Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…I think what you’d have to do — and you could do this on the fly, you could work it out — would be develop . . . Okay, here’s a good test. Read it half of a good novel and then ask what’s going on here. What’s going to happen next? Show it half of a TV episode. When we do these things, our theory of mind is just fully operational. We say that detective is going to get his revenge because he will not take that sort of stuff, and she’s going to leave in the first moment she has a chance, dah, dah, dah. I think that shows theory of mind at work. If you do it in that way, you can’t cheat. If it’s a novel novel or a novel episode, then it would have to do it on the fly. I’m afraid I’m going to fail that test. I always think of strange imaginary endings that are improbable, and occasionally, they come to pass. I think my endings are often much better than what they end up putting on the screen. My dad is great. When we watched TV together as a kid — and of course, the TV was very different and much more predictable — but a character would be about to say something, and then he would say it. He would say it simultaneously with the character.…

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