Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent • Hacker News Board

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#91

Post by fighterpilot » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:22 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…

David Chalmers is another one that will always give a polite and thoughtful reply.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#92

Post by the_watcher » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

thesausageking wrote: post #89

the_watcher wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's why I mentioned Byrne Hobart and David Perell, two people I regularly read and built businesses partially funded by EV.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#93

Post by kyleee » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 10:14 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…

Here's a direct link to the image: https://svd.vgc.no/v2/images/f5f90c1d-319d-475b-8988-15ca80c...

Since the modern web is terrible, I was confronted with a pop-up dialog in Swedish (I assume) which prevented seeing the image

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#94

Post by dv_dt » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 11:20 PM UTC

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #30

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.

And Mercatus is in turn has been bankrolled by the Koch brothers. I may be biased but I sort of see Cowan’s part of role as something akin to cross between a PR rep and a economic academic rep for a particular set of views to align with that funding source.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#95

Post by wenc » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 2:27 AM 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.

He does but it’s only partly due to his omnivorous interests and mostly due to the fact that he does a boatload of research on the interviewee, so there’s hard work involved too. (he reveals this in a meta episode)

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#96

Post by paconbork » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 4:06 AM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #74

adlorger wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

prob safe to assume that almost everyone who has clicked into a HN article mentioning TC is already very familiar with MR

I may be a minority but I’ve only heard his podcast.

Interestingly I knew about MR but didn't know he had a well-liked podcast

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#97

Post by kqr » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

Beldin wrote: post #82

kqr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Sure, so measure it in utiles instead.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#98

Post by kqr » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 4:12 AM UTC

jhayward wrote: post #72

kqr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Let me reverse your question: why would you use "how much oligarchic wealth someone has" or, possibly, "how intent on money laundering the buyer is", to determine aesthetic value? Because that's how art is sold today.

Because it's the worst alternative except for all the others.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#99

Post by kqr » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 4:25 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #39

kqr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

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…

I have some experience with the philosophy of aesthetics from my stints as a slightly more active amateur photographer. I'm sure there's much I could still benefit from learning, though. Do you have a recommendation for a book?

A sibling comment to yours pointed out a critical flaw in using price as a measure: it gives different people very unequally sized votes.

Measuring instead in something like logarithmic uttiles would instead give all people a similarly-sized vote.

My problem with all measures of aesthetics that do not give everyone an equal vote (like your proposal for a committee of experts) is the fat selection bias inherent.

I can think of no way to produce that committee that doesn't involve self-reinforcing feedback loops that bias the committee toward a local optimum that doesn't actually reflect the standards of all of humanity.

----

But. Then again, maybe this is one of those situations Weisberg talks about where trying to find the "main effect", i.e. the aggregate opinion of all humans, is meaningless.

Maybe it's more interesting to find out what specific groups of people think, and then I'm sure a committee of such people works. But one has to be up-front about what is then measured.

Re: Tyler Cowen is a curator of talent

#100

Post by keiferski » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 5:32 AM UTC

kqr wrote: post #99

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…

I have some experience with the philosophy of aesthetics from my stints as a slightly more active amateur photographer. I'm sure there's much I could still benefit from learning, though. Do you have a recommendation for a book? A sibling comment to yours pointed out a critical flaw in using price as a measure: it gives different people very unequally sized votes. Measuring instead in something like logarithmic uttile…

Unfortunately I don't know of any introductory aesthetics books that aren't heavy on the philosophical language. For that reason I would just recommend reading this IEP article. It covers the standard traditional Western conception of aesthetics, the basic ideas, and so on.

https://iep.utm.edu/aestheti/

If you don't mind reading a dictionary, The Dictionary of Aesthetics by Dabney Townsend is also a good overview of many different ideas and terms.

Otherwise, I am a big fan of Japanese aesthetics, which is much more "in the world" than the more abstract Western philosophical approach. For this, I really recommend the short essay A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics by Donald Richie.

Also, one of my favorite novels is My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. It is about Ottoman miniature painting and has extensive discussion on aesthetics, painting, and similar topics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red

--

On your other comment, I might agree with Weisberg that we aren't really going for an aggregate opinion of everyone. Instead, we need a way to measure the opinions of a diverse group of experts, whatever that might mean specifically.

A good analogue might be military strategy. If we were to ask "Who was the best general of all time?", we'd likely want to ask military historians (academic experts), actual generals (experiential experts), as well as amateur enthusiasts that are extremely knowledgeable but don't have the right credentials. We'd also probably want various other groups of people like soldiers, politicians, (resurrected) great generals like Napoleon or Hannibal themselves, etc.

As long as we had a decent method for validating membership of these different groups, I think we'd get a reasonably decent answer.

In terms of architecture, this expert-only approach might have some limitations and we would need to add the townspeople and library readers to our analysis. But this is more because buildings are something practical used in the world and not just art in a gallery.