Hello and welcome to the North Star. I'm your host David Pharrell. And this is the North Star podcast in each episode. We explore the intersection between different ideas cultures and life philosophies. The guests are diverse, but they share profound similarities. They're Guided by Purpose Driven by curiosity and see the world with a unique lens and in each episode we get to dive into their hard-earned wisdom and apply it to our lives.
What I'm not recording podcasts I write essays on my website / al.com send a weekly email newsletter called Monday musings and run an online writing school called rite of passage. I hope you enjoy the
show.
My guest today is Tyler Cowen an economics professor at George Mason University. He runs the mercatus center which Bridges the gap between academic ideas and
World problems and he's published a new blog post every single day for the past 17 years on his blog called marginal Revolution. He also writes for Bloomberg and hosts his own podcast called conversations with Tyler.
And on that podcast he ends every single episode by asking about other people's production function questions. Like how do you get so much done? What is the secret sauce of all that you've accomplished and this episode is entirely devoted to that question. But of course this time I get to ask Tyler. So we started by talking about why there aren't more Tyler Collins in the world. Then we move to Tyler's process for writing such as choosing article topics and editing his work.
And later in the podcast we discussed Tyler's process for choosing friends why he would travel across the world to visit a new country for just 10 hours and what he's learned from high-powered people like Peter teal and Patrick Collison, please enjoy this conversation with Tyler Cowen.
So Tyler, why are people so botanist about describing their production functions
its high status to be modest. If you have to boast there's a sense people don't already know how wonderful you are. So when you interview actually super productive high-status people, they're almost always self-effacing and in my now more than 100 podcasts conversations with Tyler. I've hardly found anyone willing to be anything other than modest.
So what is your personal accumulating advantage? And so this is
A little bit different than your production function. So most successful people that I know have some kind of internal compounding Advantage just like a company. What is
yours?
I started early and I kept on going for many many years is part of it. So studying economics and social science. I started at age 13 to 14 pretty seriously with even a bit before then and now I'm 58. So just having 44 or 45 years of truly absolute full time work doing something is a big advantage and most of my peers in terms of age. I'm not saying they have stopped but they typically have stopped learning.
Or stopped really trying to self-improve so one but not the only Advantage I've had is just a high absolute number of years to work on things and also good health really the whole time every year every month actually every week I would say but when I was 10, I had my appendix out. So
take someone like Larry Summers you really admire his production function. He is somebody your age whose continued to get better and better what have you learned from Larry and his production function that you've tried to apply to.
Ours. Well, Larry started very early his two parents were economists his two uncles Kenneth arrow. And Paul Samuelson were Nobel laureates in economics talk about econ royalty. He started very early over the dinner table and he's kept at it. He's a bit older than I am. I think maybe four years older and he had I think one year of poor health, but every year he's worked at being better having a deeper understanding knowing more data knowing more about economies. So I would say that's one of the things about
Out him I've copied
so why aren't there more Tyler Collins in the world?
You have to ask at some point. What are the returns both to starting early and to continuing fairly late in life. So starting early you give up a normal childhood. I would say all for the better. Awesome Bring It On Let's double down on that one. But most people don't want to do that or just doesn't occur to them. They might in fact do it if they saw more role models and then the other is once you
Just certain age. I would say for many economists. Maybe it's 45 or late forties. You can just do consulting or give the same talk again or there are many paths. You can take that have quite High income or perks where you don't really have to get any better if you've done well at all. So, you know, why go the extra mile to keep on improving I would say for most people the returns just aren't there and there may even be kind of polarization returns to being more political or partisan.
So what do you do it?
I think I'm just compelled to but also you could say well it's a niche strategy, right? So if these other people become lazier or more polarized and I'm looking for a niche because I'm on average actually not as smart as most of them than my niece would be to keep on going. That's my Niche. So I do think just in the kind of narrow self-interested sense. It's also been better for me. It's not just some Act of altruistic nobility to keep on going. So it's that do
so as
assuming that you aren't saying this because we're with low status Tyler today. Would you rather have knowledge without intelligence or intelligence without knowledge?
I'm not sure operationally, what's really the choice. I have to make their could you put it in terms of
concrete's? Yeah, I would say intelligence is what you're born with knowledge is what you develop in a very simple two by two.
I don't think my intelligence is that high like it's pretty high, but I wanted
Early things I learned playing chess which I did when I was very young and I was very good but there were always around people who were better than I was including at Young ages and just to learn like there will always be people smarter than you was a great lesson to learn early and a lot of smart people never learn it, but I learned it like by age 11 age 12
at what point did you realize that you were Tyler Cowen? Because you were one of the top chess players in the state of New Jersey when you were what 15 years old, so
At what point did you say? Huh? I'm a little bit different. I'm going to go down this path and I'm now comfortable being myself and doubling down on that
when I was 15. I won the adult state championship of New Jersey in chess, but I already knew I didn't want to be a professional chess player. I had more or less figured that by the time I was 11 or 12 right after I started playing and also I knew there were just other people my age as far as being one of them who were better than I was so I thought I need to pick a different area.
Apply some of the same methods right off the bat learn to compensate for the fact that yes, like I'm pretty smart but they're just always people who are smarter like Ken rogoff. He's smarter than I am and he was a better chess player. He's a smarter Economist so somehow working around that to both think early on you're like really pretty smart and you're not that smart and it figured those two things out early. That's actually pretty smart. Like that's most part of my secret people have one or the other.
Are like discouraged or they're like, oh, I'm number one in my high school class, right? Like that's kind of a negative in a way. It just teaches you to play the game of doing well what other people tell you
When you go out for dessert, how do you choose what kind of ice cream
to order?
Well, I only eat really chocolate ice cream. So I'm not sure choose enters into it. If there's very good vanilla ice cream combined with something chocolate. I can like that as much if it's very good. I'll prefer that over the pure chocolate, but that's the only choice really
well last time we were together. We were Hudson yards and you asked for these very smallest chocolate size. And even the small was too big for you. So then we ask for the sample size and you have three bites and then you got to the point of diminishing marginal.
Marginal Returns on your chocolate ice cream, which I think was the best Tyler Cowen story I've ever had.
Well, I don't like to eat too much dessert. It's bad for me. But if you think a lot of the value of consumption is either memory or anticipation just by cutting a portion size and half or to a third you'll get more than 1/2 or third of the value people. Don't do that consistently. I think they're too short-sighted. They just think oh, I want to eat this and finish it the social Norm that you like clean your plate. It's a very bad Norm in my view.
It probably once made sense when food was scarce, right, but when food is very plentiful and being overweight is a bigger problem, but you really want to learn how just to eat less on your plate.
To take a very utilitarian model of friendship are there diminishing marginal returns to it? So say that you become friends with someone who's really smart you then get to know them you get to know how they think you incorporate their worldview at what point does it you're just like hey, I just don't really feel like being friends with this
person.
That in general hasn't happened to me. I think the people you pick ideally you'd like increasing returns where they keep on developing and you have such a Common Language and a common history with them. You can keep on making it better. I'm not predicting that always happens, but it's what you want to look for and you ought to be able to achieve it a fair amount of the time. At least if you yourself are continuing to improve you should be able to attract such people and maintain your connection with them.
What kinds of people do you want to attract? How do you look at friendship and how it plays into your own production
function? Just people who are are in areas. I don't know so well, but I know the area or have they think well enough to communicate with them. That's what I find very valuable. So it's not necessarily other
economists at all.
