Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…Yes. You can go to totei.com now. Sign up for the early versions of the newsletter. I think it’s going to be fun. The interesting thing — as I put it out into the world, it’s super resonant with people, all sorts of people — college students, comedians, artists, investors — who take great pride in their craft. My craft is investing. I take great pride in how we do that craft. Everyone feels seen when you put a spotlight on another craftsperson. If we think about the general public, I hear a lot of pessimism about the general American public, even the educated side. Will people read less or they know less about certain things? If you think of their artistic literacy, whether it’s in craftsmanship or contemporary painting, or just art museums in general, whatever else might be in New York City, what’s your assessment of where we’re at? Is it dire? Is it great? You’re at a positive inflection point is my read of the situation. There’s a shocking amount of aggregate pessimism everywhere right now. I think part of it is still aftereffects of COVID. Part of it is, we have a complicated economic environment where there’re haves and have nots. There’s a lot of complexity. It’s obviously a really turbulent time in the world, and that all feeds into, I think, some of the pessimism out there. People are reading less. They’re in fewer relationships, all of those things. I think by and large, as I look at it somewhat dispassionately, there’re huge reasons for optimism, especially as an American, where, while it is complicated, there’re a lot of great things happening here. The reason I think we’re at a positive inflection point is, some of the ways to make it better versus just complain have started to make its way into the ether. It’s interesting. I was at a conference recently, and there was so much doomerism about AI, as an example. But I think one of the main proximate effects is highly optimistic, increased knowledge, decrease in doing tasks that are not joyful, et cetera, so I think we’re about to see a series of innovations that drive from pessimism to optimism, or at least I hope so.…

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