Tyler Cowen: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah. You’d rather have someone that will just do much more. Their learning rate should be much higher. [to Rajagopalan] Speaking for myself, I hired you, right? You are in academia. I think in academia, there are quite a few people who are significantly undervalued. You can’t wait too long, or they’re just totally ruined. But if they’re given freedom to operate and actually do things, there’s already a reasonable positive selection for smarts. There are some people who really are thirsty to do things and run things and create and make a difference, and those people are trapped in academia because a lot of them can’t see a way of supporting themselves doing a different thing. If you can set up structures where they have that support, you can find a lot of people who can become 50, 100X more productive by simply not just being academics all the time. You’re exhibit whatever — I don’t know what letter — but that’s you. You run Emergent Ventures India, and you identify people in India and give them support and get them going with their own start-ups and projects and intellectual endeavors. That’s phenomenally way more productive. Are you smarter now than then? Well, probably somewhat, but that’s not the difference. The difference is this ability to see there’s a difference you can make and really want to do it and be in a structure that allows that to happen. That’s just an example of how the market for talent can be way more efficient, not by 2X but by 100X or more in many, many cases. I actually use the insights in the book for what I do. I’m asking you the same question.…

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