Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…Perhaps if I had to summarize my overall world view in just one quote, it would be this quote from E. O. Wilson: “The real problem with humanity is the following: We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous.” This highlights my concern with the idea that we ought to increase economic growth which seems to push more on the god-like technology than on improving the paleolithic emotions or the medieval institutions. By focusing on improving technology, we’re increasing the disconnect between the improvement that we’ve had in our engineering and scientific and technological ability and the fact that our personal and moral values and our institutions for governing ourselves have not kept up with that. So I’d be perhaps more interested in seeing people focus on the emotions and institutions here to get them to catch up with our god-like technology than increasing the technology itself. What do you think of that? I’m more optimistic than Wilson and perhaps you. He refers to medieval institutions, but in most countries institutions are much better than that. What are the good medieval institutions that stuck around? Like parliament of Iceland? Oxford, where you’ve been? I suppose Cambridge? Maybe a few other schools, but we’ve built so much since then. I don’t mean technology. I mean quality institutions with feedback and accountability. If you look, say, at how Singapore is run, a lot of the Nordic countries, some parts of American life — by no means all, just to be clear — Canada, Australia, where you’re from. You see remarkable institutions, unprecedented in human history, I don’t take those for granted they’re not automatic. But I think one has to revise the Wilson quote and be more optimistic. Yeah, so medieval institutions is perhaps and exaggeration. But do you think . . .…

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