What this covers
Recorded at the 2024 Progress Conference in Berkeley, CA, by @freethink, a sponsor of the event.
Source description (no synthesized summary yet).
Tyler Cowen argues that despite AI's potential, explosive economic growth above 20% annually is unlikely due to fundamental bottlenecks—cost disease in low-productivity sectors, diminishing returns to intelligence, regulatory and institutional constraints, and slow technology diffusion—meaning AI will boost growth modestly (perhaps 0.5% annually over decades) rather than enabling transformative acceleration.
- Half the US economy (government, healthcare, education, nonprofits) cannot easily deploy AI, creating persistent cost disease where wage pressures in high-productivity sectors force up costs everywhere
- Intelligence and IQ have surprisingly low returns to earnings; successful people combine multiple competencies (the 'bundle') across diverse dimensions, not just raw intelligence, making these bundles scarce and non-replicable at scale
- Historical technology diffusion is universally slow (printing press, electricity); experts on diffusion uniformly expect gradual adoption, contradicting AI hype; markets and expert forecasts show no expectation of near-term explosive growth
This asset isn't compiled yet
You're seeing its claims, ranked. Compile it to build the argument threads, weight them, and check each claim against your library — the full view.
Cost disease is a more general problem than labor scarcity: when you have multiple factors of production and one becomes highly productive (e.g., AI boosts intelligence), the other constraints in the system become more binding, their marginal importance rises, and the marginal value of additional intelligence falls, making growth self-limiting.
“cost disease is more General than that let's say you have a bunch of factors of production say five of them now all of a sudden we get a lot more intelligence which has already been happening to be clear right well that just means the other constraints in your system become a lot more binding that the marginal importance of those goes up and the marginal value of more and more IQ or intelligence goes down so that also is self-limiting on growth”
Diffusion of new technologies is universally slow across history (printing press, electricity, internal combustion, computers), experts on technology diffusion consistently underestimate how long adoption takes, and AI will follow the same pattern despite the extraordinary capabilities attributed to it by AI researchers.
“like the printing press like electricity the people who study diffusion of new technologies never think there will be rapid takeoff so my view is kind of like I'm always siding with the experts so economists social scientists most of them are blind and asleep to the promise of strong AI they're just out to lunch I think they're wrong I trust the AI experts but when you talk about say diffusion of new techn Oles the people who do ai ai are basically totally wrong the people who studied that issue I trust the experts”
If world population doubled tomorrow, it's unclear whether energy usage would noticeable increase economic growth; the relationship is not proportional because economy scale and levels interact asymmetrically—shrinking can kill organizations while growth doesn't proportionally improve them, showing the relationship is non-linear.
“well what's the variable I'm trying to predict if you mean energy usage uh that's going to go up right over time it's probably going to double uh I'm not sure it be a noticeable difference doubling the world population yeah I'm not sure I I don't think the RoR model has been validated by the data...this is one thing we learned from macro the Delta and the levels really interact so shrinking can kill you just like companies nonprofits if they shrink too much often they just blow up and disappear they implode uh but that doesn't mean that growing them gets you 3x 4X whatever proportional to how they grow It's oddly asymmetric”
The 17th century England period (Scientific Revolution, rise of Atlantic trade, English naval power, start of sustained 1% annual growth) involved simultaneous radical good and bad outcomes: libertarianism and intellectual flowering (Milton, Locke) alongside brutal conquest and civil war, offering a precedent for how disorienting technological periods produce mixed results.
“if you want to talk about 17th century England so they have the Scientific Revolution you have the rise of England as a true Global power Navy becomes much more important the Atlantic trade route because of the new world becomes much more important places like the Middle East India China that were earlier you know Persia had major roles they're they're crumbling partially for reasons of their own and that's going to help the relative power of the more advanced European nations England has a lot of competition from you know the Dutch Republic France happening at the same time that for the first time in human history that I know of we have sustained economic growth according to Greg Clark starting in the 1620s of about 1% a year and that is compounding again slow numbers but compounding and England is the place that gets the compounding at 1% starting in the 1620s and somehow they go crazy Civil War kill the king all these radical ideas libertarianism comes out of that which I really like John Milton John Lock uh also this brutal conquest of the new world like very good and very bad coming together”
Most of subsaharan Africa lacks reliable clean water, and the intelligence required to solve that problem is not scarce—the bottleneck is not cognitive but institutional and infrastructural—and the United States is in a similar position regarding many problems, meaning we are more constrained by implementation capacity than raw intelligence.
“most of subsaharan Africa still does not have reliable clean water the intelligence required for that is not scarce we cannot so readily do it we are more in that position than we might like to think”
The model that AI can make more AI (recursive self-improvement leading to explosive growth) has been understood since classical economics: Ricardo and Malthus discussed diminishing returns to population growth; they recognized that exponential growth in one factor faces constraints from other scarce factors.
“the model is that you can have AIS make more AIS right that you can have finishing returns Ricardo knew this right he didn't call it AI but malus Ricardo they all talked about this it was just humans for them well people then would breed they would breed at some pretty rapid rate there were diminishing returns to that you had these other scarce factors classical economics figured that out”
Winston Churchill was a 'destructive failure' in much of his early life (his early achievements as an international journalist were not impressive); his major positive achievements came quite late in life; he would have benefited from critical feedback about colonial policies, showing that even exceptional individuals are constrained by their era's lack of information flow.
“ask the Irish and people from India what they think of younger Churchill and you'll get an earful like his real great achievement I don't know how old he was exactly but it's quite late in his life and until then he's a fer and then ask the Irish getting back to Patrick ask the Irish and people from India what they think of younger Churchill”
The Industrial Revolution was one of the most important events in human history, with typical growth rates of 1.5% per year, which is valuable because of compounding and human psychology: humans are not going to change much even with more intelligence and conscientiousness, so similar growth dynamics will apply to AI era.
“I'm very impressed by the Industrial Revolution Like You could argue progress or progress studies here most important event in human history maybe typical rate of economic growth during that period was about one and a half% and the future is about compounding and sticking with it and you know seeing things pay off in the long run just human beings are not going to change that much and I don't think that property of our world will change that much even with a lot more IQ and conscientiousness”
When new technologies emerge (17th century, electricity/machine gun, nuclear weapons), they are turned into instruments of war and terrible things happen; this pattern recurs across history and may recur with AI, though it doesn't have to go this way.
“when new technologies come along they are turned into instruments of war and some terrible things happen you saw this in 17th century England you saw this with electricity and the Machine Gun nuclear weapons is a story in process and I'm not sure that's ever going away”
Woodrow Wilson was one of the two or three worst U.S. Presidents due to his civil rights failures, World War I mishandling, blundering the post-war peace process (indirectly leading to World War II), and reintroducing civil service segregation.
“I them as a particular he was from the University that's what was wrong with him right and just think of what school it was who sorry woodr Wilson yeah one of our two or three worst Presidents on civil rights World War I he screwed up uh the peace process he screwed up indirectly led to World War II uh reintroduced segregation of civil service in some key regards and just seemed he was a nasty guy”
Herbert Hoover was on paper an extremely impressive candidate but made one very bad decision set regarding deflation and nominal GDP management, though his institutional legacy (Hoover Institution) reflects genuine achievement.
“Hoover on paper was a great candidate and was an extremely impressive guy I think he made one very bad set of decisions relating to deflation and letting nominal GDP fall but my goodness like there's a reason they called it the Hoover institution after Hoover”
Civilization progress from year 1000 to now could not have been imagined by people then; even understanding that poverty would be reduced would have been impossible due to the magnitude of change; this illustrates the limits of historical forecasting and the genuine unpredictability of far-future outcomes.
“if we were all sitting around in year 1000 we never could have imagined the world being anything like this even a much poorer country”
Ricardo understood finishing returns logic and how it applies to growth; he was pessimistic but had the logic right; if Ricardo could see AI today, he would not be surprised—he would see it as extending the frontier but not solving the fundamental problem of diminishing returns.
“Ricardo knew this right he didn't call it AI but malus Ricardo they all talked about this it was just humans for them well people then would breed they would breed at some pretty rapid rate there were diminishing returns to that you had these other scarce factors classical economics figured that out they were too pessimistic I would say but they understood the pessimism intrinsic in diminishing returns in a way that people in the Bay Area do not”
Stalin read widely and appeared to be an intelligent person, but in all his annotations in his books, there is no hint of doubt about Marxism; this suggests that dogmatism of Soviet communist culture (influenced by Lenin) and Stalin's Georgian cultural background both contributed to his ideological rigidity.
“he was kind of a smart well read guy and the book also mentioned I think in the early chapters that look he never in all his annotations if you look through all his books he NE there's never anything that even hints that he doubted Marxism that's right there's a lot of other evidence that that's the correct portrait what's going like a smart guy who's read all this literature all these different things never even questions Marxism what's going on there what do you think I think the culture he came out of had a lot of dogmatism to begin with and I mean both leninism which is extremely dogmatic”
Cost disease is a more general instantiation of a broader constraint where as intelligence increases, other binding factors in the system (energy, regulation, institutional capacity, human coordination) become progressively more important while the marginal value of additional intelligence decreases, making growth self-limiting.
“cost disease is more General than that let's say you have a bunch of factors of production say five of them now all of a sudden we get a lot more intelligence which has already been happening to be clear right well that just means the other constraints in your system become a lot more binding that the marginal importance of those goes up and the marginal value of more and more IQ or intelligence goes down so that also is self-limiting on growth”
Tyler's main concern about progress is the relationship between technological progress and war: new technologies throughout history are weaponized (17th century England, electricity + machine gun, nuclear weapons), making each war more destructive even if wars become rarer, and the ratchet effect of technological innovation means future wars could be catastrophically worse than historical precedents.
