Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

Assume a spherical cow in a vacuum...

The section on art collecting highlights the limitations of an economics-based approach to defining "talent." Cowen is an economist and this colors his entire approach.

“You learn about other cultures, you learn different points of view by refining your eye and you develop a skill that is extremely useful for judging other things and cracking cultural codes in other settings. It’s an education in 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? How do you get artists in Mexico to do their best work for you? That’s a business problem that you need to solve.

You want experience at solving a broad diversity of problems, to heighten your aesthetic sense, to learn some real history, and to understand how some of the art world works, surround yourself with beauty.

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. It’s just like the world of ideas right? It is the world of ideas. It just costs more to play in it in terms of upfront dollar commitments.” [Tyler Cowen: Production Function. David Perrell, North Star Podcast.]

Relying on markets and the opinions of others may be effective in determining current economic value, but it is not a fruitful approach for finding "talent", broadly defined. Contemporary art is an excellent place to observe this phenomenon; there is very little connection between "aesthetic value" and "market value." The art market is a fascinating thing, but make no mistake, the most popular artists are not the most "talented", by whatever definition of talent you may have.

"Slow is the experience of all deep fountains: long have they to wait until they know what hath fallen into their depths. Away from the marketplace and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the marketplace and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values."

- Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

I mean, you can compare the performance of different grant programs against each other. But it's worth noting that Emergent Ventures is not very widely publicized, even by Cowen himself.

It's easier to take him at his own word - the program is so effective because the audience is self selected:

> “I try to stay a bit weird and obscure enough that mostly quite smart people are writing me. If I had too many not smart emails I would feel that I was doing something else wrong with what I’m writing.” … “The rate of good applications is reasonably high. Maybe I’m lowering it just by talking about the program.”

There's lots written about imposter syndrome probably worth checking out. A good tidbit of advice I have heard for when you feel unqualified or out of place:

Ask yourself, do you think the person who invited you / hired you is stupid? Probably not, given the people around you smart and capable.

In this specific case, of course, finding people who are not yet accomplished is entirely the point.

Congrats on your selection.

I think it's even better the other way around: he has a knack for coming up with counter-intuitive explanations, or re-framing problems or issues in a way that is illuminating or goes against conventional wisdom. Like about healthcare for example.