled
Lex Fridman (1:01:57.900)
what was called the iron rice ball.
Lex Fridman (1:02:00.020)
So it took apart the healthcare protections,
Tyler Cowen (1:02:02.340)
a lot of the welfare system, a lot of the guaranteed jobs.
Lex Fridman (1:02:05.900)
So the economic rise of China coincided
Tyler Cowen (1:02:08.100)
with the weakening of welfare.
Lex Fridman (1:02:10.500)
I'm not saying that's causal per se,
Lex Fridman (1:02:12.980)
but people think of China as having a government
Lex Fridman (1:02:16.820)
that takes care of everyone, it's very far from the truth.
Lex Fridman (1:02:19.460)
And by a lot of metrics,
Lex Fridman (1:02:20.900)
I don't mean control over people's lives,
Tyler Cowen (1:02:23.540)
I don't mean speech, but by a lot of metrics,
Lex Fridman (1:02:25.820)
economically we have a lot more government than they do.
Lex Fridman (1:02:28.900)
So what one means here by like government, private control,
Lex Fridman (1:02:32.740)
I don't think you can just add up the numbers
Lex Fridman (1:02:35.100)
and get a simple answer.
Lex Fridman (1:02:36.740)
They've been fantastic at building infrastructure in cities
Tyler Cowen (1:02:40.780)
in ways that will attract people from the countryside.
Lex Fridman (1:02:44.020)
And furthermore, they more or less enforce a meritocracy
Tyler Cowen (1:02:47.540)
in this sense.
Lex Fridman (1:02:48.980)
Like if you're a kid of a rich guy,
Tyler Cowen (1:02:51.380)
you'll get unfair privilege.
Lex Fridman (1:02:53.220)
That's unfair, but systems can afford that.
Tyler Cowen (1:02:56.020)
If you are smart and from the countryside
Lex Fridman (1:02:57.820)
and your parents have nothing,
Tyler Cowen (1:02:59.780)
you will be elevated and sent to a very good school,
Lex Fridman (1:03:02.620)
graduate school because of the exam system.
Lex Fridman (1:03:05.180)
And they do that and they mean that very consistently.
Lex Fridman (1:03:08.580)
It's like the Soviets had a version of that
Tyler Cowen (1:03:10.260)
like for chess and romantic piano.
Lex Fridman (1:03:12.460)
Not for everything, but where they had it,
Lex Fridman (1:03:14.980)
like again, they were tremendous, right?
Lex Fridman (1:03:17.420)
Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:03:18.260)
And Chinese have it in so many areas,
Lex Fridman (1:03:21.060)
a genuine meritocracy in this one way.
Tyler Cowen (1:03:23.580)
That moves people from the rural to the big city
Lex Fridman (1:03:26.460)
and that's a big boost of productivity
Tyler Cowen (1:03:29.060)
for some amount of time.
Lex Fridman (1:03:30.500)
And when they get there, they're taken seriously.
Tyler Cowen (1:03:32.300)
Jack Ma was riding a bicycle,
Lex Fridman (1:03:34.020)
teaching English in his late 20s.
Tyler Cowen (1:03:35.740)
He was a poor guy.
Lex Fridman (1:03:39.180)
Not a society of credentialism.
Tyler Cowen (1:03:41.540)
Or in America, it's way too much a credentialist society.
Lex Fridman (1:03:45.460)
As we're talking about even with the Nobel Prize.
Lex Fridman (1:03:47.940)
But what do you think about these large government programs
Lex Fridman (1:03:51.340)
like UBI?
Tyler Cowen (1:03:53.180)
The one version of UBI that makes the most sense to me
Lex Fridman (1:03:55.860)
is the Mitt Romney version, UBI for kids.
Tyler Cowen (1:03:59.300)
Like kids are vulnerable.
Lex Fridman (1:04:00.660)
If their parents screw up, you shouldn't blame the kid
Tyler Cowen (1:04:03.060)
or make the kids suffer.
Lex Fridman (1:04:04.980)
I believe in something like UBI for kids.
Tyler Cowen (1:04:07.580)
Maybe just cash.
Lex Fridman (1:04:09.900)
But if you don't have kids, even with AI,
Tyler Cowen (1:04:13.540)
my sense is at least in the world we know,
Lex Fridman (1:04:16.420)
you should be able to find a way to adjust.
Tyler Cowen (1:04:19.020)
You might have to move to North Dakota to work,
Lex Fridman (1:04:24.420)
next to fracking, say.
Lex Fridman (1:04:26.020)
But look, before the pandemic,
Lex Fridman (1:04:28.100)
the two most robot intensive societies,
Tyler Cowen (1:04:30.540)
Japan and the US, US at least for manufacturing,
Lex Fridman (1:04:33.940)
were at full employment.
Lex Fridman (1:04:35.860)
So maybe there's some far off day
Lex Fridman (1:04:37.700)
where there's literally no work, John Lennon,
Lex Fridman (1:04:39.660)
and imagine it's piped everywhere.
Lex Fridman (1:04:44.060)
And then we might revisit the question.
Lex Fridman (1:04:47.020)
But for now, we had rising wages in the Trump years
Lex Fridman (1:04:51.020)
and full employment.
Lex Fridman (1:04:52.540)
So I don't see the point.
Lex Fridman (1:04:54.580)
You don't see automation as a threat
Tyler Cowen (1:04:57.580)
that fundamentally shakes our society.
Lex Fridman (1:05:00.340)
It's a threat in the following sense.
Tyler Cowen (1:05:01.940)
The new technologies are harder to work with
Lex Fridman (1:05:04.220)
for many people, and that's a social problem.
Lex Fridman (1:05:07.260)
But I'm not sure a universal basic income
Lex Fridman (1:05:10.420)
is the right answer to that very real problem.
Tyler Cowen (1:05:13.460)
Well, that's also, I like the UBI for kids.
Lex Fridman (1:05:16.780)
It's also your definition or the line,
Tyler Cowen (1:05:20.260)
the threshold for what is vulnerable
Lex Fridman (1:05:21.940)
and what is basic human nature.
Tyler Cowen (1:05:24.740)
Going back to Russia, life is suffering.
Lex Fridman (1:05:27.860)
That struggle is a part of life.
Lex Fridman (1:05:31.220)
And perhaps sort of changing,
Lex Fridman (1:05:33.700)
maybe what defines the 21st century
Tyler Cowen (1:05:36.460)
is having multiple careers
Lex Fridman (1:05:38.100)
and adjusting and learning and evolving.
Lex Fridman (1:05:41.140)
And some of the technology in terms of,
Lex Fridman (1:05:46.980)
some of the technology we see like the internet
Tyler Cowen (1:05:50.620)
allows us to make those pivots easier,
Lex Fridman (1:05:55.820)
allows later life education possible.
Tyler Cowen (1:05:59.060)
It makes it possible.
Lex Fridman (1:06:00.700)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:06:01.540)
And your earlier point about loneliness
Lex Fridman (1:06:03.100)
being this fundamental human problem,
Tyler Cowen (1:06:04.700)
which I would agree with strongly,
Lex Fridman (1:06:07.220)
UBI, if it's at a high level, will make that worse.
Tyler Cowen (1:06:10.260)
I mean, say UBI were higher enough,
Lex Fridman (1:06:11.700)
you could just sit at home.
Tyler Cowen (1:06:14.900)
People are not gonna be happy.
Lex Fridman (1:06:16.460)
They don't actually want that.
Lex Fridman (1:06:18.300)
And we've relearned that in the pandemic.
Lex Fridman (1:06:21.500)
Yeah, the flip side, the hope with UBI
Tyler Cowen (1:06:24.060)
is you have a little bit more freedom
Lex Fridman (1:06:26.340)
to find the thing that alleviates your loneliness.
Tyler Cowen (1:06:29.260)
That's the idea.
Lex Fridman (1:06:30.740)
So it's kind of an open question.
Tyler Cowen (1:06:33.340)
If I give you a million dollars or a billion dollars,
Lex Fridman (1:06:38.260)
will you pursue the thing you love?
Tyler Cowen (1:06:41.660)
Will you be more motivated to find the thing you love,
Lex Fridman (1:06:45.820)
to do the thing you love,
Tyler Cowen (1:06:46.700)
or will you be lazy and lose yourself
Lex Fridman (1:06:50.140)
in the sort of daily activities
Tyler Cowen (1:06:52.340)
that don't actually bring you joy,
Lex Fridman (1:06:54.860)
but pacify you in some kind of way
Lex Fridman (1:06:57.700)
where you just let the days slip by?
Lex Fridman (1:07:01.300)
That's the open question.
Tyler Cowen (1:07:02.740)
A lot of the great creators did not have huge cushions,
Lex Fridman (1:07:05.580)
whether it was Mozart or James Brown
Tyler Cowen (1:07:07.580)
or the great painters in history,
Lex Fridman (1:07:10.300)
they had to work pretty hard.
Lex Fridman (1:07:12.380)
And if you look at heirs to great fortunes,
Lex Fridman (1:07:15.300)
maybe I'm forgetting someone,
Lex Fridman (1:07:16.780)
but it's hard to think of any
Lex Fridman (1:07:18.620)
who have creatively been important as novelists,
Tyler Cowen (1:07:21.860)
or they might have continued to run the family business.
Lex Fridman (1:07:25.940)
But Van Gogh was not heir to a great family fortune.
Tyler Cowen (1:07:30.700)
It's sad that cushions get in the way of progress.
Lex Fridman (1:07:37.100)
It's the same point about prizes, right?
Tyler Cowen (1:07:39.820)
Inheriting too much money is like winning a prize.
Lex Fridman (1:07:42.300)
We mentioned Eric, Eric Weinstein.
Tyler Cowen (1:07:45.780)
I know you agree on a bunch of things.
Lex Fridman (1:07:47.180)
Is there some beautiful, fascinating,
Tyler Cowen (1:07:49.260)
insightful disagreement that you have
Lex Fridman (1:07:51.700)
that has yet to be resolved with him?
Lex Fridman (1:07:54.100)
Is there some ideas that you guys battle it out on?
Lex Fridman (1:07:58.140)
Is it the stagnation question that you mentioned?
Tyler Cowen (1:08:00.560)
That's one of them, but here's at least two others.
Lex Fridman (1:08:05.180)
But I would stress Eric is always evolving.
Lex Fridman (1:08:08.000)
So I'm just talking about a time slice Eric, right?
Lex Fridman (1:08:10.700)
I don't know where he's at right now.
Tyler Cowen (1:08:12.940)
Like I heard him on Clubhouse three nights ago,
Lex Fridman (1:08:15.020)
but that was three nights ago.
Lex Fridman (1:08:17.780)
But I think he's far too pessimistic
Lex Fridman (1:08:20.060)
about the impact of immigration on U.S. science.
Tyler Cowen (1:08:23.500)
He thinks it has displaced U.S. scientists,
Lex Fridman (1:08:26.580)
which I think that is partly true.
Tyler Cowen (1:08:28.700)
I just think we've gotten better talent.
Lex Fridman (1:08:30.300)
I'm like, bring it on, double down.
Lex Fridman (1:08:33.180)
And look at Kiriko, who basically came up
Lex Fridman (1:08:35.820)
with mRNA vaccines, she was from Hungary.
Lex Fridman (1:08:37.980)
And was ridiculed and mocked,
Lex Fridman (1:08:41.140)
she couldn't get her papers published.
Tyler Cowen (1:08:42.780)
She stuck at it.
Lex Fridman (1:08:44.920)
An American might not have been so stubborn
Tyler Cowen (1:08:47.900)
because we have these cushions.
Lex Fridman (1:08:49.760)
So Eric is all worried, like mathematicians coming in,
Tyler Cowen (1:08:52.860)
they're discouraging native U.S. citizens from doing math.
Lex Fridman (1:08:56.940)
I'm like, bring in the best people.
Tyler Cowen (1:08:59.460)
If we all end up in other avocations,
Lex Fridman (1:09:02.720)
absolutely fine by me.
Tyler Cowen (1:09:04.100)
Does it trouble you that we kick them out
Lex Fridman (1:09:06.820)
after they get a degree often?
Tyler Cowen (1:09:08.700)
I would give anyone with a plausible graduate degree
Lex Fridman (1:09:11.460)
a green card, universally.
Tyler Cowen (1:09:13.460)
Yeah, I agree with that, it makes no sense.
Lex Fridman (1:09:17.140)
It makes so strange that the best people that come here
Tyler Cowen (1:09:19.940)
suffer here, create awesome stuff here,
Lex Fridman (1:09:22.660)
then when we kick them out, it doesn't make any sense.
Tyler Cowen (1:09:24.460)
Here's another view I have.
Lex Fridman (1:09:25.580)
I call it open borders for Belarus.
Tyler Cowen (1:09:29.140)
Now Russia's a big country.
Lex Fridman (1:09:30.340)
I would gladly increase the Russian quota
Tyler Cowen (1:09:33.460)
by three X, four X, five X, not 20%, but a big boost.
Lex Fridman (1:09:39.380)
But Belarus, a small country, and they're poor,
Lex Fridman (1:09:44.300)
and they have decent education, and a lot of talent there.
Lex Fridman (1:09:47.780)
Why can't we just open the door
Lex Fridman (1:09:50.140)
and convert a Belarus passport to a green card?
Lex Fridman (1:09:53.500)
Open borders for Belarus, it's my new campaign slogan.
Lex Fridman (1:09:56.660)
Are you running for president in 2024?
Lex Fridman (1:09:58.740)
Well, write ins are welcome, but.
Lex Fridman (1:10:00.460)
Okay, what's the second thing you disagree with, Eric?
Lex Fridman (1:10:05.700)
Trade, again, I'm not sure where he's at now,
Lex Fridman (1:10:10.220)
but he is suspicious of trade in a way that I am not.
Lex Fridman (1:10:14.820)
I do understand what's called the China shock
Tyler Cowen (1:10:17.300)
has been a big problem for the US middle class.
Lex Fridman (1:10:19.860)
I fully accept that.
Tyler Cowen (1:10:21.380)
I think most of that is behind us.
Lex Fridman (1:10:24.020)
National security issues aside,
Tyler Cowen (1:10:25.960)
I think free trade is very much a good thing.
Lex Fridman (1:10:29.200)
Eric, I'm not sure he'll say it's not a good thing,
Lex Fridman (1:10:33.060)
but he won't say it is a good thing.
Lex Fridman (1:10:34.840)
And I know he's kind of, it's like, Eric, free trade.
Lex Fridman (1:10:39.420)
But look, on things like vaccines,
Lex Fridman (1:10:40.920)
I don't believe in free trade.
Tyler Cowen (1:10:42.880)
You want vaccine production in your own country,
Lex Fridman (1:10:45.540)
look at the EU.
Tyler Cowen (1:10:47.000)
They have enough money, no one will send them vaccines.
Lex Fridman (1:10:50.160)
What's different about vaccines?
Tyler Cowen (1:10:51.940)
Is it, there's some things you want to prioritize
Lex Fridman (1:10:54.520)
the citizenry on.
Tyler Cowen (1:10:56.440)
You could argue it would be cheaper
Lex Fridman (1:10:58.120)
to produce all US manufactured vaccines in India.
Tyler Cowen (1:11:02.040)
They have the technologies, obviously lower wages,
Lex Fridman (1:11:05.960)
but look, there's talk in India right now
Tyler Cowen (1:11:07.560)
of cutting off the export of vaccines.
Lex Fridman (1:11:09.880)
If you outsource your vaccine production,
Tyler Cowen (1:11:12.000)
you're not sure the other country
Lex Fridman (1:11:13.400)
will respect the norm of free trade.
Lex Fridman (1:11:15.840)
So you need to keep some vaccine production in your country.
Lex Fridman (1:11:20.160)
It's an exception to free trade, not to the logic,
Tyler Cowen (1:11:24.760)
a bunch of things the Navy uses.
Lex Fridman (1:11:26.480)
You can't buy those components from China.
Tyler Cowen (1:11:28.520)
That's insane.
Lex Fridman (1:11:31.520)
But look, it would be cheaper to do so, right?
Tyler Cowen (1:11:34.140)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:11:35.360)
Let me completely shift topics
Tyler Cowen (1:11:37.360)
on something that's fascinating.
Lex Fridman (1:11:38.720)
It's all the same topic, but great.
Tyler Cowen (1:11:40.960)
Everything is interesting.
Lex Fridman (1:11:45.560)
What do you think about what the hell is money?
Lex Fridman (1:11:48.800)
And the recent excitement around cryptocurrency
Lex Fridman (1:11:56.880)
that brings to the forefront
Tyler Cowen (1:12:01.120)
the philosophical discussion of the nature of money.
Lex Fridman (1:12:04.880)
Are you bullish on cryptocurrency?
Lex Fridman (1:12:06.840)
Are you excited about it?
Lex Fridman (1:12:07.900)
What does it make you think about
Lex Fridman (1:12:09.560)
how the nature of money is changing?
Lex Fridman (1:12:11.840)
No one knows what money is.
Tyler Cowen (1:12:13.720)
Probably no one ever knew.
Lex Fridman (1:12:15.560)
Go back to medieval times, bills of exchange.
Lex Fridman (1:12:17.920)
Were they money?
Lex Fridman (1:12:19.460)
Maybe it's just a semantic debate.
Lex Fridman (1:12:21.500)
Gold, silver, what about copper coins?
Lex Fridman (1:12:23.360)
What about metals that were considered legal tender
Lex Fridman (1:12:26.380)
but not always circulating?
Lex Fridman (1:12:28.280)
What about credit?
Lex Fridman (1:12:29.700)
So being confused about moneyness
Lex Fridman (1:12:32.480)
is the natural state of affairs for human beings.
Lex Fridman (1:12:35.240)
And if there's more of that,
Lex Fridman (1:12:36.240)
I'd say that's probably a good thing.
Tyler Cowen (1:12:38.880)
Now, crypto per se, I think Bitcoin has taken over
Lex Fridman (1:12:42.920)
a lot of the space held by gold.
Tyler Cowen (1:12:45.560)
That to me seems sustainable.
Lex Fridman (1:12:48.160)
I'm not short Bitcoin.
Tyler Cowen (1:12:50.360)
I don't have some view that the price
Lex Fridman (1:12:53.460)
has to be different than the current price,
Lex Fridman (1:12:55.100)
but I know it changes every moment.
Lex Fridman (1:12:58.360)
I am deeply uncertain about the less of crypto,
Tyler Cowen (1:13:01.180)
which seems connected to ultimate visions
Lex Fridman (1:13:04.480)
of using it for transactions in ways where I'm not sure
Tyler Cowen (1:13:09.360)
whether it be prediction markets or DeFi.
Lex Fridman (1:13:12.460)
I'm not sure the retail demand really is there
Tyler Cowen (1:13:16.200)
once it is regulated like everything else is.
Lex Fridman (1:13:19.500)
I would say I'm 40, 60 optimistic on those forms of crypto.
Tyler Cowen (1:13:24.360)
That is, I think it's somewhat more likely
Lex Fridman (1:13:26.020)
they fail than succeed, but I take them very seriously.
Lex Fridman (1:13:29.140)
So we're talking about it becoming
Lex Fridman (1:13:31.160)
one of the main currencies in the world.
Tyler Cowen (1:13:32.920)
That's what we're discussing.
Lex Fridman (1:13:33.760)
That I don't think will happen.
Tyler Cowen (1:13:35.720)
So, but the reality is that Bitcoin used to be
Lex Fridman (1:13:40.420)
in the single digits of a dollar and now has crossed $50,000
Tyler Cowen (1:13:44.720)
for a single Bitcoin.
Lex Fridman (1:13:46.600)
Do you think it's possible it reaches
Lex Fridman (1:13:48.600)
something like a million dollars?
Lex Fridman (1:13:51.480)
I don't think we have a good theory of the value of Bitcoin.
Tyler Cowen (1:13:54.280)
If people decide it's worth a million dollars,
Lex Fridman (1:13:56.160)
it's worth a million dollars.
Lex Fridman (1:13:57.760)
But isn't that money?
Lex Fridman (1:13:58.600)
Like you said, isn't the ultimate state of money confusion,
Lex Fridman (1:14:01.640)
however beautifully you put it?
Lex Fridman (1:14:03.200)
It's like valuing an Andy Warhol painting.
Lex Fridman (1:14:05.040)
So when Warhol started off,
Lex Fridman (1:14:06.960)
probably those things had no value.
Tyler Cowen (1:14:08.880)
They were sketches, early sketches of shoes.
Lex Fridman (1:14:11.560)
Now a good Warhol could be worth over 50 million.
Tyler Cowen (1:14:14.960)
That's an incredible rate of price appreciation.
Lex Fridman (1:14:17.600)
Bitcoin is seeing a similar trajectory.
Tyler Cowen (1:14:20.640)
I don't pretend to know where it will stop,
Lex Fridman (1:14:23.780)
but it's about trying to figure out
Lex Fridman (1:14:25.240)
what do people think of Andy Warhol?
Lex Fridman (1:14:26.760)
He could be out of fashion in a century.
Tyler Cowen (1:14:29.600)
Maybe yes, maybe no.
Lex Fridman (1:14:32.680)
But you don't think about Warhols as money.
Tyler Cowen (1:14:36.560)
They perform some money like functions.
Lex Fridman (1:14:38.640)
You can even use them as collateral
Tyler Cowen (1:14:40.640)
for like deals between gangs.
Lex Fridman (1:14:43.520)
But they're not basically money, nor is Bitcoin.
Lex Fridman (1:14:46.880)
And the transactions velocity of Bitcoin,
Lex Fridman (1:14:48.960)
I would think is likely to fall, if anything.
Lex Fridman (1:14:51.320)
So you don't think there'll be some kind of phase shift
Lex Fridman (1:14:53.320)
where it become adopted and become mainstream
Lex Fridman (1:14:55.440)
for one of the main mechanisms of transactions?
Lex Fridman (1:15:00.200)
Bitcoin, no.
Tyler Cowen (1:15:01.020)
Now, you know, ether has some chance at that.
Lex Fridman (1:15:03.380)
I would bet against it,
Lex Fridman (1:15:04.840)
but I wouldn't give you a definitive no.
Lex Fridman (1:15:06.840)
And you wouldn't put us here.
Tyler Cowen (1:15:07.680)
Bitcoin is too costly.
Lex Fridman (1:15:10.160)
It may be fine to hold it like gold,
Lex Fridman (1:15:12.400)
but gold is also costly.
Lex Fridman (1:15:15.200)
You have smart people trying to make, say, ether,
Tyler Cowen (1:15:18.360)
much more effective as a currency than Bitcoin.
Lex Fridman (1:15:22.560)
And there's certainly a decent chance they will succeed.
Tyler Cowen (1:15:25.600)
Yeah, there's a lot of innovation.