So what kinds of people have you learned the most from
depends on the time Horizon very early in my life. It was hundred percent chess players and a small number of like Junior High School teachers grade school teachers. Now a lot of tech people just people in the world of ideas people in my Twitter feed. My preference is to be flying all around meeting new people in different countries all the time. And right now I can't do that. So I feel like I'm at a lower level of learning productivity at
Too long that one dimension that to me is painful and those are often new people. You only see them once like you're in Korea. You have a great two hours with someone. Maybe you'd like to continue it. But you know odds are you won't
what is it about people in Silicon Valley that make those friendships so fruitful for you.
Thinking outside of the box. They're not super smart, but typically not that well educated. So they haven't just learned the same things that other people have learned. They're both thinkers and people who have had to do things and pass various reality tests. And that makes them much much smarter. So many academics are lacking in that the only test they've ever faced often is like can I publish this piece and I think that stunting
So it's education then
overrated well by whom I would say by the country as a whole it's still underrated. But by smart people it's definitely
overrated.
But maybe learning is actually what's underrated and education in everyone learning. The same thing is the thing that is overrated
well, but if you look at American colleges and universities, they typically don't publicize their completion rates, but I suspect there between like 38 to 40 percent and a lot of those people ought to finish but they don't they lack the self confidence the discipline or their family has money problems. And I think if they assigned higher value to finishing their lives would be better.
Even if they wouldn't in every case always learn so much.
What's the biggest thing that you've had to give up to be
Tyler Cowen?
Well give up. I mean did I ever have it so I'm not sure it's anything like if I hadn't done what I've done in terms of reading and writing and traveling a good deal. It's not like I would be playing center field for the New York Mets. Right? So the
counterfactual be a basketball player. Of course,
you need that be a point guard for the Los Angeles Lakers I stepping in to replace Avery Bradley.
So I don't really view it in terms of sacrifice at all. Maybe I should think more along the lines of opportunity cost like a good Economist, but somehow I don't
but maybe for example you don't do drugs. You don't drink alcohol. Maybe you're missing some fundamental part of The Human
Experience. Probably I am but even if I were driving a bus, I still wouldn't drink or take drugs. I just don't feel like I would enjoy it and drinking I've tried I know I don't enjoy it. So.
It's not that the alternative is a world-class Somali a or a wine Steward or I've had the best LSD experiences of anyone out there. I'm the new Timothy Leary For Better or Worse. None of those are open to me. So again, not an opportunity cost as I view it.
Not even the best LSD
experience.
I severely doubt that I would be very good at doing LSD reporting on it understanding it. Obviously. I haven't tried this a speculative but I think the mere fact that I'm repelled by that notion of giving up control and taking that particular kind of risk and people who Advocate LSD. They don't even describe their trips is very fun. Necessarily. I'm just like I don't want that. I want to see a good movie.
Which I know I'll really enjoy.
That way I'm super complacent right complacent glasses about
me.
So walk me through why you don't drink is it a productivity thing? It's not it's an enjoyment thing. It's a healthy thing what's going on there?
I believe the health consequences of modest drinking are neutral to very very very tiny positive. I think the chance I would develop into a problem Drinker is essentially zero. I'm quite sure it would harm my productivity even a small amount of alcohol and once you're not drinking you become sensitized.
Is I very much enjoy the taste of very good red wine. And I've had very very good red wine. I once went to an event in France. It was the Journal of wine economists put it on and they pulled things out of the cellar which I tried where they were mind-bogglingly good like it clear Notch above an expensive bottle at a two or three star Michelin restaurant in New York. Like wow, this is amazing. But at the end of the day, you know, it didn't interest me that much and I'd rather have the productivity.
And specializes in other things and I just don't like being drunk gives me a headache. So why do it
Why did you settle on an 11:30 bedtime?
I think on average it's more like 11:26, but that's when I'm tired. Maybe that's a silly answer, but it's a pretty good
one.
And what time do you
wake up?
It depends on the season but typically seven and I write in the morning. First thing I do is go through most but not all of my messages. I don't respond to everyone right away. That would take too much time, but I see where I'm at for the day and then I start into writing pretty quickly.
So what does that mean where I'm at for the day that would imply that you plan your days every single day sort of new and that there's not a lot of planning going on in your life
planning is a tricky word. I would say it's intense extreme planning, but planning to have a lot of open space. There's an earlier Marc Andreessen essay, which he's now kind of repudiated where he says, well the way you should try to schedule this leave open a lot of time and then do important things at the last
a minute and have big blocks of time for thinking writing or for him programming perhaps in his earlier life and I still managed to do a version of that and that works for me. But if I think of writing is the most important thing I do I do that just every single morning depends on the year maybe in a lot of years. There's 15 to 20 mornings or I just can't write that morning the most common cause of that would be in the old days and 9 a.m. Plane flight
And then I won't write that morning. Maybe won't write that day. But otherwise every morning right total religion Saturday Sunday Christmas day my birthday. I don't care do it no exceptions. If you write every day, you don't even have to worry about how much you've written. It's going to add up and furthermore the regularity of the Habit pushes you along a learning curve. So you'll get more done each day, and I'm still moving along
that curve.
So I want to dive into that but let's start by saying that in your writing. One of the things that you do a lot is lay out the arguments of use that you disagree with. Why is that so productive
you understand the views better. You also start sympathizing with those people more you begin to realize they might be right and you might be wrong that makes your own arguments better and sometimes you'll change your mind. So if you're only just writing out the same tired version
Of some point, that's probably true. You become stupider. So the natural inclination past a certain age, which is not that big a number is to become stupider de facto and you do that by saying the same thing even if it's right. So I've always wanted to avoid that and I think we you asked earlier like what are your kind of different special tricks? And the first I said was just having been added a long time, but I would say that's another one like really being willing to entertain and indeed right out.
Two points of view and a lot of that I do on marginal Revolution, but some of it is just stuff that never comes out anywhere
what percentage of what you write. Do you
publish? I'm not sure it's become higher. Maybe that's worrying.
But a typical book there's half of what gets published that doesn't make it into the book on average and I guess I think it's worse.
Or maybe in a few cases to speculative which is a different kind of worse, but usually just like too boring or a little trivial or just like wouldn't think it had a chance of being in the top half of the book and look people have enough pages of me if that's they want to read all of it. So just giving them more pages from their point of view. I don't think as a high
return
If you take a spectrum from Clarity to Beauty you are far on the clarity side. You don't seem like somebody who would sit back for draft number 17 and try to rehash a sentence to try to find the perfect. Most elegant purple prose to put on a sentence. Why have you chosen focusing more in Clarity?
I wouldn't call it a choice. I'm not a good Pro stylist. I've read really a great great deal of poetry. Classic literary Pros, I think.
My eye and ear for it in the writings of other people actually is very very good. But I don't have that Talent at all. It's just like how I'm not good at thinking in terms of stories. I'm good at being either blunt and to the point or Strauss Ian and complex which was clear and a very roundabout way but doesn't look clear to the uninitiated and that's what I can do. So I do it. I love the other kinds of writing but I've never felt I could choose to have done them and in a way, I feel I'm moving further from them.
And I'll just never do them. I never think like, oh, I could write a novel or just to kind of things John Stuart Mill. Did this beautiful essays like on Bentham in college?
Forgetting about the fact that he's much smarter than I am. Just stylistically. I could never come close to anything like
that. That's interesting because it implies that what you're doing is you're trying to double down on the things that you're already good at but it sort of contradicts with what you were saying about friends earlier like you like being with friends in areas that you don't know this there's something going on here where you're saying. Oh, it's not even worth developing that skill. I'm just not good at it.
But I have to know what the friends due to.
Extent so I don't have any taxidermist friends, right? And I probably never will things like that or if I had them it would be like through family connections.
