Tyler Cowen: prediction

Transcript context

…Let me think about this a bit. [pause] I would say the closest thing that comes up is in classical music, in the different interpretations of the same pieces. When you’re familiar with what’s coming, and it doesn’t happen the way you think it’s going to happen. It’s written, and the notes are the same notes. The first one that came to mind was Glenn Gould’s early version and later versions of the Variations. In the early one, it’s played very quickly, a great deal of dexterity. In the later one, there are times when the next note seemingly never comes. It’s fascinating. I actually prefer that one. That gives me that same feeling of the notes hanging in space. It’s also interesting that the rhythms change, where once we understand a certain rhythm that the notes come in—we learn that in learning how a song goes—to hear them come in a different rhythm, it’s fascinating. It really just lights up things in the brain. I believe that later Gould recording is 79 minutes, whereas the first Gould recording is 45 minutes. Some of that is adding the repeats, but he’s also playing much more slowly. Yes. I feel like in the speed, in the slowness of it, there’s so much more emotion between the notes that we can feel. The earlier one is a showier rendition, and the later one is more of a soulful rendition for me.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.