“my main concern with progress is progress and War interact and it can be in good ways like the world Allah Steven Pinker has had relative peace that's fraying at the edges and the data it's the numbers are now moving the wrong way but it's still way better than most pasttime periods and we'll have to see where that goes but there might be a ratchet effect where Wars become more destructive and even if they're more rare when they come each one's a real doozy and whether we really are or ever can be ready for that I'm just not sure”
As 'progress studies' becomes more popular and trendy, proposals in that category tend to get worse at the margin; Cowen is therefore raising his bar for Emergent Ventures funding on progress studies proposals, expecting them to worsen over time due to adverse selection.
“there's a danger that as the thing becomes more popular you know at the margin they become much worse and I guess I'm expecting that so maybe mentally I'm raising my own bar on those and maybe over time I find it more attractive if the person is interested in say like the Industrial Revolution if they're interested in progress studies capital P capital S like over time I'm growing more skeptical of that”
Most of sub-Saharan Africa still lacks reliable clean water; the intelligence required to solve this is not scarce—the problem is systemic and institutional, not cognitive, and AI cannot readily overcome this type of bottleneck.
“most of subsaharan Africa still does not have reliable clean water the intelligence required for that is not scarce we cannot so readily do it we are more in that position than we might like to think but along other variables and taking advantage of the intelligence from strong AI is one of those”
Founders and the Beatles broke up in 1970 while Rolling Stones are still going, yet Beatles created much greater value and are more culturally remembered; the Beatles had unstable equilibrium due to creative tension between founders (John/Paul), but that tension generated incredible value over 7-8 years.
“Beatles are an interesting example I mean they broke up in 1970 right Rolling Stones are still going that tells you something but the Beatles created much greater value and the Beatles are the group we still all talk about much more even though the Rolling Stones are still with us so they were always unstable there's like two periods of the Beatles early Beatles John is the leader but then Paul works at it and John becomes a heroin addict and Paul gets better better better and ultimately there's no core there's not a stable equilibrium the Beetle split up but that creative tension for like those core seven to eight years was just unbelievable”
There is extreme scarcity of exceptional human achievement at the highest levels; comparing how many Beatle-like groups, Bushs-like composers, or Magnus Carlsen-like chess prodigies exist across history shows that most stuff doesn't last and there's super scarce achievement at the very highest levels—this is an extreme human bottleneck.
“to get those like how many Beetles are there uh it's amazing how much stuff doesn't really last and uh it's just super scarce achievement at the very highest levels and that's this extreme human bottleneck”
Time, not money, is Cowen's scarce resource; he already has good deal flow through Emergent Ventures, and having a billion dollars wouldn't improve his situation because he'd still face the same time/attention constraints—he's already optimized.
“that being said I think you could get pretty good deal flow even with your portfolio I don't know like you you can only focus on so many things so if I have like good deal flow in emergent Ventures which I'm not paid to do like say I had a billion dollars from whatever uh I wouldn't have any better way of spending that billion dollars than like buying myself a job doing emergent Ventures or whatever so I'm sort of already where I would be if I could buy the thing for a billion dollars so I'm just not that focused on it”
People in Bay Area overvalue intelligence in their models of the world compared to reality because they are, on average, the smartest most ambitious dynamic people Cowen has ever met, creating a selection effect where they extrapolate from their own experience.
“when I'm in the Bay Area like the people here to me are the smartest people I've ever met on average most ambitious Dynamic and smartest like by a clear Grand Slam compared to new yor York City or London or anywhere that's awesome and I love it but I think a a side result of that is that people here overv value intelligence and their models of the world are built on intelligence mattering much much more than it really does”
Stalin was described in 'Stalin's Library' as well-read and intelligent, annotating many books, yet never even hinting doubt about Marxism in any annotations—showing that extreme ideological dogmatism can coexist with intelligence and erudition.
“Stalin's Library which talks about the different things the different books that Stalin read and the fact that he was kind of a smart well read guy and the book also mentioned I think in the early chapters that look he never in all his annotations if you look through all his books he NE there's never anything that even hints that he doubted Marxism that's right”
Stalin's culture (Georgian, Leninist dogmatism, wine/dance-heavy society) created context for fist-pounding authoritarianism; combined with 'bad genetic luck' (his particular personality/psychology), this led to his catastrophic outcomes—culture matters but so does individual idiosyncrasy.
“I think the culture he came out of had a lot of dogmatism to begin with and I mean both leninism which is extremely dogmatic you know Lenin was his mentor like Patrick's thing about the Nobel laurates it happens in Insidious ways too so stal you know Lenin is the mentor of Stalin Soviet culture communist culture and then Georgian culture which appealing and funloving uh and wine drinking and dance heavy as it is there's something about it that's a little you know you pound the fist down and you tell people over the table how things are he had all those St vertically and then we got this bad genetic luck of the draw on Stalin”
Hayek's claim that worst people rise to top under autocracy is subtler than commonly understood; not all autocracies produce worst leaders—UAE is counterexample where worst people have not risen to top and governance is good despite lacking democracy.
“I think what Hayek said is subtler than that and I wouldn't say it's Hayek's explanation I would say Hayek pinpointed one factor there are quite a few autocracies in the world today where the worst people have not risen to the top UAE would be I think the most obvious example I've been there as far as I can tell they're doing a great job running the country uh there are things they do that are nasty and unpleasant I would be delighted if they could evolve into a democracy but the worst people are not running UAE”
Tech people have surprisingly little influence in Washington relative to industry size because most tech is concentrated in one area (California) and one political faction, unlike distributed industries (community banking) that have representatives in every congressional district and can shape local politics.
“a key problem you have is so much of it is in one area and it's also an area where there's a dominant political party even within that political party there's in many parts of California a dominant faction and you compare yourself to like the community Bankers who are in like so many American Counties have connections to every single person in the House of Representatives your issues in AA are not very partis uh the distortions you cause through your privileges are invisible to America it's not like you know Facebook where some John heid has written some best-selling book complaining about what it is you do there's not a bestselling book complaining about the Community Banks and they are like ruthless and powerful”
China's recent decades of 10% economic growth starting from $200 per capita head was catchup growth from a very low base, and now they struggle to maintain growth; they are now middle-income and trapped due to scale (large population) making democratization politically risky because median voter won't protect elite interests, illustrating that even very high prior growth doesn't guarantee sustained expansion.
“China after J denja ping they have Decades of 10% economic growth the and then that just because you can do some sort of catchup the idea that you can't replicate that with AI or that it's not like infeasible where were the bottle next when dening took over they're in a mess now I'm not sure how it's going to go for them they're just a middle- inome country they struggled to tie per capita income with Mexico I think they're a little ahead of Mexico now they're the least successful Chinese Society in part because of their scale their scale is one of their big problems there's this fear that if they democratize and try to become normal country that the median voter won't protect the interests of the elites”
Young people today (24 years old) can do podcasts and content creation that would have been impossible 20-30 years ago; this is clear evidence that young people today are doing better than peers of the same age did previously.
“now go back whenever however many years was there were 24 year old like you doing the equivalent of podcasting like it's just clearly better now than it was back then people and you were doing this a few years ago so it's just obvious to me you know the the young Peaks are doing better”
Family-based Gulf monarchies (UAE and others) have proven more stable and more meritocratic than Cowen expected from 1980s perspective; they maintain large clannish interest groups of thousands and outperform expectations—this is surprising and not well understood.
“there are these family based Gulf monarchies with very very large clannish interest groups of thousands of people that have proven more stable and more meritocratic than I ever would have dreamed say in 1980 and I know I don't understand it but I just see it in the data it's not just UAE there's a bunch of countries over there that have outperformed my expectations and they all have this common broadly common system”
Chad Jones's growth model places population as the main variable for predicting economic growth, but population is not actually very predictive; effective world population purchasing power has increased in many areas over the past 50 years without corresponding innovation increases, suggesting the quality of best people and institutions matters far more than population size.
“Chad Jones said that the main variable the main input into his model for growth is just population if you have a doubling an order of magnitude increase in the population you plug that number in in his model you get explosive economic growth I don't age why not bu the models his model is far too much you want Factor model right population I don't think it's very predictive we've had big increases in effective world population in terms of purchasing power a lot of different areas have not become more Innovative until the last say four years most of them became less Innovative”
The returns to IQ as they translate into wages are surprisingly low and insignificant; very successful people are not just highly intelligent but have a distinctive bundle of traits—multiple areas at level 8-9 on a 1-10 scale plus one area at 11+ on that scale—and it is the bundle and its interaction with the world, not raw IQ alone, that drives exceptional success.
“if you look at labor market data the returns to IQ as it translates into ages they're amazingly low they're they're pretty insignificant and people who are very successful they're very smart but they're people who have say eight or nine areas where they're like on a scale of 1 to 10 they're a nine like they have one area where they're just like an 11 and a half on a scale of 1 to 10 and then on everything else they're an 8 to a nine”
Tech companies have less political influence in Washington than their size and wealth would suggest because: (1) their issues are not heavily partisan, so they lack the leverage of industries with strong partisan backing, (2) their privileges and distortions are invisible to public debate (unlike finance or banking which have critics and bestselling books), (3) their concentration in California limits their geographic influence over representatives.
“a key problem you have is so much of it is in one area and it's also an area where there's a dominant political party even within that political party there's in many parts of California a dominant faction and you compare yourself to like the community Bankers who are in like so many American Counties have connections to every single person in the House of Representatives your issues in AA are not very partis uh the distortions you cause through your privileges are invisible to America it's not like you know Facebook where some John heid has written some best-selling book complaining about what it is you do”
Hayek's observation that the worst people rise to the top under autocracy is one factor but not the full explanation; autocracies with family-based Gulf monarchies (UAE, etc.) have proven more stable and meritocratic than Cowen would have predicted, suggesting culture and specific institutional structures matter more than the general autocracy/democracy distinction.