So I think with modes and styles most people don't have that much Choice with your friends. You do have more Choice. That's like a portfolio. I don't have the skill or the temperament to have a portfolio of you know, Charles Dickens like literary writing and then Tyler Cowen like economics writing. There are people who've done that. I mean John Maynard Keynes had both Styles in a pretty phenomenal way. It's greatly to be it.
Tired and I've learned a lot from him but one of the things I learned is I can't do that. You read Keynes essays in biography to me. One of the most beautifully written works in English in the 20th century and it as are some parts of the general theory though. They're not always clear, but also a lot of early canes on Treaty of Versailles or tract on monetary reform just beautifully written clear economics kind of in the way Milton Friedman could write
and I think actually canes as a writer influence treatment.
What's the binding constraint on your writing
output?
I think there are quite a few so I don't feel I have so many ideas that don't get written up at any moment in time. I might have a few but they tend to come out pretty quickly or in the next book. So the ideas behind me pretty tightly, but I think also time if I had twice as many ideas and believe me, I doubt I wouldn't write twice as much I would still want to spend my other time reading or shooting baskets, whatever it is that you know,
Eating chocolate ice cream whatever it is, I do so that binds me as well and then time spent talking to people binds me. So a very good way to come up with new ideas is to talk with smart people your friends, but they don't have to be her friends. They could even be like your opponent you talk with smart people. I almost always come away from that with ideas, but it's pretty time-consuming. If only the travel costs right last you talk with them and the talk with them is surrounded by dining out.
Or going to a movie whatever else that's also a binding constraint. So I think it would be really hard for me to write a lot more because there's like three main constraints that are all pretty binding all the time.
Do you outline your essays?
No, I don't outline anything not books. Not anything just things get written. I don't know. It seems to me like an excuse not to write when you outline.
Maybe somehow my longer bigger picture narratives would be more coherent or more compelling if I outlined I don't know. It's just frustrating. I want to get to working out the problems and I don't feel you can do that well in outlining like how do you know what you think until you write it?
So if you take a book like the complacent class when you even just the complacent class as the thesis of the book is that an emergent property of your writing or do you start with that idea and then say Oh, I'm going to read a book about
it. I think it's emerging. So I have this earlier book The Great stagnation about a productivity slowdown, but I don't much explain where it comes from. So I then thought well gee I should always try to push this a step further.
What might be some sociological roots of this not to say sociological or the only routes but it's an interesting question and I then went through all the different things. I know kind of scanned the memory space. Well what might count here and it a lot of research which ones seemed like plausible sociological causes and as I did the research and writing some seemed more plausible others less so and the stuff that stuck then that was the book worked on it every day.
Day ended up with a book.
What do you do when your ideas get tangled like an old pair of
headphones?
Just keep on writing and rewriting. So I rewrite a lot of drafts to try to make things clear or maybe more correct. So if I do a book it will go through more than 10 draft. Typically obviously not all at once. But any given paragraph will have been Wordsmith more than 10 times and a lot gets just thrown out. So just like effort and application. I don't think I know any tricks. I wish I could write better the first time.
But I do think my first draft now are really much better than they were even seven or eight years ago. I'm not sure why but I feel like when a long time and didn't make a lot of progress on that the last seven or eight years. My first drafts are much better what changed. I don't know. I guess I'm just tense right and I worked on it for long enough and there were more pressures on me to write more. So when I wrote for New York Times that was a column once a month, that's not that much right I right.
For Bloomberg, which is a better arrangement for me and it's two columns a week, which is really quite a bit. So your first draft had better get better, right? That's not the only thing because I think it happened before Bloomberg, but in part I wouldn't have taken on Bloomberg. Maybe unless I could see that my first drafts would be good enough that yes those go through a number of drafts. But if those needed 10 drafts that would be hard part to be doing that the book definitely needs to end draft because it has more than
one idea
what makes for a good topic to write about
It
depends whom you're asking it ought to be in the new cycle. And most of what I write on I try to have in the new cycle though. It's maybe only 85% of what I do. Then. There are what I call like Lone Wolf topics that no one else is talking about and you want to introduce into the discourse and by definition those are not on the news cycle the topic for a column 800 words. You just can't have too many ideas. Most of those columns should have one main idea with support or rebut.
Objections about one main idea that can more or less fit into a headline or sub-header. That's a column A lot of my writing is not columns, but that's what makes for a good column and it should be correct right or like approaching correct? We hope
why do you collect so much art? So I'm looking at you now. It looks like you have some Haitian art behind you. I believe what do you get out of collecting art both from maybe the economic lens the cultural lens and then just the pure human satisfaction of it.
I think if you're in a position to do it, it's one of the most important things a human being can do first. You are surrounding yourself with beauty every day of your life at least every day your home and when I'm traveling often, I'm seeing are the places I'm at so you just make your
Wife your whole home. Something remarkably special you learn about other cultures. You learn different points of view by refining your eye you develop a skill that is extremely useful for judging other things and cracking cultural codes and other settings. It's an education and market economics art markets. Like how do you buy the best pictures in an area Haitian art or how do you assemble a very good Voodoo flag collection or how do you get Outsider Art a mate painters?
And Mexico to do their best work for you. That itself is a kind of business problem that you need to solve.
And this idea that you want to experience in solving a broad diversity of problems high in your aesthetic sense. Learn some real history understand have some of the art world's work surround your life with beauty to me. That's pretty phenomenal and you know, a lot of artists stratospherically expensive but
The things I've bought have not been I'm not saying it's cheap in the aggregate. But to me, it's definitely been worth it and some of my regrets or not having bought more. I think back pictures I go in those 19 years ago. There's a never old brown Jamaican naive art painting I passed up for $3,500 owned by the Thompsons who live in Connecticut. It still bugs me. What a fool I was if you're listening Thompson's please sell it to me. I'm still interested. Let's get him that
painting we should start.
We should start a whole movement around this. So how do you heighten your
aesthetic sense?
Well, you should look at as much art. As you can in museums visiting private collections is often better than museums because you see how other people's eyes have worked and express themselves talking to artists talking to collectors talking to curators all the obvious things you might do but just do as much of it as you can but then buying is the final test your like betting with your own money. Everyone makes a lot of mistakes at first you'd better learn pretty quickly or you go broke and
And having real money on the line as in business, as you know is a highly sobering and edifying experience like G this better
work. So presumably then the market is some kind of validator of how good your aesthetic senses. Are you selling art to
I don't typically sell our they've been paintings. I've regretted. I'm willing to get rid of I've helped people buy art and I do that by buying myself and then reselling
But it's not intended as a sale. I'm really just playing a middleman role. I don't think you should treat the market as a validator. You should treat the market is something you can improve upon. But of course that's hard. I don't think you should buy art to resell it or make a profit bid-ask spreads are quite wide. It's one of the hardest areas to get rich in a lot of the people who do very well are actually semi corruptor using it for kind of not quite legitimate tax reasons. Maybe it's
Barely legal but not the kind of thing. I want to get involved with and you should buy it for the love of the art and try to find that which other people have not really found or appreciated yet. And it's just like World of ideas, right? It is the world of ideas. It just costs more to play in it terms of upfront dollar commitments.
So
when you're finding for example, you lived in what is it northern Mexico for a while? What did that Village teach you about art and collecting it
that was in the state of Guerrero. The Village was called Saint Augustine hop on and I lived with some artists who are doing art for a considerable part of each day. And one of the things I learned from them is just you would buy some Works elsewhere and bring it to them sit down with them. Let them criticize it.
Tell you what, they think and they are brutal, especially on each other. But that's part of the fun part of the learning and you see what different ways they have of being smart that you can learn from and these are people who basically can't do arithmetic or maybe cannot write Beyond writing down their name. They have not gone too much schooling.
