Tyler Cowen: uncertainty

Transcript context

…I’m a big believer — having experienced it personally — that the fields of research and education that one struggles with — for the reasons that I mentioned earlier about 3D being a better learning environment — will be one of those places. I’m a terrible chemist. I’m good at math. I’m good at modeling. I could never rock chemistry in high school. I firmly believe that if you’re trying to learn about astrophysics; physics at a primitive level; frankly, language — that finding these created environments for those who are curious will be like nothing we’ve ever experienced before. That may be too broad, so I’m interested to hear your answer. I don’t know. I would consider a trip to Mars or Antarctica — or for that matter, North Korea if they would allow it — using the metaverse, so places I can’t get to in the normal ways. Maybe, there aren’t many of them, but there are some of them. That would be my bet if it can be done. Well, this is a fun example. I’m often asked which categories do you think are most likely to be disrupted and/or which are you personally most excited about? Education is easily that answer, and I spoke about that, and there are three reasons why. First and foremost, it’s of critical importance, not just societally, but of course to the individual. Second, we have long expected fundamental disruption in education like healthcare, but third, it hasn’t happened. You’d know this. There are no actual measurable improvements in productivity in education since the internet came out. In fact, it’s the single highest-cost category growth in the United States, 1200 to 1400 percent at the high school, and then the secondary level. Why is that? That’s because we haven’t figured out how to teach students with fewer resources. We haven’t figured out how to teach students better with the same resources. We haven’t figured out how to teach faster. Yet, when you talk about 3D — I’ll get to your moon point in a second — things become interesting. I learned about physics with a textbook. I watched a NASA commander drop a feather and a hammer on the moon and then watched my teacher do the same thing to start to understand how gravity works and what the differences are. The ability to build, especially with others, a sophisticated Rube Goldberg machine on Earth, then on Mars, in the clouds of Venus and beyond, and then to modulate gravity, is fascinating to me. Dissecting a feral cat was something I got to do that was hard for many, that most people can’t afford to do, but that you can do at no marginal cost in virtual environments. In fact, you can shrink down into the Magic School Bus and travel the circulatory system. I think we often think about this linear question of I’ll go to a place that I can’t today, but you think of it as you, Tyler, a human roughly 6 feet tall, not what would I do if I were atomic? What if I could be in a place that if I were there for half a second, I would be crushed instantaneously? What that means for education can be a lot.…

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