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Conversations with Tyler / episode intelligence

Glen Weyl on Fighting COVID-19 and the Role of the Academic Expert

29 Apr 2020 33 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Glen WeylTyler Cowen

Claim mix

belief 21prediction 4commitment 3recommendation 2uncertainty 1evaluation 1preference 1

Evidence policy

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.

33 published records

01 / belief

I think we’ve got two basic problems. One is a coordination failure along the supply chain, and the other is a lot of small innovations that require a lot of regulatory engagement to get rapidly deployed that need to be really accelerated and coordinated.

“I think we’ve got two basic problems. One is a coordination failure along the supply chain, and the other is a lot of small innovations that require a lot of regulatory engagement to get rapidly deployed that need to be really accelerated and coordinated.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

03 / belief

I think if people not paying their rents, and maybe more importantly, not paying their mortgages — they worry, say, within four to six weeks, the whole banking system will be insolvent.

“I think if people not paying their rents, and maybe more importantly, not paying their mortgages — they worry, say, within four to six weeks, the whole banking system will be insolvent.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

05 / belief

We believe that taking the test frequently enough — and I don’t think once a week is enough; it should probably be twice a week — that that should give you an equal status to someone who’s been shown an immune.

“We believe that taking the test frequently enough — and I don’t think once a week is enough; it should probably be twice a week — that that should give you an equal status to someone who’s been shown an immune.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

06 / belief

I think having a very top-down regime of someone analyzing a bunch of data and, on the basis of some probably pretty tenuous statistical correlation, claiming that such and such a person needs to be tested, and then coercively going in and testing them on a government basis — it does not seem to me like a very robust regime.

“I think having a very top-down regime of someone analyzing a bunch of data and, on the basis of some probably pretty tenuous statistical correlation, claiming that such and such a person needs to be tested, and then coercively going in and testing them on a government basis — it does not seem to me like a very robust regime.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

07 / belief

I think that that’s true. I also think that we’re not getting a huge dragnet coming out of these PCR tests in countries where prevalence rates are low, and you would expect to see that if the false positive rate were nontrivial.

“I think that that’s true. I also think that we’re not getting a huge dragnet coming out of these PCR tests in countries where prevalence rates are low, and you would expect to see that if the false positive rate were nontrivial.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

09 / belief

I think that getting the precise parameters of that right are really critical, Tyler, and I can’t say that I’ve gotten down to the level of precision necessary.

“I think that getting the precise parameters of that right are really critical, Tyler, and I can’t say that I’ve gotten down to the level of precision necessary.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

11 / belief

I think often the parts of individuals that we’re talking about actually are associated with various groups, so we should think of individuals as being made up of group identities to a large extent, and group identities as being made up of individuals to a large extent.

“I think often the parts of individuals that we’re talking about actually are associated with various groups, so we should think of individuals as being made up of group identities to a large extent, and group identities as being made up of individuals to a large extent.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

12 / belief

I bet it’s something you’ve thought about, actually, Tyler. But I think we need to be bringing that public engagement and delivery of things directly to the public much more into how we evaluate people.

“I bet it’s something you’ve thought about, actually, Tyler. But I think we need to be bringing that public engagement and delivery of things directly to the public much more into how we evaluate people.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

13 / belief

I think probably quite similar, but a lot of the more rich and nuanced things — for example, restrictions on parks versus restrictions on theaters — I think we’d learn a lot about what’s most important to people there.

“I think probably quite similar, but a lot of the more rich and nuanced things — for example, restrictions on parks versus restrictions on theaters — I think we’d learn a lot about what’s most important to people there.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

14 / belief

I think the pandemic testing board should have some authority to set guidance about that, and my guess is, under standard common-law approaches, that there would be a fair bit of deference to that by most reasonable courts.

“I think the pandemic testing board should have some authority to set guidance about that, and my guess is, under standard common-law approaches, that there would be a fair bit of deference to that by most reasonable courts.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

15 / belief

I think serological tests — if we get them working, and they’re not really working very reliably yet — can be quite helpful for that because there’s one of the antibodies — I always forget which one it is, MMM or MMG — but one of them is an indicator of convalescence and at least temporary immunity.

“I think serological tests — if we get them working, and they’re not really working very reliably yet — can be quite helpful for that because there’s one of the antibodies — I always forget which one it is, MMM or MMG — but one of them is an indicator of convalescence and at least temporary immunity.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

17 / belief

I’d prefer it to be an interstate compact, in which case it would be a consortium of governors who would be the final authority, but they would appoint the pandemic testing board, which I think would be mostly staffed by retired generals and business leaders, as well as probably someone representing labor and so forth.