And how they think about what they do so different those are some of my most memorable experiences are sitting down with these artists, you know, maybe a family of 7 would have an income of two three thousand dollars a year and hearing how they think about things.
What can writers learn in terms of having a more prolific and productive output from artists?
I think a lot of artists work only occasionally and in bursts, that's not how I write some writers work that way. It seems more common amongst us say painters at least and I don't know why the difference is it's one thing. I've always wanted to understand better, but the nature of inspiration it seems to be lumpier more convex somehow. So the artist is kind of waiting and then explodes and against some right.
Are like that right proust at one point? He just wrote remembrance of things past didn't do that much before then obviously was dying didn't do anything significant afterwards Thomas mon. It seems exploded periodically with Masterworks, but was not a journalist writing every day. It could be, you know, the very greatest talents explode cervantes's would be another example
Was in prison, he wrote Don Quixote. His other works. I mean, they're interesting. I wouldn't say they're not good, but they're not really close to Don Quixote. So it could be the convex fication of the highest forms of creativity something we should learn more from.
But I'm pretty sure I'm not the person who will figure that out. I'm to non-convex, right every day write a small amount if needed. Just keep on going.
Music compositions an interesting area if you look at Johann Sebastian Bach, I mean one of the greatest Geniuses it's pretty clear. He was always composing. He was like a lot of these writers Shakespeare seems pretty actively to have been writing also and he and Bach maybe the two greatest Geniuses in Western cultural history for they were actually not very Lumpy.
Picasso also wasn't Lumpy
do you think about Legacy?
No when I'm dead, I'm dead. You know, it's nice if somehow it's help the people I've known had better lives, but I'm not at all. Like I will people still read me first. I'm pretty sure they won't second. I'm not sure I would care that much if they did. I do care that they read me now though. I'm not saying it doesn't matter but I've spent a lot of time actually studying the half-lives of ideas and hardly anything happening now, we'll still be right in 20 years time really close to
Thing but if I've had influence or produce benefits now that's enough for me,
but it really doesn't matter if the percentage of things that you've written that have influenced like you were just talking about Don Quixote. That was the one book that stood out. It doesn't it matter. It's much more of a tail
distribution.
Well, but it's become a tail distribution. We're hardly anything in nonfiction still gets red. So you take someone like Gary Becker in his lifetime. I think he was the most cited Economist for many years. He could have won five or six Nobel prizes helped build an enduring program at University of Chicago. One of the top half dozen Nobel laureates in my opinion of what is now a pretty large group. He's not red anymore.
So like Milton Friedman is barely still read like what is it? I should hope for.
I think it's under I have this debate with Robin Hanson. So Robin really wants people are maybe Em's, you know to read him after he's gone. The M's will read him. I'm sure if that's what it comes to but I don't think the people will so I say maximize impact now but most of all maximize your own learning like be pretty selfish in that regard at least
Henry. George was like that too,
right?
Yes, he's had an amazing impact up to the current day. But he's not that much red and his impact probably does not come from him still being red because he is red very rarely. I actually put on a whole two day seminar to read through progress and poverty with a number of people including Peter teal. This was just a phenomenal event. We had a small group. Everyone was totally dedicated to the book just like sessions all day long. We had some, Georgia.
Specialists there some historians. I had a blast. That was great. But again one thing I learned is how few people are reading that
book. What if you learned from Peter thiel's production function.
There's a lot about Peters production function. I don't know. First of all, I don't think of Peter is a tech person. I think of Peter as a Humanities person with maybe the deepest understanding of the humanities that is out there. Now of anyone think it's not an accident that Peter is fairly religious and is embraced thinkers such as Rene Girard. I mean, he is a philosophy major from Stanford and a law degree that
Kind of training in the humanities, but you wouldn't say he's trained in the humanities and the way that in academic writing in the humanities is but understanding the humanity side of what is going on in American society right now, he to me has been thinker number one for some time.
And I think deep reading of Highly selective set of things. He's kind of a lumpy thinker ideas to him probably come in bursts and the way he engages with other people in an intense way like you sit down with Peter. It's for quite a while. You kind of figure like this isn't the setting where you get up to go to the little boy's room, right? You know, you're supposed to stick to the talk and learn something.
And that's like a very tough audience to have but it's phenomenal
you once told me that he has the best BS detector of anyone you've ever spoken
with probably true. He just gets when people are bluffing and I think some of that comes from his experience in Real World Companies and on boards and doing Venture Capital. He's probably the best selector of talent America maybe ever but at least you know in the last 50 years.
Has seen and for that you need I think a pretty phenomenally deep understanding of things that at least correlate with the humanities something like how good a programmer is Peter. I have no idea whatsoever. Couldn't tell you no idea.
So what do you think Peter knows about studying the humanities that the rest of us don't know like if I were to look at the progress at least the explicit progress in studying computer science, it's gone up way faster than the progress of how good we are teaching Humanities. What does he
know?
I think it's how seriously he takes it first of all that he has what I would call a deeply moral perspective, which is discouraged in a lot of academic research. It is moralizing in some kind of backdoor almost sniveling way actually, but Peter up front I think would present his thought as an attempt to moralize and to get morals right taking religion. Seriously taking the West seriously being open to ideas from a broad range of sources.
He's being super smart and having all this real world experience with companies. And I think also being bicultural and bilingual gives him a huge Edge and that is not remarked upon enough. Peter was born in Germany is fluent in German obviously fluent in English and that from the very beginning gives him at least two ways of looking at things.
So you're talking about Peters intensity and I presume that you've borrowed some of that. Let's move into your reading. How do you read and how do you make that reading?
Appearance intense one of the advantages that you have is you can just read way faster than other people so maybe start there. What is it about the way that you read the way that you process information? And then let's move into what are some of the things that you actually do in your reading
while reading fast is one of my core advantages may be the core advantage to get back to your very early question and that I'm pretty sure I was born with I think I'ma hyperlexia. There's a technical term for it. My mother used to always tell me that when I was two years old.
Sold, I just sat down and taught myself how to read and I looked over the shoulder of my grandmother when she was teaching my slightly older sister how to read and just learned how to read and at the time my mother said this I kind of roll my eyes like he had mom, you know, and whatever and I could have been a pro baseball player.
But you know you go out you read some literature and it turns out there's such a thing of young kids often at the age of two who can do that. It's fairly rare, but I now definitely believe I had it. So even like a comparably well educated or whatever person you might take to be my peer probably I can read 5 to 10 times faster than they can and you know people used to always say like, oh you don't understand it. You don't absorb it.
But after I've done like a hundred this is now low status Tyler coming out. I've done now more than a hundred of these podcasts and no one ever says anymore. Like I don't understand what I read. Those are in real time there live. I'm dealing with the writings of all these people and like all background literature's and people get that I get it like in the pretty deep way. So people have stopped doubting that I understand what I read since I've done podcasting. That's my boast for this podcast.
Yeah. My favorite podcast is the canal.
Guard and I think that that's a good example here because he is Norwegian I believe so, how did you react prepare for
that?
Well, I already know a lot about Norwegian literature history and culture. That's just obviously something I would have done some time ago, right? Okay, but why is that obvious Norway's a major country? It's one of the world's most successful countries. Gibson is a major figure. I wouldn't call Greg and major composer but like you Oughta Know like even his second tier Piano Works if you're serious about anything at all, right and then Edvard Munch the Norwegian painter while I've been
The Munch Museum I've made a point earlier in life. If seeing several shows of want paintings much prints rad probably two biographies of monkey. So I didn't have like a strong background in his work, but I knew something about it and then Here Comes Canal scarred with the new book out about Edvard Munch. So I'm like gee I kind of know this stuff. So I reread or read some of the new works read his book carefully rear at a lot of canals guard, of course.