Lex Fridman (1:15:26.720)
I mean, with smart contracts, with NFTs as well,
Tyler Cowen (1:15:30.120)
there's a lot of interesting innovations
Lex Fridman (1:15:33.440)
that are plugging into the human psyche somehow,
Tyler Cowen (1:15:36.120)
just like money does.
Lex Fridman (1:15:37.760)
You know, money seems to be this viral thing,
Lex Fridman (1:15:41.360)
our ideas of money, right?
Lex Fridman (1:15:43.080)
And if the idea is strong enough,
Tyler Cowen (1:15:45.360)
it seems to be able to take hold.
Lex Fridman (1:15:47.740)
Like there's network effects that just take over.
Lex Fridman (1:15:50.880)
And like, I particularly see that with,
Lex Fridman (1:15:54.060)
I'd love to get your comment on Dogecoin,
Tyler Cowen (1:15:57.400)
which is basically by a single human being,
Lex Fridman (1:15:59.760)
Elon Musk has been created.
Tyler Cowen (1:16:01.400)
You know, it's like these celebrities
Lex Fridman (1:16:03.200)
can have a huge ripple effect on the impact of money.
Tyler Cowen (1:16:07.160)
Is it possible that in the 21st century,
Lex Fridman (1:16:11.560)
people like Elon Musk and celebrities,
Tyler Cowen (1:16:13.840)
I don't know, Donald Trump, The Rock,
Lex Fridman (1:16:16.120)
whoever else, can actually define,
Lex Fridman (1:16:20.680)
you know, the currencies that we use?
Lex Fridman (1:16:22.320)
Maybe can Dogecoin become the primary currency of the world?
Tyler Cowen (1:16:27.400)
I think of it as like baseball cards.
Lex Fridman (1:16:29.280)
So right now, every baseball player has a baseball card.
Lex Fridman (1:16:32.800)
And the players who are stars,
Lex Fridman (1:16:34.120)
their cards can end up worth a fair amount of money.
Lex Fridman (1:16:37.280)
And that's stable, we've had it for many decades.
Lex Fridman (1:16:40.780)
Sort of the player defines the card,
Tyler Cowen (1:16:42.840)
they sign a contract with Topps or whatever company.
Lex Fridman (1:16:46.200)
Now, could you imagine celebrities, baseball players,
Lex Fridman (1:16:49.040)
LeBron James, having their own currencies instead of cards?
Lex Fridman (1:16:53.000)
Absolutely, and you're somewhat seeing that right now,
Tyler Cowen (1:16:55.960)
as you mentioned, artists with these unique works
Lex Fridman (1:16:58.320)
on the blockchain.
Lex Fridman (1:16:59.340)
But I'm not sure those are macroeconomically important.
Lex Fridman (1:17:02.340)
If it's just a new class of collectibles
Tyler Cowen (1:17:04.140)
that people have fun with, again, I say, bring it on.
Lex Fridman (1:17:08.260)
But whether there are use cases beyond that,
Tyler Cowen (1:17:11.140)
that challenge fiat monies, which actually work very well.
Lex Fridman (1:17:15.380)
Yesterday, I sent money to a family in Ethiopia
Tyler Cowen (1:17:19.340)
that I helped support.
Lex Fridman (1:17:21.100)
In less than 24 hours, they got that money.
Tyler Cowen (1:17:24.020)
Digitally, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:17:26.300)
No, not digitally, through my bank.
Tyler Cowen (1:17:28.340)
My primitive dinosaur bank, BB&T, Mid Atlantic Bank,
Lex Fridman (1:17:32.220)
headquartered in North Carolina,
Tyler Cowen (1:17:34.500)
charted by the Fed, regulated by the FDAC and the OCC.
Lex Fridman (1:17:38.340)
Now, you could say, well, the exchange rate was not so great.
Tyler Cowen (1:17:44.220)
I don't see crypto as close to beating that
Lex Fridman (1:17:46.580)
once you take into account all of the last mile problems.
Tyler Cowen (1:17:50.580)
Fiat currency works really well.
Lex Fridman (1:17:52.660)
People are not sitting around bitching about it.
Lex Fridman (1:17:54.820)
And when you talk to crypto people,
Lex Fridman (1:17:56.260)
they're crypto people, the number who have to postulate
Tyler Cowen (1:17:58.500)
some out of the blue hyperinflation,
Lex Fridman (1:18:00.700)
where there's no evidence for that whatsoever,
Tyler Cowen (1:18:03.300)
that to me is a sign they're not thinking clearly
Lex Fridman (1:18:06.060)
about how hard they have to work
Tyler Cowen (1:18:07.620)
to outcompete fiat currency.
Lex Fridman (1:18:10.060)
There's a bunch of different technologies
Tyler Cowen (1:18:11.860)
that are really exciting that don't want to address
Lex Fridman (1:18:15.860)
how difficult it is to outcompete
Tyler Cowen (1:18:17.780)
the current accepted alternative.
Lex Fridman (1:18:19.220)
So for example, autonomous vehicles.
Tyler Cowen (1:18:21.780)
A lot of people are really excited.
Lex Fridman (1:18:24.100)
But it's not trivial to outcompete Uber
Tyler Cowen (1:18:28.060)
on the cost and the effectiveness and the user experience
Lex Fridman (1:18:32.300)
and all those kinds of, sorry, Uber driven by humans.
Lex Fridman (1:18:34.940)
And it's not, you know, that's taken for granted,
Lex Fridman (1:18:39.380)
I think, that look, wouldn't it be amazing,
Lex Fridman (1:18:41.980)
how amazing would the world look
Lex Fridman (1:18:43.260)
when the cars are driving themselves fully,
Tyler Cowen (1:18:45.580)
you know, it's gonna drive the cost down,
Lex Fridman (1:18:47.220)
you can remove the cost of drivers,
Tyler Cowen (1:18:48.620)
all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (1:18:50.180)
But it's when you actually get down to it
Lex Fridman (1:18:52.180)
and have to build a business around it,
Lex Fridman (1:18:53.620)
it's actually very difficult to do.
Lex Fridman (1:18:55.500)
And I guess you're saying your sense
Lex Fridman (1:18:56.860)
is similar competition is facing cryptocurrency.
Tyler Cowen (1:19:00.300)
Like you have to actually present a killer app reason
Lex Fridman (1:19:06.740)
to switch from fiat currency to Ethereum or to whatever.
Lex Fridman (1:19:12.900)
And the Biden people are gonna regulate crypto
Lex Fridman (1:19:15.500)
and they're gonna do it soon.
Lex Fridman (1:19:16.980)
So something like DeFi, I fully get why that is cheaper
Lex Fridman (1:19:20.700)
or for some can be cheaper than other ways
Tyler Cowen (1:19:23.300)
of conducting financial intermediation.
Lex Fridman (1:19:25.620)
But some of that is regulatory arbitrage.
Tyler Cowen (1:19:28.500)
It will not be allowed to go on forever
Lex Fridman (1:19:30.740)
for better or worse.
Tyler Cowen (1:19:32.300)
I would rather see it given greater tolerance.
Lex Fridman (1:19:35.140)
But the point is banking lobby is strong.
Tyler Cowen (1:19:37.540)
The government will only let it run so far.
Lex Fridman (1:19:39.980)
There'll be capital requirements,
Tyler Cowen (1:19:41.380)
reporting requirements imposed,
Lex Fridman (1:19:43.420)
and it will lose a lot of those advantages.
Lex Fridman (1:19:46.620)
What do you make of Wall Street bets?
Lex Fridman (1:19:48.820)
Another thing that recently happened
Tyler Cowen (1:19:50.620)
that shook the world and at least me
Lex Fridman (1:19:54.700)
from the outside of perspective,
Tyler Cowen (1:19:56.860)
make me question what I do
Lex Fridman (1:19:58.500)
and don't understand about our economics.
Tyler Cowen (1:20:01.380)
Which is a bunch of different,
Lex Fridman (1:20:03.500)
a large number of individuals
Tyler Cowen (1:20:05.140)
getting together on the internet
Lex Fridman (1:20:06.780)
and having a large scale impact on the markets.
Tyler Cowen (1:20:10.260)
If you tell a group of people
Lex Fridman (1:20:11.740)
and coordinate them through the internet,
Tyler Cowen (1:20:13.420)
we're gonna play a fun game, it might cost you money,
Lex Fridman (1:20:16.060)
but you're gonna make the headlines
Lex Fridman (1:20:17.460)
and there's a chance you'll screw over
Lex Fridman (1:20:18.860)
some billionaires and hedge funds.
Tyler Cowen (1:20:20.820)
Enough people will play that game.
Lex Fridman (1:20:23.020)
So that game might continue,
Lex Fridman (1:20:24.260)
but I don't think it's of macroeconomic importance.
Lex Fridman (1:20:26.900)
And the price of those stocks in the medium term
Tyler Cowen (1:20:30.660)
will end up wherever it ought to be.
Lex Fridman (1:20:32.980)
So these are little outliers
Tyler Cowen (1:20:34.980)
from a macroeconomics perspective.
Lex Fridman (1:20:36.780)
They're not going to,
Tyler Cowen (1:20:38.740)
these are not signals of shifting power,
Lex Fridman (1:20:43.620)
like from centralized power to distributed power.
Tyler Cowen (1:20:46.300)
These aren't some fundamental changes in the way
Lex Fridman (1:20:49.220)
our economy works.
Tyler Cowen (1:20:50.260)
I think of it as a new brand of eSports,
Lex Fridman (1:20:52.500)
maybe more fun than the old brand.
Lex Fridman (1:20:54.140)
Which is fine, right?
Lex Fridman (1:20:56.340)
It's like push the anarchy into the corners
Tyler Cowen (1:20:58.540)
where you want it.
Lex Fridman (1:20:59.660)
It doesn't bother me,
Lex Fridman (1:21:02.700)
but I think people are seeing it
Lex Fridman (1:21:04.100)
as more fun than it is.
Tyler Cowen (1:21:05.260)
It's a new eSport, more fun for many,
Lex Fridman (1:21:07.620)
but more expensive than the old eSports.
Tyler Cowen (1:21:10.940)
Like chess is a new eSport, super cheap,
Lex Fridman (1:21:13.660)
not as fun as like sending hedge funds to their doom,
Lex Fridman (1:21:16.900)
but like, what would you expect?
Lex Fridman (1:21:19.900)
The poetry, I love it, okay.
Lex Fridman (1:21:22.420)
But macroeconomically, it's not fundamental.
Lex Fridman (1:21:24.900)
Okay, I was going to say, I hope you're right,
Tyler Cowen (1:21:27.380)
because I'm uncomfortable with the chaos
Lex Fridman (1:21:29.820)
of the masses that's creates.
Lex Fridman (1:21:32.380)
But I also think that chaos is somewhat real to be clear,
Lex Fridman (1:21:36.980)
but it will matter through other channels,
Tyler Cowen (1:21:40.620)
not through manipulating GameStop or AMC.
Lex Fridman (1:21:46.140)
So you're seeing the real macro phenomenon.
Tyler Cowen (1:21:48.540)
When people see a real macro phenomenon,
Lex Fridman (1:21:50.740)
they tend to make every micro story fit the narrative.
Lex Fridman (1:21:54.020)
And this micro story, like it fits the narrative,
Lex Fridman (1:21:56.220)
but it doesn't mean its importance fits the narrative.
Tyler Cowen (1:21:58.980)
That's how I would kind of dissect the mistake
Lex Fridman (1:22:01.780)
I think people are making.
Lex Fridman (1:22:05.060)
The macro phenomenon that are there, do you mean?
Lex Fridman (1:22:07.820)
Everyone's weird now, the internet.
Tyler Cowen (1:22:10.540)
Either allows us to be weirder or makes us weirder.
Lex Fridman (1:22:12.980)
I'm not sure what's the right way to put it.
Tyler Cowen (1:22:14.540)
Maybe a mix of both.
Lex Fridman (1:22:16.420)
You're probably right that it allows us to be weirder
Tyler Cowen (1:22:18.780)
because, well, this is the other, okay.
Lex Fridman (1:22:21.340)
So this connects our previous conversation.
Tyler Cowen (1:22:23.980)
Does America allow us to be weirder
Lex Fridman (1:22:26.660)
or does it make us weirder?
Tyler Cowen (1:22:29.220)
Like say we're weird and somewhat neurotic to begin with,
Lex Fridman (1:22:32.300)
but the only messages we get are Dwight D. Eisenhower
Lex Fridman (1:22:34.940)
and I Love Lucy and network TV.
Lex Fridman (1:22:37.580)
Like that's going to keep us within certain bounds.
Tyler Cowen (1:22:40.060)
In good and bad ways.
Lex Fridman (1:22:41.660)
That's obviously totally gone.
Lex Fridman (1:22:43.860)
And the internet, you can connect to not just QAnon,
Lex Fridman (1:22:47.020)
but all sorts of things.
Lex Fridman (1:22:47.980)
Many of them just fantastic, right?
Lex Fridman (1:22:51.260)
But in good and bad ways, it makes us weirder.
Lex Fridman (1:22:54.260)
So that maybe is troubling, right?
Lex Fridman (1:22:56.700)
Like if someone's worried about that,
Tyler Cowen (1:22:58.020)
I would at least say they should
Lex Fridman (1:22:59.580)
give it deep serious thought.
Lex Fridman (1:23:01.500)
And then it has a whole lot of ebbs and flows,
Lex Fridman (1:23:04.620)
micro realizations of the weirdness
Tyler Cowen (1:23:07.580)
that don't actually matter.
Lex Fridman (1:23:09.580)
So like chess players today,
Tyler Cowen (1:23:10.940)
they play a lot more weird openings
Lex Fridman (1:23:12.580)
than they did 20 years ago.
Tyler Cowen (1:23:14.580)
Like it reflects the same thing
Lex Fridman (1:23:16.740)
because you can research any weird opening on the internet,
Lex Fridman (1:23:19.140)
but like, does that matter?
Lex Fridman (1:23:21.140)
Probably not.
Lex Fridman (1:23:22.460)
So a lot of the things we see
Lex Fridman (1:23:23.780)
are just like the weird chess openings.
Lex Fridman (1:23:26.020)
And to figure out which are like the weird chess openings
Lex Fridman (1:23:28.340)
and which are fundamental to the new and growing weirdness,
Tyler Cowen (1:23:31.540)
like that's what a hedge fund investor type
Lex Fridman (1:23:33.500)
should be trying to do.
Tyler Cowen (1:23:35.020)
I just think no one knows yet.
Lex Fridman (1:23:36.900)
It's like this itself, this fun weird guessing game,
Tyler Cowen (1:23:40.020)
which we're partly engaging in right now.
Lex Fridman (1:23:42.220)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:23:43.260)
And I mean, as Eric talks about
Lex Fridman (1:23:46.180)
on the science side of things,
Tyler Cowen (1:23:47.980)
I mean, I said like at MIT,
Lex Fridman (1:23:50.100)
especially in the machine learning field,
Tyler Cowen (1:23:52.460)
there's a natural institutional resistance to the weird.
Lex Fridman (1:23:56.180)
It's very, as they talk about,
Tyler Cowen (1:23:58.220)
it's difficult to hire weird faculty, for example.
Lex Fridman (1:24:00.940)
Correct.
Tyler Cowen (1:24:03.220)
You want to hire and give tenure to people that are safe
Lex Fridman (1:24:06.380)
and not weird.
Lex Fridman (1:24:07.620)
And that's one of the concerns is like,
Lex Fridman (1:24:09.700)
it seems like the weird people
Tyler Cowen (1:24:10.980)
are the ones that push the science forward usually.
Lex Fridman (1:24:13.060)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:24:14.060)
And so like, how do you balance the two?
Lex Fridman (1:24:16.620)
It's not obvious.
Tyler Cowen (1:24:17.820)
Because it's another area where Eric and I disagree.
Lex Fridman (1:24:20.500)
As I interpret him,
Tyler Cowen (1:24:21.940)
he thinks academia is totally bankrupt.
Lex Fridman (1:24:24.460)
And I think it's only partially bankrupt.
Lex Fridman (1:24:27.860)
How do we fix it?
Lex Fridman (1:24:28.700)
Because I'm with you, I'm bullish on academia.
Tyler Cowen (1:24:31.980)
You need up and coming schools
Lex Fridman (1:24:34.180)
that end up better than where they started off.
Lex Fridman (1:24:36.300)
And MIT was once one of them.
Lex Fridman (1:24:38.420)
Yes.
Tyler Cowen (1:24:39.260)
Now they're not in every area.
Lex Fridman (1:24:40.500)
In some areas, they have become the problem.
Tyler Cowen (1:24:42.580)
Yep.
Lex Fridman (1:24:43.420)
UChicago, you wouldn't call it up and coming,
Lex Fridman (1:24:45.220)
but it's still different.
Lex Fridman (1:24:46.300)
And that's great.
Tyler Cowen (1:24:47.140)
Let's hope they manage to keep it that way.
Lex Fridman (1:24:51.100)
The biggest problem to me is the rank absurd conformism.
Tyler Cowen (1:24:55.260)
I kind of second tier schools,
Lex Fridman (1:24:57.060)
maybe in the top 40, but not in the top dozen,
Tyler Cowen (1:24:59.900)
that are just trying to be like a junior MIT,
Lex Fridman (1:25:02.620)
but it's mediocre and copycat.
Lex Fridman (1:25:04.820)
And they're the most dogmatic enforcers of weirdness
Lex Fridman (1:25:07.340)
that like Harvard is more open
Tyler Cowen (1:25:09.580)
than those second tier schools.
Lex Fridman (1:25:11.340)
And those second tier schools
Lex Fridman (1:25:12.580)
are pretty good typically, right?
Lex Fridman (1:25:13.980)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:25:14.820)
But the mediocrity is enforced there.
Lex Fridman (1:25:17.340)
Correct.
Tyler Cowen (1:25:18.180)
Very strictly.
Lex Fridman (1:25:19.460)
And the homogenization pressures.
Tyler Cowen (1:25:21.220)
Climb the rankings by another three places
Lex Fridman (1:25:24.460)
and be a little closer to MIT,
Tyler Cowen (1:25:25.860)
though you'll never touch them.
Lex Fridman (1:25:27.260)
That to me is very harmful.
Lex Fridman (1:25:28.740)
And you'd rather they be more like Chicago,
Lex Fridman (1:25:30.900)
more like Caltech, or the older Caltech all the more,
Tyler Cowen (1:25:33.940)
like pick some model, be weird in it.
Lex Fridman (1:25:37.380)
You might fail.
Tyler Cowen (1:25:38.900)
That's socially better.
Lex Fridman (1:25:40.580)
Yeah, but so the problem with MIT, for example,
Tyler Cowen (1:25:43.660)
is the mediocrity is really enforced on the junior faculty.
Lex Fridman (1:25:49.300)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:25:50.140)
So like the people that are allowed to be weird,
Lex Fridman (1:25:52.620)
or actually they just don't even ask for permissions anymore
Tyler Cowen (1:25:54.900)
are more senior faculty.
Lex Fridman (1:25:56.340)
And that's good, of course,
Lex Fridman (1:25:57.780)
but you want the weird young people.
Lex Fridman (1:26:00.300)
I find too, this podcast, I like talking to tech people,
Lex Fridman (1:26:06.220)
and I find the young faculty to be really boring.
Lex Fridman (1:26:08.740)
They are.
Tyler Cowen (1:26:09.580)
They're the most boring of faculty.
Lex Fridman (1:26:11.100)
Their work is interesting technically,
Tyler Cowen (1:26:13.740)
technically, but just the passion.
Lex Fridman (1:26:18.100)
They are drudges.
Lex Fridman (1:26:19.340)
And some of them sneak by.
Lex Fridman (1:26:23.380)
Like you have like the Max Tegmark,
Tyler Cowen (1:26:24.980)
young version of Max Tegmark,
Lex Fridman (1:26:26.420)
who knows how to play the role of boring and fitting in.
Lex Fridman (1:26:31.700)
And then on the side, he does the weird shit.
Lex Fridman (1:26:34.380)
Sure.
Lex Fridman (1:26:35.380)
But they're far and few in between,
Lex Fridman (1:26:37.380)
which I'd love to figure out a way to shake up that system
Tyler Cowen (1:26:41.460)
because as you look at MIT's Broad Institute, right,
Lex Fridman (1:26:45.140)
in biomedical, it's been a huge hit.
Tyler Cowen (1:26:47.300)
I'm not privy to their internal doings,
Lex Fridman (1:26:49.420)
but I suspect they support weird
Tyler Cowen (1:26:52.460)
more than the formal departments do at the junior level.
Lex Fridman (1:26:55.340)
Yes, that's probably true.
Tyler Cowen (1:26:56.500)
Yeah, I don't know what, whatever they're doing,
Lex Fridman (1:26:58.940)
it's working, but we needed to figure it out
Tyler Cowen (1:27:03.580)
because I think the best ideas still do come from the,
Lex Fridman (1:27:07.660)
so forget, my apologies,
Lex Fridman (1:27:10.140)
but for the humanities side of things,
Lex Fridman (1:27:11.660)
I don't know anything about,
Lex Fridman (1:27:12.820)
but the engineering and the science side,
Lex Fridman (1:27:15.660)
I think there's so many amazing ideas
Tyler Cowen (1:27:17.740)
that are still coming from universities.
Lex Fridman (1:27:19.780)
It's not true that you don't know anything
Tyler Cowen (1:27:21.220)
about the humanities.
Lex Fridman (1:27:22.060)
You're doing the humanities right now.
Tyler Cowen (1:27:24.460)
Talking about people,
Lex Fridman (1:27:25.740)
there are no numbers put on a blackboard, right?
Tyler Cowen (1:27:28.340)
There's no hypothesis testing per se.
Lex Fridman (1:27:30.260)
No, yeah.
Tyler Cowen (1:27:31.100)
You have however many subscribers to your podcast,
Lex Fridman (1:27:34.580)
all listening to you on the humanities.
Tyler Cowen (1:27:37.060)
Every, whatever your frequency is.
Lex Fridman (1:27:38.820)
But I'm not in the department of the humanities.
Tyler Cowen (1:27:40.940)
That's why it's innovative.
Lex Fridman (1:27:42.420)
They have very different conversations.
Tyler Cowen (1:27:44.900)
There's the number of emails I get about,
Lex Fridman (1:27:48.180)
listen, I really deeply respect diversity
Lex Fridman (1:27:51.860)
and the full scope of what diversity means
Lex Fridman (1:27:56.220)
and also the more narrow scope of different races
Lex Fridman (1:27:58.380)
and genders and so on.
Lex Fridman (1:27:59.380)
It's a really important topic,
Lex Fridman (1:28:01.020)
but there's a disproportionate number of emails
Lex Fridman (1:28:03.100)
I'm getting about meetings and discussions
Lex Fridman (1:28:05.980)
and that just kind of is overwhelming.
Lex Fridman (1:28:08.540)
I don't get enough emails from people,
Lex Fridman (1:28:10.860)
like a meeting about why are all your ideas bad?