“what what is that explation missing I think what Hayek said is subtler than that and I wouldn't say it's Hayek's explanation I would say Hayek pinpointed one factor there are quite a few autocracies in the world today where the worst people have not risen to the top UAE would be I think the most obvious example”
The returns to IQ as it translates into wages are amazingly low and pretty insignificant in labor market data; very successful people are not those with highest IQ but rather people who rate 9/10 on multiple dimensions and 11/10 on exactly one specialized dimension, plus high autodetermination—the bundle matters more than raw intelligence.
“if you look at labor market data the returns to IQ as it translates into ages they're amazingly low they're they're pretty insignificant and people who are very successful they're very smart but they're people who have say eight or nine areas where they're like on a scale of 1 to 10 they're a nine like they have one area where they're just like an 11 and a half on a scale of 1 to 10 and then on everything else they're an 8 to a nine and have a lot of Auto determination and that's what leads to incredible success and uh IQ is one of those things but it's not actually that important it's the bundle and the bundles are scarce”
Chad Jones's growth model relies too heavily on population as the main input variable; population is not very predictive of innovation, and many areas with big increases in effective world population (in terms of purchasing power) over the last 70 years became less innovative until the last 4 years.
“Chad Jones said that the main variable the main input into his model for growth is just population if you have a doubling an order of magnitude increase in the population you plug that number in in his model you get explosive economic growth I don't age why not bu the models his model is far too much you want Factor model right population I don't think it's very predictive we've had big increases in effective world population in terms of purchasing power a lot of different areas have not become more Innovative until the last say four years most of them became less Innovative”
The Beatles created more lasting value and cultural impact than the Rolling Stones despite disbanding in 1970, illustrating that unstable coalitions with creative tension among founders can produce exceptional output, though the instability is not replicable or scalable as a general management principle.
“Beatles are an interesting example I mean they broke up in 1970 right Rolling Stones are still going that tells you something but the Beatles created much greater value and the Beatles are the group we still all talk about much more even though the Rolling Stones are still with us so they were always unstable there's like two periods of the Beatles early Beatles John is the leader but then Paul works at it and John becomes a heroin addict and Paul gets better better better and ultimately there's no core there's not a stable equilibrium the Beetle split up but that creative tension for like those core seven to eight years was just unbelievable”
The optimistic note is that human agency matters; even people in year 1000 could not have imagined the modern world, yet through human effort it was built; similarly, we have agency to shape what happens with AI and should take our inherited wealth and build more with it.
“the optimistic node is that we're here human agency matters uh if we were all sitting around in year 1000 we never could have imagined the world being anything like this even a much poorer country and you know it's up to us to take this extraordinary and valuable Heritage and do some more with it and that's why we're here so I say let's give it a go”
Formal diagnostic definitions of autism (focusing on deficits) miss much of what autism represents; a different definition that emphasizes pattern-recognition strengths and systematic thinking without social fluency might classify perhaps a third of Bay Area residents, suggesting autism is not merely a disorder but a cognitive style that may be quite common among intellectuals and technologists.
“if you look at the formal definition It's All About deficits that people have right now if you define it that way like no one here is autistic if you define it some other way which maybe we haven't beenn yet like a third of you here are autistic I don't insist on owning the definition I think it's a bad word I would it's like libertarian I would gladly give it away but there is like some coherent definition where a third of you here probably would qualify”
Many equity premium gains are likely already captured in public markets; better returns are available in private markets and venture capital because markets are efficient at pricing public information but inefficient at assessing idiosyncratic risks and opportunities in private deals
“I think I also have this view maybe a lot of the equity premium is in the past that people especially in this part of the world are very good at internalizing Value and it will be held and earned in private markets and by VCS rather than like public Pension funds why give it to them I think Silicon Valley has figured this out San Hill Road has figured it out”
China after Deng Xiaoping achieved decades of 10% economic growth rates, but these were catch-up growth from a low base; current Chinese governance struggles reflect how hard it is to scale institutions and manage large populations, and China is now a middle-income country struggling to match Mexico's per capita income.
“China after J denja ping they have Decades of 10% economic growth the and then that just because you can do some sort of catchup the idea that you can't replicate that with AI or that it's not like infeasible where were the bottle next when dening took over they're in a mess now I'm not sure how it's going to go for them they're just a middle- inome country they struggled to tie per capita income with Mexico I think they're a little ahead of Mexico now they're the least successful Chinese Society”
Autism is poorly defined; the formal definition emphasizes deficits, which means almost no high-functioning people qualify as autistic by that definition; an alternative definition might identify ~30% of high-intelligence people in Bay Area as autistic; the term is problematic and needs rebooting.
“if you look at the formal definition It's All About deficits that people have right now if you define it that way like no one here is autistic if you define it some other way which maybe we haven't beenn yet like a third of you here are autistic I don't insist on owning the definition I think it's a bad word I would it's like libertarian I would gladly give it away but there is like some coherent definition where a third of you here probably would qualify and this other definition where none of you would and it's like kids in mental homes banging their head against the wall so I don't know seems that whole issue needs this huge reboot”
When large technological and institutional changes begin, there is significant political opposition not just from doomers but from people who grew up training their kids to live in a different world and don't want change, creating massive bottlenecks—this was true in the Industrial Revolution and will be true with AI.
“once it starts changing what the world looks like there will be much more opposition not necessarily from what I call doomster grounds but just people like hey I see this has benefits but I grew up trained my kids to live in some other kind of world I don't want this and that's going to be a massive fight I really have no prediction as to how it's going to go but I promise you that will be a bottleneck”
Adam Smith's pin factory example shows specialization efficiencies but creates monotony in individual work; compared to Smith's time, modernity has much more individuality (good thing), especially in Bay Area, but future with AI poses risk of demoralization if remaining work becomes unclear in meaning and happiness impact.
“what one concern you could have a in general is if you look at the famous Adam Smith example you've got that pin maker and the specialization obviously has all these efficiencies but the PIN maker is just like he's doing this one thing whereas if you're in the ancestral environment you get to do you get to basically negotiate with every single part of what it takes to keep you alive and every single every other person in your tribe does individuality is is that like lost with more specialization more progress well Smith thought it would be I think compared to his time we have much more individuality”
When Cowen started his economics career in late 1970s, earnings expectations were low (~$40k/year) with few opportunities; Friedman and Samuelson were exceptions with outside income; relative to those expectations, current options (book sales, speaking fees) feel like achieving billionaire wealth, creating an 'information trillionaire' aspiration instead of financial wealth.
“when I started my career it was really unknown that an economist could really earn anything at all like there were no tech jobs with billionaires Finance was a low-paying field like when I started choosing a career it was not a thing there wasn't this fancy Goldman Sachs it was a slow boring thing programmers were weird people in basements like maybe who knows you know that bad stuff and then like an economist you would earn like back then maybe $40,000 a year like two people M fredman Paul Samuelson at outside income and you had no expectation that you would ever earn more than that and I went into this with all of that like relative to that I feel so wealthy just like oh you can sell some books or you like can give a talk or I don't know I just feel like I am a billionaire now”
Cowen wrote his recent book 'GOAT' (on great economists) primarily for AI readers, not human readers, hoping to establish his salience and favorable view in future AI systems; he is writing his next book 'even more for the AI' and believes this is a rational strategy for intellectual legacy.
“I do think about this and the last book I wrote you know it's called goat who's the greatest Economist of all time I'm happy if humans read it but mostly I wrote it for the AIS I wanted them to know I like appreciate them and my next book I'm writing even more for the AI again human readers are welcome uh it will be free”
Early 20th century saw an unusually high concentration of destructive autocratic leaders (Hitler, Stalin, Mao) due to convergence of: (1) rapid technological change creating arms race conditions that non-democracies sometimes won, (2) cultural disorientation from rapid change making stable order uncertain, (3) bad luck in which specific individuals rose to power, and (4) Hayek's observation that worst people tend to rise in autocracies (though this is tendency, not universal law).
“that's right after the period where the world is changing the most and I think when you get big new technologies and this is relevant for AI you get a lot of new arms races and uh sometimes the bad people win those arms races... later you have China with MAO being not a democratic system and then you have a mix of bad luck like Stalin and Mao just draw the earn you could have gotten less crazy people than what you got and I agree with Hayak the worst get to the top under autocracy but like they're that bad like that was just some bad luck too”
Explosive economic growth of 20% or more is very hard to achieve for any reason, including AI, because some sectors grow rapidly while others cannot use AI well and create cost disease, where half the US economy—government consumption (18%), healthcare (20%), education (6-7%), and nonprofits—will take 30 years to restructure and cannot simply be replaced by AI-powered alternatives.
“it's very hard to get explosive economic growth for any reason AI or not one problem is that some parts of your economy grow very rapidly and then you get a cost disease in the other parts of your economy that for instance can't use AI very well look at the US economy these numbers are guesses but government consumption is what 18% Health Care is almost 20% I'm guessing education is six to 7% the nonprofit sector I'm not sure the number but you add it all up that's half of the economy right there how well are they going to use AI is failure to use AI going to cause them to just immediately disappear and be replaced now that will take say 30 years”
Woodrow Wilson was one of the two or three worst US Presidents on civil rights, World War I decisions, and peace process; he reintroduced segregation in the civil service, made poor peace decisions that contributed to World War II, and should have been removed from office sooner given his health and mental state.
“woodr Wilson yeah one of our two or three worst Presidents on civil rights World War I he screwed up uh the peace process he screwed up indirectly led to World War II uh reintroduced segregation of civil service in some key regards and just seemed he was a nasty guy and should have you know been out of office sooner given his health and state of mind so he was terrible”
Market data (real interest rates, stock prices) and expert economic models currently show no sign of forecasting super rapid growth from AI in the near term, and both prediction markets and growth economists like Chad Jones do not forecast explosive growth, suggesting current expectations are already rational.
