Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…I think if we were to define the buckets a bit more simply — nature, nurture broadly and who you’re around or whatever, and then just physical environment — what I’m hearing from you is, between those last two categories you’d stack rank, effectively, the nurture effect. I’d probably put the environment effect ahead of that. I really think, and this theory is definitely not mine — there are all sorts of researchers on Twitter that are expert at this — but I think a lot of what is driving American mood today or conversation today is a byproduct of lithium we put in the water or plastics we consumed from when we were children. I think that might be one aspect of it where we might swap, not that it really matters that much, but it is a difference. Here’s a way I would put it. I would say, I look for signs that the person, at an early age, tried to get nature and nurture working together in some multiplicative fashion. That brings the question a bit away from nature versus nurture. If they made a decision at age 13 to get nature and nurture compounding each other, then I’m very impressed. Does that make sense to you? I think that makes sense. I would probably say that I agree with that, but I think, ultimately, the mitochondrial efficiency that that person has is a by-product of the nutrition they got early on in life. It might actually be the one driving that, but we can agree to disagree there.…

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