Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent • Hacker News Board

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#81

Post by keiferski » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

Steer wrote: post #70

keiferski wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philosophers, artists, and other thinkers have written about aesthetics for thousands of years. Truly answering your question would take a long time, but a short version might be something like: the collective opinions of a diverse group of highly informed and experienced (not necessarily educated as in a university) individuals. But that's just one approach and there are many others. Even then, anything is probably…

This reminds me of a debate we're having in Sweden presently around architecture. Most contemporary architects seem to prefer buildings as big concrete blocks while most "common folk" would prefer something... less modern? A perfect example is the new art museum which you can see here https://www.svd.se/liljevalchs-tillbyggnad--ett-bankvalv-for... . I personally find it revolting, but am I then the person without tas…

I think much of contemporary art and architecture is stuck in a monocultural loop. There is no input from aesthetically-educated people that are outside the academy or architecture/art industry. It is extremely anti-diverse, especially compared to previous centuries where you had the entire swath of society working on a structure. Hence you’ll get things like that building.

And no I wouldn’t say you have no taste. Most aestheticians throughout (global) history would likely dislike that building. It’s only a recent phenomenon that such styles became so prevalent, largely out of ignorance or rejection of previous things.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#82

Post by Beldin » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #37

keiferski wrote: post #14

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 - 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?

But money doesn't measure work. One hour of work by Jeff Bezos trumps what most make in a year.

Moreover, it doesn't even work as a relative scale. If Jeff Bezos spends half his fortune on one art piece, he is still one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet. He won't be materially affected by this in any way. If I spend half my savings on an art piece, that puts me at a substantial risk (2 catastrophes and I'm broke).

Basically, Jeff has little opportunity cost to spending 50 billion, while I have enormous opportunity cost to spending 50,000. But Jeff doesn't work 1 million times as much as I do for that.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#83

Post by the_watcher » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

adlorger wrote: post #40

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.

I have on occasion reached out to public intellectuals for personal advice and wisdom over the years. Unique among everyone, he's been invariably wise and generous with me (a total stranger). He also writes back almost immediately. The only people online who have a similarly thoughtful and generous spirit, in my direct experience, is Russ Roberts and Scott Alexander. Prob reveals a lot about the media I consume (and…

He regularly says something like "my superpower is that I respond to all of my emails". And from what it seems, he truly does.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#84

Post by the_watcher » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

calcsam wrote: post #15

It's also worth noting that Tyler is an uncommonly good interviewer, largely because he asks very good, and unique, questions (see https://conversationswithtyler.com/ ). I suspect these two skills are related.

The episode with John McWhorter is my favorite example of this - McWhorter is audibly delighted by Cowen's questions about linguistics.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#85

Post by the_watcher » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

thesausageking wrote: post #49

I 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 h…

While it's true he will give grants to accomplished people, he also makes far more grants to smart young people (often from non-Western, lower income nations) that are _not_ accomplished, for things like "general career development". People like Byrne Hobart and David Perell launched their writing careers via EM. And even in the list you linked to, there's a 15 year old and a high school junior.

Regarding success rate, his explicit goal is to fund extremely ambitious people and projects that would otherwise struggle or not get funding at all. This could mean funding the most speculative or risky (or highly societally beneficial but lower financial return) ideas from already accomplished people or funding talented people that would struggle to get funding otherwise (due to age, access to capital, etc). I believe (and I think TC agrees) that there are likely many people and projects whose course could be substantially altered for the better if given access to a reasonably small amount of money early enough to convince the person to work on it full time.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#86

Post by colinmhayes » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

emtel wrote: post #76

colinmhayes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow, is there some other Russ Roberts with a podcast? I can't believe you'd say this. He's the most thoughtful, humble, and introspective interviewer I'm aware of. What in the world do you mean by "shit takes"?

Russ doesn't believe in the concept of expected value. Check out the episode with Peter Singer.

Most of his episodes are great though.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#87

Post by the_watcher » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

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?

You should email him and ask him if he's considered this. Of all funders, he seems like one of the most likely to consider doing this (and given some of the people he funds, it may actually be possible to run some sort of experiment while minimizing moral hazard). I'm fairly certain he'd at least answer the question though.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#88

Post by twolf910616 » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

Can anyone comment on Cowen's economic/political view? Last I've heard he's kind of a dying breed of Hayek supporter, but looking at his wikipedia page - it seems like even he has adopted a much more sympathetic view towards bigger government.

Not to say anything about libertarian - I'm just curious.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#89

Post by thesausageking » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #85

thesausageking wrote: post #49

I 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 h…

While it's true he will give grants to accomplished people, he also makes far more grants to smart young people (often from non-Western, lower income nations) that are _not_ accomplished, for things like "general career development". People like Byrne Hobart and David Perell launched their writing careers via EM. And even in the list you linked to, there's a 15 year old and a high school junior. Regarding success rat…

By “success” I mean at curating talent, which the author claims Cowen is the best at in the world. It’s easy to recognize talent many years into someone’s career when they’ve accomplished a lot.

I’m curious what his record is like in finding people with talent who haven’t yet done much.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#90

Post by hibikir » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #57

webmaven wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really felt out of place, since everyone else seemed so much more accomplished and smart. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room .

> If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Believing this would quickly kill every room as the people inside leave.

It's far more complicated than that. The maxim doesn't model a world where everyone has a smarts score, and everyone knows what everyone else's score is. That's not how the world works.

What it's really saying is that if you believe that you are the smartest person in the room, and you are there just to teach, as you have little to learn, that you need to be in a room where you really believe you have a lot to learn from the others there. This is true regardless of how much better, or worse, you happen to be.

I sure have seen rooms where almost everyone thought they were the smartest person in the room, and others where nobody thought they were the smartest. A common problem in startups is that you end up building the first room, when you really need to be building the second.