Lex Fridman (1:28:15.980)
Let's, for example, let me call out MIT.
Lex Fridman (1:28:18.820)
Why don't we do more?
Lex Fridman (1:28:20.360)
Why don't we kick Stanford's ass or Google's ass,
Tyler Cowen (1:28:24.280)
more importantly, in deep learning and machine learning
Lex Fridman (1:28:26.600)
and AI research?
Lex Fridman (1:28:28.240)
What CSAIL, for example, used to be a laboratory
Lex Fridman (1:28:31.600)
is a laboratory for artificial intelligence research.
Lex Fridman (1:28:35.080)
And why is that not the beacon of greatness
Lex Fridman (1:28:42.400)
in artificial intelligence?
Tyler Cowen (1:28:43.760)
Let's have those meetings as well.
Lex Fridman (1:28:45.720)
Diversity talk has oddly become this new mechanism
Tyler Cowen (1:28:48.920)
for enforcing conformity.
Lex Fridman (1:28:50.440)
Yes, exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:28:51.280)
And right, so it's almost like this conformity mechanism
Lex Fridman (1:28:54.320)
finds the hot new topic to use
Tyler Cowen (1:28:56.800)
to enforce further conformity.
Lex Fridman (1:28:58.200)
Exactly.
Tyler Cowen (1:28:59.680)
Oh boy, I still, I remain optimistic.
Lex Fridman (1:29:03.480)
The humanities have innovated through podcasts,
Tyler Cowen (1:29:05.600)
including yours and mine, and they're alive and well.
Lex Fridman (1:29:08.680)
All the bad talk you hear about the humanities
Tyler Cowen (1:29:12.520)
in universities, there's been this huge end run
Lex Fridman (1:29:15.120)
of innovation on the internet and it's amazing.
Tyler Cowen (1:29:17.640)
You're right.
Lex Fridman (1:29:18.480)
I never thought of, I mean, this is humanities.
Tyler Cowen (1:29:20.680)
This podcast is right.
Lex Fridman (1:29:23.400)
It's like you've been speaking prose all one's life
Lex Fridman (1:29:25.040)
and didn't know it, right?
Lex Fridman (1:29:28.080)
Yeah, I am actually part of the humanities department
Tyler Cowen (1:29:31.000)
at MIT now.
Lex Fridman (1:29:31.840)
I did not realize this and I will fully embrace it
Tyler Cowen (1:29:35.000)
from this moment on.
Lex Fridman (1:29:36.080)
Look, you have this thing, the Media Lab.
Tyler Cowen (1:29:37.560)
I'm sure you know about it.
Lex Fridman (1:29:39.040)
Done some excellent things, done a lot of very bogus things,
Lex Fridman (1:29:42.400)
but you're out competing them.
Lex Fridman (1:29:43.680)
You're blowing them out of the water.
Tyler Cowen (1:29:44.960)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:29:45.800)
Like you are them.
Tyler Cowen (1:29:46.880)
Yeah, I mean, and I'm talking to those folks
Lex Fridman (1:29:48.480)
and they're just trying to, well,
Tyler Cowen (1:29:50.440)
they're just trying to figure it out.
Lex Fridman (1:29:51.480)
I mean, they had their issues with Jeff Epstein and so on,
Lex Fridman (1:29:53.920)
but outside of that, there's a,
Lex Fridman (1:29:57.840)
I've actually gone through a shift
Tyler Cowen (1:29:59.960)
with this particular podcast, for example,
Lex Fridman (1:30:02.240)
where at first it was seen as a,
Tyler Cowen (1:30:06.240)
one, at the very first it was seen as a distraction.
Lex Fridman (1:30:09.560)
Second, it was a source of like,
Tyler Cowen (1:30:12.000)
almost like a kind of jealousy,
Lex Fridman (1:30:13.720)
like the same kind of jealousy you feel
Tyler Cowen (1:30:15.280)
when junior faculty outshines the senior faculty.
Lex Fridman (1:30:18.960)
And now it's more like, oh, okay, this is a thing.
Tyler Cowen (1:30:22.240)
Like we should do more of that.
Lex Fridman (1:30:23.800)
We should embrace this guy.
Tyler Cowen (1:30:25.200)
We should embrace this thing.
Lex Fridman (1:30:26.880)
So there's a sense that podcasting and whatever this is,
Tyler Cowen (1:30:30.680)
it doesn't have to be podcasting,
Lex Fridman (1:30:32.760)
will drive some innovation within MIT,
Tyler Cowen (1:30:35.440)
within different universities.
Lex Fridman (1:30:37.560)
There's a sense that things are changing.
Tyler Cowen (1:30:39.160)
It's just that universities lag behind.
Lex Fridman (1:30:41.800)
And my hope is that they catch up quickly.
Tyler Cowen (1:30:45.760)
They innovate in some way that goes along
Lex Fridman (1:30:49.520)
with the innovations of the internet.
Tyler Cowen (1:30:51.840)
Online.
Lex Fridman (1:30:52.680)
I think the internet will outrace them
Tyler Cowen (1:30:53.520)
for a long time, maybe forever.
Lex Fridman (1:30:55.720)
Well, I mean, but it's okay if they're,
Tyler Cowen (1:30:57.640)
as long as they're keeping.
Lex Fridman (1:30:58.600)
Yeah, and we're both in universities.
Lex Fridman (1:31:00.160)
So we have multiple hats on here as we're speaking.
Lex Fridman (1:31:02.680)
So we can complain about the universities,
Lex Fridman (1:31:05.760)
but that's like complaining about the podcast, right?
Lex Fridman (1:31:08.760)
We be them.
Lex Fridman (1:31:09.600)
But speaking on the weird,
Lex Fridman (1:31:12.440)
you've in the best sense of the word weird,
Tyler Cowen (1:31:16.400)
you've written about and made the case
Lex Fridman (1:31:18.520)
that we should take UFO sightings more seriously.
Lex Fridman (1:31:22.280)
So that's one of the things that I've been inundated with,
Lex Fridman (1:31:29.920)
sort of the excitement and the passion that people have
Tyler Cowen (1:31:36.400)
for the possibility of extraterrestrial life,
Lex Fridman (1:31:39.200)
of life out there in the universe.
Tyler Cowen (1:31:40.720)
I've always felt this excitement.
Lex Fridman (1:31:42.440)
I was just looking up at the stars
Lex Fridman (1:31:43.760)
and wondering what the hell's out there.
Lex Fridman (1:31:46.160)
But there's people that have more like,
Tyler Cowen (1:31:48.840)
more grounded excitement and passion
Lex Fridman (1:31:52.160)
of actually interacting with aliens
Tyler Cowen (1:31:55.080)
on this here, our planet.
Lex Fridman (1:31:57.880)
What's the case from your perspective
Lex Fridman (1:32:01.240)
for taking these sightings more seriously?
Lex Fridman (1:32:05.020)
The data from the Navy, to me, seem quite serious.
Tyler Cowen (1:32:09.020)
I don't pretend that I have the technical abilities
Lex Fridman (1:32:11.580)
to judge it as data,
Lex Fridman (1:32:13.940)
but there are numerous senators
Lex Fridman (1:32:16.100)
at the very highest of levels,
Tyler Cowen (1:32:18.220)
former heads of CIA, Brennan.
Lex Fridman (1:32:20.180)
I talked to him, did an interview with him.
Lex Fridman (1:32:22.540)
I asked him, what's up with these?
Lex Fridman (1:32:24.580)
What do you think it is?
Tyler Cowen (1:32:25.420)
He basically said that was the single most likely explanation
Lex Fridman (1:32:28.740)
was of alien origin.
Tyler Cowen (1:32:30.020)
Now you don't have to agree with him.
Lex Fridman (1:32:32.340)
But look, if you know how government works, these senators,
Tyler Cowen (1:32:35.180)
or Hillary Clinton, for that matter, or Brennan,
Lex Fridman (1:32:37.700)
they sat down, they were briefed by their smartest people,
Lex Fridman (1:32:40.380)
and they said, hey, what's going on here?
Lex Fridman (1:32:43.900)
And everyone around the table, I believe,
Tyler Cowen (1:32:45.580)
is telling them, we don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:32:48.180)
And that is sociological data I take very seriously.
Tyler Cowen (1:32:52.660)
I have not seen a debunking of the technical data,
Lex Fridman (1:32:56.460)
which is eyewitness reports and images and radar.
Tyler Cowen (1:32:59.060)
Again, I don't pretend that I have the technical abilities
Lex Fridman (1:33:02.020)
or again, at a technical level,
Tyler Cowen (1:33:03.860)
I feel quite uncertain on that turf.
Lex Fridman (1:33:06.660)
But evaluating through the testimony of witnesses,
Tyler Cowen (1:33:10.020)
it seems to me it's now at a threshold
Lex Fridman (1:33:12.660)
where one ought to take it seriously.
Tyler Cowen (1:33:15.140)
Yeah, one of the problems with UFO sightings
Lex Fridman (1:33:18.500)
is that because of people with good equipment
Tyler Cowen (1:33:21.940)
don't take it seriously, it's such a taboo topic,
Lex Fridman (1:33:25.140)
that you have just like really shitty equipment
Tyler Cowen (1:33:28.100)
collecting data.
Lex Fridman (1:33:28.940)
And so you have the blurry Bigfoot kind of situation
Tyler Cowen (1:33:32.460)
where you have just bad video and all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (1:33:35.700)
As opposed to, I mean, there's a bunch of people,
Tyler Cowen (1:33:41.180)
Avi Lo from Harvard talking about Oumuamua.
Lex Fridman (1:33:44.860)
It's just like people with the equipment
Tyler Cowen (1:33:49.660)
to do the data collection don't want to help out.
Lex Fridman (1:33:54.220)
And that creates a kind of divide
Tyler Cowen (1:33:57.820)
where the scientists ignore that this is happening
Lex Fridman (1:34:00.740)
and there's the masses of people who are curious about it.
Lex Fridman (1:34:04.100)
And then there's the government that's full of secrets
Lex Fridman (1:34:07.020)
that's leaking some confusion
Lex Fridman (1:34:10.780)
and it creates distrust in the government,
Lex Fridman (1:34:12.820)
it creates distrust in science
Lex Fridman (1:34:15.260)
and it prevents the scientists
Lex Fridman (1:34:16.980)
from being able to explore some cool topics,
Tyler Cowen (1:34:19.860)
some exciting possibilities that they should be,
Lex Fridman (1:34:22.780)
be curious kids like Avi talks about.
Tyler Cowen (1:34:25.340)
Even if it has nothing to do with aliens,
Lex Fridman (1:34:28.540)
whatever the answer is, it has to be something fascinating.
Tyler Cowen (1:34:31.220)
We already know everything's interesting,
Lex Fridman (1:34:32.620)
but this is fascinating.
Lex Fridman (1:34:36.020)
But look, that all said,
Lex Fridman (1:34:37.020)
I suspect they're not of alien origin.
Lex Fridman (1:34:39.060)
And let me tell you my reason.
Lex Fridman (1:34:40.380)
The people who are all gung ho,
Tyler Cowen (1:34:43.220)
they do a kind of reasoning in reverse
Lex Fridman (1:34:45.220)
or argument from elimination.
Tyler Cowen (1:34:47.740)
They figure out a bunch of things that can't be,
Lex Fridman (1:34:49.900)
like is it a Russian advanced vehicle?
Tyler Cowen (1:34:52.340)
No, probably pretty good arguments there.
Lex Fridman (1:34:54.580)
Is it a Chinese advanced vehicle?
Tyler Cowen (1:34:56.340)
No.
Lex Fridman (1:34:57.300)
Is it people like from the earth's future
Lex Fridman (1:35:00.180)
coming back in time?
Lex Fridman (1:35:01.500)
No.
Lex Fridman (1:35:02.340)
And they go through a few others.
Lex Fridman (1:35:03.620)
They have some really good no arguments.
Tyler Cowen (1:35:05.020)
Then they're like, well, what we've got left is aliens.
Lex Fridman (1:35:07.980)
This argument from elimination,
Tyler Cowen (1:35:09.700)
I don't actually find that persuasive.
Lex Fridman (1:35:12.500)
You can talk yourself into a lot of mistaken ideas that way.
Tyler Cowen (1:35:16.060)
The positive evidence that it's aliens is still quite weak.
Lex Fridman (1:35:20.500)
The positive evidence that it's a puzzle is quite huge.
Lex Fridman (1:35:24.100)
And whatever the solution to the puzzle is,
Lex Fridman (1:35:27.180)
it might be fascinating.
Lex Fridman (1:35:28.500)
And it's gonna be so weird or fascinating
Lex Fridman (1:35:30.580)
or maybe even trivial, but that's weird in its own way,
Tyler Cowen (1:35:33.540)
that we can't set up by elimination
Lex Fridman (1:35:37.060)
all the things that might be able to be.
Tyler Cowen (1:35:38.700)
Yeah, and just like you said,
Lex Fridman (1:35:39.980)
the debunking that I've seen of these kinds of things
Tyler Cowen (1:35:43.820)
are less explorations and solutions to the puzzle
Lex Fridman (1:35:49.380)
and more a kind of halfhearted dismissal.
Lex Fridman (1:35:52.820)
And Avi, as you mentioned to him on your podcast with him,
Lex Fridman (1:35:56.620)
he's been attacked an awful lot.
Lex Fridman (1:35:58.820)
And when I hear the idea carrier attacked,
Lex Fridman (1:36:01.300)
I get very suspicious of the critics.
Tyler Cowen (1:36:04.620)
If he's wrong, like just tell me why.
Lex Fridman (1:36:07.220)
Like my ears are open.
Tyler Cowen (1:36:08.940)
I don't have a set view on Oumuamua, you know.
Lex Fridman (1:36:12.460)
I know I can't judge Avi's arguments.
Tyler Cowen (1:36:14.460)
He can't convince me in that sense.
Lex Fridman (1:36:15.980)
I'm too stupid to understand
Lex Fridman (1:36:18.180)
how good his argument may or may not be.
Lex Fridman (1:36:20.740)
And like you said, ultimately,
Tyler Cowen (1:36:23.140)
in the argument, in the meeting of that debate
Lex Fridman (1:36:27.980)
is where we find the wisdom.
Tyler Cowen (1:36:30.580)
Like dismissing it, there's one other thing
Lex Fridman (1:36:32.180)
that troubles me.
Tyler Cowen (1:36:33.020)
There's a bunch of people,
Lex Fridman (1:36:33.860)
like Nietzsche sometimes dismiss this way.
Tyler Cowen (1:36:35.500)
Ayn Rand is sometimes dismissed this way.
Lex Fridman (1:36:38.100)
Oh, here we go.
Tyler Cowen (1:36:38.940)
Like there's a, as opposed to arguing against her ideas,
Lex Fridman (1:36:43.100)
dismissing it outright.
Lex Fridman (1:36:44.900)
And that's not productive at all.
Lex Fridman (1:36:48.340)
She may be wrong on a lot of things,
Lex Fridman (1:36:49.780)
but like laying out some arguments,
Lex Fridman (1:36:52.900)
even if they're basic human arguments,
Tyler Cowen (1:36:55.740)
that's where we arrive at the wisdom.
Lex Fridman (1:36:57.980)
I love that.
Tyler Cowen (1:36:59.820)
Is there something deeper to be said
Lex Fridman (1:37:03.300)
about our trust in institutions and governments and so on
Lex Fridman (1:37:06.740)
that has to do with UFOs?
Lex Fridman (1:37:08.940)
That there's a kind of suspicion
Tyler Cowen (1:37:10.980)
that the US government and governments in general
Lex Fridman (1:37:13.580)
are hiding stuff from us when you talk about UFOs.
Tyler Cowen (1:37:17.340)
This is my view on that.
Lex Fridman (1:37:18.900)
If we declassified everything,
Tyler Cowen (1:37:20.940)
I think we would find a lot more evidence
Lex Fridman (1:37:22.900)
all pointing toward the same puzzle.
Tyler Cowen (1:37:25.260)
There aren't some alien men being held underground.
Lex Fridman (1:37:28.180)
There's not some secret file that lays out
Tyler Cowen (1:37:30.100)
whatever is happening.
Lex Fridman (1:37:32.220)
I think the real lesson about government
Tyler Cowen (1:37:34.420)
is government cannot bring itself to any new belief
Lex Fridman (1:37:38.460)
on this matter of any kind.
Lex Fridman (1:37:40.580)
And it's a kind of funny inertia.
Lex Fridman (1:37:42.300)
Like government is deeply puzzled.
Tyler Cowen (1:37:44.300)
They're more puzzled than they want to admit to us,
Lex Fridman (1:37:46.540)
which I'm okay with that, actually.
Tyler Cowen (1:37:49.740)
They shouldn't just be out panicking people in the streets.
Lex Fridman (1:37:53.140)
But at the end of the day,
Tyler Cowen (1:37:54.180)
it's a bit like approving the AstraZeneca vaccine,
Lex Fridman (1:37:57.220)
which does work and they haven't approved it.
Lex Fridman (1:37:59.060)
When are they gonna do it?
Lex Fridman (1:38:00.380)
When is our government actually, if only internally,
Tyler Cowen (1:38:06.140)
gonna take this more than just seriously,
Lex Fridman (1:38:08.220)
but take it truly seriously?
Lex Fridman (1:38:10.380)
And I just don't know if we have that capability,
Lex Fridman (1:38:13.060)
kind of mentally, to sound like Eric Weinstein
Tyler Cowen (1:38:15.820)
for another moment.
Lex Fridman (1:38:17.500)
And to stay on the same topic,
Tyler Cowen (1:38:21.620)
although on the surface shifting completely,
Lex Fridman (1:38:25.100)
because it is all the same topic.
Tyler Cowen (1:38:26.980)
You have written and studied art.
Lex Fridman (1:38:29.620)
Why do you think we humans long to create art,
Lex Fridman (1:38:34.740)
human society in general and just the human mind?
Lex Fridman (1:38:38.020)
Well, most of us don't really long to create art, right?
Tyler Cowen (1:38:41.180)
I would start with that point.
Lex Fridman (1:38:43.860)
You think so?
Tyler Cowen (1:38:45.100)
You think that's a unique weirdness
Lex Fridman (1:38:47.740)
of some particular humans?
Tyler Cowen (1:38:49.940)
I think, I don't know, 10% of humans roughly,
Lex Fridman (1:38:52.900)
which is a lot, but it is somewhat weird.
Tyler Cowen (1:38:56.780)
I don't aspire to create art.
Lex Fridman (1:38:58.860)
You could say, like writing nonfiction,
Tyler Cowen (1:39:01.660)
there's something art like about it,
Lex Fridman (1:39:03.460)
but it's a different urge, I would say.
Lex Fridman (1:39:07.980)
So why do some people have it?
Lex Fridman (1:39:10.780)
I think human brains are very different.
Tyler Cowen (1:39:13.180)
It's a different notion of working through a problem.
Lex Fridman (1:39:16.260)
Like you and I enjoy working through analytic problems.
Tyler Cowen (1:39:20.220)
For me, economics, for you, AI and other areas,
Lex Fridman (1:39:22.620)
or your humanities podcast, but that's fun.
Tyler Cowen (1:39:26.860)
For that problem to be visual
Lex Fridman (1:39:29.260)
and linked to physical materials
Lex Fridman (1:39:31.220)
and putting those like on a canvas,
Lex Fridman (1:39:34.300)
to me, it's not a huge leap,
Lex Fridman (1:39:36.260)
but I really don't wanna do it.
Lex Fridman (1:39:38.740)
Like it would be pain.
Tyler Cowen (1:39:40.100)
If you paid me like 500 bucks to spend an hour painting,
Lex Fridman (1:39:45.540)
I don't know, is that worth it?
Tyler Cowen (1:39:48.140)
Maybe, but like, I'm happy when that hour's over.
Lex Fridman (1:39:53.100)
And would not be proud or happy with the result.
Tyler Cowen (1:39:55.540)
It would suck.
Lex Fridman (1:39:57.140)
I don't think I would do it actually.
Lex Fridman (1:39:59.740)
Do you think you're suppressing some deep, I mean?
Lex Fridman (1:40:02.940)
Absolutely not.
Tyler Cowen (1:40:03.860)
Now, when I was young, I played the guitar
Lex Fridman (1:40:06.780)
as you played the guitar and that I greatly enjoyed,
Tyler Cowen (1:40:09.020)
although I was never good,
Lex Fridman (1:40:11.060)
but it helped me appreciate music much, much more.
Tyler Cowen (1:40:14.380)
Well, this is the question.
Lex Fridman (1:40:15.220)
Okay, so from the perspective of the observer
Lex Fridman (1:40:17.020)
and appreciator of art, you said good.
Lex Fridman (1:40:20.300)
Is there such a concept as good in art?
Tyler Cowen (1:40:23.500)
There's clearly a concept of bad.
Lex Fridman (1:40:25.860)
My guitar playing fit that concept.
Tyler Cowen (1:40:29.100)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (1:40:29.940)
But I wasn't trying to be good.
Lex Fridman (1:40:30.780)
I wanted to learn like how do chords work?
Lex Fridman (1:40:33.100)
Okay, analytical.
Lex Fridman (1:40:33.940)
How does a jazz improvisation work?
Lex Fridman (1:40:35.620)
How is blues different?
Tyler Cowen (1:40:37.340)
Classical guitar, sort of physically,
Lex Fridman (1:40:39.380)
how do you make those sounds?
Lex Fridman (1:40:41.100)
And I did learn those things.
Lex Fridman (1:40:42.340)
And you can't learn everything about them,
Lex Fridman (1:40:44.780)
but you can learn a lot about them without ever being good
Lex Fridman (1:40:47.100)
or even trying to be that good.
Lex Fridman (1:40:48.700)
But I could play all the notes.
Lex Fridman (1:40:51.020)
So from the observer perspective,
Lex Fridman (1:40:53.140)
what do you, I apologize for the absurd question,
Lex Fridman (1:40:56.980)
but what do you use the most beautiful
Lex Fridman (1:40:58.740)
and maybe moving piece of art you've encountered
Lex Fridman (1:41:02.140)
in your life?
Tyler Cowen (1:41:02.980)
It's not an absurd question at all.
Lex Fridman (1:41:05.780)
And I think about this quite a bit.
Tyler Cowen (1:41:09.140)
I would say the two winners by a clear margin
Lex Fridman (1:41:13.060)
are both by Michelangelo.
Tyler Cowen (1:41:15.140)
It's the Pieta in the Vatican
Lex Fridman (1:41:17.620)
and the David statue in Florence.
Lex Fridman (1:41:20.780)
Why?
Lex Fridman (1:41:21.620)
Historical context or just purity, the creation itself?
Tyler Cowen (1:41:25.340)
I don't think you can view it apart from historical context
Lex Fridman (1:41:28.060)
and being in Florence or in the Vatican,
Lex Fridman (1:41:30.820)
you're already primed for a lot, right?
