Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…I had explained to me three basic theories of cosmology when I was seven, one of which was the Big Bang, and then there were two others, which was steady state theory, and a third whose name I don’t even remember anymore. They leave some questions unanswered. Why is there anything? As far as I can tell, we haven’t made any progress on those things in the 40-odd years since. It’s frustrating, actually, that that’s the case. I think you’re correct to say, “Oh, you’ve learned a lot. Why haven’t you changed?” My response to that is, I’ve learned a lot. Gosh, it’s really annoying that it hasn’t impacted that question more. I think my p has gone up a modest amount over time. When I was, say, in my young 20s, I thought physics was going to make more progress than it has at fundamental theoretical levels. The fact that it hasn’t — it nudges me a bit to wonder. These other types of explanations that I was not so keen on, maybe they’re a bit more important than I had thought. That hasn’t happened with you? No. That’s interesting. It hasn’t really. I just don’t think 40 years is very long. If it had been 100,000 years —…

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