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Conversations with Tyler / episode intelligence

Russ Roberts on Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate

25 Nov 2024 30 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Russ RobertsTyler Cowen

Claim mix

belief 18evaluation 5recommendation 3uncertainty 1preference 1disagreement 1prediction 1

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Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

30 published records

01 / recommendation

Mentions personal use of Brothers Karamazov.

“Well, she doesn’t get a lot of air time, and she isn’t written about a lot. It might have had trouble finding any kind of references to her. As you point out, she plays a very powerful, symbolic role, but she doesn’t take up a lot of pages. I mentioned the essay a minute ago, “The Sistine Madonna.” I asked ChatGPT what it was about, and it totally got it wrong. It said it was about beauty and art. It is not what it is about at all. Claude got it right exactly, which is maybe neither here nor there other than it’s good to have, sometimes, two LLMs to ask questions of. I found my reading of the book was very inconsistent. I struggled in the early pages, as I’ve mentioned, to get my momentum going. When I read Brothers Karamazov, I read it over a fairly long period of time, but the last 300 or 400 pages I read in a couple days because it’s such a page-turner. This book is not a page-turner. As I said, you might get discouraged, but I found myself more, if I may say so, engrossed in it, engrossed in a Grossman novel. There’s almost no or very little narrative suspense. We know how the Battle of Stalingrad turns out. The tide turns. I found it interesting that Novikoff, I think, is part of the lead tank group going into Ukraine. He’s very excited to reclaim Ukraine for the Soviets and take it back from the Germans. It was a slightly eerie shadow of the current moment, but I just kept going. One of my followers on Twitter . . . I apologize to you because this is such a good joke, and we’ll put a link to it in the show notes that don’t have it. But when I said, “We’re reading this book. You should get started. It’s going to air soon,” he wrote back, “I’m on page 12, and all the characters are named Stroganoff. I need more time.” The names are hard.”
Speaker
Russ Roberts
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

06 / belief

The machine, for him, eventually becomes all-powerful. It becomes a kind of god and can create humans in its image that are in a way superior, and I think he’s terrified by this.

“The machine, for him, eventually becomes all-powerful. It becomes a kind of god and can create humans in its image that are in a way superior, and I think he’s terrified by this.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

07 / belief

There is a cast, I would say perhaps five to eight central characters, as well as perhaps three to four central, major themes, so everything is kind of a fugue of characters, a fugue of plot.

“There is a cast, I would say perhaps five to eight central characters, as well as perhaps three to four central, major themes, so everything is kind of a fugue of characters, a fugue of plot.”
Speaker
Russ Roberts
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

08 / belief

In fact, supposedly as people get older — it’s not my personal experience; I’m grateful for that — but a lot of people, when they get older, just get crankier, and they get more obsessed with their obsessions, more fanatical about their fanaticisms. I think I’ve been spared that.

“In fact, supposedly as people get older — it’s not my personal experience; I’m grateful for that — but a lot of people, when they get older, just get crankier, and they get more obsessed with their obsessions, more fanatical about their fanaticisms. I think I’ve been spared that.”
Speaker
Russ Roberts
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

10 / belief

Obviously, we’re living in a moment where the world’s a little different, with the current situation in Israel. But I think the characters in Life and Fate obviously do feel that they are beleaguered.

“Obviously, we’re living in a moment where the world’s a little different, with the current situation in Israel. But I think the characters in Life and Fate obviously do feel that they are beleaguered.”
Speaker
Russ Roberts
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

15 / belief

There’s Dante and Swift and Homer and Huck Finn, which are all about journeys, and he’s taking us on our journey through this war, through this battle, through Soviet and Nazi life. I think that’s another way he thought of the book.

“There’s Dante and Swift and Homer and Huck Finn, which are all about journeys, and he’s taking us on our journey through this war, through this battle, through Soviet and Nazi life. I think that’s another way he thought of the book.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

16 / belief

The saner thing to do — and you see this with many people from the progressive left as well — is just to become more moderate, more uncertain, to have better epistemic practices and take a broader swathe of history more seriously, and I think Grossman is doing that.

“The saner thing to do — and you see this with many people from the progressive left as well — is just to become more moderate, more uncertain, to have better epistemic practices and take a broader swathe of history more seriously, and I think Grossman is doing that.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

21 / evaluation

He says, “The private kindness of one individual towards another, a petty, thoughtless kindness, an unwitnessed kindness, something we would call senseless kindness, a kindness outside any system of social or religious good, but if we think about it, we realize that this private, senseless, incidental kindness is, in fact, eternal.

“He says, “The private kindness of one individual towards another, a petty, thoughtless kindness, an unwitnessed kindness, something we would call senseless kindness, a kindness outside any system of social or religious good, but if we think about it, we realize that this private, senseless, incidental kindness is, in fact, eternal.”
Speaker
Russ Roberts
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

22 / evaluation

I think of the man of system, the Adam Smith quote from The Theory of Moral Sentiments, this idea that if you have a view of the world that you want to impose on the chessboard of the human experience, you’re going to do some bad things.

“I think of the man of system, the Adam Smith quote from The Theory of Moral Sentiments, this idea that if you have a view of the world that you want to impose on the chessboard of the human experience, you’re going to do some bad things.”
Speaker
Russ Roberts
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

23 / evaluation

In Life and Fate, Hitler and Stalin make actual appearances in the novel, which I find shocking when I read it, like, here they are on the page, and it’s actually somewhat plausible.

“In Life and Fate, Hitler and Stalin make actual appearances in the novel, which I find shocking when I read it, like, here they are on the page, and it’s actually somewhat plausible.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

24 / evaluation

The officers of the church — and here I’m talking about not any particular church but any religious dogma — they’re flawed. They’ve lost the original doctrine that inspired the believers, but the idea of giving up that doctrine is so painful to the adherents that they confess to things they didn’t do because they have to believe that the system, the church, still stands.

“The officers of the church — and here I’m talking about not any particular church but any religious dogma — they’re flawed. They’ve lost the original doctrine that inspired the believers, but the idea of giving up that doctrine is so painful to the adherents that they confess to things they didn’t do because they have to believe that the system, the church, still stands.”
Speaker
Russ Roberts
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

25 / preference

When I read Brothers Karamazov, I read it over a fairly long period of time, but the last 300 or 400 pages I read in a couple days because it’s such a page-turner.

“When I read Brothers Karamazov, I read it over a fairly long period of time, but the last 300 or 400 pages I read in a couple days because it’s such a page-turner.”
Speaker
Russ Roberts
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

26 / recommendation

As I’ve suggested, you may want to read this on the Kindle, which makes it a little easier to follow the characters because it’s easy to search for them if you forget who they are.

“As I’ve suggested, you may want to read this on the Kindle, which makes it a little easier to follow the characters because it’s easy to search for them if you forget who they are.”
Speaker
Russ Roberts
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

30 / prediction

Viktor, yes, you could say he’s the hero or, certainly, center of the novel, but what ends up happening is, Viktor — this is not too much of a spoiler because we know what did happen — ends up helping Stalin build nuclear weapons, and he can’t be too thrilled by that.

“Viktor, yes, you could say he’s the hero or, certainly, center of the novel, but what ends up happening is, Viktor — this is not too much of a spoiler because we know what did happen — ends up helping Stalin build nuclear weapons, and he can’t be too thrilled by that.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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