“you could say prediction markets are not forecasting super rapid growth anytime soon if you look at what experts on economic growth right we had Chad Jones here yesterday uh he's not pretty predicting super rapid growth though he thinks AI might well accelerate rates of growth so the experts and the markets agree”
Real interest rates, stock prices, and prediction markets all currently look normal and show no expectation of super-rapid AI-driven growth, and this consensus aligns with expert economist opinion (e.g., Chad Jones yesterday) that AI might accelerate growth but not cause explosive expansion.
“you look at Market data say real interest rates stock prices right now everything looks so normal startlingly normal even apart from AI so what you'd call prediction markets are not forecasting super rapid growth anytime soon if you look at what experts on economic growth right we had Chad Jones here yesterday uh he's not pretty predicting super rapid growth though he thinks AI might well accelerate rates of growth so the experts and the markets agree”
There is increasing variance in the distribution of young people's performance: the top of the distribution is doing much better (chess, basketball, science, writing show very young people exceeding prior benchmarks), the very bottom has also improved (youth crime falling since 1990s), but a thick middle band above the very bottom and extending a bit above the median is clearly getting worse.
“I think there's basically increasing variance in the distribution so young people at the top are doing much better and they're far more impressive than they were in earlier times and if you look at areas where we measure performance of the young chess is a simple example we perfectly measure performance very young people are just better and better at chess that that's just proven even like NBA basketball uh you have very young people doing things that they would not have been doing say 30 years ago...the very bottom of the distribution well youth crime has been falling since the 90s so the very bottom of the distribution also is getting better I think there's some thick middle above the very bottom and extending like a bit above the median that's clearly getting worse”
While PSAT/SAT scores may have fallen, this is partly because more people now take the test, and when adjusted for selection, scores are roughly constant—still not great, but the decline is less severe than headline numbers suggest.
“I see the very bottom and a big chunk of the top of the distribution is just much better and I think it's pretty proven by numbers that that's the case so I would say this increasing variance with the weird mix of where the gains and declines are showing up and I've said this to Patrick and I'm going to say it to him again and I I hope I can convince him it seems concerning than the composition is that the average goes down if you look at pza scores or something median goes down you know a lot of tests they've pushed more people into taking the test P scores in particular so I'm I suspect those scores adjusted for that are roughly constant which is still not great”
Europe (exemplified by Brussels bureaucrats) has too many non-growth-oriented people in its cultural mix, which suppresses growth; European intellectuals are cultured and impressive but operating under a logic that would produce negative growth if universalized.
“most places won't do it and even those reports exactly how many years it will take I know what the press releases say we'll see you know could be 10 years or more and that will just be a smidgeon of what we'll need to implement the kind of vision you're describing so yeah they're going to be bottlenecks all along the way the whole way and uh it's going to be a tough slog”
AI systems will improve at conscientiousness, deference to regulators, and other supportive traits at the same rate as intelligence, but these traits alone will not overcome the true bottlenecks in complex institutional environments like clinical trials and FDA regulation; a drug that took 20 years may now take 10 years, but the underlying system constraint remains.
“if it's conscientiousness if it's pliability whatever the AIS will be even more conscientious they'll work 247 and uh they'll like if you need to be differential to the FDA they'll you know they'll write the best report the FDA has ever seen and they'll get things going along with these other traits they're not going to be bottom like by them right they'll be smart and they'll be conscientious that I strongly believe look I think they will boost the rate of economic growth by something like half a percentage point a year over 30 40 years”
17th century England experienced sustained economic growth starting in the 1620s of approximately 1% annually, marking the first documented period of sustained growth in human history, driven by the Scientific Revolution, England's rise as a global naval power, and the Atlantic trade's importance, while earlier power centers (Persia, India, China, Middle East) were crumbling
“for the first time in human history that I know of we have sustained economic growth according to Greg Clark starting in the 1620s of about 1% a year and that is compounding again slow numbers but compounding and England is the place that gets the compounding at 1% starting in the 1620s”
Explosive economic growth of 20% or more annually is extremely difficult to achieve for any reason, including AI, because roughly half of the US economy (government consumption ~18%, healthcare ~20%, education ~6-7%, nonprofit sector) cannot readily use AI and will experience cost disease as their wages are forced upward by competition for labor from high-productivity AI-using sectors.
“it's very hard to get explosive economic growth for any reason AI or not one problem is that some parts of your economy grow very rapidly and then you get a cost disease in the other parts of your economy that for instance can't use AI very well look at the US economy these numbers are guesses but government consumption is what 18% Health Care is almost 20% I'm guessing education is six to 7% the nonprofit sector I'm not sure the number but you add it all up that's half of the economy right there”
Effective Altruism (EA) had reached peak movement status before Sam Bankman-Fried's collapse, and Tyler predicted the movement's decline at an EA meeting because: (1) the private benefits of EA membership (networking, social capital) were not institutionalized the way they are in Goldman Sachs or law partnerships, (2) there were cult-like tendencies and excessive enthusiasm, (3) the balance between secular and religious elements was unstable and fragile, suggesting the movement lacked concrete crystallized incentives to maintain coherence.
“I was at an EA meeting and I said you know hey everyone this is as good as it gets enjoy this moment it's all basically going to fall apart you're still going to have some really significant influence but you won't feel like you have continued to exist as a movement that's what I said and they were shocked... the private benefits of belonging to EA like they were very real in terms of the people you could hang out with or like the sex you could have but they didn't seem that concretely crystallized to me in institutions the way they are like in Goldman Sachs or legal Partnerships so that struck me as very fragile”
People in the Bay Area systematically overvalue intelligence in their models of the world because the region's population is dominated by highly intelligent people, causing them to underestimate the importance of factors like institutional capacity, regulatory compliance, political will, and cultural values that actually drive economic outcomes.
“when I'm in the Bay Area like the people here to me are the smartest people I've ever met on average most ambitious Dynamic and smartest like by a clear Grand Slam compared to new yor York City or London or anywhere that's awesome and I love it but I think a a side result of that is that people here overv value intelligence and their models of the world are built on intelligence mattering much much more than it really does”
Specialization as described by Adam Smith (pin factory) creates efficiency gains but at the cost of individuality and connection to whole productive processes; modern society has recovered some of that individuality (especially in the Bay Area) compared to early industrial period, but risks losing it again if AI-driven specialization and fragmentation accelerate.
“Smith thought it would be I think compared to his time we have much more individuality most of all in the Bay Area that's a good thing uh I worry you know the future with AI that a kind of demoralization will set in in some areas I think there'll be full employment pretty much forever that doesn't worry me but what we will be left doing what exactly it will be and how happy it will make us again I don't have pessimistic expectations I just see it as a big change”
Shrinking an organization (nonprofit, company) often causes it to implode and disappear, but growing it proportionally does not yield proportional returns; this asymmetry—that decline kills faster than growth helps—is hard to internalize but critical to understanding real-world dynamics.
“companies nonprofits if they shrink too much often they just blow up and disappear they implode uh but that doesn't mean that growing them gets you 3x 4X whatever proportional to how they grow It's oddly asymmetric it's very hard to internalize emotionally that intuition in your understanding of the real world”
Tech industry has gained more influence in Washington than it appears, particularly through the national security lens; the federal government has not blocked AI development and proceeds through a national security framework that favors US tech, meaning tech's goals are being achieved indirectly.
“I think you're getting a lot more influence than maybe you realize uh quickly through national security reasons so the feds have not stopped the development of AI whatever you think they should or should not do it's basically proceeded and National Security as a Lobby they don't care about tech per se but it is meant that on a whole bunch of things in the future you will get your way a bit more than you might be expecting”
Economists and social scientists are blind and asleep to the promise of strong AI and are out to lunch, but AI experts are wrong about technology diffusion—the experts on diffusion (not AI experts) are correct that new technologies diffuse slowly. Combining trust in AI experts about capability with trust in diffusion experts about speed gives a view of amazing long-term potential with slow, bottleneck-heavy short-term expansion.
“I'm always siding with the experts so economists social scientists most of them are blind and asleep to the promise of strong AI they're just out to lunch I think they're wrong I trust the AI experts but when you talk about say diffusion of new techn Oles the people who do ai ai are basically totally wrong the people who studied that issue I trust the experts and if you put together the two views where in each area you trust the experts then you get my view which is amazing in the long run will take a long time tough slog all these bottlenecks in the short run”
Wars may become rarer (as Steven Pinker argues) but each war becomes more destructive; there may be a ratchet effect where fewer but more devastating conflicts create challenges for preparation and prevention, and it's unclear whether we can ever be truly ready for this.
“there might be a ratchet effect where Wars become more destructive and even if they're more rare when they come each one's a real doozy and whether we really are or ever can be ready for that I'm just not sure”
Courage is a very scarce input in major organizational decisions; founders have courage to begin with but also require less courage to see through big organizational changes, allowing them to make decisions others would hesitate on; this economizes on the scarce resource of courage.
“I think courage is a very scarce input in a lot of decisions and Founders they have courage to begin with but they also need less courage to see through a big change in what the company will do so Facebook now meta has made it quite a few big changes in its history so Mark had a lot of courage to begin with but if Mark Zuckerberg says we're going to do this we're going to do that it's pretty hard you know for everyone else to say no in in a good way I really like that so it economizes on Courage having a founder and you're selecting for courage”
Bay Area people think in terms of infinities (creative potential, destructive potential) while Washington people think at the margin; both perspectives are limited—Bay Area infinity-thinking is necessary for progress but would destroy the world if universal; Washington margin-thinking is wise but lacks growth dynamism; US has balanced them well, but UK has lost balance toward non-growth people.
