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← People and their mental models

Tyler Cowen's mental models

5 claims Tyler Cowen made fit 4 mental models. Most often: Incentives, Emergence, Second-order thinking. Everything they said here.

Models they name

Their own words name the idea.

Incentives

Look at what people are rewarded for; it explains more behaviour than what they say, your own included.

Used by 98 others

A ban on self-recursive improvement in AI models would create a big incentive for some other parts of the world to invest a lot more in compute.

  1. Tyler Cowen Economist at George Mason University The policy creates a big incentive for some other parts of the world to invest a lot more in compute. Banning self-recursive improvement in AI models?marginalrevolution.com · 22 Sept 2026
    The policy creates a big incentive for some other parts of the world to invest a lot more in compute.

Moral hazard problems are often worse in government programs than in private markets.

  1. Tyler Cowen Economist at George Mason University The truth is that moral hazard concerns very often are worse with government programs than with markets. GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?tylercowen.com · 1 Oct 2023All korrents from this piece
    The truth is that moral hazard concerns very often are worse with government programs than with markets.

Signalling

Much of what people do is a message about themselves, and a signal is believed only when it costs something to send.

Used by 15 others

Guests who answer by signalling empathy instead of saying something substantive are a reason to turn a bit more against empathy.

  1. Tyler Cowen Economist at George Mason University The signaling-empathy answers I find quite uninteresting, and I think a lot of my listeners do, too. Yet people will just keep on doing this, and I get frustrated. Then I think, “Well, Tyler, you should turn a bit more against empathy for this reason.” And I think that’s correct. Paul Bloom on the Psychology of Children, and the Morality of Empathy and Disgust (Conversations with Tyler, Ep. 218)conversationswithtyler.com · 13 May 2024All korrents from this piece
    The signaling-empathy answers I find quite uninteresting, and I think a lot of my listeners do, too. Yet people will just keep on doing this, and I get frustrated. Then I think, “Well, Tyler, you should turn a bit more against empathy for this reason.” And I think that’s correct.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Emergence

Whole systems do things none of their parts do, and nobody has to design that order for it to appear.

Used by 22 others

Both markets and states are spontaneous orders, not just the state as constructed 'taxis' versus the market as 'cosmos'.

  1. Tyler Cowen Economist at George Mason University In my own view, both markets and states are spontaneous orders, and government is not uniquely the product of “taxis” or “rationalist constructivism.” GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?tylercowen.com · 1 Oct 2023All korrents from this piece
    In my own view, both markets and states are spontaneous orders, and government is not uniquely the product of “taxis” or “rationalist constructivism.”

Second-order thinking

Ask "and then what?": follow a decision past its first effect to the ones that come after.

Used by 92 others

A highly dynamic economy that cheaply mass-produces robots may increase rather than decrease the risk of Malthusian resource dilemmas.

  1. Tyler Cowen Economist at George Mason University A very dynamic economy probably will be very good at building lots of robots cheaply, which may make us more rather than less likely to end up in Malthusian dilemmas. GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter?tylercowen.com · 1 Oct 2023All korrents from this piece
    A very dynamic economy probably will be very good at building lots of robots cheaply, which may make us more rather than less likely to end up in Malthusian dilemmas.