Lex Fridman (1:41:32.780)
You can't pull that out.
Lex Fridman (1:41:35.460)
But just technically how they express
Lex Fridman (1:41:37.780)
the emotion of human form,
Tyler Cowen (1:41:40.060)
I do honestly intellectually think
Lex Fridman (1:41:42.180)
they're the two greatest artworks for doing that.
Tyler Cowen (1:41:45.220)
That's not all that art does.
Lex Fridman (1:41:46.500)
Not all art is about the human form,
Lex Fridman (1:41:48.620)
but they are phenomenal.
Lex Fridman (1:41:51.140)
And I think critical opinion, not that everyone agrees,
Lex Fridman (1:41:54.300)
but my view is not considered a crazy one
Lex Fridman (1:41:57.300)
within the broader court of critical opinion.
Tyler Cowen (1:41:58.940)
Now in painting, I think the most I was ever blown away
Lex Fridman (1:42:02.820)
was to see Vermeer's artwork.
Tyler Cowen (1:42:05.420)
It's called The Art of Painting and it's in Vienna
Lex Fridman (1:42:09.020)
in the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Lex Fridman (1:42:11.300)
And I saw that, I think I was 23.
Lex Fridman (1:42:15.260)
It just stunned me because I'd seen reproductions,
Lex Fridman (1:42:17.940)
but live in front of you in huge,
Lex Fridman (1:42:19.540)
a completely different artwork.
Lex Fridman (1:42:21.020)
And again, Vienna, primed.
Lex Fridman (1:42:23.460)
Yes, and I was living abroad for the first time
Lex Fridman (1:42:26.820)
and Vienna itself, the city and so on.
Lex Fridman (1:42:28.740)
Now, unlike the Michelangelo's,
Tyler Cowen (1:42:30.300)
that is not my current favorite painting,
Lex Fridman (1:42:33.060)
but that would be like historically the one I would pick.
Lex Fridman (1:42:35.500)
What do you make in the context of those choices?
Lex Fridman (1:42:38.060)
What do you make of modern art?
Lex Fridman (1:42:39.700)
And I apologize if I'm not using the correct terminology,
Lex Fridman (1:42:44.660)
but art that maybe goes another level of weird
Tyler Cowen (1:42:50.500)
outside of the art that you've kind of mentioned
Lex Fridman (1:42:52.940)
and breaks all the conventions and rules and so on
Lex Fridman (1:42:55.700)
and becomes something else entirely
Lex Fridman (1:42:59.420)
that doesn't make sense in the same way
Tyler Cowen (1:43:02.620)
that David might.
Lex Fridman (1:43:03.860)
I think a lot of it is phenomenal.
Lex Fridman (1:43:05.660)
And I would say the single biggest mistake
Lex Fridman (1:43:07.740)
that really smart people make is to think contemporary art
Tyler Cowen (1:43:12.300)
or music for that matter is just a load of junk or rubbish.
Lex Fridman (1:43:15.980)
It's just like a kind of mathematics
Tyler Cowen (1:43:17.580)
they haven't learned yet.
Lex Fridman (1:43:18.780)
It's really hard to learn.
Tyler Cowen (1:43:20.620)
Maybe some people can never learn it,
Lex Fridman (1:43:23.260)
but there's a very large community of super smart,
Tyler Cowen (1:43:26.220)
well educated people who spend their lives with it,
Lex Fridman (1:43:28.820)
who love it.
Tyler Cowen (1:43:29.700)
Those are genuine pleasures.
Lex Fridman (1:43:30.900)
They understand it.
Tyler Cowen (1:43:31.740)
They talk about it with the common language.
Lex Fridman (1:43:34.260)
And to think that somehow they're all frauds,
Tyler Cowen (1:43:36.100)
it just isn't true.
Lex Fridman (1:43:37.500)
Like one doesn't have to like it oneself,
Tyler Cowen (1:43:40.100)
just like Love House may or may not be your thing,
Lex Fridman (1:43:42.340)
but it is amazing and for me personally, highly rewarding.
Lex Fridman (1:43:45.820)
And if someone doesn't get it,
Lex Fridman (1:43:47.980)
I do kind of have the conceited response of thinking
Tyler Cowen (1:43:50.420)
like in that area, I'm just smarter than you are.
Lex Fridman (1:43:54.060)
Yeah, so the interesting thing is as with most...
Tyler Cowen (1:43:56.860)
We get back to Eric Weinstein again.
Lex Fridman (1:43:58.580)
Yes.
Tyler Cowen (1:43:59.420)
He's in general smarter than I am, this I get.
Lex Fridman (1:44:02.180)
But when it comes to contemporary artistic creations,
Tyler Cowen (1:44:05.060)
I'm smarter than he is.
Lex Fridman (1:44:06.700)
So he's not a fan of contemporary art?
Tyler Cowen (1:44:08.780)
I don't want to speak for him.
Lex Fridman (1:44:10.180)
I've heard him say derogatory...
Tyler Cowen (1:44:11.500)
He's evolving always.
Lex Fridman (1:44:12.660)
He's evolving always.
Tyler Cowen (1:44:13.780)
I've heard him say derogatory things about some of it.
Lex Fridman (1:44:16.180)
Doesn't mean he doesn't love some other parts of it.
Lex Fridman (1:44:18.740)
So I wonder if there's just a higher learning curve,
Lex Fridman (1:44:22.340)
a steeper learning curve for contemporary art,
Tyler Cowen (1:44:24.820)
meaning like it takes more work to appreciate the stories,
Lex Fridman (1:44:28.660)
the context from which they're like thinking about this work.
Tyler Cowen (1:44:32.420)
It feels like in order to appreciate the art contemporary,
Lex Fridman (1:44:36.180)
certain pieces of contemporary art,
Tyler Cowen (1:44:37.660)
you have to know the story better behind the art.
Lex Fridman (1:44:41.260)
I think that's true for many people,
Lex Fridman (1:44:42.860)
but I think it's a funny shape distribution
Lex Fridman (1:44:45.420)
because there's a whole other set of people.
Tyler Cowen (1:44:47.780)
Sometimes they're small children
Lex Fridman (1:44:49.460)
and they get abstract art more easily.
Tyler Cowen (1:44:51.740)
You show them Vermeer or Rembrandt, they don't get it.
Lex Fridman (1:44:56.380)
But just like a wall of color, they're in love with it.
Lex Fridman (1:45:00.340)
So I don't think I know the full story.
Lex Fridman (1:45:03.100)
Again, some strange kind of distribution.
Tyler Cowen (1:45:04.740)
The entry barriers are super high or super low,
Lex Fridman (1:45:07.820)
but not that often in between.
Lex Fridman (1:45:11.100)
But you would challenge saying
Lex Fridman (1:45:12.780)
that there's a lot to be explored in contemporary art.
Tyler Cowen (1:45:15.420)
It's just you need to learn.
Lex Fridman (1:45:20.420)
Yeah, it's one of the most profound bodies
Tyler Cowen (1:45:22.380)
of human thought out there.
Lex Fridman (1:45:24.060)
And it's part of the humanities.
Lex Fridman (1:45:26.460)
And yes, there are people who also don't like podcasts,
Lex Fridman (1:45:28.540)
right?
Lex Fridman (1:45:30.540)
And that's fine.
Lex Fridman (1:45:31.380)
Yeah.
Tyler Cowen (1:45:32.540)
You've also been a scholar of food.
Lex Fridman (1:45:35.500)
We're just going through the entirety
Tyler Cowen (1:45:37.060)
of the human experience today on this humanities podcast.
Lex Fridman (1:45:42.620)
Another absurd question, say this conversation
Tyler Cowen (1:45:45.460)
is the last thing you ever do in your life.
Lex Fridman (1:45:47.100)
I, wearing the suit, would murder you
Tyler Cowen (1:45:49.460)
at the end of the conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:45:50.660)
So this is your last day on earth,
Lex Fridman (1:45:52.660)
but I would offer you a last meal.
Lex Fridman (1:45:54.540)
What would that meal contain?
Tyler Cowen (1:45:57.220)
We can also travel to other parts of the world.
Lex Fridman (1:45:59.340)
Well, we have to travel
Tyler Cowen (1:46:00.340)
because my preferred last meal here,
Lex Fridman (1:46:03.420)
I probably had like two nights ago.
Lex Fridman (1:46:05.820)
Which is what?
Lex Fridman (1:46:06.900)
Can you describe or no?
Tyler Cowen (1:46:08.580)
The best restaurant around here is called Mama Chang's
Lex Fridman (1:46:11.300)
and it's in Fairfax and it's food from Wuhan actually.
Lex Fridman (1:46:16.100)
And they take pandemic safety seriously
Lex Fridman (1:46:18.420)
in addition to the food being very good.
Lex Fridman (1:46:20.420)
But this is what I would do.
Lex Fridman (1:46:23.060)
I would fly to Hermosillo in Northern Mexico,
Tyler Cowen (1:46:27.460)
which has some of the best food in Mexico,
Lex Fridman (1:46:29.180)
but I sadly only had two days there.
Lex Fridman (1:46:31.980)
So somewhere like Oaxaca, Puebla,
Lex Fridman (1:46:35.020)
I think they have food just as good
Tyler Cowen (1:46:37.500)
or some people would say better,
Lex Fridman (1:46:38.820)
but I've spent a lot of time in those places.
Lex Fridman (1:46:41.220)
So the scarce, wait, is it possible the scarcity of time
Lex Fridman (1:46:44.340)
contributed to the richness of the experience?
Tyler Cowen (1:46:46.660)
Of course, but the point is that scarcity still holds.
Lex Fridman (1:46:50.020)
So I want one more dose of the food from Hermosillo.
Lex Fridman (1:46:53.380)
Can you describe what the food is?
Lex Fridman (1:46:55.620)
It's the one kind of Mexican food that at least nominally
Tyler Cowen (1:46:58.180)
is just like the Mexican food you get in the US.
Lex Fridman (1:47:00.740)
So there are burritos, there's fajitas.
Tyler Cowen (1:47:02.860)
It doesn't taste at all like our stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:47:05.420)
But again, nominally, it's the part of Mexican food
Tyler Cowen (1:47:08.180)
that made it into the US was then transformed.
Lex Fridman (1:47:11.380)
But it's in a way the most familiar.
Lex Fridman (1:47:14.420)
But for that reason, it's the most radical
Lex Fridman (1:47:16.220)
because you have to rethink all these things you know
Lex Fridman (1:47:18.700)
and they're way better in Hermosillo.
Lex Fridman (1:47:21.140)
Hardly any tourists go there.
Tyler Cowen (1:47:22.580)
Like there's nothing to see in Hermosillo.
Lex Fridman (1:47:24.860)
Nothing you do other than eat.
Tyler Cowen (1:47:26.820)
It's not ruined by any outsiders.
Lex Fridman (1:47:29.340)
It's this longstanding tradition, dirt cheap.
Lex Fridman (1:47:33.060)
And the thing to do there is just sweet talk a taxi driver
Lex Fridman (1:47:36.340)
into first taking you seriously
Lex Fridman (1:47:38.580)
and then trusting you enough to know that you trust him
Lex Fridman (1:47:41.900)
to bring you to the very best like food stands.
Lex Fridman (1:47:44.820)
So where's the magic of that nominally similar
Lex Fridman (1:47:51.900)
entity of the burrito?
Lex Fridman (1:47:53.500)
Where's the magic come from?
Lex Fridman (1:47:55.220)
Is it the taxi ride?
Tyler Cowen (1:47:56.780)
Is it the whole experience
Lex Fridman (1:47:57.980)
or is there something actually in the food?
Lex Fridman (1:47:59.940)
So well, you can break the food down part by part.
Lex Fridman (1:48:02.340)
So if you think of the beef,
Tyler Cowen (1:48:04.020)
the beef there will be dry aged just out in the air
Lex Fridman (1:48:07.500)
in a way the FDA here would never permit.
Tyler Cowen (1:48:10.660)
Like they dry age it till it turns green,
Lex Fridman (1:48:12.540)
but it is phenomenal.
Tyler Cowen (1:48:14.460)
The quality of the chilies.
Lex Fridman (1:48:16.380)
So here there's only a small number
Tyler Cowen (1:48:17.820)
of kinds of chilies you can get.
Lex Fridman (1:48:19.740)
In most parts of Mexico,
Tyler Cowen (1:48:21.700)
there's quite a large number of chilies you can get.
Lex Fridman (1:48:24.220)
They're different, they're fresher,
Lex Fridman (1:48:26.140)
but it's just like a different thing.
Lex Fridman (1:48:27.980)
The chilies, the wheat used.
Lex Fridman (1:48:32.260)
So this is wheat territory, not corn territory,
Lex Fridman (1:48:34.740)
which is a self interesting.
Tyler Cowen (1:48:37.460)
The wheat is more diverse and more complex.
Lex Fridman (1:48:39.740)
Here it's more homogenized, obviously cheaper,
Tyler Cowen (1:48:42.300)
more efficient, but there it is better.
Lex Fridman (1:48:45.860)
Non pasteurized cheeses are legal in all parts of Mexico
Lex Fridman (1:48:50.220)
and they can be white and gooey and amazing
Lex Fridman (1:48:52.900)
in a way that here again, it's just against the law.
Tyler Cowen (1:48:55.660)
You could legalize them.
Lex Fridman (1:48:56.620)
The demand wouldn't be that great.
Tyler Cowen (1:48:57.780)
There's a black market in these cheeses
Lex Fridman (1:48:59.300)
that Latino groceries around here,
Lex Fridman (1:49:01.620)
but you just can't get that much of it.
Lex Fridman (1:49:03.420)
So the cheese, the meat, the wheat,
Tyler Cowen (1:49:06.660)
all different in significant ways.
Lex Fridman (1:49:09.300)
The chilies, I don't think the onions really matter much.
Tyler Cowen (1:49:13.100)
Garlic, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:49:14.060)
I wouldn't put much stock in that,
Lex Fridman (1:49:16.700)
but that's a lot of the core food
Lex Fridman (1:49:18.700)
and then it's cooked much better
Lex Fridman (1:49:20.020)
and everything's super fresh.
Lex Fridman (1:49:22.340)
The food chain is not relying on refrigeration.
Lex Fridman (1:49:25.300)
And this is one thing Russia and US have in common.
Lex Fridman (1:49:28.660)
We were early pioneers in food refrigeration
Lex Fridman (1:49:31.540)
and that made a lot of our foods worse quite early.
Lex Fridman (1:49:34.260)
And it took us a long time to dig out of that
Lex Fridman (1:49:37.260)
because big countries, right?
Lex Fridman (1:49:39.380)
You've had an extensive rail system in Russia,
Tyler Cowen (1:49:42.420)
USSR a long time, which makes it easier to freeze
Lex Fridman (1:49:45.740)
and then ship.
Lex Fridman (1:49:47.580)
What about the actual cooking, the chef?
Lex Fridman (1:49:50.580)
Is there an artistry to the simple?
Tyler Cowen (1:49:53.780)
I hesitate to call the burrito simple, but.
Lex Fridman (1:49:57.060)
And there's no brain drain out of cooking.
Lex Fridman (1:49:58.740)
So if you're in the United States and you're very talented,
Lex Fridman (1:50:03.460)
I'm not saying there aren't talented chefs.
Tyler Cowen (1:50:05.260)
Of course there are,
Lex Fridman (1:50:06.780)
but there's so many other things to pull people away.
Lex Fridman (1:50:09.620)
But in Mexico, there's so much talent going into food
Lex Fridman (1:50:12.300)
as there is in China,
Tyler Cowen (1:50:14.100)
which would be another candidate for last meal questions.
Lex Fridman (1:50:17.460)
Or India.
Tyler Cowen (1:50:18.500)
Or, oh, India, let's not even get started on India.
Lex Fridman (1:50:21.340)
Unbelievable.
Tyler Cowen (1:50:23.220)
You've also, I mean, there's a million things
Lex Fridman (1:50:24.740)
we could talk about here,
Lex Fridman (1:50:25.580)
but you've written about your own dreams of sushi.
Lex Fridman (1:50:28.700)
It's just a really clean, good example
Tyler Cowen (1:50:30.620)
that people are aware of of mastery
Lex Fridman (1:50:33.700)
in the art of the simple in food.
Lex Fridman (1:50:39.420)
What do you make of that kind of obsessive pursuit
Lex Fridman (1:50:41.460)
of perfection in creating simple food?
Tyler Cowen (1:50:45.020)
Sushi is about perfection,
Lex Fridman (1:50:46.780)
but it's a bit like the Beatles White album,
Tyler Cowen (1:50:48.420)
which people think is simple and not overproduced.
Lex Fridman (1:50:51.540)
It's in a funny way their most overproduced album,
Lex Fridman (1:50:54.340)
but it's produced just perfectly.
Lex Fridman (1:50:55.980)
It sounds simple.
Tyler Cowen (1:50:57.260)
It's really hard to produce music to the point
Lex Fridman (1:50:59.860)
where it's gonna sound so simple and not sound like sludge.
Tyler Cowen (1:51:03.140)
Like Let It Be album, it has some great songs,
Lex Fridman (1:51:06.140)
but a lot of it sounds like sludge.
Tyler Cowen (1:51:07.700)
One After 909, that's sludge.
Lex Fridman (1:51:09.780)
I Dig A Pony, it's sludge.
Tyler Cowen (1:51:11.580)
Like it's a bit interesting.
Lex Fridman (1:51:13.020)
It's not that good.
Tyler Cowen (1:51:13.860)
It doesn't sound that good.
Lex Fridman (1:51:15.740)
White album, like the best half, like Dear Prudence,
Tyler Cowen (1:51:18.140)
sounds perfect, sounds simple.
Lex Fridman (1:51:20.020)
Cry Baby Cry, it's not simple.
Tyler Cowen (1:51:21.940)
Back in the USSR, super complex.
Lex Fridman (1:51:25.180)
So sushi is like that.
Tyler Cowen (1:51:26.900)
It's because it's so incredibly not simple
Lex Fridman (1:51:29.580)
starting with the rice.
Tyler Cowen (1:51:31.540)
You try to refine it to make it appear super simple,
Lex Fridman (1:51:34.420)
and that's the most complex thing of all.
Lex Fridman (1:51:37.020)
So do you admire,
Lex Fridman (1:51:39.300)
I mean, we're not talking about days, weeks, months.
Tyler Cowen (1:51:43.900)
We're talking about years, generations
Lex Fridman (1:51:46.540)
of doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Lex Fridman (1:51:49.260)
Do you admire that kind of sticking to the,
Lex Fridman (1:51:53.020)
we talked about our admiration of the weird.
Tyler Cowen (1:51:56.060)
That doesn't feel weird.
Lex Fridman (1:51:57.540)
That seems like discipline and dedication
Tyler Cowen (1:52:01.420)
to like a stoic minimalism or something like that.
Lex Fridman (1:52:05.300)
I'm happy they do it, but I actually feel bad about it.
Tyler Cowen (1:52:07.940)
I feel they're sacrificial victims to me,
Lex Fridman (1:52:10.860)
which I benefit from.
Lex Fridman (1:52:12.620)
But don't you ever think like,
Lex Fridman (1:52:13.740)
gee, you're a great master sushi chef.
Lex Fridman (1:52:16.900)
Wouldn't you be happier if you did something else?
Lex Fridman (1:52:21.780)
Doesn't seem to happen.
Tyler Cowen (1:52:23.500)
That might be something that a weird mind would think.
Lex Fridman (1:52:25.700)
Maybe it is weird people,
Lex Fridman (1:52:27.260)
and maybe they're really enjoying it,
Lex Fridman (1:52:29.820)
but like to learn how to pack rice for 10 years
Tyler Cowen (1:52:32.820)
before they let you do anything else.
Lex Fridman (1:52:35.180)
It's like these Indian, you know, sarod players.
Tyler Cowen (1:52:37.820)
They just spent five years tapping out rhythms
Lex Fridman (1:52:40.380)
before they're allowed to touch their instruments.
Tyler Cowen (1:52:43.420)
Well, actually to defend that.
Lex Fridman (1:52:46.220)
It's kind of like graduate school, right?
Tyler Cowen (1:52:48.460)
Well, I think graduate school, perhaps.
Lex Fridman (1:52:53.700)
Graduate school is full of,
Tyler Cowen (1:52:54.860)
like every single day is full of surprises, I would say.
Lex Fridman (1:53:00.260)
I did martial arts for a long time.
Tyler Cowen (1:53:01.940)
I do martial arts, and I've always loved,
Lex Fridman (1:53:04.380)
it's kind of the Russian way of drilling,
Tyler Cowen (1:53:06.900)
is doing the same technique.
Lex Fridman (1:53:09.180)
I don't know if this applies
Tyler Cowen (1:53:10.500)
into intellectual or academic disciplines,
Lex Fridman (1:53:13.220)
where you can do the same thing over and over and over again,
Tyler Cowen (1:53:16.940)
thousands and thousands and thousands of times.
Lex Fridman (1:53:19.940)
What I've discovered through that process
Tyler Cowen (1:53:23.620)
is you get to start to appreciate the tiniest of details
Lex Fridman (1:53:27.260)
and find the beauty in them.
Tyler Cowen (1:53:29.420)
People who go to like monasteries to meditate
Lex Fridman (1:53:32.020)
talk about this, is when you just sit in silence
Lex Fridman (1:53:35.620)
and don't do anything,
Lex Fridman (1:53:37.420)
you start to appreciate how much complexity and beauty
Tyler Cowen (1:53:41.340)
there is in just the movement of a finger.
Lex Fridman (1:53:43.060)
Like you can spend the whole day joyously thinking about
Lex Fridman (1:53:47.100)
how fun it is to move a finger.
Lex Fridman (1:53:49.540)
And then you can almost become your full weird self
Tyler Cowen (1:53:54.700)
about the tiniest details of life.
Lex Fridman (1:53:56.940)
As a thing, you've got to wonder,
Lex Fridman (1:53:57.980)
like, is there a free lunch in there?
Lex Fridman (1:53:59.780)
Are the rest of us moving around too much?
Tyler Cowen (1:54:01.900)
Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:54:04.060)
They sure feel like they found a free lunch.
Tyler Cowen (1:54:06.620)
The people meditate, they're onto something.
Lex Fridman (1:54:09.180)
I tend to think it's like artists,
Tyler Cowen (1:54:11.260)
that some percent of people are like that,
Lex Fridman (1:54:13.420)
but most are not.
Lex Fridman (1:54:14.740)
And for most of us, there's no free lunch.
Lex Fridman (1:54:16.820)
Like my free lunch is to move around a lot.
Tyler Cowen (1:54:19.100)
In search of lunch, in fact.
Lex Fridman (1:54:20.820)
Well, with all the food talk, you made me hungry.