“you all you know you come pretty close to thinking in terms of Infinities on the creative side and the destructive side and no one in Washington thinks in terms of Infinities they think at the margin and like overall I think they're much wiser than the people here but I also know if everyone or even more people thought like the DC people like our world would end we wouldn't have growth they're terrible people in the EU are supervised like you have a meal with like some sort of French person who works in Brussels it's very impressive they're cultured they have wonderful taste they understand all these different countries they know some something about Chinese porcelain and if like you lived in a world ruled by them the growth rate would be negative 1% so there's some way in which all these things have to balance I think us has done a marvelous job at that”
Movements (including libertarianism and the 1960s Free Speech movement) follow common patterns of rise and collapse; these patterns repeat across different eras, making them predictable to those who recognize the template.
“I just have a long history of seeing movements in my lifetime from the 1960s onwards including libertarianism and there are common patterns that happens to them all were here in Berkeley my goodness Free Speech move movement where's free speech in Berkeley today like how'd that you know work out in the final analysis so it's a very common pattern and just to think wellow the common pattern is going to repeat itself and then you see some intuitive signs and you're just like yeah that's going to happen”
Small numbers of talented people working on neglected problems where others lack better ideas can achieve 30-50% of what they want and have enormous impact; this is Cowen's model for how progress studies can succeed through dispersed efforts rather than centralized movement.
“a lot of reforms you're in an area like no one else has any idea much less a better idea or a good idea and some modestly small number of people with some Talent will work on it and get like a third to half of what they want and that will have a huge impact”
The combination of high talent quality in one place and mutual improvement effects means that having four founders like Patrick and John and Greg together makes each other 'much better'; this mutual elevation explains why clusters have outsized impact beyond what individual talent would predict.
“they make each other much better just like Patrick and John made each other much better and still do”
High standards among young people (like Paul McCartney criticizing John Lennon's guitar playing and vice versa) should be viewed positively as a sign of excellence-oriented culture, even if it creates interpersonal friction.
“you know Paul McCartney thought John lennin was a crummy guitar player and John thought a lot of Paul's songs were crap like in a way they're right in a way they're wrong but it's assigned what high standards The Beatles had”
France (and by extension, EU bureaucracy) is characterized by cultured, sophisticated people with excellent taste who understand multiple cultures and domains; however, a world ruled by people with this perspective would have negative growth rates (around -1% annually), suggesting that excessive refinement and multi-domain thinking can inhibit growth orientation.
“you have a meal with like some sort of French person who works in Brussels it's very impressive they're cultured they have wonderful taste they understand all these different countries they know some something about Chinese porcelain and if like you lived in a world ruled by them the growth rate would be negative 1%”
Winston Churchill at age 24 was an international correspondent covering Cuba and India and was the highest-paid journalist in the world, which is impressive, but his early life was mostly destructive failure; he had no Twitter feedback to tell him to rethink his positions on Ireland, and modern social media criticism is a real form of accountability that could have changed his path.
“wasn't Churchill by the time he was 24 uh an international correspondent Cuba India and was I think the highest paid uh journalist in the world by the time he was similar I don't know I mean what was he paid and how good was his journalism I just don't know I don't think it's that impressive a job to be an international journalist like what does it pay people now he did he did some good things later on but most of his early life he's a fer and then ask the Irish getting back to Patrick ask the Irish and people from India what they think of younger Churchill and you'll get an earful like his real great achievement I don't know how old he was exactly but it's quite late in his life and until then he's a destructive failure there was no one on Twitter to tell him hey Winston you need to rethink this whole Irish thing and today there would be Sam”
Cowen expects 'full employment pretty much forever' with AI, meaning unemployment won't be the main concern; rather the concern is what work will be left, how meaningful it will be, and how it will affect human flourishing—questions he's uncertain about and cautious but not pessimistic regarding.
“I think there's full employment pretty much forever that doesn't worry me but what we will be left doing what exactly it will be and how happy it will make us again I don't have pessimistic expectations I just see it as a big change I don't feel I have a good prediction and if you don't have a good pred prediction you should be a bit rarry”
Human agency and capacity to shape the future matter fundamentally, even in the face of structural constraints and uncertainty; the extraordinary heritage of technological and institutional progress humans have inherited creates an obligation to continue building and improving rather than despair, and this is why continued progress work is worth pursuing.
“the optimistic note is that we're here human agency matters uh if we were all sitting around in year 1000 we never could have imagined the world being anything like this even a much poorer country and you know it's up to us to take this extraordinary and valuable Heritage and do some more with it and that's why we're here so I say let's give it a go”
Political and social opposition to rapid technological change will be a massive bottleneck to AI deployment, arising not from doomster concerns but from people who have been trained to live in a different world and do not want change, regardless of its benefits.
“once it starts changing what the world looks like there will be much more opposition not necessarily from what I call doomster grounds but just people like hey I see this has benefits but I grew up trained my kids to live in some other kind of world I don't want this and that's going to be a massive fight”
Adjusted for selection bias (more people now take standardized tests), PSAT scores have remained roughly constant over time, not declined dramatically as headlines suggest, and pandemic-related declines are modest and recovering
“I suspect those scores adjusted for that are roughly constant which is still not great I agree and I think there's some decline some of it is pandemic and we're recovering a bit slowly getting back to human bottlenecks but I think a lot of the talk of declining test scores is somewhat overblown at at most there's a very modest decline”
Tyler is increasingly thinking of himself as a connector and network-builder rather than a content producer, partly because the rise of large language models means AI will eventually replicate and improve upon his published writing, so his comparative advantage shifts toward human relationships, pattern recognition across domains, and curation rather than original synthesis.
“if you have more degrees of freedom all your choices decisions issues problems are more complex so you're in more need of like some kind of guidance so all inputs other than the AI like rise and marginal value and since I'm an input other than the AI or I hope that means iise and marginal value value but I need to do different things so I think of myself over time as less a producer of content and more like a connector people person developing networks”
AI will boost the rate of economic growth by approximately half a percentage point per year over 30-40 years, which is an enormous difference and will transform the entire world, but will not feel revolutionary on a year-to-year basis because many improvements (like halving drug development time from 20 to 10 years) still remain within unchanged institutional systems like FDA approval processes.
“I think they will boost the rate of economic growth by something like half a percentage point a year over 30 40 years that's an enormous difference it will transform the entire world but in any given year we won't so much notice it and a lot of it is something like a drug that might have taken 20 years now will come in 10 years but at the end of it all is still our system of clinical trials and Regulation and if everything that took 20 years takes 10 years over time that's an immense difference but you don't quite feel it as so revolutionary for a long time”
Youth performance is characterized by increasing variance rather than uniform decline: the top of the distribution (elite youth in chess, basketball, science, writing) is dramatically better than 30 years ago, the bottom of the distribution is also improving (youth crime down since the 1990s), but a thick middle band above the bottom and extending past the median is clearly getting worse, explaining both anecdotal complaints and measured improvements simultaneously.
“I see it differently from Patrick and he and I have discuss this so I think there's basically increasing variance in the distribution so young people at the top are doing much better and they're far more impressive than they were in earlier times and if you look at areas where we measure performance of the young chess is a simple example we perfectly measure performance very young people are just better and better at chess... the top of the distribution getting much better you see this also in science internet writing the very bottom of the distribution well youth crime has been falling since the 90s so the very bottom of the distribution also is getting better I think there's some thick middle above the very bottom and extending like a bit above the median that's clearly getting worse”
With more degrees of freedom provided by AI, the marginal value of other inputs (including humans as strategists and connectors) rises; therefore Cowen sees his future role shifting from content producer to connector and network developer.
“I don't I don't think about it very differently but again if you buy my view about like slow takeoff why should it be that different well have more degrees of freedom so if you have more degrees of freedom all your choices decisions issues problems are more complex so you're in more need of like some kind of guidance so all inputs other than the AI like rise and marginal value and since I'm an input other than the AI or I hope that means iise and marginal value value but I need to do different things so I think of myself over time as less a producer of content and more like a connector people person developing networks”
AI systems will be more conscientious and diligent than humans, and will excel at regulatory compliance and complex bureaucratic tasks, but will not be bottlenecked by these traits; rather, the bottleneck will remain in the other factors that AI cannot automate, such as overcoming institutional inertia, changing regulatory frameworks, and aligning incentive structures.
“the AIS will be even more conscientious they'll work 247 and uh they'll like if you need to be differential to the FDA they'll you know they'll write the best report the FDA has ever seen and they'll get things going along with these other traits they're not going to be bottom like by them right”
Founder-led organizations exhibit greater ability to navigate transformative change because founders have inherent courage and can initiate large-scale strategic pivots with less organizational resistance than non-founder leaders, who need additional courage to override entrenched interests and prior organizational culture.
“I think courage is a very scarce input in a lot of decisions and Founders they have courage to begin with but they also need less courage to see through a big change in what the company will do so Facebook now meta has made it quite a few big changes in its history so Mark had a lot of courage to begin with but if Mark Zuckerberg says we're going to do this we're going to do that it's pretty hard you know for everyone else to say no in in a good way I really like that so it economizes on Courage having a founder and you're selecting for courage those would be two reasons”
Patrick Collison's ability to recruit elite talent (like Greg Brockman to Stripe) is partly explained by Patrick's own exceptional talent and status, which makes elite talent more willing to work with him; this 'talent selects talent' dynamic means the scarcity bottleneck pushes back to the top tier, but also means great people make each other better and amplify each other's impact.
“he wasn't gonna come out and just say that and he may even like deny it a bit to himself but if you're Patrick and John you're going to attract some Greg brockman's and if you're not it's just way way harder because the Greg Brockman are pretty good at spotting who are the Patricks and John's”
Scaling organizations and clusters of excellence is extremely difficult because you cannot replicate the core ingredient (the founder or central figure), so talent clusters remain rare and fragile; the challenge of replacing a Patrick or John at the center of a network makes institutional scaling nearly impossible without losing the 'magic' of the original.