His sources like new Thompson. There was a lot of late new Thompson. I'd never read I had met hunger like everyone else but the late autobiography which to me is Thompson's most interesting work because he's trying to rationalize having been in Nazi and he was super smart kind of an evil guy right not kind of an evil guy so that I went through a new and found fascinating and that was one of the favorite perhaps I've done for anyone just to kind of retake in Norway yet again and having been there in
Your time in the meantime as well. I've been to Norway three times. I love those trips. I love the country.
So when you prep what do you do? So you read every single thing that that person has written. How do you read about them? What do you do? Do you talk to people?
It depends on the person? So for canals guard I've read almost everything. He's written volumes four and five. I couldn't bring myself to read all of
So that's a failing but I didn't think they were very good. So I'm just not going to ask him about those and otherwise at least what he wrote in English. I believe I've read all of it. And in fact his first book before my struggle. I was one of the first two or three people to push it and say he's a great writer. That was his book about angels. You can still find it in the archives before canals card was knez card. I was saying this is great. Can I was card was once a commentator on marginal Revolution. So like I have some ties to him and how he
Thanks. So read all of it re-read read about him just kind of track down influences. So I reread some strindberg's I'm hips and the new Thompson including some of the new reading just to like get into his mindset, but you can't do that for everyone. So Margaret Atwood, she's never had a University post. She's had to write for money. I forget the number four novels, but it's over 40. I haven't read all 40. I'm sure I haven't read 20 of them.
Probably I've read 15 the important ones and I enjoy doing that but you can't read all of Margaret Atwood with the time Horizon. I had and I read a lot of her essays read maybe a quarter for poetry certainly not all of it. But again, that's enough. He's a very steady writer as I am and just knowing that was a big
help coming back to your competitive Advantage. It seems like what I'm hearing is that you understand culture.
Better than other analytical thinkers and you understand analytics and how to think statistically and mathematically better than other cultural
thinkers. It's probably true but I would stress there's really not any field or I'm smarter than the people who are really smart in that field or that method of thought like there's some kind of bridge building I can do that is scarce. But like in any particular area, I'm really backward compared to the very most skilled talented people.
But I recognize that and I've known it for a long time. I've built kind of my whole career and modes of doing around knowing these other people are smarter than I am. And again, that's a kind of smarts to I get that if I'm allowed to boast again you are but it's not the same as like actually being good at figuring out how to work the microwave oven right? I'm terrible at that. Why is that so hard?
I just see a screen. I'm not used to the order. None of it makes sense and I reheat things on the stove. It's easier for
me.
Well, it's the same thing with your website. Right? Like don't you just follow the same directions for posting a Blog every single day and you just follow the directions. We don't really understand how it works
and I get upset when they make small changes to the software. That's right.
Like how to add a link it's a little different than how it was 13 years ago. I mean I've gotten used to it but I'm never happy when they like improve my Gmail or whatever else they might be trying to do. It's almost always a negative for me.
So then we should be complacent with your software.
Well, I don't doubt that over like very long time Horizons stuff is better like Microsoft Word is better than word star which is what I wrote my first pieces in and I'm glad that shift has been made.
But there's no kind of in transitivity of indifference. There's no step along the way when I was happy.
And some of the steps some of the intermediate like operating systems for Microsoft have been worse, right? That's not just my view like some of them are actually worse and a lot of the better ones. It just doesn't seem worth it to me.
With canals guard you said that in his first book before my struggle you knew that he was gonna be a good writer then and now a lot of her recent conversations have been about evaluating talent. What is it about evaluating talent that you know that other people should learn from you.
My next book is co-authored with Daniel gross The Venture capitalists and it is on exactly this question and I have a policy never to give books away until they're coming out.
So I will refuse to answer that question like maybe one or two specific questions about talent, I would answer but for now I will pass on that but whatever Daniel and I know about talent and talent finding and are able to put into words. We are putting into that book. And right now it is 73 thousand ninety three words. I believe that have been written so I wouldn't call it done but it's not just a gleam in their eye like it exists.
Okay, two
questions, then they'll be super specific. It seems to me that you're taking advantage of some kind of Arbitrage in that what happened was in the same way that we didn't have the ability to understand what drivers were available with taxis. And now we know where all the cars are with Uber. I feel like there's a similar kind of legibility that's been created with talent in that the average person had nothing better than a resume and
Out there writing blogs to making videos like our friend Kraig Paulsen. He has Market power. And so what you're doing is you're taking these new signals of legibility and making bets and so you have eyes where other people don't
I'm very bullish on Kraig Paulsen. That's P AE L sson. If you want to Google him at Market power, I think on Twitter and what I see in him is just really wanting to be out there and a determination.
Ian and a focus and just really caring about getting things right or expressing things a certain way and that is one of his priorities when I met you this emphasis on writing to me is very commonly a big plus for thinking people will do. Well. It's something it's a sign of clear thinking and there was also a sense in which I felt you could take your sports background and learn from that for other things you would done and that you really wanted to be
Something that would meet your curiosity but also help you to succeed and we're really keen on focusing on doing that was why I became bullish on you. Thank you. Does that make sense to you as a description of you? I think it says I mean, I think that
one of the things that you've said that I thought was spot-on. I'm not very good at a lot of things. But if there's one thing I'm good at I'm good at taking action and I think that for me my competitive advantage
Is just being able to take a lot of action really fast and just to ruthlessly improve it things and I think that you sense that at some
point and yeah, you're met irrational about that like you can easily see I'm not good at XYZ. I need to hire someone or my line of business just won't cover that. Here's what I'm good at. Let's structure what I do around that and that sense you reminded me of myself and I think highly successful people tend to have that like a ruthless honesty. Like what am I really?
That or not.
Thank you out of the emergent Ventures winners or Grant recipients. How many have an online presence like a blog or make
videos?
Most of them often to give you a percentage I would guess at 80 But It's tricky because the ones who are online I see their names more often. Maybe I'm overestimating them slightly, but that we have even some Anonymous winners who are not online at all and have had quite a big impact doing things say in the so-called real world. Sometimes even in the world of policy and they're really important, but they'll never be the visible
winners.
So then it does sort of prove my thesis that what you're doing is you're taking writing online and and Publishing is a proxy for some kind of ambition.
Intelligence Drive clear-thinking motivation and you're betting on those
people. Mostly I would agree but I would just stress how much the writing in The Proposal matters to me. Mmm. So how good the proposal is is really very important. So when I interview someone for the first time most of the time I don't track them down using Google.
I try to read whatever they're medium essays or their tweets. I want to approach them fresh have a Skype chat with them. But I've definitely read their application and thought like how well is this written? How clearly is this explained but by not tracking down the past stuff just like I don't ask for CV don't ask for letters of reference trying to give everyone a fresh start in a way but like okay here. I am like show me something.
What is the quirkiest thing about you that people don't
know.
I don't know. I mean if you block for 17 years do these podcasts other things people know an awful lot the quirkiest thing about me. I think my quirks are pretty evident.
I'll give an answer you always have the same tote bag from the same London bookstore and you don't even hold it. Normally you
throw it over your back and then you hold it like
this and your arm must get tired.
Well, that's a good answer but you know, I kind of assumed a lot of people know that
Because I carry the tote bag is from daunt books by the way my favorite book shop in the world in London the branch on marylebone street. I highly recommend it. They have these wonderful bags. If you buy enough books, they'll give you one for free. You can buy others at the margin the dark bags were the best I carry around an iPad and some books in the bag pretty much
always.
