Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…One concern you could have about progress in general is, if you look at the famous Adam Smith example, you've got that pin maker, and the specialization obviously has all these efficiencies. But the pin maker is just doing this one thing. Whereas if you're in the ancestral environment, you get to basically negotiate with every single part of what it takes to keep you alive, and every other person in your tribe does. Is individuality lost with more specialization, more progress? Well, Smith thought it would be. I think compared to his time, we have much more individuality, most of all in the Bay Area. That's a good thing. I worry the future with AI, that a kind of demoralization will set in, in some areas. I think there'll be full employment pretty much forever. That doesn't worry me. But what we will be left doing, what exactly it will be, and how happy it will make us... Again, I don't have pessimistic expectations. I just see it as a big change. I don't feel I have a good prediction. And if you don't have a good prediction, you should be a bit wary and just say, "Okay, we're going to see." But, you know, some words of caution. Are merited when you're learning about a new field? The vibe I get from you when you're doing a podcast is that you're picking up the long tail of different—you talk to interesting people, or you read the book that nobody else would have considered. How often do you just have to read the main textbook versus looking at the esoteric thing? How do you balance that trade-off?…

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