I highly recommend his blog/newsletter “Marginal Revolution”.
prob safe to assume that almost everyone who has clicked into a HN article mentioning TC is already very familiar with MR
Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
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Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
#42The 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 - a…
> there is very little connection between "aesthetic value" and "market value." Wait, so how do you determine this "aesthetic value" if not by how much people are willing to work to acquire it? Your personal opinion? Some authority figure? Maths?
At the very least we can recognize that "market value" and "aesthetic value" are two different things. The only thing you are really measuring when looking at the economics of art is the "market value" so the other thing you have to pass over in silence, as Wittgenstein would say.
The art world is notorious for being a tax avoidance scheme, on top of money laundering and all sorts of other related activities. Tying market value and aesthetic value in the art world makes about as much sense as introducing the concept of "aesthetic value" when talking about Apple's stock price.
Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
#43I 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.
Apologies, I should've really just said that he had a vested interest in it.
Either way, the people that came to the presentation didn't come to hear about the product he was promoting - we wanted, at least I wanted, to hear the ideas in his book. Instead we got the old switcheroo.
Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
#44The 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 - a…
It may be a mistake focusing on "Cowen is an economist." He does happen to be one, but everyone is something.
This may mean that he's applying a economist's mindset, like an engineer might apply an engineering mindset... but either might be besides the point. More about choice of method and language than substance.
Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
#45Cowen 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.
Econtalk is a pretty good podcast that's similar.
Russ tries really hard to keep an open mind, but especially now that he's getting more into political philosophy I find it hard to take him seriously depending on the guest. It can be interesting to listen to his shit takes for a while, but it grows tiresome pretty quickly.
Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
#46I highly recommend his blog/newsletter “Marginal Revolution”.
prob safe to assume that almost everyone who has clicked into a HN article mentioning TC is already very familiar with MR
Not at all. The safer assumption is that HN readers here in this discussion today have never heard of him or MR. I've never heard of him, and I think I keep up pretty well in tech.
Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
#47The 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 - a…
It may be a mistake focusing on " Cowen is an economist. " He does happen to be one, but everyone is something . This may mean that he's applying a economist's mindset, like an engineer might apply an engineering mindset... but either might be besides the point. More about choice of method and language than substance.
I only brought it up because the author mentions the humanities as being critically important to Cowen's analysis method. Yet I think his approach is fundamentally still economic in nature, likely because of Cowen's economist background.
Tyler calls his study of the humanities “cracking cultural codes,” and he highlights this as the most “importantly novel” activity he practices.
Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
#48Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
#49I had never heard of this award and the author doesn't give great evidence that it actually has a great success rate. Looking at the past winners:
https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=emergent+ventures+winners
A number of award winners are already very accomplished. In this most recent cohort, there's a woman who's a professor at Brown, has a PhD from Harvard, and written multiple books.
It would be interesting to see how accomplished the award winners are and how early in their careers they received the award.
Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent
#50The 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 - a…
> there is very little connection between "aesthetic value" and "market value." Wait, so how do you determine this "aesthetic value" if not by how much people are willing to work to acquire it? Your personal opinion? Some authority figure? Maths?
Taste.
I realize this is unsatisfying to many, but there really is no other choice. A strict empiricist has no way of knowing whether or not art is good. In fact, a purely empirical worldview will find it hard to have art in it at all. There's no way to distinguish subjective from arbitrary.
If you do accept that taste exists and that subjective != arbitrary, we can move forward and discuss it without expecting externally verifiable tests for it. If you can't, maybe you shouldn't believe that art exists at all... or that we can gain any knowledge of it if it does.
Substituting price or popularity for quality is redundant. Just think in terms of price or popularity, and forget about quality. Calling popularity quality just because it's easier to define or measure muddies things up, whether or not you believe in taste.