How many wool sweaters do
you own?
The good question over 10 to me. They're comfortable. I like the end a and patterns. I like the dark colors. Obviously. I'm not wearing them now because it's summer and there's nowhere to go. But again, that's a quirk about me. I kind of assumed people already know.
How when you're with people you say that you learn a lot from conversation, how do you choose restaurants that will lead to good conversations?
Well, the best thing to do if you can is to be in the suburbs, right? It will be much quieter and no one will rush you out the door and then you want to pick an ethnic restaurant because they used to people staying longer their business model usually is not to turn over tables very often the business model involves catering for weddings or you know, auxiliary services and you can just stay there.
I want hopes the music is not too loud. And then just camp out in order some things. Now. You're in New York City. It's harder to do your in San Francisco that's harder to do. But even in those urban areas, there are different Corners where that's relatively easier compared to say being on Fifth Avenue and trying to sit down which is bad news
having done more than a hundred conversations with Tyler episodes coach me. What makes a good interview question.
How would you say first all of this episode? You know how they have those like warning signs on videos like children do not try this at home everything I'm saying that applies to like, none of it is suggesting other people could or should do the same and I think my interviewing style for conversations with Tyler. It's pretty different from other interviewing Styles. I do think it works probably wouldn't work for most people you really have to have read an awful lot for it to work for you.
I don't Probe on a lot of matters. I think when you probe people repeat a lot and they also get defensive for your next question. So I asked a series of questions all highly specific. I tried that there never hostile never perceived as hostile but super conceptual and just really hard to answer. So to get the guests into the serious intellectual substantive mindset as soon as possible no real introduction. None of this will first I'm going to summarize the works.
So although this is know what we're talking about. Like no way. I mean, this is not here for the listeners, right? You just want to start in on the question you want to ask them and people will figure it out as you go along but to make that work you need to have captured in your head like a very very large body of material and if you can do that great, but the kind of normal style, which I hate. Oh will tell us about your new book says to me that's like deaf and it deadens almost
You author who's already done it, you know a few dozen times or more you just want to start on the substance and dig right in
yeah it's as if you've picked up on a weird Paradox of the internet because you say this is the conversation I want to have not the one that you want to have and in some way not thinking about other people actually has you making better quality of work
sure and that's describes the in common to the one I want to have not the one you want to have I mean there's a lot /
Buried in there, right? Like maybe the one I want to have is to talk about some other people. I don't mean their work like talk about gossip about other people but we don't do that in the podcast. That's fine. It wouldn't be really appropriate but it might be what I want to have. So in a way I'm announcing it's not exactly what I wanted to have.
Charlie song Hurst when you introduce me to him. You said this one of the smartest guys I've ever met. He says that people either want money power or fame. Where do you fall in that Venn
diagram?
You know, I wrote Charlie. I don't think that's really the correct division of motives and also one should add missing from the tripartite structure is love. I'm not sure that's the right way to express it either. But if you're just going to play the gross Concepts game, it's got to be at least four maybe immortality beats them all. I just think I have a nature a kind of temperament way, I think and it's built into me pretty deeply and I want to do that.
I'm not sure which of his structure that falls under and to do that for me is really fun. It's turned to me decent money. I'm not a rich person, but I'm comfortably well-off. I wouldn't say it's earned me Fame but like some recognition.
So there's like some kind of code movement there and this I just keep on doing it. I don't know. I don't like have a plan really maybe I'm just trying to get through the next 15 minutes
when you have some kind of famous where people know you and I think that people who you want to know, you know you and that there's a way that you could think of you as some kind of Bismarck and that, you know, a lot of very high power High status wealthy people and you
Have very strong relationships with them and you have influence if that's true. Why don't you recommend that
more?
Well, I think what you need to do to have my version of that is so extreme and require such specialized skills. I don't want to talk someone out of it. If they think they can do it, but most people should be finding their own paths not mine. So again, like children don't perform the stunt at home with the motorcycle over the Flaming barrels of oil or whatever like trying to copy.
I don't know that it's like any one person. I tried to copy. I'm pretty sure not so like if you want to copy me don't copy me.
How have you practice getting better at teaching
just by teaching a lot? I don't find student evaluations that helpful mine if typically been very very good which I don't equate with doing a good job, but look at beats them being very bad, right? I think to some extent you get good evaluations just by being a predictable grader and I think I'm a predictable greater, but I don't confuse that with being a good teacher.
I think I'm an entertaining lecturer which is important and inspires people. But again, it's not exactly the same as being a very good teacher. I think there's a whole bunch of detailed things that some students hope to learn in the classroom that I'm actually bad at providing and I'm kind of a very good teacher in a specialized inspirational way like you want to get a dose of have Tyler Cowen thinks they'll be this kind of to our 37 minute lecture if you're lucky.
You're unlucky a short break in the middle that sort of the first five minutes are prepared. Then it's improvised, but it's like very substantive and actually quite well ordered kind of a blitzkrieg at you in all directions and it's super fun for that. I think I'm really good. But I don't think education should be any more than 10 or 15 percent that either going through a model in class. I don't think I'm that good at and I'm worse at it than when I was like first teaching in my
20s.
Have you tried to become more entertaining over time? Do you say oh if I being funny, that's a good thing anything like
that? No, that's terrible. In fact, I've almost tried not to be funnier and my funniest stuff. Like I don't even know it's funny. I'll say things people like, oh you have this great deadpan sense of humor.
I mean, I guess I do if you say so but I'm shocked when people laugh not trying to be funny as poison for being funny at least for me, and I'm never really trying to be funny.
And somehow this is why I now
is it worth teacher spending more time reading studies on how to teach better or is teaching such a tacit skill that you just need to do more of it to get
better.
I don't know. I think for people who are teaching at The Graduate level in research universities probably to read how to teach better as a waste of time and they just need to teach a lot and maybe teach diverse groups. But if you're just talking about your like 38 percentile quality Junior High School teacher and a mediocre district for them to just read kind of a stupid Blanche treatment and copy the stupid Bland advice.
I'm not sure but I suspect that's probably pretty good and it could be a reasonable Improvement. I would say one other thing that's helped. My teaching is just teaching such diverse groups. I started teaching when I was 19. I taught high school students. I had a barnstorming job flying across the country to like weird American mid sized towns like Manhattan, Kansas or Grand Rapids, Michigan and teaching High School Debaters. How do use economics to think about the debate topic? But I have taught in dozens of
Countries different, you know all the different continents places old people young people educated people not educated people. I've given lectures on like the history of piano music the Arts many different areas too many different kinds of groups, and I think that's helped my teaching a lot.
You speak some Spanish and some German. How do those languages help you access different
ideas?
Well, of course, you can read in those languages that's less important than it used to be and you can talk to people who don't speak English that's still very important. It seems less important than it used to be but I'm not sure that it is because the people who have a native tongue of German or Spanish who come to speak English. There are very select group lesser with German, but nonetheless, but even then hearing like if I meet someone whose first language is German, I don't feel I know.
Till I've heard them speak German and I said fuck that intuition is basically correct. There's like an english-language version of them a German language version or swiss German version, whatever that's the real version and if I don't know that like I'm just marking time and of course for most languages, I'll never know that like Russian. I don't understand but I hear so much of it if I hear someone in Russian, it's like I feel I know them even if I don't know the words because I know different Russian ways.
