19 | Tyler Cowen on Maximizing Growth and Thinking for the Future

19 | Tyler Cowen on Maximizing Growth and Thinking for the Future

Economics, like other sciences (social and otherwise), is about what the world does; but it's natural for economists to occasionally wander out into the question of what we should do as we live in the world. A very good example of this is a new book by economist Tyler Cowen, Stubborn Attachments. Tyler will be well-known to many listeners for his long-running blog Marginal Revolution (co-created with his colleague Alex Tabarrok) and his many books and articles. Here he offers a surprising new take on how society should arrange itself, based on the simple idea that the welfare of future generations counts for just as much as the welfare of the current one. From that starting point, Tyler concludes that the most moral thing for us to do is to work to maximize economic growth right now, as that's the best way to ensure that future generations are well-off. We talk about this idea, as well as the more general idea of how to think like an economist. (In the second half of the podcast we veer off into talking about quantum mechanics and the multiverse, to everyone's benefit.) Tyler Cowen is the Holbert C. Harris professor of economics and General Director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is the author of over a dozen books and many journal articles, and writes frequently for the popular press. His blog Marginal Revolution is one of the leading economics blogs on the internet. He is widely recognized for his eclectic interests, from chess to music to ethnic dining. Website Home page at George Mason Mercatus Center web page Marginal Revolution Marginal Revolution University Twitter Bloomberg Opinion columns Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide Wikipedia page Amazon books

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84 | Suresh Naidu on Capitalism, Monopsony, and Inequality

84 | Suresh Naidu on Capitalism, Monopsony, and Inequality

Nations generally want their economies to be rich, robust, and growing. But it's also important to person to ensure that wealth doesn't flow only to a few people, but rather that as many people as pos...

17 Helmi 20201h 26min

83 | Kwame Anthony Appiah on Identity, Stories, and Cosmopolitanism

83 | Kwame Anthony Appiah on Identity, Stories, and Cosmopolitanism

The Greek statesman Demosthenes is credited with saying "I am a citizen of the world," and the idea that we should take a cosmopolitan view of our common humanity is a compelling one. Not everyone agr...

10 Helmi 20201h 38min

82 | Robin Carhart-Harris on Psychedelics and the Brain

82 | Robin Carhart-Harris on Psychedelics and the Brain

The Convention on Psychotropic Substances was a 1971 United Nations treaty that placed strong restrictions on the use of psychedelic drugs — not only on personal use, but medical and scientific resear...

3 Helmi 20201h 17min

81 | Ezra Klein on Politics, Polarization, and Identity

81 | Ezra Klein on Politics, Polarization, and Identity

People have always disagreed about politics, passionately and sometimes even violently. But in certain historical moments these disagreements were distributed without strong correlations, so that any ...

27 Tammi 20201h 21min

80 | Jenann Ismael on Connecting Physics to the World of Experience

80 | Jenann Ismael on Connecting Physics to the World of Experience

Physics is simple; people are complicated. But even people are ultimately physical systems, made of particles and forces that follow the rules of the Core Theory. How do we bridge the gap from one kin...

20 Tammi 20201h 26min

79 | Sara Imari Walker on Information and the Origin of Life

79 | Sara Imari Walker on Information and the Origin of Life

We are all alive, but "life" is something we struggle to understand. How do we distinguish a "living organism" from an emergent dynamical system like a hurricane, or a resource-consuming chemical reac...

13 Tammi 20201h 23min

78 | Daniel Dennett on Minds, Patterns, and the Scientific Image

78 | Daniel Dennett on Minds, Patterns, and the Scientific Image

Wilfrid Sellars described the task of philosophy as explaining how things, in the broadest sense of term, hang together, in the broadest sense of the term. (Substitute "exploring" for "explaining" and...

6 Tammi 20202h 1min

Holiday Message 2019: On Publishing Books

Holiday Message 2019: On Publishing Books

Welcome to the second annual Mindscape Holiday Message! No substantive content or deep ideas, just me talking a bit about the state of the podcast and what's on my mind. Since the big event for me in ...

22 Joulu 20191h 6min

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