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Friday, August 2, 2024

Weekend Listening: The Philosophical Economist + Financial Bonus

Moonset from our yard, July 21.

Bonus: 3 Investment Fallacies I’ve Had to Unlearn is excellent!

Bonus bonus from The Lincoln Project (90 seconds of liberal porn).


I should start out by saying that I've generally not liked Tyler Cowen, at least not as much as many on the center-left do. But listening to his appearance on Lives Well Lived with Peter Singer and Kasia de Lazari Radek, I agreed with Tyler a lot more than I expected. E.g. I agree with him on AI and nuclear war; and can we be sure he's not correct about the 2012 election or the U.S. compared to other countries?

I disagree with Cowen on population, but his conclusion is consistent with utilitarianism (why I'm not a utilitarian). But he is factually right about climate change not making large swaths of the earth "uninhabitable." And I also liked how he rejected the premise of many questions, including "Would you torture a child to create a utopia?" and especially the entire idea of "living a good life." Obviously, I'm very sympathetic to that point of view, having only recently realized that I spent most of my professional life making the world a net worse place

Maybe give it a listen. (The Danny Kahneman and Yuval Noah Harari episodes were also interesting.) It is refreshing to hear a smart, thoughtful, well-informed, and seemingly well-intentioned person challenge liberal dogma and doom. 

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