Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah. So one thing I found really interesting in your book, What Price Fame was you had this interesting discussion where you cite your former adviser, Thomas Schelling, about how certain celebrities can make themselves focal points in the culture. I'm curious about how we can apply this to public intellectuals. In recent years, we've seen a lot of public intellectuals become a focal point in the cultural war or in just general discussions. So in some sense, this has happened to you as well, right? Where we've seen this with many of your podcast guests: Jordan Peterson, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris––how do public intellectuals make themselves focal points? Well, by doing something noteworthy, right? It can be an idea, but it can also be a form of performance art, and maybe performance art has become more important. I think my own vocality has more to do with performance art than with any specific idea I have. I think very carefully about how to stay somewhat focal for a long period of time. So it's quite unusual that I've mostly increased my vocality for over 20 years now. It's much more common that people come and go and decline. I work quite hard not to do that. A lot of the IDW people: very clear peaks, which now lie in the past, and I suspect will have fairly rapid declines. Well I don't want that to happen to me. I want to be in the thick of things, just for selfish reasons. What do you think is the explanation for why they peak so early?…

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