“I’d prefer it to be an interstate compact, in which case it would be a consortium of governors who would be the final authority, but they would appoint the pandemic testing board, which I think would be mostly staffed by retired generals and business leaders, as well as probably someone representing labor and so forth.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

21 / belief

Now, if you call that blockchain or not is a bit of a question, but certainly privacy-preserving cryptographic technologies, if anything, I think are getting more attention now than they were getting before because of the emphasis on trying to do contact tracing in a privacy-preserving way.

“Now, if you call that blockchain or not is a bit of a question, but certainly privacy-preserving cryptographic technologies, if anything, I think are getting more attention now than they were getting before because of the emphasis on trying to do contact tracing in a privacy-preserving way.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

22 / belief

I think almost any moral concept is a useful concept in certain contexts because all our ideas are proxies for some deeper truth that we don’t fully understand.

“I think almost any moral concept is a useful concept in certain contexts because all our ideas are proxies for some deeper truth that we don’t fully understand.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

23 / belief

There’s also a big problem, which is that manual tracing efforts do a poor job of covering public spaces, and I think that the Singaporeans believed that these Bluetooth-based tracing technologies would cover those public spaces well, and they failed to do so.

“There’s also a big problem, which is that manual tracing efforts do a poor job of covering public spaces, and I think that the Singaporeans believed that these Bluetooth-based tracing technologies would cover those public spaces well, and they failed to do so.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

24 / commitment

I don’t think so because first of all, we will not make that available — the immunity certificates or these ones that you’re talking about, the frequent negative tests — until we’ve already managed to really control the disease enough that we feel comfortable for people going back into most public amenities just based on the fact that we’re tracing down most of the disease.

“I don’t think so because first of all, we will not make that available — the immunity certificates or these ones that you’re talking about, the frequent negative tests — until we’ve already managed to really control the disease enough that we feel comfortable for people going back into most public amenities just based on the fact that we’re tracing down most of the disease.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

25 / prediction

The other thing I would say is, because it’s so ambitious, Paul’s plan, in terms of the number of tests required, will take much longer to ramp up to that point, so we’ll end up with one to two more months of freeze in place.

“The other thing I would say is, because it’s so ambitious, Paul’s plan, in terms of the number of tests required, will take much longer to ramp up to that point, so we’ll end up with one to two more months of freeze in place.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

27 / recommendation

Therefore, I think we need to have a lot of nonprice allocation, not of the whole economy but just of the really critical elements, like testing and certain types of PPE, because I think otherwise we’re all going to be harmed by that not being allocated to those nodes, as you were talking about, where they have the largest costs associated with it.

“Therefore, I think we need to have a lot of nonprice allocation, not of the whole economy but just of the really critical elements, like testing and certain types of PPE, because I think otherwise we’re all going to be harmed by that not being allocated to those nodes, as you were talking about, where they have the largest costs associated with it.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

28 / prediction

Once that’s accomplished, I think we can, over the course of July, reintroduce most of the rest of the economy and have the confidence that, because we haven’t seen reemergence of diseases within the essential sector, that reintroducing everybody else will proceed in a similar fashion.

“Once that’s accomplished, I think we can, over the course of July, reintroduce most of the rest of the economy and have the confidence that, because we haven’t seen reemergence of diseases within the essential sector, that reintroducing everybody else will proceed in a similar fashion.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

29 / prediction

There’s a possibility that we get very successful here in a very uniform way, but for the reasons that you’re saying — because of the federal structure — I think we’re going to face a choice between centralizing power more than I think we should want to and in a way that would reduce the scope for desirable experimentation, and allowing some restrictions on travel across localities.

“There’s a possibility that we get very successful here in a very uniform way, but for the reasons that you’re saying — because of the federal structure — I think we’re going to face a choice between centralizing power more than I think we should want to and in a way that would reduce the scope for desirable experimentation, and allowing some restrictions on travel across localities.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

30 / evaluation

He had in the back of his mind this sort of decreasing returns model that’s dominant in economics, and I think that that colors his whole worldview in a way that leads him to miss a lot of the key questions, even though he was right on a lot of the things that he spoke about, actually.

“He had in the back of his mind this sort of decreasing returns model that’s dominant in economics, and I think that that colors his whole worldview in a way that leads him to miss a lot of the key questions, even though he was right on a lot of the things that he spoke about, actually.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

31 / commitment

But my wife got banned from going to Venezuela because she wrote a critical report on the government. And so, we’ve never been able to go to Isla Magdalena, I believe, which is supposed to be one of the best places.

“But my wife got banned from going to Venezuela because she wrote a critical report on the government. And so, we’ve never been able to go to Isla Magdalena, I believe, which is supposed to be one of the best places.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

33 / recommendation

I think we would learn a lot more about what elements, for example, of the social distancing are hurting people the most and what elements people are most willing to accept.

“I think we would learn a lot more about what elements, for example, of the social distancing are hurting people the most and what elements people are most willing to accept.”
Speaker
Glen Weyl
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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