Lex Fridman (1:54:24.460)
What books, three or so books,
Lex Fridman (1:54:29.100)
if any come to mind, technical fiction, philosophical,
Tyler Cowen (1:54:33.500)
would you recommend, had a big impact on you,
Lex Fridman (1:54:37.340)
or you just drew some insights from throughout your life?
Tyler Cowen (1:54:40.420)
Well, two of them we've already discussed.
Lex Fridman (1:54:42.340)
One is Plato's Dialogues,
Tyler Cowen (1:54:44.740)
which I started reading when I was like 13.
Lex Fridman (1:54:47.620)
Another is Ayn Rand, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal.
Lex Fridman (1:54:51.100)
But I would say the Friedrich Hayek essay,
Lex Fridman (1:54:53.860)
The Use of Knowledge in Society,
Tyler Cowen (1:54:56.260)
which is about how decentralized mechanisms can work,
Lex Fridman (1:54:58.940)
also why they might go wrong.
Lex Fridman (1:55:01.060)
And that's where you start to understand
Lex Fridman (1:55:03.260)
the price system, capitalism.
Lex Fridman (1:55:05.220)
And that was in a book called
Lex Fridman (1:55:06.300)
Individualism and Economic Order,
Lex Fridman (1:55:08.020)
but it was just a few essays in that book.
Lex Fridman (1:55:10.580)
Those are maybe the three I would cite.
Lex Fridman (1:55:12.700)
Can you elaborate a little bit on the...
Lex Fridman (1:55:14.580)
Say the price of copper goes up, right?
Tyler Cowen (1:55:16.380)
Because there's a problem with the copper mine
Lex Fridman (1:55:18.540)
in Chile or Bolivia.
Lex Fridman (1:55:20.660)
So the price of copper goes up.
Lex Fridman (1:55:21.980)
All around the world, people are led to economize copper,
Tyler Cowen (1:55:24.860)
to look for substitutes for copper,
Lex Fridman (1:55:26.740)
to change their production processes,
Tyler Cowen (1:55:28.860)
to change the goods and services they buy,
Lex Fridman (1:55:31.100)
to build homes a different way.
Lex Fridman (1:55:33.900)
And this one event creates
Lex Fridman (1:55:35.500)
this one tiny change in information.
Tyler Cowen (1:55:38.100)
This gets into your AI work very directly.
Lex Fridman (1:55:41.220)
And how much complexity that one change engenders
Tyler Cowen (1:55:44.780)
in a meaningful, coherent way,
Lex Fridman (1:55:47.140)
how the different pieces of the price system fit together.
Tyler Cowen (1:55:50.780)
Hayek really laid out very clearly.
Lex Fridman (1:55:53.940)
And it's like an AI problem.
Lex Fridman (1:55:56.340)
And how well, not for everything,
Lex Fridman (1:55:57.980)
but for many things, we solve that AI problem.
Tyler Cowen (1:56:00.900)
I learned, I was, I think 13, maybe 14 when I read Hayek.
Lex Fridman (1:56:04.780)
Yeah, the distributed nature of things there.
Lex Fridman (1:56:07.300)
And it's like your work on human attention,
Lex Fridman (1:56:09.100)
like how much can we take in?
Tyler Cowen (1:56:10.580)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:56:11.620)
Very often not that much.
Lex Fridman (1:56:13.780)
And how many of the advances of modern civilization
Lex Fridman (1:56:16.460)
you need to understand as a response to that constraint.
Tyler Cowen (1:56:19.500)
I got that also from Hayek.
Lex Fridman (1:56:21.260)
And what's the title of the book again?
Tyler Cowen (1:56:23.900)
It's reprinted in a lot of books at this point.
Lex Fridman (1:56:26.060)
But back then the book was called
Tyler Cowen (1:56:27.500)
Individualism and Economic Order.
Lex Fridman (1:56:30.460)
But the essay is online.
Tyler Cowen (1:56:31.700)
Hayek, Use of Knowledge in Society.
Lex Fridman (1:56:34.500)
There are open access versions of it through Google.
Lex Fridman (1:56:37.300)
And you don't need the whole book.
Lex Fridman (1:56:39.020)
So it's a very good book.
Tyler Cowen (1:56:40.340)
Again, one of those profound looking over the ocean,
Lex Fridman (1:56:46.140)
maybe sitting on a porch,
Tyler Cowen (1:56:47.860)
maybe with a drink of some kind.
Lex Fridman (1:56:50.940)
And a young kid comes by and asks you for advice.
Lex Fridman (1:56:55.020)
What advice would you give to?
Lex Fridman (1:56:56.620)
A drink.
Tyler Cowen (1:56:57.460)
That's my advice.
Lex Fridman (1:56:58.620)
I'm serious.
Tyler Cowen (1:57:00.700)
So, okay, after that,
Lex Fridman (1:57:05.780)
what advice would you give to a young person today
Lex Fridman (1:57:09.420)
as they take on life?
Lex Fridman (1:57:10.900)
Whether a career in academia in general or just a life,
Tyler Cowen (1:57:15.900)
which is probably more important than career.
Lex Fridman (1:57:19.340)
Most good advice is context specific.
Lex Fridman (1:57:22.060)
But here are my two generic pieces of advice.
Lex Fridman (1:57:24.540)
Good.
Tyler Cowen (1:57:25.380)
First, get a mentor.
Lex Fridman (1:57:27.180)
Both career, but anything you wanna learn.
Tyler Cowen (1:57:29.100)
Like say you wanna learn about contemporary art.
Lex Fridman (1:57:31.580)
People write me this.
Lex Fridman (1:57:33.060)
Oh, what book should I read?
Lex Fridman (1:57:34.380)
It's probably not gonna work that way.
Tyler Cowen (1:57:36.420)
You need a mentor.
Lex Fridman (1:57:37.260)
Yes, you should read some books on it.
Lex Fridman (1:57:39.140)
But you want a mentor to help you frame them,
Lex Fridman (1:57:40.820)
take you around to some art, talk about it with you.
Lex Fridman (1:57:43.900)
So get as many mentors as you can
Lex Fridman (1:57:45.580)
in the things you wanna learn.
Lex Fridman (1:57:47.660)
And then...
Lex Fridman (1:57:48.500)
Can I ask you a quick tangent on that?
Tyler Cowen (1:57:52.580)
Presumably a good mentor.
Lex Fridman (1:57:54.380)
Of course.
Tyler Cowen (1:57:55.220)
Is there...
Lex Fridman (1:57:56.060)
I'm begging the question in there.
Lex Fridman (1:57:56.900)
It's complicated, right?
Lex Fridman (1:57:59.220)
Well, it is complicated.
Lex Fridman (1:58:00.300)
Is there a lot of damage to be done from a bad mentor?
Lex Fridman (1:58:03.380)
I don't think that much
Tyler Cowen (1:58:04.300)
because it's very easy to drop mentors.
Lex Fridman (1:58:06.020)
And in fact, it's quite hard to maintain them.
Tyler Cowen (1:58:07.980)
Good mentors tend to be busy.
Lex Fridman (1:58:09.620)
Bad mentors tend to be busy.
Lex Fridman (1:58:12.820)
And you can try on mentors
Lex Fridman (1:58:14.260)
and maybe they're not good for you,
Lex Fridman (1:58:15.460)
but there's a good chance you'll learn something.
Lex Fridman (1:58:19.460)
Like I had a mentor, I was an undergrad.
Tyler Cowen (1:58:21.060)
He was a Stalinist.
Lex Fridman (1:58:22.620)
He edited the book called The Essential Stalin.
Tyler Cowen (1:58:24.700)
Brilliant guy.
Lex Fridman (1:58:25.740)
I learned a tremendous amount from him.
Lex Fridman (1:58:28.220)
Was he like as a Stalinist a good mentor for me?
Lex Fridman (1:58:30.660)
Fan of Hayek?
Tyler Cowen (1:58:31.500)
Well, no.
Lex Fridman (1:58:32.500)
But for a year it was tremendous.
Tyler Cowen (1:58:34.180)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:58:38.220)
He introduced me like to Soviet
Lex Fridman (1:58:40.180)
and Eastern European science fiction
Lex Fridman (1:58:41.780)
because he was a Marxist.
Tyler Cowen (1:58:43.500)
Like that's what I took from him among other things.
Lex Fridman (1:58:45.420)
Any advice on finding a good mentor?
Tyler Cowen (1:58:47.700)
Daniel Kahneman has...
Lex Fridman (1:58:50.980)
Somebody just popped this to mind
Tyler Cowen (1:58:52.700)
as somebody who was able to find
Lex Fridman (1:58:54.300)
exceptionally good collaborators throughout his life.
Tyler Cowen (1:58:57.100)
There's not many bright minds that find collaborators.
Lex Fridman (1:59:00.380)
They often, which I ultimately see what a mentor is.
Tyler Cowen (1:59:06.420)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:59:07.260)
Be interesting, be direct and try.
Tyler Cowen (1:59:10.180)
It's not like a perfect formula,
Lex Fridman (1:59:11.660)
but it's amazing how many people
Tyler Cowen (1:59:12.940)
don't even do those things.
Lex Fridman (1:59:14.220)
Be interesting, be direct and try.
Tyler Cowen (1:59:17.540)
Like what you want from a better known person,
Lex Fridman (1:59:20.140)
I would just say be very direct with them.
Tyler Cowen (1:59:22.220)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:59:23.940)
Beautiful.
Lex Fridman (1:59:24.780)
What's the second piece of advice?
Lex Fridman (1:59:26.540)
Build small groups of peers.
Tyler Cowen (1:59:29.300)
They don't have to be your age,
Lex Fridman (1:59:30.740)
but very often they'll be your age,
Tyler Cowen (1:59:32.340)
especially if you're younger
Lex Fridman (1:59:33.820)
with broadly similar interests,
Lex Fridman (1:59:35.380)
but there can be different points of view.
Lex Fridman (1:59:37.260)
People you hang out with,
Tyler Cowen (1:59:38.980)
which can include in a WhatsApp group online
Lex Fridman (1:59:41.780)
and like every day or almost every day,
Tyler Cowen (1:59:43.860)
they're talking about the thing you care about,
Lex Fridman (1:59:46.180)
trying to solve problems in that thing.
Lex Fridman (1:59:48.780)
And that's your small group and you really like them
Lex Fridman (1:59:51.060)
and they like you and you care
Lex Fridman (1:59:52.260)
what you think about each other
Lex Fridman (1:59:53.940)
and you have this common interest.
Tyler Cowen (1:59:55.860)
That's for human connection
Lex Fridman (1:59:57.220)
or that's for development of ideas?
Tyler Cowen (1:59:58.860)
It's both, they're not that different.
Lex Fridman (20:00.420)
than say Germany or Denmark.
Lex Fridman (20:02.380)
But there is truly, whether from the government
Lex Fridman (20:05.500)
or from your private community,
Tyler Cowen (20:06.980)
there is less social security in some fundamental sense.
Lex Fridman (20:10.060)
On the point of weirdo,
Tyler Cowen (20:11.500)
what, that's kind of a beautiful little statement.
Lex Fridman (20:16.340)
What is that?
Tyler Cowen (20:19.460)
I mean, that seems to be, you know,
Lex Fridman (20:21.460)
you could think of a guy like Elon Musk
Lex Fridman (20:23.580)
and say that he's a weirdo.
Lex Fridman (20:25.180)
Is that the sense in which you're using weirdo
Lex Fridman (20:27.180)
like outside of the norm, like breaking conventions?
Lex Fridman (20:30.420)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (20:31.260)
And here that is either acceptable or even admired
Lex Fridman (20:35.340)
or to be a loner.
Lex Fridman (20:36.700)
And since so many people are outsiders
Lex Fridman (20:39.380)
and that we're all immigrants is selecting for people
Tyler Cowen (20:41.980)
who left something behind,
Lex Fridman (20:43.200)
we're willing to leave behind their families,
Tyler Cowen (20:45.480)
we're willing to undergo a certain brutality
Lex Fridman (20:48.220)
of switch in their lives,
Tyler Cowen (20:50.760)
makes us a nation of weirdos and weirdos are creative.
Lex Fridman (20:55.020)
And Denmark is not a nation of weirdos.
Tyler Cowen (20:58.060)
It's a wonderful place, you know, great for them.
Lex Fridman (21:01.100)
Ideally you want part of the world
Tyler Cowen (21:02.580)
to be full of weirdos and innovating.
Lex Fridman (21:04.460)
And the other part of the world to be a little
Tyler Cowen (21:06.500)
kind of chicken shit, risk averse
Lex Fridman (21:09.660)
and enjoy the benefit to the innovation
Lex Fridman (21:12.020)
and to give people these smooth lives
Lex Fridman (21:13.980)
and six weeks off and free ride.
Lex Fridman (21:16.580)
And everyone's like, oh, American way versus European way,
Lex Fridman (21:19.340)
but basically they're compliments.
Tyler Cowen (21:21.500)
Yeah, that's fascinating.
Lex Fridman (21:22.420)
I used to have this conversation with my like parents
Tyler Cowen (21:25.660)
when I was growing up and just others
Lex Fridman (21:27.460)
from the immigrant kind of flow.
Lex Fridman (21:29.840)
And they use this term, especially in Russian is,
Lex Fridman (21:32.780)
you know, to criticize something I was doing,
Tyler Cowen (21:36.500)
that was suggest, you know, normal people don't do this.
Lex Fridman (21:41.120)
And I used to be really offended by that,
Tyler Cowen (21:44.500)
but, you know, as I got older,
Lex Fridman (21:48.340)
I realized that that's a kind of compliment
Tyler Cowen (21:51.340)
because in the same kind of, I would say,
Lex Fridman (21:56.740)
way that you're saying that is the American ideal,
Tyler Cowen (21:59.860)
because if you want to do anything special or interesting,
Lex Fridman (22:02.760)
you don't want to be doing in one particular avenue
Lex Fridman (22:06.340)
what normal people do, because that won't be interesting.
Lex Fridman (22:12.380)
Russians, I think fit in very well here
Tyler Cowen (22:14.860)
because the ones who come are weirdos.
Lex Fridman (22:16.780)
And there's a very different Russian weirdo tradition
Lex Fridman (22:19.100)
like Alyosha, right?
Lex Fridman (22:20.340)
And by this card, I miss off.
Tyler Cowen (22:21.940)
Or Perelman, the mathematician, they're weirdos.
Lex Fridman (22:25.060)
And they have their own different kind of status
Tyler Cowen (22:27.860)
in Soviet Union, Russia, wherever.
Lex Fridman (22:30.740)
And when Russians come to America,
Tyler Cowen (22:32.380)
they stay pretty Russian, but it seems to me a week later,
Lex Fridman (22:35.180)
they've somehow adjusted.
Lex Fridman (22:38.020)
And the ways in which they might want to be like grumpier
Lex Fridman (22:40.860)
than Americans, not smile,
Tyler Cowen (22:42.260)
think that people who smile are idiots,
Lex Fridman (22:44.200)
like they can do that.
Tyler Cowen (22:45.220)
No one takes that away from them.
Lex Fridman (22:48.300)
What are you, on a tiny tangent,
Tyler Cowen (22:50.700)
I'd love to hear if you have thoughts
Lex Fridman (22:52.220)
about Grisha Perelman turning down the Fields Medal.
Lex Fridman (22:57.060)
Is that something you admire?
Lex Fridman (22:59.180)
Does that make sense to you that somebody,
Tyler Cowen (23:02.100)
you know, with the structure of Nobel Prizes,
Lex Fridman (23:04.160)
of these huge awards, of the reputations,
Tyler Cowen (23:06.340)
the hierarchy of everyone saying, applauding,
Lex Fridman (23:09.240)
how special you are, and here's a person
Tyler Cowen (23:12.060)
who was doing one of the greatest accomplishments
Lex Fridman (23:14.820)
in the history of mathematics.
Tyler Cowen (23:16.160)
It doesn't want the stupid prize
Lex Fridman (23:17.660)
and doesn't want recognition,
Tyler Cowen (23:19.380)
doesn't want to do interviews,
Lex Fridman (23:20.580)
it doesn't want to be famous.
Lex Fridman (23:22.020)
What do you make of that?
Lex Fridman (23:24.140)
It's great.
Tyler Cowen (23:24.980)
Look, prizes are corrupting.
Lex Fridman (23:26.880)
After scientists win Nobel Prizes,
Tyler Cowen (23:28.940)
they tend to become less productive.
Lex Fridman (23:31.220)
Now, statistically, it's hard to sort out
Tyler Cowen (23:32.960)
the different effects.
Lex Fridman (23:33.800)
There's aggression toward the mean.
Lex Fridman (23:35.340)
Does the prize make you too busy?
Lex Fridman (23:36.660)
It's a little tricky, but.
Tyler Cowen (23:38.060)
There's not enough Nobel Prizes either
Lex Fridman (23:39.900)
to gather enough data.
Tyler Cowen (23:41.780)
Right, but I've known a lot of Nobel Prize winners,
Lex Fridman (23:45.260)
and it is my sense they become less productive.
Tyler Cowen (23:47.780)
They repeat more of their older messages,
Lex Fridman (23:49.580)
which may be highly socially valuable,
Lex Fridman (23:52.220)
but if someone wants to turn their back on that
Lex Fridman (23:54.960)
and keep on working, which I assume is what he's doing,
Tyler Cowen (23:58.300)
that's awesome.
Lex Fridman (23:59.400)
I mean, we should respect that.
Lex Fridman (24:01.300)
It's like he wins a bigger prize, right?
Lex Fridman (24:02.980)
Our extreme respect.
Tyler Cowen (24:04.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (24:06.560)
Wow.
Tyler Cowen (24:07.820)
Grisha, if you're listening, I need to talk to you soon.
Lex Fridman (24:10.700)
Okay.
Tyler Cowen (24:11.540)
I've been trying to get ahold of him.
Lex Fridman (24:15.140)
Okay.
Tyler Cowen (24:17.580)
Back to capitalism.
Lex Fridman (24:18.460)
I gotta ask you, just competition in general,
Tyler Cowen (24:20.720)
in this world of weirdos,
Lex Fridman (24:22.560)
is competition good for the world?
Tyler Cowen (24:24.820)
This kind of seems to be one of the fundamental engines
Lex Fridman (24:29.940)
of capitalism, right?
Lex Fridman (24:31.100)
Do you see it as ultimately constructive
Lex Fridman (24:32.860)
or destructive for the world?
Lex Fridman (24:34.860)
What really matters is how good your legal framework is.
Lex Fridman (24:37.660)
So competition within nature for food
Tyler Cowen (24:40.820)
leads to bloody conflict all the time.
Lex Fridman (24:42.500)
The animal world is quite unpleasant, to say the least.
Tyler Cowen (24:46.300)
If you have something like the rule of law
Lex Fridman (24:49.860)
and clearly defined property rights,
Tyler Cowen (24:52.060)
which are within reason justly allocated,
Lex Fridman (24:56.100)
competition probably is gonna work very well.
Lex Fridman (24:58.960)
But it's not an unalloyed good thing at all.
Lex Fridman (25:01.460)
It can be highly destructive.
Lex Fridman (25:02.900)
Military competition, right?
Lex Fridman (25:05.300)
Which actually is itself sometimes good,
Lex Fridman (25:07.820)
but it's not good per se.
Lex Fridman (25:09.380)
What aspects of life do you think
Lex Fridman (25:11.340)
we should protect from competition?
Lex Fridman (25:13.820)
Is there some, you said like the rule of law,
Lex Fridman (25:16.620)
is there some things we should keep away from competition?
Lex Fridman (25:19.780)
Well, the fight for territory, most of all, right?
Lex Fridman (25:22.180)
So violence, anything that involves
Lex Fridman (25:24.220)
like actual physical violence.
Tyler Cowen (25:25.780)
Right, and it's not that I think
Lex Fridman (25:26.860)
the current borders are just.
Tyler Cowen (25:28.140)
I mean, go talk to Hungarians, Romanians,
Lex Fridman (25:31.860)
Serbians, Bosnians, they'll talk your ear off.
Lex Fridman (25:34.500)
And some of them are probably right.
Lex Fridman (25:36.720)
But at the end of the day,
Tyler Cowen (25:37.660)
we have some kind of international order.
Lex Fridman (25:40.620)
And I would rather we more or less stick with it.
Tyler Cowen (25:44.380)
If Catalonians wanna leave, they keep up with it,
Lex Fridman (25:46.860)
let them go, but.
Lex Fridman (25:48.420)
What about a space of like healthcare?
Lex Fridman (25:50.500)
This is where you get into a tension of like
Tyler Cowen (25:52.660)
between capitalism and kind of more,
Lex Fridman (25:56.500)
I don't wanna use socialism,
Lex Fridman (25:57.900)
but those kinds of policies that are less free market.
Lex Fridman (26:02.620)
I think in this country,
Tyler Cowen (26:03.460)
healthcare should be much more competitive.
Lex Fridman (26:06.020)
So you go to hospitals, doctors,
Tyler Cowen (26:07.580)
they don't treat you like a customer.
Lex Fridman (26:10.020)
They treat you like an idiot or like a child
Tyler Cowen (26:11.980)
or someone with third party payment.
Lex Fridman (26:14.520)
And it's a pretty humiliating experience often.
Tyler Cowen (26:18.840)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (26:19.680)
Do you think a free market in general is possible?
Lex Fridman (26:22.860)
Like a pure free market?
Lex Fridman (26:25.160)
And is that a good goal to strive for?
Tyler Cowen (26:28.260)
I don't think the term pure free market's well defined
Lex Fridman (26:31.300)
because you need a legal order.
Tyler Cowen (26:33.020)
Legal order has to make decisions
Lex Fridman (26:35.100)
on like what is intellectual property
Tyler Cowen (26:37.020)
more important than ever.
Lex Fridman (26:38.520)
There's no benchmark that like represents
Tyler Cowen (26:40.500)
the pure free market way of doing things.
Lex Fridman (26:43.800)
What will penalties be?
Lex Fridman (26:45.460)
How much do we put into law enforcement?
Lex Fridman (26:47.840)
No simple answers, but just saying free market
Tyler Cowen (26:50.780)
doesn't pin down what you're gonna do
Lex Fridman (26:52.380)
on those all important questions.
Lex Fridman (26:53.980)
So free market is an economics, I guess, idea.
Lex Fridman (26:56.980)
So it's not possible for free market to generate the rules
Lex Fridman (27:01.220)
that are like emergent, like self governing?
Lex Fridman (27:03.780)
It generates a lot of them, right?
Tyler Cowen (27:05.320)
Through private norms, through trade associations.
Lex Fridman (27:08.140)
International trade is mostly done privately and by norms.
Lex Fridman (27:13.140)
So it's certainly possible, but at the end of the day,
Lex Fridman (27:16.020)
I think you need governments to draw very clear lines
Tyler Cowen (27:19.940)
to prevent it from turning into mafia run systems.
