Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen • Hacker News Board

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#81

Post by andrewprock » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

edanm wrote: post #20

stopads wrote: post #7

Mark Zuckerberg takes it for granted that the most important things in the universe are productivity growth and the number of people citing your publication and talks about ways we can make these numbers go up more in this podcast. Are those really our biggest priorities right now? Should they be? How many more decades are we supposed to pretend the pie getting bigger will cause all problems to ~ magically tricklesol…

Tyler Cowen has a book with basically that premise - that in the long run, economic growth is the only thing that matters. It's called Stubborn Attachments. It's not an intuitive position for most people, but it's a pretty convincing argument - it's certainly been the most important thing in the last 100 years, in my mind (think the incredible increase in health, standards of living, etc, which, even if they aren't s…

Endless economic growth is only a convincing argument if you don't understand basic math.

Things that appear exponential locally usually turn out to be logistic or cyclic.

I would like to say that I'm surprised that an economist doesn't understand math, but I can't.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#82

Post by cf » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

ChrisLomont wrote: post #46

n4r9 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As long as the pie is growing, it can hide or solve by default many existing problems I think one issue with this analogy, is that companies have central points of authority but Western economies don't so much. For example GDP growth doesn't magically fix rising homelessness, and in the absence of central authority it becomes very difficult to address. People often don't like the idea that their "taxpayers money" i…

>For example GDP growth doesn't magically fix rising homelessness Nothing magically fixes homelessness, but GDP correlates well with a host of public benefits, including "poverty reduction and per capita income growth performances are correlated" [1]. All these correlations can be more accurately detailed by searching google scholar. In the US, it seems homelessness has decreased greatly since it was first investigat…

Homelessness has been increasing rapidly in recent years across North America even while GDP growth has been adequate. You actually need to devote resources to fight homelessness.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#83

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

mattigames wrote: post #22

edanm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tyler Cowen has a book with basically that premise - that in the long run, economic growth is the only thing that matters. It's called Stubborn Attachments. It's not an intuitive position for most people, but it's a pretty convincing argument - it's certainly been the most important thing in the last 100 years, in my mind (think the incredible increase in health, standards of living, etc, which, even if they aren't s…

Yeah, most of that was before we discovered (or just didn't care enough) we have been destroying natural resources in a completely unsustainable way, from the extraction processes (mining) to disposal (ocean filled with trash)

Arguably the worst stewards of the environment and other resources have been those economies that didn't focus on growth in a capitalistic sense. Consider the corrupt banana Republicans of Brazil who cheerfully support burning the rain forests, or the apocalyptic levels of environmental disregard displayed by the Soviets.

Yes, it's true that here in the US, we set a river on fire that one time. That sucked. We tried to do better, and largely succeeded -- which feeds back into the larger question of why it takes 40x as much time and money to build a subway in the Y2K era as it did in the 1900s.

Point being, with a healthy economy, at least you have the option to do right by your neighbors, your countrymen, and the planet as a whole. That may be what Tyler is getting at.

Although in one part of the interview, his words sent chills down my spine ("I’ve often suggested for graduate school, instead of taking a class, everyone should be sent to a not-so-high-income village...") All three of the participants spent a lot of time and verbiage signaling their historical awareness, but apparently the Cultural Revolution escaped their notice because it didn't happen in Vienna or Edinburgh. I'd like to assume good faith... but holy hell, dude, how'd you think that would sound?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#84

Post by andrewprock » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

drusenko wrote: post #21

eloff wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the compound interest problem. If you keep compounding growth, like growing GDP at 1-2% a year, within some few thousand years you've grown bigger than all the resources within a sphere the same number of light years in radius. So clearly, growth is not sustainable and must eventually slow down until it approaches zero. To be clear, we're far away from that today. But the parent is mathematically correct, the be…

> If you keep compounding growth, like growing GDP at 1-2% a year, within some few thousand years you've grown bigger than all the resources within a sphere the same number of light years in radius. Would be super interested to see your math. What are the inputs and equation that get you to these specific outputs (a few thousand years, all resources, a few thousand light years)?

If the Pharoah Tutankhamen had invested the equivalent of $1, and earned a real rate of return of 1%, today's value of that investment would be more than $350 trillion, which is a quantity larger than Credit Suisse's estimate of "global net worth".

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#85

Post by davidw » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #51

I'm always cautious about Cowen as he receives backing from the Koch network. https://macro.economicblogs.org/naked-capitalism/2018/05/sco...

What I dislike about a lot of his writing is the weird "mostest contrarianist" vibe I sometimes get. It's kind of hard to describe, but here's an example:

The growing YIMBY movement calls for, among other things, some deregulation of our cities so that more housing can be built. A broadly left-leaning movement pushing for fewer regulations might be something the average libertarian might find encouraging, but galaxy-brain Cowen seems to take the opposite tack in some of his argumentation, that maybe all that regulation is good.

That, and he seems to enjoy just saying random provocative stuff. Today it's that Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg are great orators: https://twitter.com/dwallacewells/status/1201544920110174208 uh huh...

