Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…One thing I think we have both probably learned in interviews is, the best interview questions break the fourth wall of the interview, so to speak, and the characters come out a little bit. It’s the same joy you have when a character breaks on set or on stage. You’re watching some behind-the-scenes footage of something, a blooper reel. In good interview questions, I think, ultimately, we’ll have that property of breaking people out. A really good one that we can’t do now because we just got started in this conversation, but about three-quarters of the way in, just asking the question “How do you think this conversation’s going?” is a bit off-putting. It’s a bit funny, and it breaks the stress or the fixed nature of the conversation that isn’t fun. I always like having fun with that one. 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. I find creativity and interest in conspiracy theories to be correlated, that there’s some innate desire to connect a bunch of different points. A bunch of data is thrown at you, like the JFK assassination or how COVID 19 came to be, and whatever you think the truth is, if your mind is sufficiently restless in the right way, you won’t be content with the regular stories. They seem not very satisfying. Like, “Oh, Jack Ruby — he simply came along and killed Lee Harvey Oswald.” Now, maybe that’s true. I’m not an expert on this, but if you’re not irritated or pissed off by that event, I think there’s something wrong with you. It’s a sign you’re taking too many things for granted. Do you think that maybe the simple theory there — that’s a bit of a conspiracy theory — is just true, that Lee Harvey Oswald was just operated by Russian agents he met while he was living in Russia?…

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