Lex Fridman (27:24.180)
You know, I've been hanging out with other group of weirdos,
Tyler Cowen (27:29.340)
lately Michael Malice, who espouses to be an anarchist,
Lex Fridman (27:34.760)
anarchism, which is like, I think intellectually
Tyler Cowen (27:39.440)
just a fascinating set of ideas, where taking free market
Lex Fridman (27:46.300)
to the full extreme of basically saying
Lex Fridman (27:48.580)
there should be no government, what is it?
Lex Fridman (27:54.260)
Oversight, I guess, and then everything should be fully,
Tyler Cowen (27:57.740)
like all the agreements, all the collectives you form
Lex Fridman (28:00.340)
should be voluntary, not based on the geographic land
Tyler Cowen (28:05.660)
you were born on and so on.
Lex Fridman (28:07.460)
Do you think that's just a giant mess?
Tyler Cowen (28:10.900)
Like, do you think it's possible for an anarchist society
Lex Fridman (28:13.620)
to work where it's, you know, in a fully distributed way,
Tyler Cowen (28:18.940)
people agree with each other,
Lex Fridman (28:20.500)
not just on financial transactions,
Lex Fridman (28:22.700)
but you know, on their personal security,
Lex Fridman (28:28.060)
on sort of military type of stuff, on healthcare,
Tyler Cowen (28:31.940)
on education, all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (28:34.100)
And where does it break down?
Tyler Cowen (28:35.700)
Well, I wouldn't press a button to say get rid
Lex Fridman (28:37.660)
of our current constitution, which I view is pretty good
Lex Fridman (28:40.540)
and quite wise, but I think the deeper point
Lex Fridman (28:43.060)
is that all societies are in some regards anarchistic
Lex Fridman (28:47.220)
and we should take the anarchists seriously.
Lex Fridman (28:49.100)
So globally, there's a kind of anarchy across borders,
Tyler Cowen (28:53.580)
even within federalistic systems, they're typically complex.
Lex Fridman (28:57.260)
There's not a clear transitivity necessarily
Tyler Cowen (29:00.340)
of who has the final say over what,
Lex Fridman (29:03.140)
just the state vis a vis its people.
Tyler Cowen (29:05.300)
There's not per se a final arbitrator in that regard.
Lex Fridman (29:09.060)
So you want a good anarchy rather than a bad anarchy.
Tyler Cowen (29:13.060)
You wanna squish your anarchy into the right corners.
Lex Fridman (29:15.980)
And I don't think there's a theoretical answer
Lex Fridman (29:18.420)
how to do it, but you start with a country,
Lex Fridman (29:20.660)
like is it working well enough now?
Tyler Cowen (29:23.540)
This country, you'd say mostly,
Lex Fridman (29:25.740)
you'd certainly wanna make a lot of improvements.
Lex Fridman (29:28.220)
And that's why I don't wanna press that
Lex Fridman (29:29.700)
get rid of the constitution button,
Lex Fridman (29:31.660)
but to just dump on the anarchists is to miss the point.
Lex Fridman (29:34.060)
Always try to learn from any opinion.
Lex Fridman (29:37.500)
What in it is true?
Lex Fridman (29:39.100)
I'm just like marveling at the poetry
Tyler Cowen (29:42.900)
of saying that we should squish our anarchy
Lex Fridman (29:45.580)
into the right corners of it.
Tyler Cowen (29:48.380)
Okay, I gotta ask, I've been talking with,
Lex Fridman (29:53.940)
since we're doing a whirlwind introduction
Tyler Cowen (29:55.940)
to all of economics,
Lex Fridman (29:57.420)
I've been talking to a few objectivists recently
Lex Fridman (2:00:01.380)
Like Beatles, classic small group, right?
Lex Fridman (2:00:05.220)
But there's so much drama.
Tyler Cowen (2:00:06.580)
The Florentine artists, of course there's drama
Lex Fridman (2:00:08.540)
and small groups tend to split up, which is fine,
Tyler Cowen (2:00:10.900)
just like entering relationships off an end.
Lex Fridman (2:00:14.180)
But it's remarkable how little has been done
Tyler Cowen (2:00:16.900)
that was not done in small groups in some way.
Lex Fridman (2:00:19.940)
So speaking of loss of beautiful relationships,
Lex Fridman (2:00:24.940)
where do you make this whole love thing?
Lex Fridman (2:00:29.260)
Why do humans fall in love?
Lex Fridman (2:00:31.620)
What's the role of love, friendship, family in life?
Lex Fridman (2:00:37.420)
In a successful life or just life in general?
Lex Fridman (2:00:40.020)
Why the hell are we so into this thing?
Lex Fridman (2:00:42.100)
There are multiple layers of understanding that question.
Lex Fridman (2:00:44.820)
So kind of the lowest layer is the Darwinian answer, right?
Lex Fridman (2:00:48.660)
If we weren't this way,
Tyler Cowen (2:00:50.340)
we wouldn't have been successful
Lex Fridman (2:00:51.700)
in reproducing and building alliances.
Tyler Cowen (2:00:54.420)
It's important to realize that's far from complete.
Lex Fridman (2:00:57.580)
Sort of the highest understanding would be poetic,
Tyler Cowen (2:00:59.940)
like read John Keats or many other love poets.
Lex Fridman (2:01:03.620)
So who do I go to to find out,
Lex Fridman (2:01:05.540)
to learn about love in terms of poets or?
Lex Fridman (2:01:07.980)
I would say start with John Keats.
Lex Fridman (2:01:10.020)
But given that you're fluent in Russian.
Lex Fridman (2:01:13.740)
Yeah, let's go Russian literature for a second.
Tyler Cowen (2:01:16.060)
Like you keep mentioning Russia.
Lex Fridman (2:01:18.580)
What's your connection?
Lex Fridman (2:01:21.180)
What's your love in Russia?
Lex Fridman (2:01:25.100)
Well, first it's all interesting,
Lex Fridman (2:01:26.380)
but more concretely, my wife was born in Moscow.
Lex Fridman (2:01:29.340)
So Kolniki was her neighborhood.
Tyler Cowen (2:01:31.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:01:32.300)
Wow.
Lex Fridman (2:01:33.140)
And she grew up there.
Lex Fridman (2:01:34.180)
I married her here.
Tyler Cowen (2:01:36.740)
My daughter, I adopted her.
Lex Fridman (2:01:38.340)
I'm not her biological father, but I genuinely raised her.
Tyler Cowen (2:01:41.260)
She was born in Russia,
Lex Fridman (2:01:42.540)
though she came here when she was one.
Tyler Cowen (2:01:45.500)
My father in law.
Lex Fridman (2:01:46.340)
So you're basically Russian.
Tyler Cowen (2:01:47.260)
No, no, no.
Lex Fridman (2:01:48.100)
I'm a New Jersey boy.
Tyler Cowen (2:01:49.180)
That's the same thing.
Lex Fridman (2:01:51.140)
I'm very sorry to report.
Tyler Cowen (2:01:52.220)
My father in law passed away a week ago.
Lex Fridman (2:01:54.820)
He lived with us for six years.
Tyler Cowen (2:01:57.300)
He lived in Russia till he was, oh, 70.
Lex Fridman (2:02:01.460)
Saw Stalinist error.
Tyler Cowen (2:02:04.180)
His father was brought to a camp,
Lex Fridman (2:02:05.820)
lived through World War II.
Tyler Cowen (2:02:07.780)
Much, much more.
Lex Fridman (2:02:09.580)
Had an incredible life.
Tyler Cowen (2:02:11.820)
Never really learned how to speak English.
Lex Fridman (2:02:14.500)
So I absorbed something Russian from him as well.
Tyler Cowen (2:02:17.940)
He was part Armenian.
Lex Fridman (2:02:20.260)
So that's my connection to Russia.
Tyler Cowen (2:02:21.980)
A bit of the Russian soul, too.
Lex Fridman (2:02:24.060)
Do you?
Tyler Cowen (2:02:24.900)
I don't think I have it.
Lex Fridman (2:02:25.740)
I think I appreciate it.
Lex Fridman (2:02:27.580)
But there's division of labor, right?
Lex Fridman (2:02:29.020)
Others in the family.
Tyler Cowen (2:02:31.380)
Take care of that.
Lex Fridman (2:02:32.220)
I'm more superficial.
Tyler Cowen (2:02:34.180)
You mentioned Keats and that higher version,
Lex Fridman (2:02:36.940)
that non Darwinian love.
Lex Fridman (2:02:38.420)
What's that about?
Lex Fridman (2:02:39.700)
That it's the highest form of human connection
Lex Fridman (2:02:42.340)
and it's intoxicating and it's part of building a life.
Lex Fridman (2:02:46.860)
And most of us are very, very strongly drawn to it.
Lex Fridman (2:02:50.340)
And it's part of the highest realization
Lex Fridman (2:02:52.540)
of you being what you can be.
Tyler Cowen (2:02:54.660)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:02:56.580)
He mentioned you lost.
Lex Fridman (2:02:57.540)
But ask a Russian.
Lex Fridman (2:02:58.380)
I mean, this is a superficial New Jersey boy
Tyler Cowen (2:03:01.460)
who grew up listening to Bruce Springsteen
Lex Fridman (2:03:03.820)
and that was his romanticism.
Lex Fridman (2:03:05.620)
What's your favorite Bruce Springsteen song?
Lex Fridman (2:03:09.580)
I think the album Born to Run has actually held up the best.
Tyler Cowen (2:03:14.100)
Though it's very fashionable to think
Lex Fridman (2:03:15.900)
the earlier or later works are actually better.
Lex Fridman (2:03:18.340)
And that's the overproduced super pop album.
Lex Fridman (2:03:21.100)
But the quality of the songs,
Tyler Cowen (2:03:22.380)
to me Born to Run is just far and away the best.
Lex Fridman (2:03:25.380)
Then Darkness on the Edge of Town.
Lex Fridman (2:03:27.540)
And those are still my favorites.
Lex Fridman (2:03:29.860)
Born to Run is an incredible song.
Lex Fridman (2:03:33.060)
And perfectly produced in a Phil Spector kind of way.
Lex Fridman (2:03:36.460)
Every detail is right.
Tyler Cowen (2:03:38.020)
Every lyric.
Lex Fridman (2:03:39.220)
What else is on the album?
Tyler Cowen (2:03:40.580)
Thunder Road, Jungle Land, Tenth Avenue, Freeze Out.
Lex Fridman (2:03:43.540)
She's the one, unbelievable.
Tyler Cowen (2:03:46.620)
Yeah, Bruce is amazing.
Lex Fridman (2:03:47.460)
Leading across the river.
Tyler Cowen (2:03:48.900)
I really like when he goes into love personally.
Lex Fridman (2:03:55.860)
Like I'm on fire.
Tyler Cowen (2:03:57.780)
That's a very good song, Dancing in the Dark.
Lex Fridman (2:04:00.340)
A lot of the later work,
Tyler Cowen (2:04:01.420)
I find the percussion becomes too simple
Lex Fridman (2:04:04.020)
and kind of too white somehow.
Lex Fridman (2:04:06.740)
And a little clunky.
Lex Fridman (2:04:08.100)
And it's still good work.
Tyler Cowen (2:04:09.580)
He's super talented, but it doesn't speak to me.
Lex Fridman (2:04:12.820)
But when it all bursts open into the open road,
Tyler Cowen (2:04:16.020)
like it does on Born to Run, that's magic.
Lex Fridman (2:04:19.660)
Yeah.
Tyler Cowen (2:04:20.500)
Or Rosalita.
Lex Fridman (2:04:21.340)
Have you ever seen him live?
Tyler Cowen (2:04:23.980)
Yes, twice.
Lex Fridman (2:04:26.140)
I wonder what he's like live when he was young, right?
Tyler Cowen (2:04:28.620)
Those years.
Lex Fridman (2:04:29.460)
I saw him live when he was young.
Tyler Cowen (2:04:31.220)
I was young.
Lex Fridman (2:04:32.980)
New Jersey.
Tyler Cowen (2:04:34.460)
I was a little disappointed actually.
Lex Fridman (2:04:37.260)
I think what I like best from him is quite studio.
Tyler Cowen (2:04:41.180)
He certainly played well.
Lex Fridman (2:04:42.260)
I don't fault his performance.
Lex Fridman (2:04:44.060)
But it's like when I saw Plant and Page of Led Zeppelin.
Lex Fridman (2:04:47.580)
Tremendous creators.
Lex Fridman (2:04:48.980)
And they showed up.
Lex Fridman (2:04:49.820)
They were not drunk.
Tyler Cowen (2:04:50.660)
Like they were paying attention.
Lex Fridman (2:04:52.140)
But I was underwhelmed.
Tyler Cowen (2:04:54.060)
Because Led Zeppelin, like the Beatles White album,
Lex Fridman (2:04:56.660)
is much more of a studio band than you think at first.
Lex Fridman (2:04:59.740)
And in the case of Bruce Springsteen,
Lex Fridman (2:05:01.220)
I don't know about you, but for me,
Tyler Cowen (2:05:03.220)
he's somebody that I connect with the most
Lex Fridman (2:05:05.940)
when I'm alone and there's like a melancholy feeling.
Lex Fridman (2:05:10.100)
And actually, my folks live in Philly.
Lex Fridman (2:05:12.620)
I went to school in Philly.
Lex Fridman (2:05:14.860)
And so, you know, I've, I think I've.
Lex Fridman (2:05:18.420)
You're almost worthy of New Jersey then.
Tyler Cowen (2:05:20.020)
Yeah, well you're, you're almost worthy of Russia.
Lex Fridman (2:05:24.020)
So we're, we can connect.
Lex Fridman (2:05:27.260)
And then ask, but I mean, I love Jersey.
Lex Fridman (2:05:28.580)
This is something I feel like, I feel like, I don't know.
Tyler Cowen (2:05:34.660)
It's always, there's this beautiful,
Lex Fridman (2:05:36.660)
like there's a diner, Olga's Diner that closed down.
Tyler Cowen (2:05:39.020)
I used to go there.
Lex Fridman (2:05:41.540)
There's, there's a melancholy feeling to me.
Tyler Cowen (2:05:43.860)
I mean, of course.
Lex Fridman (2:05:44.700)
A thickness to culture in that part of the world.
Tyler Cowen (2:05:47.780)
Which is oddly similar to some elements
Lex Fridman (2:05:49.940)
of the thickness of Russian culture.
Lex Fridman (2:05:51.940)
And when you see like Russian characters on the Sopranos,
Lex Fridman (2:05:55.580)
it totally makes sense,
Tyler Cowen (2:05:56.700)
even though there are these complete outliers.
Lex Fridman (2:05:59.460)
Exactly, it totally makes sense.
Tyler Cowen (2:06:01.820)
You've, you mentioned you lost your father in law last week.
Lex Fridman (2:06:06.180)
Do you think about mortality?
Lex Fridman (2:06:09.580)
Do you think about your own mortality?
Lex Fridman (2:06:12.420)
Are you afraid of death?
Tyler Cowen (2:06:14.820)
I don't think about my own mortality that much,
Lex Fridman (2:06:17.300)
which is probably a good thing.
Tyler Cowen (2:06:19.900)
I think death will be bad.
Lex Fridman (2:06:22.340)
I wouldn't say I'm afraid of it.
Tyler Cowen (2:06:23.900)
For me, the worst thing about death
Lex Fridman (2:06:25.420)
is not knowing how the human story turns out.
Tyler Cowen (2:06:28.660)
The full human story.
Lex Fridman (2:06:29.780)
The full human story.
Lex Fridman (2:06:30.660)
So if I could, right before I die,
Lex Fridman (2:06:32.780)
read like a Wikipedia page called The Rest of Human History
Lex Fridman (2:06:36.500)
and have enough time, just like a few days,
Lex Fridman (2:06:38.220)
to absorb it, think about it,
Lex Fridman (2:06:40.220)
and know like, oh, well 643 years from now,
Lex Fridman (2:06:43.220)
that's when all the atomic weapons went off
Lex Fridman (2:06:45.060)
and here's what happened between now and then,
Lex Fridman (2:06:47.900)
I would feel much better dying.
Lex Fridman (2:06:52.180)
But that's not how it's gonna be, right?
Lex Fridman (2:06:54.100)
That's unlikely.
Tyler Cowen (2:06:55.020)
It's almost like the Hitchhiker's Guide,
Lex Fridman (2:06:57.020)
they kind of have, what is it?
Tyler Cowen (2:06:58.780)
They have a one or two sentence description of the human,
Lex Fridman (2:07:01.900)
of what goes on on Earth.
Tyler Cowen (2:07:03.580)
It's kind of interesting to think
Lex Fridman (2:07:05.020)
if there's a lot of intelligent civilizations out there
Tyler Cowen (2:07:07.980)
that in the big encyclopedia that describes the universe,
Lex Fridman (2:07:10.980)
humans will only have one sentence, maybe two.
Tyler Cowen (2:07:13.660)
Probably true.
Lex Fridman (2:07:15.100)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:07:15.940)
But it's the only one I can read and understand, right?
Lex Fridman (2:07:18.620)
And it may be hard to understand the human one
Tyler Cowen (2:07:20.740)
past a number of centuries.
Lex Fridman (2:07:22.860)
Yeah, with AI, yes.
Tyler Cowen (2:07:26.420)
Like how many years from now will reading Wikipedia
Lex Fridman (2:07:29.060)
be like trying to read Chaucer,
Tyler Cowen (2:07:31.140)
which I almost can do, but I actually can't.
Lex Fridman (2:07:33.380)
I need a translation.
Tyler Cowen (2:07:34.860)
Probably you can't do it at all.
Lex Fridman (2:07:36.380)
Yeah.
Tyler Cowen (2:07:37.580)
I mean, maybe reading will be outdated.
Lex Fridman (2:07:39.380)
It might be a very silly notion.
Tyler Cowen (2:07:41.660)
Maybe we're fundamentally,
Lex Fridman (2:07:43.540)
like we think language is fundamental to cognition,
Lex Fridman (2:07:46.060)
but it could be something visual
Lex Fridman (2:07:47.380)
or something totally different that we'll plug in.
Tyler Cowen (2:07:50.260)
Neuralink or, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:07:53.500)
But in that story, that Wikipedia article,
Lex Fridman (2:07:55.820)
do you think there'll be a section on the meaning of it?
Lex Fridman (2:08:00.940)
I hope not, because that section we could write now,
Lex Fridman (2:08:04.780)
and it's just not going to be very good, right?
Lex Fridman (2:08:07.220)
What would you put in the section
Lex Fridman (2:08:08.580)
on the meaning of human existence?
Lex Fridman (2:08:11.620)
I don't know, links to a lot of other sections?
Tyler Cowen (2:08:15.940)
I don't think there are general statements
Lex Fridman (2:08:17.380)
about the meaning of life that have that much meaning.
Tyler Cowen (2:08:19.860)
I think if you study different cultures,
Lex Fridman (2:08:21.980)
the arts, travel, mathematics,
Tyler Cowen (2:08:23.780)
like whatever your thing is,
Lex Fridman (2:08:25.420)
you'll get a lot about the meaning of life.
Lex Fridman (2:08:27.220)
So like it's there in Wikipedia in some bigger sense.
Lex Fridman (2:08:30.660)
But I don't want to read the page on the meaning.
Tyler Cowen (2:08:32.180)
I bet they have such a page, in fact.
Lex Fridman (2:08:34.300)
The fact that I've never visited it,
Tyler Cowen (2:08:36.020)
none of my friends, oh, here, Tyler,
Lex Fridman (2:08:37.740)
here's the page on the meaning of life.
Tyler Cowen (2:08:39.100)
I know you've been wondering about this.
Lex Fridman (2:08:40.340)
You got to read this one.
Lex Fridman (2:08:41.580)
No one's ever done that to you, have they?
Lex Fridman (2:08:43.300)
It probably has, well, I've actually gone to that page.
Tyler Cowen (2:08:46.020)
It does, in fact, have a lot of links to other pages.
Lex Fridman (2:08:48.500)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (2:08:51.020)
So that's it.
Lex Fridman (2:08:52.540)
The meaning of life is just a bunch of self referential
Tyler Cowen (2:08:57.180)
or citation needed type of statements.
Lex Fridman (2:09:02.260)
I think there's no better way to end it.
Tyler Cowen (2:09:03.860)
Tyler, it's a huge honor.
Lex Fridman (2:09:05.100)
I'm a huge fan.
Tyler Cowen (2:09:07.500)
Thank you so much for wasting all of this time with me.
Lex Fridman (2:09:10.060)
It was one of the greatest conversations I've ever had.
Tyler Cowen (2:09:11.980)
Thank you so much.
Lex Fridman (2:09:12.820)
My pleasure and delighted to finally have met you
Lex Fridman (2:09:15.220)
and that we can do this.
Lex Fridman (2:09:17.740)
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tyler Cowen
Lex Fridman (2:09:20.260)
and thank you to Linode, ExpressVPN,
Lex Fridman (2:09:23.580)
SimpliSafe and Public Goods.
Tyler Cowen (2:09:25.940)
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (2:09:29.580)
And now let me leave you with some words from Adam Smith.
Tyler Cowen (2:09:33.660)
Little else is requisite to carry a state
Lex Fridman (2:09:36.580)
to the highest degree of opulence
Tyler Cowen (2:09:38.580)
from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes
Lex Fridman (2:09:42.660)
and a tolerable administration of justice.
Tyler Cowen (2:09:45.900)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (30:00.100)
and just, Ayn Rand comes up as a person,
Tyler Cowen (30:04.340)
as a philosopher throughout many conversations.
Lex Fridman (30:07.060)
A lot of people really despise her.
Tyler Cowen (30:09.180)
A lot of people really love her.
Lex Fridman (30:11.140)
It's always weird to me when somebody arouses a philosophy
Tyler Cowen (30:14.940)
or a human being arouses that much emotion
Lex Fridman (30:16.780)
in either direction, does she make,
Lex Fridman (30:20.140)
do you understand, first of all, that level of emotion
Lex Fridman (30:22.780)
and what are your thoughts about Ayn Rand
Lex Fridman (30:25.060)
and her philosophy of objectivism?
Lex Fridman (30:26.700)
Is it useful at all to think about this kind of formulation
Tyler Cowen (30:31.140)
of a rational self interest,
Lex Fridman (30:34.860)
if I could put it in those words,
Tyler Cowen (30:36.700)
or I guess more negatively the selfishness
Lex Fridman (30:43.100)
or she would put, I guess, the virtue of selfishness.
Tyler Cowen (30:46.540)
Ayn Rand was a big influence on me growing up.
Lex Fridman (30:49.300)
The book that really mattered for me was
Tyler Cowen (30:50.860)
Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal.
Lex Fridman (30:53.340)
The notion that wealth creates opportunity
Lex Fridman (30:56.220)
and good lives and wealth is something we ought to valorize
Lex Fridman (30:59.860)
and give very high status.