I much prefer his co-blogger, Alex Tabarrok, who seems much more a straight-shooting libertarian-ish econ guy. I mean, you can disagree with his conclusions or policy ideas, but it's much more "what you see is what you get". He's someone I'll read even if I disagree, since it's often reasonably well argued.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#86

Post by davidw » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

yellowstuff wrote: post #72

hogFeast wrote: post #53

The self-importance of pretty much everything in this interview is literally unbearable. I will give you the precis: I think X is important, why doesn't everyone think X is important (usually about five sentences of escalating grandeur about the importance of X), because I think X is important and "no-one is talking about X" you know that I am a real genius...on and on. Cowen is also an utter ignoramus. He seems to c…

> He seems to confuse being an economist with having knowledge about literally everything. Cowen does have knowledge on almost literally everything. If you listen to his podcast he will get into the weeds with experts in a diverse array of fields. When he interviewed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar he asked about specifics of his basketball career and also his writing and political work, when he interviewed an Asian food writer…

At times he comes across as a very bright guy who tries very hard to come across as a very bright guy.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#87

Post by ramzyo » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #77

mikorym wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound like I am trolling or something. However, I find it hard to take anything Mark Zuckerberg does seriously. For that matter, I am so biased that I have no interest in these interviews at all (maybe to your detriment). How do you see this? You say that you are an admirer of CZI. In my experience with obnoxious CEO types, they are happy to be philantrophic or "build" things when it suits them, and o…

If you went back 25 years, Bill Gates was considered by many (if not most) the "obnoxious CEO", but you're now using him as an example of "someone else I'd take seriously".

Interesting point, although I hesitate to see this as an effective counterpoint. People change, perceptions of people change, and those who were once maligned can become beloved, while those who were once beloved can become maligned. Bill Gates has followed the maligned to beloved arch over the last 25 years - it's easy for me to see how Mark could follow this same trajectory given that he's relatively early in his career.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#88

Post by jonmc12 » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

pyb wrote: post #38

"What’s interesting and, anyway should be concerning, is that for almost every conceivable applied measure we seem to be getting at best constant returns. But that’s really bad because we see exponentially increasing inputs and constant return outputs." Ironically, in terms of innovation, the yearly output of companies such as Facebook and Stripe has seemed somewhat constant, despite those companies getting many orde…

I had been listening to some "Game A" vs "Game B" podcasts - Schmachtenberger, Hall (Greenhall), Rutt, etc, just before listening to this podcast. For example: https://soundcloud.com/venturestories/game-b-in-a-silicon-va...

These thinkers propose a common constraint for stagnant growth in education and medicine: a philosophy of science. There is much more to it, and unfortunately it's not a concise explanation. However, I find this conceptual frame much stronger than the education/medicine problem "commonalities" described by Zuck, Collison and Cowen. Further, the "Game A" insight seems to predict the shortcomings of an applied meta-approach of "the tool-building which comes from having the experience building engineering teams."

Game A: ("hill climbing") invest in better microscopy tools, even though "right now, the actual technology of microscopes is ahead of scientists’ ability to process the data".

Game B: ("valley crossing") invest in a philosophy of science to better understand complexity management, causality and sense-making in the domains of education and medicine.

"And as engineers.. you really want to get into the code and step through it to see where the thing is breaking down" (Zuck). But whats 'broken' at FB? is it a server infrastructure? monetization? or is it interpersonal psychology of user relationships? Mistaking our tools' observation for reality, and optimizing for only what we can measure can build profits, but it has limits to make sense of complexity - and undefined/unmanaged complexity is common to the nature of education/medicine problems.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#89

Post by kelnos » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

ramzyo wrote: post #87

the_watcher wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you went back 25 years, Bill Gates was considered by many (if not most) the "obnoxious CEO", but you're now using him as an example of "someone else I'd take seriously".

Interesting point, although I hesitate to see this as an effective counterpoint. People change, perceptions of people change, and those who were once maligned can become beloved, while those who were once beloved can become maligned. Bill Gates has followed the maligned to beloved arch over the last 25 years - it's easy for me to see how Mark could follow this same trajectory given that he's relatively early in his c…

I wouldn't call Gates "beloved", at least not in all circles. I consider his work with his foundation as basically table stakes in society for someone who has made his fortune from illegal, anti-competitive practices that damaged an entire industry.

Beyond that, while I'll certainly admit that government has a ton of problems, I'm not sure that the best model for funding -- for example -- research into various diseases is to put decisions under the control of rich people in the private sector, no matter how "reformed" and generous they seem. Or that super-rich people deserve to have praised philanthropic legacies because they managed to game the system during some point in their lives at the expense of income inequality and unfair markets.

Granted, Gates doing good with his money is orders of magnitude better than him sitting on it doing nothing, but I don't think he deserves all the praise he's been getting, given his background.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Interviews Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen

#90

Post by jonstewart » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 9:13 PM UTC

mikorym wrote: post #66

pc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I was most struck by in the conversation is that Zuck is actually doing some of the things Cowen advocates - policy experimentation, taking on long-term projects with uncertain payoffs, etc. at CZI. I'm a big admirer of what Mark is doing with CZI (which is part of why Cowen/I agreed to the interview). Stripe is still a private company, but maybe I'll be able to intervene more directly over time. If I do, havi…

I don't want to sound like I am trolling or something. However, I find it hard to take anything Mark Zuckerberg does seriously. For that matter, I am so biased that I have no interest in these interviews at all (maybe to your detriment). How do you see this? You say that you are an admirer of CZI. In my experience with obnoxious CEO types, they are happy to be philantrophic or "build" things when it suits them, and o…

I agree. Billionaire-class philanthropy seems like it could be a societal anti-pattern these days; even if it isn’t, there are certainly problematic instances. A healthy amount of skepticism of billionaire-class philanthropy therefore seems warranted.

Moreover, given the repeated problems Facebook has caused, the repeated apologies Zuckerberg has offered with little demonstration of true repentance, skepticism of him specifically also seems warranted. The best thing he could do to help humanity would be to mitigate Facebook’s various negative impacts on our societies.

Zuckerberg has fooled us many times. However much he’s right about wanting to encourage societal progress, he’s actively contributed to its decline in much of the world—to the point that Facebook has now clearly has been an instrument of genocide (in Bangladesh).

Just because he’s a rich and a successful startup founder who’s conducted an interview where he says the right things (contrast with his Georgetown speech) doesn’t obviate him from criticism or skepticism.