Cowen and Gross ask questions, 5/22

Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross ask questions, and I'll give my answers

In a Conversation with Tyler, Daniel Gross throws out,

Another interesting one that I learned from a friend of mine is, do you have any good conspiracy theories that you’re liking lately? Which is interesting because it’s unusual, and I find a lot of really good, really productive people are constantly exploring on the fringe and frontiers of all ideas, so you end up with people that have odd theories.

My reaction would be: I’m not sure what constitutes a conspiracy. You know there is the saying that you should not assume a conspiracy when it could just be incompetence. And does it have to be my conspiracy theory? Or can it be someone else’s conspiracy theory that I buy into?

So I’d be one of those people who basically stonewall the question instead of answering it. I have unusual ideas; they’re just not conspiracy theories.

Later, Gross says,

If you were to try to really explain to a five-year-old at a very basic level, why aren’t there more SpaceX’s, I think it comes down to the right people don’t have the right jobs for human progress. Once you start viewing the world through this lens, it’s really hard to unsee it, at least for me.

Something to ponder. In some sense, the whole point of the Fantasy Intellectual Teams project was to develop a system to upgrade the status of better thinkers and downgrade the status of tribal thinkers. That is not the realm of business and engineering, but maybe we are seeing those realms adversely affected by the ruin taking place in the worlds of journalism, politics, and academia.

Another question, from Tyler:

It comes from Peter Thiel, I believe. It’s simply to ask the person, “How ambitious are you?”

My response is that I doubt that I am ambitious enough. When I was in high school, I had friends who liked to play poker. I ended up not liking it and after a few months I stopped playing. I didn’t enjoy it when I lost, of course. But I didn’t get that much enjoyment out of winning, either. I felt sorry for taking other’s money, and it was not such a thrill to win. To me, being ambitious is like playing poker. I don’t imagine getting enough psychological upside from winning. But then I look at famous successful people and feel a pang of regret, “Hey, maybe I could have done that if I had pushed harder.”

Another one from Tyler:

I like to talk to people about drama. If they’ve read Shakespeare, you can say, “Well, my hypothesis is that in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet don’t actually love each other at all. Does the play still make sense?”

If anyone other than Tyler asked me that in an interview, my reaction would be “WTF?” But here I would say that the play still could make sense. They could be angry with their parents, and they use suicide to get back that them. Or in love with the idea of love. But most likely, they are teenage drama queens, who crave attention and significance. Maybe you could write a play in which Juliet scorns Romeo, and he becomes a mass killer.

And one from Gross:

I love asking people sometimes, “Out of what I see on your LinkedIn or your résumé, what are things you are trying to hide? And what do you wish you could feature more?”

I hate the whole concept of a “profile.” I’m glad I got married before the emergence of dating sites, so I never had to fill out a profile on one of those.

On my own web site, I really feature my Israeli dancing hobby. I am not trying to hide it on LinkedIn, but you sure won’t see it featured there.

I think that if you were to engage me about dancing, you might learn more about me than if you engaged me about economics or business or social theory. So you don’t really know about me by reading my profile.

Dancing has changed a lot over the years. In the late 1970s, the dances were really easy and for me it was mostly a way to meet girls. Over time, the dances have become much more challenging, and I have come to relish the challenge. Most people don’t, and so it has become narrower, deeper, older.

When COVID came, dancing went online. Dancers from different parts of the world bonded together. But a lot of casual dancers didn’t take to following dancing online, so many of them have dropped out. Now we’re left with the obsessive dancers. I look around and see a larger proportion of dancers who are much younger than I am, and much better.

Attendance at weekly sessions is way down. But attendance at three-day workshops is actually up. I think that what has happened is that dedicated dancers in out-of-the-way places have been able to get much better, thanks to the online dancing that has sprung up with COVID. So they are now good enough to attend the workshops, which tend to be too challenging for the casual dancer. The workshops also put you together for meals, so that there is more time to get to know one another.

This may have subtly influenced my Network-based University idea. Ordinary college is like the weekly dance sessions that are losing participants. The conferences that I propose instead are like the three-day workshops. And the intellectually curious students I envision are like the dedicated dancers, including those from out-of-the-way places.