As of talking or something. So to me that's super valuable and from reading in German Spanish, you get different perspectives insights from different cultures, but they're not so distant that you can't absorb them. If I were fluent in Mongolian, I don't know how that would be. It might be less valuable to me because Mongolian is very distant from what I grew up with
assume a normal state of the world. If I told you that tomorrow, I would pay for a flight and you could go to Mongolia you could go for
Hours, but you'd have a very local experience. You would learn something but you'd have to deal with the sleepiness the hassle the inefficiency of it. All I feel like you would at least consider that and entertain that idea in a way other people wouldn't
oh, I do it in a heartbeat. There's no consider. What kind of word is this those 10 hours would be so vivid food would be so interesting to seeing how people relate to each other like hearing the sounds of their Village or city. Wherever you would send me my goodness. What a thrill to remember.
Your whole life Mongolia. Like wow, I used to be a kid. I'd like for all out these books with maps on the floor. I'd look at different countries. They were barely real places to me until I go to one. So what's behind that so there's got to be
some learning element walk me through that because that is a great like, I don't think I would do it for 10 hours. No
way.
I bet you would first. Have you ever tried it?
No, well once covid is over. You need to try it. Maybe even will have the chance to try it together. That'd be great. In any case try it. Like I've tried alcohol right you might decide it's not for you. But if it is my goodness whole new worlds are open to upright and most places are closer than Mongolia. The only argument against Mongolia is like the Caribbean is only a few hours away. You're in San Francisco. You're further from most things but still a lot of is close to
Right now or when you are in New York, so the only case against Mongolia simply you can do the same 10 hours with the shorter flight like in Belize are under arrest whatever whatever you want to do.
So then it's some kind of appreciation for novelty that you have. That's what I'm hearing
and there's an excitement to just my goodness. I am here and taking in the new like sound site Sensations that it's imprinted on your memory. You kind of order it with the other places you've been
Maybe you'll get to hear some music which like on a recording is never the same, you know, send me somewhere good. I'll order the right thing from the menu.
So you seem to get so much from travel. So what are the rest of us missing about how to
travel?
I'm not sure the rest of you are missing that much. So a lot of people love to travel right? I'm not sure it's a majority taste like percentage of Americans with the passport I think is pretty low. But even they travel within the US which I'm a big advocate of I just did a trip to West Virginia blew my mind Sony three days. I went with daughter Jana and most Americans do that. So I think most people get travel in a basic way as it stands. I have maybe more ambition or
More material resources. I've trained my body to take travel very well. I got a bit of jet lag but I really adapt to travel quite well don't get sick. I've eaten like street food all kinds of weird places haven't gotten sick. So I just put maybe accidental reasons of lower cost but I don't think I have a grand in sight. I just think the more you travel the Richer the picture you can get in a single place. There's increasing returns. I want to keep on going.
Tell me about two things increasing returns and let's talk about that
one first.
The very first place I went outside of the United States was Oxford in England, of course that Oxford not Mississippi. I certainly enjoyed it.
I like the fish and chips. I was glad I went my way was paid. I didn't love it. Actually. I didn't really get Oxford some of his some of this old staff and you know, some of its rundown I came back home. I still didn't love travel. It's not till I saw a larger number of places that had all clicked for me and maybe that's how it is for a lot of people.
Then a bit after the Oxford trip, I moved to Germany for a year drover took trains to most of the countries near Germany, which of course is a lot of countries then it's like oh my God, this is amazing even just different parts of Germany all of a sudden you have like a filing system.
When you
travel if I had like a binary you either you either speak the language or you don't so if you went to a country where you didn't speak the language, how would you travel differently to still extract a lot of the cultural knowledge out of your
experience?
Well, it's much worse, right? So I don't think there's a way you can make up for that other people. They are speaking English might help but that can be a trap of its own but some of the best experiences are just when you don't speak they don't speak and you're just like out there you've got to make signs gestures just interact with people directly physically you're in the restaurant you imitated chicken or something if you want to eat chicken.
It's in fear. You're in some ways. But your Forest also to have more direct more visceral interactions.
You said that you trained yourself to not get jet lag. How'd you do
that?
I'm not sure if this is what worked but I'll tell you what I tried and it felt like it worked. I just started saying to myself I don't get jet lag. So when I like food to Oxford when I was I think 17 I had really bad jet lag even though I was you know, physically as strong as I was ever going to be in life, I'm still healthy, but I hardly get much jet lag now. I think there's a nocebo effect that when people how jet lag jet lag and I'm going to take this pill and I mean who did this and here's my hit neck raster.
I don't know. You're like making jet lag and more Vivid thing for you. Just like forget about jet lag. I don't really get it and I got less of it. I can't prove causality that was effective. But I would maybe at least try that one out. If this one of these are going to try at home, I would say it's try my jet lag trick. Just tell yourself. You don't
get it.
You've said that you have a underlying Philosophy for marginal Revolution as a belief in excellence. How do you yourself strive towards excellence and how do you do it in a way where you can be self-critical without being self-loathing or ever getting mad at yourself if you don't achieve
something.
That's a hard question to answer. I mean, I don't know that I'm the one to judge Excellence of anything. I do in general, especially if you're a writer, but in general you just order hang out with people who are willing to criticize you that gets harder as you get older and more successful. You have to take more extreme steps, but I would say those steps are worth taking.
Hang out with some very critical people.
And you know, hope you can get the benefits of that but it's a hard problem.
I think it's an underrated problem.
And then if you're with people who are kind of above you in the status hierarchy, you should still be critical when it's called for that's hard to do as well. But like stick to
that.
So take somebody who you are close to who is certainly excellent. What can we learn or what have you learned from Patrick Collison's production function
Patrick is the person I know who learns new ideas the most quickly by an order of magnitude so he can take anything study it and like pretty quickly. He has a good understanding and then a bit after that he is a very good understanding and then it can be like a technical issue in macroeconomics after we thought about it for bid or
Bit more he has a phenomenally good understanding. So that's I think the area where he is just close to being number one in the world, but certainly if anyone I know and I think that the course of stripe in some ways reflects that a learning a new area quickly is his phenomenal strength, or I haven't really even seeing anyone close to him on that. Do
you have a sense for what he does? Maybe he's really good at asking questions picking books focusing.
Well, he's good at all those things sure but at the end of the day that doesn't explain it. So probably there's some strong inborn element and then he's recognized that's what he's good at. And then the execution is very high quality and it all fits together
when you and I go to jazz concerts at the Village Vanguard. Why do you insist on showing up 35 minutes early and sitting in the front
row?
Well, you see much better in the front row. The best Row for hearing is maybe like three rows back. Not the very front row the very front row can be a little oppressive depending who's playing but to see how they play you understand the music much better and in that conceptual understanding since the hearing of the music is fast in the front row, even if though if you could you might substitute in third row sound into the experience to see how the guitarist is moving his or her finger.
On the Fret had The Pianist has playing had the people in the group look at each other such a fresh new way of understanding the music you're hearing.
What do you get out of it?
I learned a great deal about music and if you see the right people, it's fun. Now you go to Village Vanguard. I would say you can go almost any night randomly and you see something excellent our world-class maybe even every night. It's like Museum of Modern Art in New York. It's just so so good that if you know enough to appreciate like everything they do is just very very good and I will go to the Village Vanguard literally just randomly like, oh, I'm in New York. It's Thursday night. I don't
They even need to check who's playing. I'm just going to go.
It's like Moma you don't have to check which exhibits are on I mean you write for pleasure of anticipation, but you can just go
how have you gone about improving your musical knowledge. It doesn't seem like you can pick it up and read it in a book. It seems like live experience talking to musicians maybe playing music yourself. What have you done
when I was young my early teens, I played guitar for seven years.
And I studied music theory. I've studied Jazz some amount of rock. I studied classic Blues. I studied Ragtime. I studied American show tunes that history sort of had chord changes worked not like in a very deep way and look I was a kid, but seven years of something you take a lot in I wouldn't say I could play ever play the piano but I spent time on the piano and like figure it out how it worked and would like play tunes on the piano and a simple way.