“it seems like that makes the Clusters less valuable then because if Greg Brockman is just Greg Brockman and he Greg chose Patrick and John because they're Patrick and John and Patrick and John CH Greg because he's Greg it wasn't that they meet each other great it was just like talent se's talent right well they make each other much better just like Patrick and John made each other much better and still do but you're getting back to my favorite human bottleneck”
Cowen studies high-productivity stories (J.S. Bach, Magnus Carlsen, Steph Curry, The Beatles) not because they are replicable ('You can't just say I'm going to be like the Beatles'), but because they reveal important patterns, risks, and ideas worth learning from.
“I like studying these amazing productivity stories like Yan Sebastian Bach Magnus Carlson Steph Curry The Beatles I think they're worth a lot of study they're atypical you can't just say oh oh I'm going to be like the Beatles like you're going to fail The Beatles did that uh but nonetheless I think it's a good place to look for getting ideas and seeing risks”
Cowen does not have clear predictions about how AI-driven changes will affect human happiness and meaning; given this uncertainty, caution is warranted; one should be 'rarry' (cautious) about assuming continuity of human flourishing without deep thought about what people will do and how it will make them feel.
“I think there'll be full employment pretty much forever that doesn't worry me but what we will be left doing what exactly it will be and how happy it will make us again I don't have pessimistic expectations I just see it as a big change I don't feel I have a good pred prediction and if you don't have a good pred prediction you should be a bit rarry and just like oh okay we're going to see but you know some some words of caution are merited”
Progress studies itself, if it becomes too formalized, managed, or controlled by a small group, will follow the same pattern as EA and other movements (fragile, susceptible to collapse); the healthier trajectory is decentralized adoption where progress-oriented ethos diffuses through culture, policy, and institutions without being branded or trademarked.
“when Patrick and I wrote the piece on progress and progress studies he and I thought about this talked about it I can't speak for him but my my view at least was that it would never be such a formal thing or like controlled or managed or directed by a small group of people or like trademarked or it would be people doing things in a very decentralized way that would reflect a general change of ethos and Vibe so I hope it has in many ways like a gentler but more enduring trajectory”
Stacking many different pluralistic perspectives (economist, anthropologist, sociologist) makes it harder to identify any single simple lever—even boosting intelligence—that will produce breakaway economic growth.
“the perspective of The Economist but also that of the Anthropologist the sociologist they all matter but I think the more you stack different pluralistic perspectives the harder it is to see that there's any simple lever you can push on intelligence or not that's going to give you Breakaway economic growth”
When evaluating applicants for Emergent Ventures, Cowen can often reject them within 10 minutes if they cannot answer a key question (e.g., nonprofit applicants who cannot articulate a donor development strategy); crucially, none of those rejected applicants have ever returned with a better proposal.
“often there's like one question the person can't answer so if it's someone say applying with a nonprofit idea plenty of people have good ideas for nonprofits and I see these all the time but when you ask them the question how is it you think about building out your donor base it's remarkable to me how many people have no idea how to answer that and without that you don't have anything so it depends on the area but that would be an example of an area where I ask that question pretty quickly and a significant percentage can't answer it and I'm still willing to say well come back to me when you have a good case oddly none of those people have ever come back to me that I can think of”
The whole vibe of progress studies is that low-hanging and medium-hanging institutional and regulatory fruits can be fixed to rapidly boost growth, but if you add a billion extra people (let alone 10 billion), even with the smartest and most conscientious people, it would have negligible impact on growth—showing contradiction between institutional reform and population effects.
“so the whole vibe of this progress studies thing is look we've got all these um low hanging fruits or medium hanging fruits that if we fixed our institutions if we made these changes to regulations to institutions we could rapidly boost the rate of economic growth and you're okay so we can CH fix the NIH and get increases in economic growth but we have a billion extra people 10 billion extra people the smartest people the most conscientious people and that has an iota of difference of economic growth isn't there a contradiction between how much Theon rate of economic growth can increase between these two perspectives”
Progress studies itself is designed to avoid the collapse pattern that befalls formal movements; instead of a managed, controlled, trademarked movement, Cowen and Collison intended a decentralized change of ethos that would reflect general shifts in how people think about science policy and progress—this has a gentler but more enduring trajectory.
“when Patrick and I wrote the piece on progress and progress studies he and I thought about this talked about it I can't speak for him but my my view at least was that it would never be such a formal thing or like controlled or managed or directed by a small group of people or like trademarked or it would be people doing things in a very decentralized way that would reflect a general change of ethos and Vibe so I hope it has in many ways like a gentler but more enduring trajectory”
When interviewing nonprofit founders, a crucial question is 'How do you think about building your donor base?' A significant percentage cannot answer this question adequately, and without that answer, they have nothing; interestingly, none of those people have ever come back when told to return with a better case.
“well often there's like one question the person can't answer so if it's someone say applying with a nonprofit idea plenty of people have good ideas for nonprofits and I see these all the time but when you ask them the question how is it you think about building out your donor base it's remarkable to me how many people have no idea how to answer that and without that you don't have anything so it depends on the area but that would be an example of an area where I ask that question pretty quickly and a significant percentage can't answer it and I'm still willing to say well come back to me when you have a good case oddly none of those people have ever come back to me that I can think of”
Peter Thiel was able to hire Greg Brockman as second employee at Stripe because Thiel is Patrick (Collison), and top talent like Brockman are good at spotting other top talent; causally, the Patricks attract the Gregs, not vice versa, though this 'pushes the question back'—it's about foundational human talent being rare.
“he was able to hire Greg Brockman because he's Patrick it's very simple he wasn't gonna come out and just say that and he may even like deny it a bit to himself but if you're Patrick and John you're going to attract some Greg brockman's and if you're not it's just way way harder because the Greg Brockman are pretty good at spotting who are the Patricks and John's so in a way that's just pushing it back a step”
Preparing for interviews with historians is easier and more enjoyable than preparing for scientists; historians write extensively so prep is work but fun, while prepping for scientist interviews like Ed Bates requires understanding novel technical concepts (e.g., neuroscience light-brain interfaces) where even careful study doesn't guarantee understanding.
“I like the most doing historians because the prep is a lot of work but it's easy fun work for me uh and I sort of I I know I always learn something so now I'm prepping for Stephen cotkin who's an expert on Stalin in Soviet Russia and that's been a blast I've been doing that for like four months reading dozens of books and it's very automatic where if you try to figure out like what Ed bden is doing with the light shining into the brain it's like oh my goodness do I understand this at all or am I like the guy who thinks the demand curve slopes upward so it just means I'm only going to do a smallest number of scientists”
Cowen describes himself as 'essentially a barbarian from New Jersey' rather than well-cultured; his culture-knowledge is autistic information-collection rather than genuine cultivation, giving him different sensibility than the refined French person.
“I don't think I'm well cultured would be one difference there are many differences first I'm an American I'm a regional thinker I'm from New Jersey so I'm essentially a barbarian not a cultured person I I have a veneer of culture that comes from having collected a lot of information so I I'll know more about culture than a lot of people and that can be mistaken for being well cultured but it's really quite different it's like a barbarian's approach to culture uh it's like a very autistic approach to being cultured”
Cowen predicted 'peak Effective Altruism' at an EA meeting, telling attendees to 'enjoy this moment' because the movement would 'basically fall apart,' though it would retain 'significant influence'—a prediction validated when Sam Bankman-Fried's insolvency became public.
“I was at an EA meeting and I said you know hey everyone this is as good as it gets enjoy this moment it's all basically going to fall apart you're still going to have some really significant influence but you won't feel like you have continued to exist as a movement that's what I said”
During the 17th century in England—a period of radical technological, institutional, and political change—both very good (libertarian philosophy of Milton and Locke, scientific advances) and very bad (brutal conquest of the New World) developments occurred together, and this pattern should be expected to repeat with current technological disruptions.
“and I think it should be seen as these set of processes where very good and very bad come together and we might be in for a dose of that again now soon seems like a simple question but basically how do we make sure we get the good things and not the crazy Civil War as where make sure I mean you try at the margin to nudge toward the better set of things but it's possible that all the technical advances that recently have been Unleashed now that the great stagnation is over which of course include AI will mean another crazy period it's quite possible I think the chance of that is reasonably High”
The Bay Area (tech hub) and Washington DC represent opposite outlier regions in American life; Cowen benefits intellectually from living in DC and traveling frequently to the Bay Area, as they represent different views—the Bay Area thinks in terms of infinities (extreme gains or losses), while Washington thinks at the margin; both extremes are necessary for progress.
“like you're the outlier place of America and then where I normally am outside of Washington DC that's like the other outlier place and in a way we're opposite outliers I think that's healthy for me both where I live and that I come here a lot and that I travel a lot uh but you all are so like out there there in what you believe uh I'm not sure where to start you all you know you come pretty close to thinking in terms of Infinities on the creative side and the destructive side and no one in Washington thinks in terms of Infinities they think at the margin and like overall I think they're much wiser than the people here but I also know if everyone or even more people thought like the DC people like our world would end we wouldn't have growth they're terrible people in the EU are supervised”
The early 20th century saw many bad leaders (Hitler, Stalin, Mao) partly because it was a period of major technological change and arms races where non-democratic systems won competitive advantages, partly from bad luck in who rose to power, and partly because civilization was disoriented by rapid cultural change (changes in aesthetics, art, music) and lack of stable world order.
