Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…After reading the book, I was inclined to think that intelligence matters more than I previously thought. Not less. You say in the book that intelligence has convex returns and that it matters especially for areas like inventors. Then you also say that if you look at some of the most important things in society, something like what Larry and Sergey did, they're basically inventors, right? So in many of the most important things in society, intelligence matters more because of the increasing returns. It seems like with Emergent Ventures, you're trying to pick the people who are at the tail. You're not looking for a barista at Starbucks. So it seems like you should care about intelligence more, given the evidence there. More than who does? I feel what the book presents is, in fact, my view. So kind of by definition, I agree with that view. But yes, there's a way of reading it where intelligence really matters a lot. But it's only for a relatively small number of jobs. Maybe you just started off with a really high priori on intelligence, and that's why you downgraded?…

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