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Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

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Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#21

Post by majormajor »

carnitine wrote: post #11
progbits wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there is likely impact from the recognition itself. Shouldn't be hard to verify, no? Have him pick 2N candidates, randomly select half that he can not announce publicly, talk to or otherwise influence (impossible to prevent entirely but "good enough" will suffice to establish a difference). Then look at how the two groups are doing some time down the line.

Not hard to verify in some weird vacuum where completely pointless albeit simple sounding things are done to validate random conjectures, yes.

If I was a person trying to find talented people with potential to do great things, and I cared about the quality of my selection process, I think doing things like that would be extremely necessary.

You can't improve what you can't measure.

But is the goal of these sorts of things often actually to select the best?

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#22

Post by elefanten »

>Still, the program keeps a low profile. Even with Tyler’s tall stature, a Google search of “Emergent Ventures Tyler Cowen” shows results only from Tyler / GMU’s own promotion, one short TechCrunch article, a mention on LessWrong / Effective Altruism, a mention on Hacker News, and a small number of Emergent Ventures winners’ blogs and podcasts.

Well, publishing articles with hyperbolic titles seems like painting a big, glowing target for status-seekers to come and ruin Cowen's signal-to-noise ratio.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#23

Post by paulpauper »

legitster wrote: post #13

Cowen is truly unique. He's one of the only "public intellectuals" who has replied to my random emails on multiple occasions. Everyone should listen to some episodes of Conversations with Tyler. I normally hate interview podcasts, but it is bar none the best one out there. It doesn't matter the topic - the questions he is able to hit his subjects with are amazing, nothing at all like how most interviews go.

it's paying for google ads too

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#24

Post by felipe_ii »

I wonder if this article is an example of the submarine coming to surface (http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html).

I say this because back when I used to frequent Marginal Revolution, I found that there was a good deal of self-promotion of Cowen's work in the website - for example, he would link an interesting news story and provide minimal commentary, but then would link his tangentially related research. I understand his incentive for doing this, but the amount of self-promotion was enough to annoy me and make me stop reading.

Years later, I attended a presentation that Cowen gave that was ostensibly on his book the Great Stagnation, but in reality it turned out to be a demonstration of some online learning venture he was bankrolling at the time.

He's a smart and productive guy, no doubt, but my (anecdotal) experiences make me wonder about what is behind an article like this.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#25

Post by Jasper_ »

majormajor wrote: post #21
carnitine wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not hard to verify in some weird vacuum where completely pointless albeit simple sounding things are done to validate random conjectures, yes.

If I was a person trying to find talented people with potential to do great things, and I cared about the quality of my selection process, I think doing things like that would be extremely necessary. You can't improve what you can't measure. But is the goal of these sorts of things often actually to select the best?

Why would Cowen want to actually empirically test their skills? They're getting articles about their supposed mystical powers written up right now. Why risk tossing that away and find out for real, with very limited upside?

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#26

Post by paulpauper »

klelatti wrote: post #17

Tyler clearly brings: - Intense curiosity - Deep knowledge of economics - Strong interpersonal skills - Risk taking bias - e.g. focus on MR was a significant risk for him No surprise that he's exceptionally good at identifying and backing talent in this way.

not just economics, he has a wide repertoire of knowledge about many things . Eric Wienstein is similar in this regard.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#27

Post by majormajor »

Jasper_ wrote: post #25
majormajor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was a person trying to find talented people with potential to do great things, and I cared about the quality of my selection process, I think doing things like that would be extremely necessary. You can't improve what you can't measure. But is the goal of these sorts of things often actually to select the best?

Why would Cowen want to actually empirically test their skills? They're getting articles about their supposed mystical powers written up right now. Why risk tossing that away and find out for real, with very limited upside?

Right: if PR and kudos for yourself is the point, you don't want to test it.

But if you want to do this sort of thing for some sort of "making the world a better place" reason... or want to actually truly select the best... you gotta test it!

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#29

Post by klelatti »

paulpauper wrote: post #26
klelatti wrote: post #17

Tyler clearly brings: - Intense curiosity - Deep knowledge of economics - Strong interpersonal skills - Risk taking bias - e.g. focus on MR was a significant risk for him No surprise that he's exceptionally good at identifying and backing talent in this way.

not just economics, he has a wide repertoire of knowledge about many things . Eric Wienstein is similar in this regard.

Agree 100% - just focused on economics as probably a bit more relevant in this context as an investor.

I actually think the curiosity and risk taking bias are key here.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#30

Post by Matticus_Rex »

felipe_ii wrote: post #24

I wonder if this article is an example of the submarine coming to surface ( http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html ). I say this because back when I used to frequent Marginal Revolution, I found that there was a good deal of self-promotion of Cowen's work in the website - for example, he would link an interesting news story and provide minimal commentary, but then would link his tangentially related research. I und…

I think I know the one you're talking about, and he wasn't bankrolling it -- it was just one of his projects through Mercatus. And they had a bunch of course content on the Great Stagnation, which was definitely relevant.
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