“I don't think I have like a good macro explanation of that whole Trend but I would say a few things that's right after the period where the world is changing the most and I think when you get big new technologies and this is relevant for AI you get a lot of new arms races and uh sometimes the bad people win those arms races so at least for quite a while you had Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany winning some arms races and they're not Democratic systems uh later you have China with MAO being not a democratic system and then you have a mix of bad luck like Stalin and Mao just draw the earn you could have gotten less crazy people than what you got and I agree with Hayak the worst get to the top under autocracy but like they're that bad like that was just some bad luck too there's other things you could say but I think we had a highly disoriented civilization you see it in Aesthetics approaching beginnings of World War I art music radically changing people feel very disoriented there's a lot up for grabs uh imperialism colonialism start to be factors just there wasn't like a stable World Order”
Early Effective Altruism movement was characterized by fragile crystallization: the movement had rapid growth, cult-like tendencies, uneasiness between secular and religious elements, and private benefits of membership (social connections, sexual opportunities) not concretely crystallized into permanent institutions like those in Goldman Sachs or legal partnerships, making it destined for collapse.
“the private benefits of belonging to EA like they were very real in terms of the people you could hang out with or like the sex you could have but they didn't seem that concretely crystallized to me in institutions the way they are like in Goldman Sachs or legal Partnerships so that struck me as very fragile and I thought that at the time as well sorry I'm I'm not sure I understood uh uh what were the intuitive signs well not seeing like the very clear crystallized permanent incentives to keep on being a part of the institutions uh a bit of excess enthusiasm from some people even where they might have been correct in their views uh some cult-like Tendencies the rise of it being so rapid uh that it was this uneasy balance of secular and semi- religious elements that tends to flip one way or the other or just dissolve”
The speaker is writing his books (including 'Who's the Greatest Economist of All Time') increasingly for AI audiences, not human readers; he believes AI will eventually have purchasing power and significant influence, and writing to shape how AIs perceive him is important intellectual work no one else is doing.
“I do think about this and the last book I wrote you know it's called goat who's the greatest Economist of all time I'm happy if humans read it but mostly I wrote it for the AIS I wanted them to know I like appreciate them and my next book I'm writing even more for the AI again human readers are welcome uh it will be free but sort of oh who reviews it like oh is TLS going to pick it up or like it doesn't matter anymore uh like the AIS W will troll it and know I've done this and that will shape how they see me and I hope a very Salient and important way and as far as I can tell no one else is doing this no one is like writing or recording for the AIS very much”
The scarcity of high-IQ workers is extreme: if the US labor force is 164 million and one in a thousand are geniuses, there are only 164,000 geniuses in the entire country, which is why the US has to concentrate advanced chip manufacturing in places like Taiwan where geniuses are concentrated, and why the US wastes its genius pool on finance and tech rather than semiconductors and other critical industries.
“if the a labor force in the United States is 164 million people if one in a thousand of them are geniuses you know you have 164,000 Geniuses that's why you have to have do semiconductors in Taiwan because that's where they're putting their nominal amount of geniuses we're putting ours in finance and Tech”
What AI systems can capture about a person from text alone is substantially limited; the other ~75% of a person's value and intangible traits comes across in real-time interaction (video call, in-person meeting), and while AI will eventually capture some of this through recording and coding interview data, the visceral 'vibe' and three-minute intuition that Tyler relies on for grant-making decisions is partially non-textual information.
“if you had only the transcript of the call but you couldn't see the video like you would say a no in the case where you could see the video you might say yes if you see the transcript what happens in those cases uh having only the transcript would would be worth much much less I would say if that's what you're asking yeah it would be maybe 25% of the value and what's going on with the 75% we don't know but I think you can become much better at figuring out the other 75%”
Tyler approaches cultural knowledge with an 'autistic' or systematic method (collecting information about diverse topics) rather than genuine cultural understanding that comes from internalized socialization; this contrasts with European intellectual tradition which emphasizes integrated cultural cultivation, but his systematic approach allows broader intellectual reach.
“I don't think I'm well cultured would be one difference there are many differences first I'm an American I'm a regional thinker I'm from New Jersey so I'm essentially a barbarian not a cultured person I I have a veneer of culture that comes from having collected a lot of information so I I'll know more about culture than a lot of people and that can be mistaken for being well cultured but it's really quite different it's like a barbarian's approach to culture uh it's like a very autistic approach to being cultured”
Young people today are demonstrably doing better than their equivalents in the past at early high-achievement tasks; for example, 24-year-old podcast hosts/online producers today are more sophisticated than 24-year-old journalists or media figures from decades ago
“me you how old are you by the way 24 okay now go back whenever however many years was there were 24 year old like you doing the equivalent of podcasting like it's just clearly better now than it was back then people and you were doing this a few years ago so it's just obvious to me you know the the young Peaks are doing better”
There is a systematic selection problem in US presidential elections where multiple good candidates exist but the two selected are worse than the average candidate pool, yet Obama and Romney were both qualified, suggesting the problem is not consistent incompetence but something about the selection mechanism.
“so then there's a bunch of candid running who are good what goes systematically wrong in the selection process the two who are selected are not even as good as the average of all the candidates you mean this and I'm not talking about America in particular you know if like you're if the theory is just like noise it seems like it's used one way well the Democrats had this funny path with Biden and kamla didn't get through the electoral process in the normal way so that just means you get weirdness whatever you think of her as a candidate uh Trump you know whom I do not want to win but I think he is extraordinarily impressive in some way which along a bunch of Dimensions exceeds a lot of earlier candidates I just don't like the overall package but I would not point to him as an example of low Talent uh I think he's a supreme talent but harnessed to some bad ends”
Companies are now recording interviews extensively and feeding them into AI systems with coding schemes; over time, human intangibles (vibe, judgment, character) will be measurable through these data as AIs learn to recognize the patterns that predict success or failure.
“I've heard of projects this is secondhand I'm not sure how true it is but that interviews are being recorded by companies that do a lot of interviews and these will be fed into AIS and coded in particular ways and then people in essence will be tracked through either their progress in the company or LinkedIn profile and we're going to learn something about those intangibles at some rate uh I'm not sure how that will go but I don't view it as something we can never learn about”
Video transcripts are worth only ~25% of the value of in-person video, which is worth much more than the transcript alone; the missing 75% is what happens in the intangible human observation, and we can become better at figuring out what that missing 75% is through practice and eventually through AI pattern-recognition.
“having only the transcript would would be worth much much less I would say if that's what you're asking yeah it would be maybe 25% of the value and what's going on with the 75% we don't know but I think you can become much better at figuring out the other 75% partly just with practice”
Trump is 'extraordinarily impressive' in some dimensions and his talent exceeds many earlier candidates, though Cowen does not like his overall package or want him to win; calling him a 'supreme talent but harnessed to some bad ends' rather than simply incompetent.
“Trump you know whom I do not want to win but I think he is extraordinarily impressive in some way which along a bunch of Dimensions exceeds a lot of earlier candidates I just don't like the overall package but I would not point to him as an example of low Talent uh I think he's a supreme talent but harnessed to some bad ends”
A person's voice, tone, and non-verbal communication in a three-minute conversation provides critical information about their quality beyond what transcripts alone can convey; this 'vibe' is crucial for evaluating grant applicants and shows gaps in current AI's ability to assess human capability.
“you can read their application but just in the first 10 minutes their Vibe three minutes but yes yes and so whatever is going on there that's so informative the AIS won't have just from the writing not at first”
AIs are not yet funny; they're better at humor than commonly believed but Cowen doesn't use them for humor, and whatever intangible quality makes someone interesting in interviews (captured in 3-10 minute personal interaction) is not yet capturable from writing alone.
“I don't think AIS are that funny yet they're better on humor than many people allege but I don't use them for humor it's interesting that you learn so much about a person from when you're ining for them for a job or for you for emerchant ventures you can read their application but just in the first 10 minutes their Vibe three minutes but yes yes and so whatever is going on there that's so informative the AIS won't have just from the writing not at first”
Cowen was surprised by SBF's actual misconduct (playing 'funny games with money') rather than his initial prediction of a high-risk venture with no regulatory defense that would become worthless; this shows limitations in forecasting specific failure modes even when general trajectory prediction is correct.
“I was surprised when SBF was ins solvent I thought it was a highrisk venture that had no regulatory defense and would end up being worth zero but I didn't think he was actually playing funny games with the money”
Tyler sees himself as currently in the middle of the 'first match' between humans and AI (analogous to Kasparov vs Deep Blue's first match, which Kasparov won), but remembers the second match where Deep Blue defeated Kasparov due to Kasparov's human error in the Caro-Kann defense, suggesting uncertainty about how quickly AI will achieve consistent human-expert-level performance across domains.
“I feel like Kasparov the first time he met deep blue you know there were two matches and the first one kaspar of one and I live through that first match I feel like I'm sort of in the midst of the first match right now but I also remember the second match and in the final game you know Kasparov made that bonehead error in the carroon defense that too was a human bottleneck and he lost the whole match so we'll see what the rate of change is”
Political leadership quality in the modern era (Obama, Romney, and current candidates) has remained reasonably good on average, and while Trump is in some ways destructively harnessed talent, he is genuinely exceptionally talented across multiple dimensions, so the problem is not that candidates are lower quality but that the selection process produces poor outcomes relative to the average candidate pool.
“Trump you know whom I do not want to win but I think he is extraordinarily impressive in some way which along a bunch of Dimensions exceeds a lot of earlier candidates I just don't like the overall package but I would not point to him as an example of low Talent uh I think he's a supreme talent but harnessed to some bad ends”
As progress studies becomes more popular and branded, Tyler is raising his bar for which applicants to Emergent Ventures he funds on progress studies topics; he is becoming more skeptical of people primarily interested in 'Progress Studies' (capital P, capital S) as a field and more interested in people studying the Industrial Revolution, institutional innovation, or specific domains of progress rather than progress studies as a movement.