Tyler Cowen (31:01.340)
It's one of her key ideas.
Lex Fridman (31:02.860)
I think it's completely correct.
Tyler Cowen (31:04.500)
I think she has the most profound
Lex Fridman (31:06.100)
and articulate statement of that idea.
Tyler Cowen (31:08.780)
That said, as a philosopher,
Lex Fridman (31:10.780)
I disagree with her on most things.
Lex Fridman (31:12.980)
And I did, even like as a boy, when I was reading her,
Lex Fridman (31:15.700)
I read Plato before Ayn Rand.
Lex Fridman (31:17.820)
And in a Socratic dialogue,
Lex Fridman (31:19.140)
there's all these different points of view
Tyler Cowen (31:20.380)
being thrown around.
Lex Fridman (31:22.100)
And whomever it is you agree with,
Tyler Cowen (31:24.100)
you understand the wisdom is in the coming together
Lex Fridman (31:27.020)
of the different points of view.
Lex Fridman (31:28.700)
And she doesn't have that.
Lex Fridman (31:29.780)
So altruism can be wonderful in my view.
Tyler Cowen (31:32.980)
Humans are not actually that rational.
Lex Fridman (31:35.340)
Self interest is often poorly defined.
Tyler Cowen (31:38.140)
To pound the table and say existence exists.
Lex Fridman (31:41.140)
I wouldn't say I disagree,
Lex Fridman (31:42.900)
but I'm not sure that it's a very meaningful statement.
Lex Fridman (31:46.460)
I think the secret to Ayn Rand is that she was Russian.
Tyler Cowen (31:49.220)
I'd love to have her on my podcast if she was still alive.
Lex Fridman (31:52.020)
I'd only ask her about Russia,
Tyler Cowen (31:53.820)
which she mostly never talked about
Lex Fridman (31:56.060)
after writing We the Living.
Lex Fridman (31:57.860)
And she is much more Russian than she seems at first,
Lex Fridman (32:01.580)
even like purging people from the objectivist circles.
Tyler Cowen (32:04.340)
It's like how Russians, especially female Russians,
Lex Fridman (32:07.380)
so often purge their friends.
Tyler Cowen (32:09.300)
It's weird, all the parallels.
Lex Fridman (32:11.540)
So you're saying, so yes,
Lex Fridman (32:13.460)
so assuming she's still not around,
Lex Fridman (32:17.740)
but if she is and she comes onto your podcast,
Lex Fridman (32:20.580)
can you dig into that a little bit?
Lex Fridman (32:21.940)
Do you mean like her personal demons
Tyler Cowen (32:26.020)
around the social and economic Russia of the time,
Lex Fridman (32:31.940)
when she escaped?
Tyler Cowen (32:32.860)
The traumas she suffered there,
Lex Fridman (32:34.820)
what she really likes in the music and literature and why.
Lex Fridman (32:37.540)
Music and literature, huh?
Lex Fridman (32:38.580)
And getting deeply into that,
Tyler Cowen (32:40.220)
her view of relations between the sexes and Russia,
Lex Fridman (32:42.860)
how it differs from America,
Lex Fridman (32:44.980)
why she still carries through the old Russian vision
Lex Fridman (32:48.260)
in her fiction, this extreme sexual dimorphism,
Lex Fridman (32:51.500)
but with also very strong women,
Lex Fridman (32:53.860)
to me is a uniquely, at least Eastern European vision,
Tyler Cowen (32:57.860)
mostly Russian, I would say.
Lex Fridman (33:00.380)
And that's in her, that's her actual real philosophy,
Tyler Cowen (33:03.140)
not this table bounding existence exists.
Lex Fridman (33:06.060)
And that's not talked about enough.
Tyler Cowen (33:07.820)
She's a Russian philosopher.
Lex Fridman (33:09.260)
Or Soviet, whatever you wanna call it.
Lex Fridman (33:12.380)
And if she wasn't so certain,
Lex Fridman (33:14.700)
she could have been a Dostoevsky where it's not,
Tyler Cowen (33:17.340)
that certainty is almost the thing
Lex Fridman (33:19.060)
that brings out the adoration of millions,
Lex Fridman (33:23.340)
but also the hatred of millions.
Lex Fridman (33:25.260)
She became a cult figure in a somewhat Russian like manner.
Tyler Cowen (33:29.020)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (33:29.980)
Yeah.
Tyler Cowen (33:30.820)
It is what it is.
Lex Fridman (33:32.140)
But I love the idea that, again,
Tyler Cowen (33:34.580)
you're just dropping bombs that are poetic,
Lex Fridman (33:37.100)
that the wisdom is in the coming together of ideas.
Tyler Cowen (33:40.940)
It's kind of interesting to think
Lex Fridman (33:42.300)
that no one human possesses wisdom.
Tyler Cowen (33:46.780)
No one idea is the wisdom.
Lex Fridman (33:49.380)
That the coming together is the wisdom.
Tyler Cowen (33:52.180)
Like in my view, Boswell's Life of Johnson,
Lex Fridman (33:54.620)
18th century British biography.
Tyler Cowen (33:56.900)
It's in essence a coauthored work, Boswell and Johnson.
Lex Fridman (33:59.900)
It's one of the greatest philosophy books ever,
Tyler Cowen (34:02.660)
though it is commonly regarded as a biography.
Lex Fridman (34:05.180)
John Stuart Mill, who in a sense
Tyler Cowen (34:07.180)
was coauthoring with Harriet Taylor,
Lex Fridman (34:10.140)
better philosopher than is realized,
Tyler Cowen (34:12.060)
though he's rated very, very highly.
Lex Fridman (34:14.140)
Plato slash Socrates, a lot of the greatest works
Tyler Cowen (34:18.020)
are in a kind of dialogue form.
Lex Fridman (34:19.860)
Curtis Faust would be another example.
Tyler Cowen (34:23.060)
It's very much a dialogue.
Lex Fridman (34:24.940)
And yes, it's drama, but it's also a philosophy.
Tyler Cowen (34:27.340)
Shakespeare, maybe the wisest thinker of them all.
Lex Fridman (34:31.900)
In your book, Big Business, speaking of Ayn Rand,
Tyler Cowen (34:35.380)
Big Business, A Love Letter to an American Antihero,
Lex Fridman (34:38.860)
you make the case for the benefit
Tyler Cowen (34:41.460)
that large businesses bring to society.
Lex Fridman (34:43.500)
Can you explain?
Tyler Cowen (34:45.140)
If you look at, say, the pandemic,
Lex Fridman (34:46.900)
which has been a catastrophic event, right,
Lex Fridman (34:49.060)
for many reasons, but who is it that saved us?
Lex Fridman (34:52.620)
So Amazon has done remarkably well.
Tyler Cowen (34:56.180)
They upped their delivery game more or less overnight
Lex Fridman (34:59.420)
with very few hitches.
Tyler Cowen (35:00.980)
I've ordered hundreds of Amazon packages,
Lex Fridman (35:03.660)
direct delivery food, whether it's DoorDash or Uber Eats,
Tyler Cowen (35:07.380)
or using Whole Foods through Amazon shipping.
Lex Fridman (35:10.100)
Again, it's gone remarkably well.
Tyler Cowen (35:12.260)
Switching over our entire higher educational system,
Lex Fridman (35:15.780)
basically within two weeks, to Zoom.
Tyler Cowen (35:18.140)
Zoom did it.
Lex Fridman (35:19.100)
I mean, I've had a Zoom outage,
Lex Fridman (35:21.260)
but their performance rate has been remarkably high.
Lex Fridman (35:24.820)
So if you just look at resources, competence, incentives,
Tyler Cowen (35:29.420)
who's been the star performers, the NBA even,
Lex Fridman (35:31.900)
just canceling the season as early as they did,
Tyler Cowen (35:34.460)
sending a message like, hey, people, this is real,
Lex Fridman (35:37.580)
and then pulling off the bubble
Tyler Cowen (35:39.580)
with not a single found case of COVID
Lex Fridman (35:41.700)
and having all the testing set up in advance.
Tyler Cowen (35:45.060)
Big business has done very well lately,
Lex Fridman (35:47.820)
and throughout the broader course of American history,
Tyler Cowen (35:50.700)
in my view, has mostly been a hero.
Lex Fridman (35:53.900)
Can we engage in a kind of therapy session?
Tyler Cowen (35:58.540)
I'm often troubled by the negativity towards big business,
Lex Fridman (36:04.180)
and I wonder if you could help figure out
Lex Fridman (36:07.260)
how we remove that or maybe first psychoanalyze it
Lex Fridman (36:11.380)
and then how we remove it.
Tyler Cowen (36:12.980)
It feels like once we've gotten wifi on flights,
Lex Fridman (36:20.620)
on airplane flights, people started complaining
Lex Fridman (36:24.860)
about how shady the connection is, right?
Lex Fridman (36:27.180)
They take it for granted immediately
Lex Fridman (36:29.540)
and then start complaining about little details.
Lex Fridman (36:31.900)
Another example that's closer to,
Tyler Cowen (36:36.380)
especially as an aspiring entrepreneur,
Lex Fridman (36:39.740)
is closer to the things I'm thinking about
Tyler Cowen (36:41.980)
is Jack Dorsey with Twitter.
Lex Fridman (36:45.260)
To me, Twitter has enabled
Tyler Cowen (36:46.940)
an incredible platform of communication,
Lex Fridman (36:50.620)
and yet the biggest thing that people talk about
Tyler Cowen (36:53.420)
is not how incredible this platform is.
Lex Fridman (36:58.460)
They essentially use the platform
Tyler Cowen (37:00.660)
to complain about the censorship of a few individuals
Lex Fridman (37:04.620)
as opposed to how amazing it is.
Tyler Cowen (37:06.260)
Now, you should talk about how shady the wifi is
Lex Fridman (37:09.420)
and how censorship or the removal of Donald Trump
Tyler Cowen (37:12.460)
from the platform is a bad thing,
Lex Fridman (37:13.820)
but it feels like we don't talk about the positive impacts
Tyler Cowen (37:17.740)
at scale of these technologies.
Lex Fridman (37:20.420)
Can you explain why and is there a way to fix it?
Tyler Cowen (37:23.940)
I don't know if we can fix it.
Lex Fridman (37:25.340)
I think we are beings of high neuroticism for the most part
Tyler Cowen (37:29.300)
as a personality trait.
Lex Fridman (37:30.740)
Not everyone, but most people.
Lex Fridman (37:33.460)
And as a compliment to that,
Lex Fridman (37:34.780)
if someone says 10 nice things about you and one insult,
Tyler Cowen (37:38.140)
you're more bothered by the insult
Lex Fridman (37:39.540)
than you're pleased by the nice things,
Tyler Cowen (37:41.140)
especially if the insult is somewhat true.
Lex Fridman (37:43.820)
So you have these media, these vehicles,
Tyler Cowen (37:46.620)
Twitter is one you mentioned,
Lex Fridman (37:48.420)
where there's all kinds of messages going back and forth,
Lex Fridman (37:50.580)
and you're really bugged by the messages you don't like.
Lex Fridman (37:53.580)
Most people are neurotic to begin with.
Tyler Cowen (37:56.180)
It's not only taken out on big business, to be clear.
Lex Fridman (37:58.820)
So Congress catches a lot of grief
Lex Fridman (38:01.580)
and some of it they deserve, yes.
Lex Fridman (38:05.260)
Religion is not attacked the same way,
Lex Fridman (38:07.380)
but religiosity is declining.
Lex Fridman (38:09.820)
If you poll people, the military still polls quite well,
Lex Fridman (38:14.580)
but people are very disillusioned with many things.
Lex Fridman (38:17.020)
And the Martin Gury thesis that because of the internet,
Tyler Cowen (38:19.740)
you just see more of things.
Lex Fridman (38:21.580)
And the more you see of something,
Tyler Cowen (38:22.860)
whether it's good, bad, or in between,
Lex Fridman (38:24.940)
the more you will find to complain about,
Tyler Cowen (38:26.740)
I suspect is the fundamental mechanism here.
Lex Fridman (38:30.460)
I mean, look at Clubhouse, right?
Tyler Cowen (38:32.660)
To me, it's a great service, may or may not be like my thing,
Lex Fridman (38:35.780)
but gives people this opportunity.
Tyler Cowen (38:37.380)
No one makes you go on it.
Lex Fridman (38:39.100)
And all these media articles like,
Lex Fridman (38:40.620)
oh, is Clubhouse gonna wreck things?
Lex Fridman (38:42.740)
Are they gonna break things?
Tyler Cowen (38:44.260)
New York Times is complaining.
Lex Fridman (38:45.740)
Of course, it's their competitor as well.
Tyler Cowen (38:48.020)
I'm like, give these people a chance, talk it up.
Lex Fridman (38:50.820)
You may or may not like it.
Tyler Cowen (38:52.700)
Let's praise the people who are getting something done.
Lex Fridman (38:55.580)
Very Ayn Randian point.
Tyler Cowen (38:57.780)
As an economic thinker, as a writer, as a podcaster,
Lex Fridman (39:01.460)
what do you think about Clubhouse?
Lex Fridman (39:03.980)
What do you think about...
Lex Fridman (39:06.300)
Okay, let me just throw my feeling about it.
Tyler Cowen (39:09.780)
I used to use Discord, which is another service
Lex Fridman (39:12.380)
where people use voice.
Lex Fridman (39:13.620)
So the only thing you do is just hear each other.
Lex Fridman (39:16.420)
There's no face, you just see a little icon.
Tyler Cowen (39:19.060)
That's the essential element of Clubhouse.
Lex Fridman (39:23.700)
And there's an intimacy to voice only communication.
Tyler Cowen (39:26.540)
That's hard.
Lex Fridman (39:27.660)
That didn't make sense to me, but it was just what it is,
Tyler Cowen (39:30.860)
which feels like something that won't last
Lex Fridman (39:33.420)
for some reason, maybe it's the cynical view.
Lex Fridman (39:36.260)
But what's your sense about the intimacy
Lex Fridman (39:40.900)
of what's happening right now with Clubhouse?
Tyler Cowen (39:43.420)
I've greatly enjoyed what I've done,
Lex Fridman (39:45.580)
but I'm not sure it's for me in the long run
Tyler Cowen (39:47.380)
for two reasons.
Lex Fridman (39:48.740)
First, if you compare it to doing a podcast,
Tyler Cowen (39:52.500)
podcasting has greater reach than Clubhouse.
Lex Fridman (39:55.220)
So I would rather put time into my podcast.
Lex Fridman (39:58.340)
But then also my core asset, so to speak,
Lex Fridman (40:02.820)
is I'm a very fast reader.
Lex Fridman (40:04.980)
So audio per se is not necessarily to my advantage.
Lex Fridman (40:08.220)
I don't speak or listen faster than other people.
Tyler Cowen (40:10.860)
In fact, I'm a slower listener because I like 1.0,
Lex Fridman (40:13.620)
not 1.5X.
Lex Fridman (40:15.500)
So I should spend less time on audio
Lex Fridman (40:17.260)
and more time reading and writing.
Tyler Cowen (40:18.820)
Yeah, it's interesting because you mentioned podcasts
Lex Fridman (40:21.860)
and audio books, the podcasts are recorded
Lex Fridman (40:28.660)
and so I can skip things, like I can skip commercials,
Lex Fridman (40:32.100)
or I can skip parts where it's like,
Tyler Cowen (40:34.060)
ugh, this part is boring.
Lex Fridman (40:36.220)
With live conversations, especially when,
Tyler Cowen (40:40.140)
there's a magic to the fact when you have a lot of people
Lex Fridman (40:42.540)
participating in that conversation,
Lex Fridman (40:44.820)
but some people are like, ugh, this topic,
Lex Fridman (40:47.980)
they're going into this thing and you can't skip it
Tyler Cowen (40:50.100)
or you can't fast forward, you can go 1.5X or 2X,
Lex Fridman (40:53.980)
you can't speed it up.
Tyler Cowen (40:56.100)
Nevertheless, there's a tension between that,
Lex Fridman (40:58.540)
so that's the productivity aspect,
Tyler Cowen (41:00.540)
with the actual magic of live communication,
Lex Fridman (41:04.620)
where anything can happen, where Elon Musk
Tyler Cowen (41:07.420)
can ask the CEO of Robinhood, Vlad, about like,
Lex Fridman (41:11.340)
hey, somebody holding a gun to your head,
Tyler Cowen (41:13.300)
there's something shady going on, the magic of that.
Lex Fridman (41:16.100)
That's also my criticism of like,
Tyler Cowen (41:18.300)
there's been a recent conversation with Bill Gates
Lex Fridman (41:20.900)
that he won a platform and had a regular interview
Tyler Cowen (41:26.700)
on the platform without allowing the possibility
Lex Fridman (41:29.540)
of the magic of the chaos.
Lex Fridman (41:32.460)
So I'm not exactly sure, it's probably not the right
Lex Fridman (41:36.180)
platform for you and for many other people
Tyler Cowen (41:38.380)
who are exceptionally productive in other places,
Lex Fridman (41:40.860)
but there's still nevertheless a magic to the chaos
Tyler Cowen (41:43.420)
that can be created with live conversation
Lex Fridman (41:45.540)
that gives me pause.
Tyler Cowen (41:47.860)
Maybe what it's perfect for is the tribute.
Lex Fridman (41:50.140)
So they had an episode recently that I didn't hear,
Lex Fridman (41:52.520)
but I heard it was wonderful.
Lex Fridman (41:54.040)
It was anecdotes about Steve Jobs.
Lex Fridman (41:56.380)
That you can't do one to one, right?
Lex Fridman (41:58.040)
And you don't want control.
Tyler Cowen (41:59.460)
You want different people appearing and stepping up
Lex Fridman (42:02.020)
and saying their bit.
Lex Fridman (42:03.780)
And Clubhouse is 110% perfect for that.
Lex Fridman (42:07.740)
The tribute.
Tyler Cowen (42:08.900)
I love that, the tribute.
Lex Fridman (42:10.500)
But there's also the possibility,
Tyler Cowen (42:12.580)
I think there was a time when somebody arranged
Lex Fridman (42:15.740)
a conversation with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on stage.
Tyler Cowen (42:18.900)
I remember that happened a long time ago.
Lex Fridman (42:22.540)
And it was very formal.
Tyler Cowen (42:26.580)
It could have probably gone better,
Lex Fridman (42:27.900)
but it was still magical to have these people
Tyler Cowen (42:30.060)
that obviously had a bunch of tension
Lex Fridman (42:32.220)
throughout their history.
Tyler Cowen (42:35.420)
It's so frictionless to have two major figures
Lex Fridman (42:39.460)
in world history just jump on a Clubhouse stage.
Tyler Cowen (42:42.580)
Putin and Elon Musk.
Lex Fridman (42:43.780)
Putin and Elon Musk.
Lex Fridman (42:45.660)
And that's exactly it.
Lex Fridman (42:47.180)
So there's a language barrier there.
Tyler Cowen (42:48.820)
There's also the problem that in particular,
Lex Fridman (42:52.860)
it's like Biden would have a similar problem.
Tyler Cowen (42:55.900)
It's like they're just not into a new technology.
Lex Fridman (42:58.340)
So it's very hard to catch the Kremlin up to,
Tyler Cowen (43:01.580)
first of all, Twitter,
Lex Fridman (43:03.740)
but to catch them up to Clubhouse,
Tyler Cowen (43:05.160)
you have to have the,
Lex Fridman (43:07.260)
Elon Musk has a sense of the internet,
Tyler Cowen (43:08.820)
the humor, the memes, and all that kind of stuff
Lex Fridman (43:10.860)
that you have to have in order to use a new app
Lex Fridman (43:14.900)
and figure out the timing, the beat,
Lex Fridman (43:16.900)
what is this thing about?
Lex Fridman (43:19.140)
So that's the challenge there.
Lex Fridman (43:20.540)
But that's exactly it.
Tyler Cowen (43:21.620)
That magic of have two big personalities just show up.
Lex Fridman (43:27.900)
And I wonder if it's just the temporary thing
Tyler Cowen (43:30.660)
that we're going through with the pandemic
Lex Fridman (43:32.340)
where people are just lonely
Lex Fridman (43:35.620)
and they're seeking for that human connection
Lex Fridman (43:37.500)
that we usually get elsewhere through our work.
Lex Fridman (43:40.540)
But they'll stay lonely, in my opinion.
Lex Fridman (43:42.620)
You think so? I do.
Lex Fridman (43:44.560)
So it is a pandemic thing, but I think it will persist.
Lex Fridman (43:48.140)
And the idea of wanting to be connected
Tyler Cowen (43:49.900)
to more of the world, Clubhouse will still offer that.
Lex Fridman (43:53.500)
And all the mental health issues out there,
Tyler Cowen (43:56.140)
a lot of people have broken ties
Lex Fridman (43:58.700)
and they will still be lonely post vaccines.
Tyler Cowen (44:02.300)
Yeah, I, from an artificial intelligence perspective,
Lex Fridman (44:06.940)
have a sense that there is like a deep loneliness
Tyler Cowen (44:10.720)
in the world, that all of us are really lonely.
Lex Fridman (44:13.140)
Like we don't even acknowledge it.
Tyler Cowen (44:14.460)
Even people in happy relationships,
Lex Fridman (44:16.660)
it feels like there's like an iceberg of loneliness
Tyler Cowen (44:19.140)
in all of us, like seeking to be understood,
Lex Fridman (44:22.700)
like deeply understood, understanding us,
Tyler Cowen (44:24.980)
like having somebody with whom you can have
Lex Fridman (44:27.860)
a deep interaction enough to where you can,
Tyler Cowen (44:31.540)
they can help you to understand yourself
Lex Fridman (44:34.100)
and they also understand you.
Tyler Cowen (44:36.460)
Like I have a sense that artificial intelligence systems
Lex Fridman (44:38.820)
can provide that as well, but humans,
Tyler Cowen (44:42.100)
I think crave that from other humans
Lex Fridman (44:44.420)
in ways that we perhaps don't acknowledge.
Lex Fridman (44:46.460)
And I have a hope that technology will enable that
Lex Fridman (44:48.980)
more and more, like Clubhouse is an example
Tyler Cowen (44:50.900)
that allows that.
Lex Fridman (44:52.260)
Are touring bots gonna out compete Clubhouse?
Lex Fridman (44:54.940)
Like why not sort of program your own session?
Lex Fridman (44:57.560)
You'll just talk into your device
Lex Fridman (44:59.900)
and say here's the kind of conversation I want
Lex Fridman (45:02.300)
and it will create the characters for you.
Lex Fridman (45:04.580)
And it may not be as good as Elon and Vladimir Putin,
Lex Fridman (45:07.080)
but it will be better than ordinary Clubhouse.
Tyler Cowen (45:09.620)
Yeah, and one of the things that's missing,
Lex Fridman (45:11.680)
it's not just conversation, it's memory.