And I then just have gone to large numbers of concerts and read as much on music as I possibly could I'm interviewing Alex Ross New Yorker writer. He has a new book coming out on record Wagner and that's going to be about music. Not only but mainly I'll be very ready for that and I studied classical guitar. Also, I forgot to mention that like the works of Bach on guitar like the cello Suites transcribed for guitar. I could play the first Cello Suite like not well, but
Like I could play the notes and figure out how things worked. So when I listen to those cello Suites now like especially 1/3 of six the D Minor sweet doesn't really work so well on guitar, but like I just get it in a better deeper way and then that helps me entry points into other music and if I'm ever like Alden retired, which is probably not ever going to happen, but to study Indian classical music I can well imagine doing
You're like a golfer. The great thing about golf is you can play Forever the great thing about your work is you can do it forever.
Yes. I hope
Meta question, why don't knowledge workers as a class take improving their skills as seriously as were implying here. And is he as you and I have discussed they don't have the same rigor as a LeBron James or an
athlete.
Well, some of it's the fault of the market. So we're highly imperfect at Talent spotting. You could do things to improve yourself and I'm not sure in every case. There would be a return there because the market might fail to recognize you one of the reasons Daniel and I wrote this Talent book is we want to help fix that market failure make the market better at spotting these signals of quality and then in turn more people will invest. I think also you need a somewhat longer time Horizon which not everyone has I wouldn't quite say you need to
Supplied it can be a form of irresponsibility just to work on improving your talent like maybe when I was 11, I should have been doing my school work and not learning chess like ex-post now but in a way I wasn't being disciplined. I was being the opposite of disciplined and I suspect your history of some of the same. So like what discipline or conscientiousness even means I think is more ambiguous than we're used to
realizing.
So how do you know if what you're doing now is working on something productively and all that unstructured time that you were talking
about. I know I really don't and I don't assume that it is like productive or the right thing to do is just like some cold compulsion and me to figure out ideas about the next topic which right now is evaluating talent and it will bug me till I figured it out as well as I can for the time being and so Daniel and I are doing this
last time we ate together we were talking.
About the rice and you said that the first rice was better than the second rice because it was fluffier. But both races were so fluffy that they indicated a kind of level and care to that rice that wasn't reflective of the $12 dish that it was. What are the secrets of cooking good
rice.
Well, some people would say that this secret is to get a good rice cooker, but I've never done that so understanding. What kind of rice you want with your meal and why?
Rice for French food rice for Indian food rice for Chinese food Korean Japanese, they're all quite different so that you can start learning through books and start learning just by noticing the rice you're eating at good places and then you try to do it and just experiment a lot. So I'm super kind of paranoid like am I using the right rice for this dish? I'm not saying I always get it right, but I always think about it.
A lot of dishes. I'll prefer Thai Jasmine rice, but for some it's not long grain enough. But Thai Jasmine rice retains moisture in a way that basmati rice doesn't so for most Chinese dishes. I actually prefer the Thai rice to a Chinese rice.
Whether that's correct, you can debate but it's like a clear conscious preference from me.
But you have some kind of food memory that I certainly don't have and I think surprises people because when you and I went out for Indonesian food in SoHo you were talking about all the times that you would had those same dishes in Indonesia, and I think our waitress was just shocked
and that was from 1992, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah without on there. Well, it's like travel but the more you know, the more you
Can order things into a coherent set of thoughts and if you can't order them, it's like the microwave just a blessing Verve confusion. I don't know what to do here. But like more countries you've been the more sense Mongolia might make you not that you understand it, but you kind of understand what your questions are much better and same strew with food.
Like I'm starting from a high knowledge base. I have eaten food and probably a hundred countries maybe
more.
How in the world do you respond to email so fast and still get what you want to do
done?
My only answer is a trivial one. Simply that I do it this a lot of things I don't do so I hardly ever watch TV right now. There is a good show called counterpart. I'm enjoying watch it with my wife but most of the time I'm watching 0tv. I Love The Sopranos. I left Curb Your Enthusiasm but mostly 0tv. My social life is the same as my ideas life like 90% so I don't just like sit down and shoot the ball.
People may or may not consider that a sacrifice. I don't but some people would so social life is sort of geared toward learning being curious sparring ideas. No TV you end up with a lot of time.
And I can work on
planes.
Why when you respond to email on your iPad? Why do you open up the browser for Gmail instead of opening up the Gmail
app?
I don't like apps they're like microwave ovens. They're just like new worlds with the potential to confuse me. I hardly ever use apps. I finally got pushed into the Twitter app by Twitter and it's fine. I'm used to it. It's like being pushed into Microsoft Word from word star. I use the Uber app. I don't know how to switch location or like do it for two stops. I'm slightly terrified. Every time I press the button if you are apps I can use the batter the internet to me is
home.
But don't you get yourself in some kind of negative cycle where you have all these people who email you then you respond and then more people email you and then you're going to end up in this escape velocity of everybody emailing Tyler and in some way is an email sort of a low leverage use of your time and that you could write a hundred words an email one person sees that you could write a hundred words on marginal Revolution a million people see it.
Well, I don't know. Is it a trap if everyone emails me? I learn all this stuff.
I'm sufficiently weird that it's almost always very smart people who email me?
The really naughty stuff tends to be handwritten letters about the national debt. I had to drive interest rates to zero which by the way, we figured it out on her own.
So it doesn't feel like a trap. I don't care if it's not very leveraged. I'm not even sure it's not highly leveraged. I met Patrick Collison because he emailed me. I wrote him back didn't know he was Patrick Collison at the time. He was just some guys I this guy seems smart so a I don't know that it's not highly leveraged and be I don't care if I'm learning. It's like conversation. I want to have not the one you want me to have
fair, but take the opportunity cost of you could spend five minutes reading my misspelled typo.
Will be mailed or five minutes reading Shakespeare wouldn't the Shakespeare be much better than reading my my
email.
The Shakespeare's I love which is most but not all of them. I've already read like five six, maybe even seven eight nine times. So I don't know I'll read the email, you know in the 90s when email was still pretty new. I emailed Roger McGuinn. The guy who was star of The Birds And he emailed me back. That was such a thrill. I love that made such an impression on me and he answered my question. I just thought that was a good way to be and if it's a good way to be I should be it. I hope I can be it, you know.
As long as possible it may become unworkable. It's a margin but I thought Roger mcgough news great. Like he answered my question. You're like a kid in the all days for email you like write someone a letter like if they could write you back like shouldn't they like you wrote them a letter? I don't know. It seems kind of polite to me and civil and like who knows who could be emailing you I once said jokingly, but seriously answering email is my business model.
And I think it's how I end up well plugged
in.
Yeah, but you're not quite hitting on what you do. Like. I emailed you one time with a fifteen thousand word essay that I just publish and I had emailed a bunch of people and you responded faster 50,000 words, you're spending within two hours with a list of 12 13 questions of I didn't quite like this this thing didn't quite make sense. This was really good. And then I went back and fix these things and this is one of the most popular essays I've ever written and I still have
Never gotten a response as detailed in his throw as yours and I'm just like how do you do this?
Look it only took me a minute to read your essay. I mean the constraint was the scrolling probably not my reading.
It was 50,000 words. It was a
massive
achievement. Well, Tyler, thank you very much.
Thank you. David's been a pleasure.
Hey again, it's David here one more time before you leave. I want to tell you about my online writing school called rite of passage. Now. It's nothing like the boring writing classes. You took in school. It's made for Curious people just like you.
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