Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…Please don’t elaborate further. [laughter] If I go to events with people, which I do pretty often, even in COVID times, it used to be, I would go to hear new and daring ideas that I hadn’t heard before. That’s great, but I think, especially with Twitter, it’s very hard to hear new and daring ideas you haven’t heard before. So why are you listening to other people? The way they put things, the way they argue, the way they paint the bigger picture — you’re getting a lot more context for ideas you’re somewhat already familiar with, and that context is important. Or by studying other cultures, you’re getting context for understanding people or situations or places. That, at the margin, is what I’m trying to get more of, more context rather than new ideas. Realizing that’s more important than I thought, at least for me right now, has been, maybe, my biggest mental change. But almost by definition, it’s not a new idea. It’s like more context for context. I wonder if, sometimes, the reason why we don’t attract more listeners to the show is because there is a certain orientation that has to happen to appreciate Conversations with Tyler. If you get what you’re doing, it’s very easy, but I know from talking to people, if you just pull up a random episode and listen to it, I think a lot of people do not have that context to understand.…

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