Lex Fridman (45:14.940)
So longterm memories, what current AI systems don't have
Lex Fridman (45:19.100)
is sharing experience together.
Tyler Cowen (45:21.200)
Forget the words, it's like sharing the highs
Lex Fridman (45:24.020)
and the lows of life together
Lex Fridman (45:26.300)
and the systems around us remembering that.
Lex Fridman (45:29.460)
Remembering we've been through that.
Tyler Cowen (45:31.300)
Like that's the thing that creates
Lex Fridman (45:32.900)
really close relationships, is going through some shit.
Tyler Cowen (45:35.460)
Like struggle.
Lex Fridman (45:37.660)
If you survive together, there's something really difficult
Tyler Cowen (45:41.020)
that bonds you with other humans.
Lex Fridman (45:42.820)
And this is related to immigration and the American dream.
Lex Fridman (45:46.500)
In what way?
Lex Fridman (45:47.340)
The people who have come to this country,
Tyler Cowen (45:48.940)
however weird and different they may be,
Lex Fridman (45:51.860)
they or their ancestors at some point
Tyler Cowen (45:53.740)
probably have shared this thing.
Lex Fridman (45:58.140)
Right, US is not gonna split up.
Tyler Cowen (46:00.100)
It may get more screwed up as a country,
Lex Fridman (46:02.380)
but Texas and California are not gonna break off.
Tyler Cowen (46:05.500)
I mean, they're big enough where they could do it,
Lex Fridman (46:07.280)
but it's just never gonna happen.
Tyler Cowen (46:08.920)
We've been through too much together.
Lex Fridman (46:10.380)
Yeah.
Tyler Cowen (46:11.220)
Yeah, that's a hopeful message.
Lex Fridman (46:14.060)
Do you think, some people have talked to Eric Weinstein,
Tyler Cowen (46:17.020)
you've talked to Eric Weinstein.
Lex Fridman (46:20.060)
He has a sense that growth,
Tyler Cowen (46:23.460)
like the entirety of the American system
Lex Fridman (46:26.200)
is based on the assumption that we're gonna grow forever,
Tyler Cowen (46:28.820)
that the economy's gonna grow forever.
Lex Fridman (46:30.980)
Do you think economic growth will continue indefinitely?
Lex Fridman (46:35.780)
Or will we stagnate?
Lex Fridman (46:37.180)
I've long been in agreement with Eric, Peter Thiel,
Tyler Cowen (46:40.940)
Robert Gordon and others, that growth has slowed down.
Lex Fridman (46:45.300)
I argued that in my book,
Tyler Cowen (46:46.540)
The Great Stagnation, appropriately titled.
Lex Fridman (46:49.620)
But the last two years, I've become much more optimistic.
Tyler Cowen (46:52.180)
I've seen a lot of breakthroughs
Lex Fridman (46:53.900)
in green energy and battery technology.
Tyler Cowen (46:56.780)
mRNA vaccines and medicine is a big deal already.
Lex Fridman (47:00.860)
It will repair our GDP
Lex Fridman (47:02.380)
and save millions of lives around the world.
Lex Fridman (47:05.180)
There's an anti malaria vaccine
Tyler Cowen (47:07.100)
that's now in stage three trial, it probably works.
Lex Fridman (47:10.100)
CRISPR to defeat sickle cell anemia.
Tyler Cowen (47:13.660)
Just space, area after area after area,
Lex Fridman (47:16.540)
there's suddenly the surge of breakthroughs.
Tyler Cowen (47:18.780)
I would say many of them rooted in superior computation
Lex Fridman (47:22.060)
and ultimately Moore's law
Lex Fridman (47:23.500)
and access to those computational abilities.
Lex Fridman (47:26.580)
So I'm much more optimistic than say,
Tyler Cowen (47:28.460)
the last time I spoke to Eric.
Lex Fridman (47:30.420)
I don't know, he moves all the time in his views.
Tyler Cowen (47:32.900)
I don't know where he's going.
Lex Fridman (47:34.220)
His views, I don't know where he's at now.
Tyler Cowen (47:35.940)
He's not at, he hasn't gained, that's really interesting.
Lex Fridman (47:38.900)
So your little drop of optimism comes from like,
Tyler Cowen (47:44.180)
there might be a fundamental shift
Lex Fridman (47:46.180)
in the kind of things that computation has unlocked for us
Tyler Cowen (47:49.620)
in terms of like, it could be a wellspring of innovation
Lex Fridman (47:52.860)
that enables growth for a long time to come.
Tyler Cowen (47:55.540)
Like Eric has not quite connected
Lex Fridman (47:59.420)
to the computation aspect yet
Tyler Cowen (48:01.620)
to where it could be a wellspring of innovation.
Lex Fridman (48:04.340)
But you're very close to it in your own work.
Tyler Cowen (48:06.180)
I don't have to tell you that.
Lex Fridman (48:07.740)
The work you're doing would not have been possible
Tyler Cowen (48:10.020)
not very long ago.
Lex Fridman (48:11.300)
But the question is,
Lex Fridman (48:12.140)
how much does that work enable continued growth
Lex Fridman (48:14.820)
for decades to come?
Tyler Cowen (48:16.180)
For all their problems,
Lex Fridman (48:17.660)
some version of driverless vehicles will be a thing.
Tyler Cowen (48:20.700)
I'm not sure when, you know much better than I do.
Lex Fridman (48:23.380)
Maybe only partially, but that too will be a big deal.
Tyler Cowen (48:26.700)
Well, one of the open questions
Lex Fridman (48:28.220)
that sort of the Peter Thiel School area of ideas
Lex Fridman (48:32.940)
is how much can be converted to technology?
Lex Fridman (48:36.180)
How much, how many parts of our lives
Lex Fridman (48:38.740)
can technology integrate and then innovate?
Lex Fridman (48:40.740)
Like can it replace healthcare?
Lex Fridman (48:43.460)
Can it replace the legal system?
Lex Fridman (48:46.420)
Can it replace government?
Tyler Cowen (48:47.740)
Not replace, but like, you know, make it digital
Lex Fridman (48:52.740)
and thereby enable computation to improve it, right?
Tyler Cowen (48:57.460)
That's the open question,
Lex Fridman (48:58.820)
because many aspects of our lives
Tyler Cowen (49:00.740)
are still not really that digitized.
Lex Fridman (49:06.020)
There was a New York Times symposium in April,
Tyler Cowen (49:08.580)
which is not long ago.
Lex Fridman (49:09.740)
And they asked the so called experts,
Lex Fridman (49:11.940)
when are we gonna get vaccines?
Lex Fridman (49:13.620)
And the most optimistic answer was in four years.
Lex Fridman (49:17.700)
And obviously we beat that by a long mile.
Lex Fridman (49:21.260)
So I think people still haven't woken up.
Tyler Cowen (49:23.140)
You mentioned my tiny drop of optimism,
Lex Fridman (49:25.020)
but it's a big drop of optimism.
Lex Fridman (49:27.860)
Is it a waterfall yet?
Lex Fridman (49:28.940)
I mean, is it just?
Tyler Cowen (49:30.740)
Well, here's my pessimism.
Lex Fridman (49:32.380)
Whenever there are major new technologies,
Tyler Cowen (49:34.460)
they also tend to be used for violence
Lex Fridman (49:36.340)
directly or indirectly, radio, Hitler.
Tyler Cowen (49:39.220)
Not that he hit people over the head with radios,
Lex Fridman (49:41.100)
but it enabled the rise of various dictators.
Lex Fridman (49:44.700)
So the new technologies now, whatever exactly they may be,
Lex Fridman (49:48.620)
they're gonna cause a lot of trouble.
Lex Fridman (49:50.500)
And that's my pessimism.
Lex Fridman (49:51.660)
Not that I think they're all gonna slow to a trickle.
Lex Fridman (49:54.740)
When was the stagnation book?
Lex Fridman (49:56.660)
2011.
Tyler Cowen (49:57.860)
2011.
Lex Fridman (49:58.740)
Yes.
Tyler Cowen (49:59.900)
It was the first of the stagnation books, in fact.
Lex Fridman (50:03.060)
It's very interesting.
Lex Fridman (50:05.220)
But even then I said, this is temporary.
Lex Fridman (50:07.700)
And I was predicting it would be gone
Tyler Cowen (50:09.620)
in about 20 years time.
Lex Fridman (50:12.460)
I'm not sure that's exactly the right prediction,
Tyler Cowen (50:14.540)
like 2030, but I think we're actually gonna beat that.
Lex Fridman (50:19.140)
So you think United States might still be
Tyler Cowen (50:21.020)
on top of the world for the rest of the century
Lex Fridman (50:22.980)
in terms of its economic growth,
Tyler Cowen (50:26.260)
impact on the world, scientific innovation,
Lex Fridman (50:28.460)
all those kinds of things?
Tyler Cowen (50:29.940)
That's too long to predict,
Lex Fridman (50:31.460)
but I'm bullish on America in general.
Tyler Cowen (50:35.060)
Got it.
Lex Fridman (50:36.740)
Speaking of being bullish on America,
Tyler Cowen (50:38.900)
the opposite of that is,
Lex Fridman (50:43.420)
we talked about capitalism,
Tyler Cowen (50:44.420)
we talked about Iran and her Russian roots.
Lex Fridman (50:47.900)
What do you think about communism?
Lex Fridman (50:51.340)
Why doesn't it work?
Lex Fridman (50:53.240)
Is it the implementation?
Lex Fridman (50:58.180)
Is there anything about its ideas that you find compelling?
Lex Fridman (51:01.540)
Or is it just a fundamentally flawed system?
Tyler Cowen (51:06.220)
Well, communism is like capitalism.
Lex Fridman (51:08.020)
The words mean many things to different people.
Tyler Cowen (51:10.740)
You could argue my life as a tenured professor
Lex Fridman (51:12.860)
comes closer to communism than anything
Tyler Cowen (51:15.300)
the human race has seen.
Lex Fridman (51:16.460)
And I would argue it works pretty well.
Lex Fridman (51:19.220)
But look, if you mean the Soviet Union,
Lex Fridman (51:21.740)
it devolved pretty quickly
Tyler Cowen (51:23.700)
to a kind of decentralized set of incentives
Lex Fridman (51:27.500)
that were destructive rather than value maximizing.
Tyler Cowen (51:30.620)
It wasn't even central planning, much less communism.
Lex Fridman (51:34.300)
So Paul Craig Roberts and Polanyi were correct
Tyler Cowen (51:37.140)
in their descriptions of the Soviet system.
Lex Fridman (51:39.680)
Think of it as weird mixes of barter
Lex Fridman (51:41.580)
and malfunctioning incentives
Lex Fridman (51:44.100)
and being very good at a whole bunch of things,
Lex Fridman (51:47.100)
but in terms of progress, innovation,
Lex Fridman (51:48.860)
and consumer goods, it really being quite a failure.
Lex Fridman (51:54.460)
And now I wouldn't call that communism,
Lex Fridman (51:56.380)
but that's what I think of the system the Soviets had.
Lex Fridman (52:00.420)
And it required an ever increasing pile of lies
Lex Fridman (52:04.840)
that both alienated people, but created an elite
Tyler Cowen (52:07.740)
that by the end of the thing
Lex Fridman (52:08.940)
no longer believed in the system itself,
Tyler Cowen (52:12.300)
or even thought they were doing better by being crooks
Lex Fridman (52:15.400)
than by just say moving to Switzerland
Lex Fridman (52:17.000)
and being an upper middle class individual,
Lex Fridman (52:18.740)
like you would have a higher standard of living
Tyler Cowen (52:20.740)
by Gorbachev's time, not Gorbachev,
Lex Fridman (52:23.060)
but if you're a number 30 in the hierarchy,
Tyler Cowen (52:25.340)
you're better off as a middle class person in Switzerland.
Lex Fridman (52:27.900)
And that, of course, did not prove sustainable.
Lex Fridman (52:31.180)
And so it's, what is it, a momentum of bureaucracy
Lex Fridman (52:33.620)
or something like that, it just builds up
Tyler Cowen (52:34.940)
where you lose control of the original vision,
Lex Fridman (52:37.700)
and that naturally happens, it's just people.
Lex Fridman (52:40.180)
And you can't use normal profit and loss
Lex Fridman (52:41.980)
and price incentives, so you get all prices
Lex Fridman (52:44.420)
or most prices set too low, right?
Lex Fridman (52:46.780)
Shortages everywhere, people trade favors,
Tyler Cowen (52:49.580)
you have this culture of bartered bribes,
Lex Fridman (52:52.100)
sexual favors or family friends,
Lex Fridman (52:55.380)
and you get more and more of that,
Lex Fridman (52:57.060)
and you over time lose more and more of the information
Lex Fridman (52:59.780)
and the prices and quantities and practices
Lex Fridman (53:03.180)
and norms you had, and that sort of slowly decays,
Lex Fridman (53:06.220)
and then by the end no one is believing in it.
Lex Fridman (53:09.300)
That would be my take, but again, you're the expert here.
Tyler Cowen (53:12.220)
The Russian scholar, well, I'm perhaps no more
Lex Fridman (53:17.620)
an expert than Ayn Rand, it's more personal
Tyler Cowen (53:20.580)
than it is scholarly or historic.
Lex Fridman (53:25.060)
So Stalin held power for 30 years,
Tyler Cowen (53:29.060)
Vladimir Putin has held power for 21 years,
Lex Fridman (53:34.340)
where you could argue he took a little break.
Lex Fridman (53:36.820)
But not much, he was still holding power, I think.
Lex Fridman (53:39.980)
And it's still possible now with the new constitution
Tyler Cowen (53:44.900)
that he could hold power from longer than Stalin,
Lex Fridman (53:47.500)
longer than 30 years.
Lex Fridman (53:48.860)
What do you think about the man,
Lex Fridman (53:51.380)
the state of affairs in Russia,
Lex Fridman (53:54.780)
in general, the system they have there?
Lex Fridman (53:57.900)
Is there something interesting to you
Lex Fridman (53:59.260)
as an economist, as a human being, about Russia?
Lex Fridman (54:02.300)
Everything is interesting.
Tyler Cowen (54:03.420)
I mean, here would be part of my take.
Lex Fridman (54:05.980)
As you know, the Russian economy starting, what, 1999, 2000,
Tyler Cowen (54:11.060)
has really quite a few years of super excellent growth.
Lex Fridman (54:15.060)
And Putin is still riding on that.
Tyler Cowen (54:17.140)
It more or less coincides with his rise
Lex Fridman (54:20.580)
as the truly focal figure on the scene.
Tyler Cowen (54:24.220)
Since then, pretty recently, they've had a bunch of years
Lex Fridman (54:26.460)
of negative four to 5% growth in a row, which is terrible.
Tyler Cowen (54:31.580)
The economy is way too dependent on fossil fuels,
Lex Fridman (54:35.180)
but the structural problem is this.
Tyler Cowen (54:37.660)
You need a concordance across economic power,
Lex Fridman (54:40.860)
social power, political power.
Tyler Cowen (54:43.140)
They don't have to be allocated identically,
Lex Fridman (54:45.500)
but they have to be allocated consistently.
Lex Fridman (54:49.340)
And the Russian system under Putin,
Lex Fridman (54:51.100)
from almost the beginning, has never been able to have that,
Tyler Cowen (54:55.100)
that ultimately his incentives are to steer the system
Lex Fridman (54:58.460)
where the economic power is in a small number of hands
Tyler Cowen (55:01.660)
in a non diversified way.
Lex Fridman (55:03.900)
The system won't deliver sustainable gains
Tyler Cowen (55:06.540)
in living standards anymore ever the way it's set up now.
Lex Fridman (55:11.140)
Though if fossil fuel prices go up,
Tyler Cowen (55:13.140)
they'll have some good years for sure.
Lex Fridman (55:15.780)
And that is really quite structural, what has gone wrong.
Lex Fridman (55:20.340)
And then on top of that, you can have an opinion of Putin,
Lex Fridman (55:23.380)
but you've got to start with those structural problems.
Lex Fridman (55:25.660)
And that's why it's just not going to work.
Lex Fridman (55:28.700)
But he had all those good years in the beginning.
Lex Fridman (55:30.780)
So the number of Russians, say, who live here
Lex Fridman (55:33.420)
or in Russia, who love Putin and it's sincere,
Tyler Cowen (55:36.540)
they're not just afraid of being dragged away,
Lex Fridman (55:39.260)
like that's a real phenomenon.
Tyler Cowen (55:41.460)
Yeah, I'm really torn on Putin's approval rating,
Lex Fridman (55:45.220)
real approval rating seems to be very high.
Lex Fridman (55:49.020)
And I'm torn in whether that has to do with the fact
Lex Fridman (55:54.020)
that there is control of the press,
Tyler Cowen (55:58.180)
or if it's, which is the people I talked to
Lex Fridman (56:01.020)
who are in Russia, family and so on, a genuine love
Tyler Cowen (56:04.940)
of Putin, appreciation of what Putin has done
Lex Fridman (56:07.860)
and is going to do with Russia.
Lex Fridman (56:10.180)
And a lot of that would go away
Lex Fridman (56:11.620)
if the press were freer, I think.
Tyler Cowen (56:13.140)
Yes, well, Singapore realizes this,
Lex Fridman (56:15.940)
anyone discussed by the press, no matter who they are,
Tyler Cowen (56:18.580)
people in Singapore have done a great job.
Lex Fridman (56:20.620)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (56:22.180)
But if you're discussed by the press, you don't look good.
Lex Fridman (56:24.700)
Tech company executives are learning this, right?
Tyler Cowen (56:27.140)
It's just like a rule.
Lex Fridman (56:28.380)
So in that sense, I think the rating is artificially high,
Lex Fridman (56:32.220)
but I don't by any means think it's all insincere,
Lex Fridman (56:36.060)
but that high popularity I view as bearish for Russia.
Tyler Cowen (56:39.460)
I would feel better about the country
Lex Fridman (56:40.900)
if people were more pissed off at him.
Tyler Cowen (56:43.060)
Yeah, that's right.
Lex Fridman (56:44.180)
It's nice to see free speech, even if it's full of hate.
Tyler Cowen (56:49.620)
I am also troubled on the scientific side
Lex Fridman (56:52.860)
and entrepreneurial side, it seems difficult
Tyler Cowen (56:55.420)
to be an entrepreneur in Russia.
Lex Fridman (56:58.500)
Like it's not even in terms of rules,
Tyler Cowen (57:03.060)
it's just culturally, the people I speak to,
Lex Fridman (57:06.180)
it's not easy to build a business, no.
Tyler Cowen (57:11.580)
It's not easy to even dream of building a business in Russia.
Lex Fridman (57:15.740)
That's just not part of the culture,
Tyler Cowen (57:17.140)
part of the conversation.
Lex Fridman (57:19.020)
It's almost like the conversation is,
Tyler Cowen (57:21.700)
if you wanna be the next Bill Gates or Elon Musk,
Lex Fridman (57:25.220)
or Steve Jobs or whatever, you come to America.
Tyler Cowen (57:28.820)
That's the sense they have.
Lex Fridman (57:29.980)
Yeah, history matters.
Lex Fridman (57:34.140)
Is it history, is it structural problems of today?
Lex Fridman (57:37.340)
It's all the same thing.
Lex Fridman (57:38.460)
So a history of hostility to commerce,
Lex Fridman (57:40.620)
which of course the old USSR is gone,
Lex Fridman (57:45.300)
but a lot of the attitudes remain,
Lex Fridman (57:47.220)
a lot of the corruption remains.
Tyler Cowen (57:49.140)
You have this legacy distribution of wealth
Lex Fridman (57:51.020)
from the auctioning off of the assets,
Tyler Cowen (57:53.220)
which is not conducive to some kind of broadly egalitarian
Lex Fridman (57:56.460)
democracy, and so you have these small number
Tyler Cowen (57:59.340)
of power points that try to control information and wealth
Lex Fridman (58:03.100)
and not really so keen to encourage the others
Tyler Cowen (58:06.180)
who ultimately would pull the balance of political power
Lex Fridman (58:08.900)
away from the very wealthy and from Putin,
Lex Fridman (58:11.620)
and they support that culture,
Lex Fridman (58:13.380)
and the return of interest in Orthodox Church and all that,
Tyler Cowen (58:16.300)
it's all part of the same piece, I think,
Lex Fridman (58:19.300)
because the old Orthodox Church is not that pro commerce,
Tyler Cowen (58:22.140)
you'd have to say, but it's traditionalist,
Lex Fridman (58:24.220)
it's pro family, those are safer ideas,
Lex Fridman (58:27.380)
and then there's such a great safety valve,
Lex Fridman (58:29.420)
the most ambitious, smartest people,
Tyler Cowen (58:31.420)
like they probably will learn English,
Lex Fridman (58:33.660)
they sort of can look like they belong
Tyler Cowen (58:35.820)
in all sorts of other countries,
Lex Fridman (58:37.140)
they can show up and blend in, super talented,
Tyler Cowen (58:39.700)
they've probably had an excellent education,
Lex Fridman (58:42.300)
especially if they're from one of the two major cities,
Lex Fridman (58:44.460)
but even if not so, even from Siberia,
Lex Fridman (58:47.260)
and they go off, they leave,
Tyler Cowen (58:49.180)
they're not a source of opposition,
Lex Fridman (58:51.220)
and that keeps the whole thing up and running
Tyler Cowen (58:52.780)
for another generation.
Lex Fridman (58:54.740)
Yeah, what do you make of the other big player, China?
Tyler Cowen (59:01.460)
They seem to have a very different messed up,
Lex Fridman (59:05.380)
but also functioning system.
Tyler Cowen (59:09.500)
They seem to be much better at encouraging entrepreneurs.
Lex Fridman (59:13.860)
They're choosing winners,
Lex Fridman (59:15.660)
but what do you make of the entire Chinese system?
Lex Fridman (59:18.340)
Why does it work as well as it does currently?
Lex Fridman (59:22.500)
What are your concerns about it,
Lex Fridman (59:24.340)
and what are its threats to the United States,
Tyler Cowen (59:28.180)
or possible, what is it you said,
Lex Fridman (59:32.780)
wisdom isn't when two ideas come together,
Tyler Cowen (59:34.900)
is there some possible benefits
Lex Fridman (59:36.940)
of these kinds of ideas coming together?
Tyler Cowen (59:40.420)
It's amazing what China has done,
Lex Fridman (59:42.940)
but I would say to put it in perspective,
Tyler Cowen (59:44.780)
if you compare them to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan,
Lex Fridman (59:47.700)
Hong Kong, and Singapore,
Tyler Cowen (59:49.500)
they've still done much worse, not even close.
Lex Fridman (59:53.460)
And that's both living standards,
Tyler Cowen (59:55.140)
or I hesitate to cite democracy
Lex Fridman (59:58.060)
as an unalloyed good in and of itself,
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