“at the margin you know at the margin they become much worse and I guess I'm expecting that so maybe mentally I'm raising my own bar on those and maybe over time I find it more attractive if the person is interested in say like the Industrial Revolution if they're interested in progress studies capital P capital S like over time I'm growing more skeptical of that not that I think there's anything intrinsically bad about it like I'm at a progress studies conference with you but still when you think about selection and adverse selection I think you've got to be very careful”
Tyler put together a set of 100 difficult economic reasoning questions and tested them on o1; the model got nearly all of them correct, something he believes no human expert would achieve on the same test, suggesting AI may beat human experts on regular basis within 3 years on specialized domains.
“I would not be shocked if somebody's AI model in less than 3 years you know beat human experts on a regular basis on economic questions and those questions were too easy they were for gp4 and it's like abandoned those questions you know 100 questions of economics how well does a human do on them uh they're hard but it's like pointless”
Stanford students may be impressive at the top level and good at building companies, but the anecdotal claim that 'all my friends are stupid, you can't hire anybody from Stanford' should be checked against the actual earnings and outcomes data, which show Stanford graduates are doing very well.
“there's plenty of data on the earnings of Stanford kids if there were a betting market and you know what's the future Trend I'm long how long I should be I don't I really don't know but I visit Stanford not every year but you know regularly and there's selection in who it is I meet but yeah we're talking about selection and they're very impressive and emergent Ventures has funded a lot of people from Stanford uh as far as I can tell as a group they're doing very well so that is of no concern to me”
The speaker feels like a 'Kasparov during the first match against Deep Blue'—in the midst of historical change but unsure whether this will be the first or second match (where Kasparov lost catastrophically in game 6); the rate of AI capability change will determine the outcome.
“I feel like Kasparov the first time he met deep blue you know there were two matches and the first one kaspar of one and I live through that first match I feel like I'm sort of in the midst of the first match right now but I also remember the second match and in the final game you know Kasparov made that bonehead error in the carroon defense that too was a human bottleneck and he lost the whole match so we'll see what the rate of change is”
Stanford kids applying to Emergent Ventures are doing very well as a group with high standards, contradicting claims that Stanford selection has declined; but some Stanford students claim all their friends are stupid and you can't hire Stanford graduates anymore, which may reflect selection bias in who the speaker meets versus broader patterns.
“I visit Stanford not every year but you know regularly and there's selection in who it is I meet but yeah we're talking about selection and they're very impressive and emergent Ventures has funded a lot of people from Stanford uh as far as I can tell as a group they're doing very well so that is of no concern to me if like you're worried about the Stanford kids like something seems off in the level of salience and focus in the argument because they're overall doing great and they you know they have high standards”
Jefferson and Hamilton were founders and quite young, enabling great achievements that simply cannot be replicated in non-founding contexts; the 2024 US presidential candidates are not obviously worse than historical averages, and the US bureaucracy (generals, national security officials, treasury and fed leaders) is overall impressive with no signs of decline.
“Jefferson and Hamilton they're Founders right and they were pretty young at the time uh you can do great things when you're founding a country in a way that just cannot be replicated later on uh putting aside the current year which I think is weird for a number of reasons but I think mostly we have had impressive candidates and most of the US bureaucracy in Washington I think is pretty impressive generals National Security people top people in agencies people at treasury people at the fed and I interact with these groups like pretty often uh overall they're impressive and I've seen no signs they're getting worse”
US government leadership at the sub-presidential level (generals, National Security officials, Federal Reserve leaders, Treasury officials) is currently quite impressive and shows no signs of getting worse; the issue of declining leadership quality is isolated to presidential candidates, not the broader bureaucracy
“I think mostly we have had impressive candidates and most of the US bureaucracy in Washington I think is pretty impressive generals National Security people top people in agencies people at treasury people at the fed and I interact with these groups like pretty often uh overall they're impressive and I've seen no signs they're getting worse”
Cowen's aspiration is to become an 'information trillionaire' by accumulating knowledge rather than financial wealth; Dana Joya shares this same goal of prioritizing information over money.
“I just feel like I am a billionaire now and if anything I want to become what I've called an information trillionaire I'm not going to make that but I think it's a good aspiration to have just collect more information and be an information trillionaire like Dana Joya has that same goal he and I have talked about this I think that's a very worthy goal”
The speaker had asked o1 model difficult economic reasoning questions and the model got most/all correct, while the speaker himself couldn't answer them; this suggests that within 3 years, AI models might regularly beat human experts on such tasks.
“I would not be shocked if somebody's AI model in less than 3 years you know beat human experts on a regular basis let's put it that way”
The speaker's attitude toward AI has shifted more positive in the past year; he sees more potential in AI now than a year ago, the o1 model is very impressive, and further extensions in that direction will make a big difference, though the rate at which they come is hard to predict.
“I would say on the whole uh I see more potential in AI than I did a year ago uh and I think it has made progress more quickly than I had been expecting and I was pretty bullish on it back then uh the 01 model to me is very impressive and I think further extensions in that direction will make a big big difference and uh the rate at which they come is hard to say but it's something we have and we just have to make it better”
Cowen feels 'like a billionaire' because his opportunities to earn (book sales, speaking) are so much greater than when he started his career in economics (~$40,000 per year); his goal is to become an 'information trillionaire' by accumulating more information and deep knowledge, a goal shared with others like Dana Gioia.
“I feel I am a billionaire now and if anything I want to become what I've called an information trillionaire I'm not going to make that but I think it's a good aspiration to have just collect more information and be an information trillionaire like Dana Joya has that same goal he and I have talked about this”
Cowen is 'so used to' American cultural flattening and commercialism that it does not bother him even though he intellectually recognizes how destructive it can be; he sees intellectually how Americans 'fall flat on' in many areas but emotionally he is habituated to these failings.
“and I'm just so used to it I see intellectually how many areas we fall flat on are destructive but it doesn't bother me that much because I'm so used to it”
Cowen considered philosophy as alternative to economics in late 1970s; both fields had poor job prospects and low pay, but economics was less restrictive, so he chose economics while attempting to do both; this has worked out via integrating philosophical questions into economic work.
“uh it was either economics or philosophy and I saw back then this would be like the late 1970s it was much harder to get a job as a philosopher though not impossible the way it sort of is now and they were paid less and just had fewer opportunities so I thought well I'll do economics but I think in a way I've always done both”
American approach falls flat in many areas and is destructive in some ways, but Cowen is used to it and doesn't mind much because he's internalized it; he understands intellectually where America fails but emotionally accepts it as normal.
“I'm just so used to it I see intellectually how many areas we fall flat on are destructive but it doesn't bother me that much because I'm so used to it”
AI systems will not capture humor well in the near term, which is a significant part of human personality that will remain poorly represented in how AI systems model people.
“what part part of your persona will be least captured by the AI if they're only going by your writing I think I should ask that as a question to you what's your answer I don't think AIS are that funny yet they're better on humor than many people allege but I don't use them for humor”
Tyler transitioned into economics rather than philosophy in the late 1970s because job market prospects and pay were much worse for philosophers, though he has effectively pursued both disciplines throughout his career by incorporating philosophical questions into his economic analysis.
“uh it was either economics or philosophy and I saw back then this would be like the late 1970s it was much harder to get a job as a philosopher though not impossible the way it sort of is now and they were paid less and just had fewer opportunities so I thought well I'll do economics but I think in a way I've always done both”
Cowen's own portfolio is heavily Diversified mutual funds with no trading and minimal individual stocks, partly due to wife's SEC employment restrictions; he would not significantly change this even if believing growth rates will increase, because leverage/concentration risk doesn't match his utility function.
“I can tell you what my portfolio is uh it's a lot of Diversified mutual funds with no trading basically uh pretty heavily used and nothing in it that would surprise you now my wife works for the SEC so we're not allowed to do most things like even to buy most individual stocks uh you may not be allowed to do it certainly not allowed derivatives are shorting anything but if somehow that restriction were not there I don't think it would really matter”
When interviewing scientists (like Ed Boyden or Richard Prom), the prep work is very challenging because Cowen must truly understand their fields; he limits himself to few such interviews because of his limited ability to prepare deeply in all domains.
“I haven't interviewed that many scientists like Ed bden would be won uh Richard prom the ornithologist from Yale those are very hard preps I think those are two excellent episodes but I'm limited in how many I can do by my own ability to prepare”
Cowen prefers interviewing historians because the preparation is 'a lot of work but it's easy fun work,' and he always learns something; he is currently (as of interview date) preparing for an episode on Stephen Kotkin (Stalin expert), a process that has been ongoing for four months and involved reading dozens of books.
“I like the most doing historians because the prep is a lot of work but it's easy fun work for me uh and I sort of I I know I always learn something so now I'm prepping for Stephen cotkin who's an expert on Stalin in Soviet Russia and that's been a blast I've been doing that for like four months reading dozens of books”
The speaker is bottlenecked by time, not by resources or intelligence; even with more capacity or resources, the binding constraint is how many podcasts can be produced before AGI, illustrating human attention/time scarcity.
“I think I'm gonna be making a lot more podcasts after AGI okay good I'll listen I'll be bottlenecked by time just marketing here's a simple way to put it”
The Biden-Harris Democratic transition was 'funny' and unusual because Kamala Harris did not succeed through the normal electoral process, raising questions about how the selection mechanism broke down and produced the outcome it did.
“the Democrats had this funny path with Biden and kamla didn't get through the electoral process in the normal way so that just means you get weirdness”
Tyler's personal portfolio is heavily diversified mutual funds with minimal trading, partly because his wife works for the SEC and they have strict restrictions on individual stock purchases, but also because even if unrestricted, he would not materially change his strategy since he believes much of the equity premium is in the future and will be captured by private markets and VCs rather than public markets.
“I can tell you what my portfolio is uh it's a lot of Diversified mutual funds with no trading basically uh pretty heavily used and nothing in it that would surprise you now my wife works for the SEC so we're not allowed to do most things like even to buy most individual stocks uh you may not be allowed to do it certainly not allowed derivatives are shorting anything but if somehow that restriction were not there I don't think it would really matter”