economists 12
- Milton Friedman's chief intellectual flaw was wanting to make economics too simple.
- Milton Friedman was the best economist among the plausible candidates for greatest economist of all time.
Tyler Cowen
Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved his position on AI in public more than once.
Tyler Cowen did not write this page.
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What Tyler Cowen says most about
government 6
- Post-unification Germany has made many policy mistakes and lost much former leadership, and much pessimism about it seems justified.
- 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.
America 5
- By the 1980s, West Germany had caught up to US living standards, with its provision of public goods sometimes superior.
- China declined U.S. nuclear-talk proposals in 2023 and broke off meaningful arms control talks.
AI and jobs 3
- Over time the allocation of humans to tasks will evolve so that more humans become more productive, not less.
- In a simple model of AI-aided growth, intelligence and Polanyi knowledge are mostly complements, with fairly limited substitutability in producing output.
China 3
- AI policy discussions should start with China rather than treating it as an afterthought.
- China declined U.S. nuclear-talk proposals in 2023 and broke off meaningful arms control talks.
cybersecurity 3
- Much more research effort is needed on the economics of cyber risk, such as estimating future costs of AI cyberattacks, and the subfield should rise in status.
- Cyber insurance prices can be expected to rise somewhat, though why they have kept falling is far from obvious.
Europe 3
- The Bundesrepublik Deutschland was an amazing and successful society.
- Post-unification Germany has made many policy mistakes and lost much former leadership, and much pessimism about it seems justified.
AGI 2
- In this model, commandeering the Intelligence sector would give much more limited power over society than might appear at first, because necessary complements are lacking.
- Fear of strong AI models killing everyone was not based on peer-reviewed research showing high doom odds, nor indicated by market prices.
religion 2
- In expected value terms, it seems Christ made an enormous difference.
- Muhammad is one of the three or four most consequential leaders ever.