Tag: Economics

The internet at its best. Scott Cunningham’s new syllabus: the Economics of ChatGPT.

August 25th, 2023

One of my favorite things about being a professor is learning. I love to teach because I love to learn. And I love to do that with students who do as well.
Scott Cunningham

If chatgpt is of interest download his syllabus here. H/T Marginal Revolution.

I think the syllabus is an underrated learning tool. If there’s a subject you’d like to learn creating your own syllabus would be an excellent starting point. Maybe a micro-syllabus?

There’s 6 assignments for the podcast class. The first I call “Memento Morit and the 20-year plan”. Memento Mori is latin for “remember you’re going to die. And so from that, I ask students to think about what goal they have for what they are doing in 2043, and why. Try to understand precisely what it is about that goal that matters, what feeling does it produce, and how would they feel if that feeling wasn’t produced, and then work backwards to 6 months from now. Then select an interviewee and write a short biography about them.
Cunningham, Scott. https://causalinf.substack.com/p/my-new-syllabus-for-my-new-class

I love how he’s incorporating a podcast assignment into his course. This is the first I’ve heard of it.

The Memento Mori exercise is one for (nearly) any age. What is your goal for what you’ll be doing in 2043?

Memento Mori.
Podcaster and writer Amit Varma on honing your creative judgement

June 22nd, 2023

What you also need to do is keep working on your judgment. Keep working on your judgment. That means—and this is something you do, but I’m not sure how many writers actually do it as rigorously as they should—that you have to read a lot. There’s no substitute for that. You have to read a lot. You have to read it with a critical mind. When you read a great piece, reverse engineer it. Read it again with that specific eye where you’re looking at the craft.

When you read a piece by someone you like but this particular piece hasn’t worked, do the same thing. Read it with a critical eye. Figure out why didn’t it work this time. What went wrong? Why did it feel off? You have to hone the reader in yourself, which will automatically make your judgment better, which will automatically lift your ability with it because then you’ll have to work that much harder to please the critic in you.

Rajagopalan, Shruti (2023, June 8). The Creator Economy (No. 81) Ideas of India. https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2023/06/08/ideas-of-india-the-creator-economy/

Creative judgement. For those of us without editors, it’s an essential skill to hone.

Listen to Shruti’s interview with Amit in its entirety below:
Poetic Notes of Costco by Alex Tabarrok

May 13th, 2023

Venture into a Costco warehouse – a more diverse place than many a university or legislature – and you will see shoppers from all walks of life gathered together in the pursuit of consumer goods. Here, people of various faiths and backgrounds peruse the aisles, in search of the latest giant screen television sets, buckets of ice cream, and rotisserie chickens, treating one another with respect, regardless of their beliefs. The only judgement passed is reserved for those who bump carts or try to skip the line. Upon departing this peaceful and lively consumer’s paradise, some may venture to their respective places of worship, while others linger and indulge in a beverage and a $1.50 hot dog with friends. One family may commemorate a milestone with a baptism, another might celebrate a traditional rite of passage, while still others head to the ballpark in the comfort of their spacious SUVs. And as this diverse tapestry of personal journeys is woven, everyone finds contentment.
Tabarrok, Alex, April 18, 2023, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/04/costco.html

Few would ever join the words Poetic and Costco, but Alex Tabarrok’s Costco notes make it hard to resist. The leading economist kindly reminds us of the diversity of the marketplace.
Economist Bryan Caplan’s message to the world: Be Brave! Learn more!

September 29th, 2022
That’s my theory of his overarching message.

In his latest post Bryan details why, despite the potential blow back, he only writes controversial books:
1. I want to advance human knowledge. While I have many conventional views, multiple books ably defending these conventional views almost always already exist.
2. I want to excel in my writing. My greatest intellectual strengths – imagination and iconoclasm – help me create high-quality controversial works. They wouldn’t help me craft conventional works. Probably the opposite, really.
3. I want to enjoy my work. While I have many conventional views, they rarely excite me. Controversy is fun.
4. The world is wrong, in the spell of an array of bizarre political religions. As a result, the controversial position is often true despite its unpopularity.
– Bryan Caplan
But it’s not only Bryan’s words, but actions.

This past spring he completed a speaking tour of Eastern Europe during Russia’s invasion.

In the summer he did standup at the Comedy Cellar.

After years of running his own blog, he moved to Substack. And encouraged every other blogger to do so as well.

It all comes back to the same message. Be brave! Learn more!

Stumble around with a new hobby. Move to a new state. Explore a world view you may disagree with. Have more kids!

No risk. No knowledge.

What you’ll learn by being brave will almost always out weigh the fear.

Looking up iconoclasm now…
Podcasted: Tyler Cowen’s Conversation with Adam Tooze

May 7th, 2020

The entire conversation will expand your mind, but I wanted to capture Adam’s suggestions for being a productive writer:

COWEN: You’ve written an enormous amount. Just this last week you had a major piece come out in the Guardian, one in London Review of Books. Your books are very long. What is your most unusual writing habit?
TOOZE: I’m not sure it’s unusual, but I think it’s the writing habit that many people have who do write a lot. I write every day, basically. I haven’t always found writing easy at all. I’ve been to a lot of therapy of various types to stabilize myself emotionally and psychologically. I still do. It’s very important for me in handling the stresses that arise in writing.
And one of the things I realized in the course of that is that, actually, rather than thinking it was something terrifying that I had to steel myself to do, the best way to think about it was as something I do every day, so it’s like exercise. If I have the chance, I like to exercise. It’s a puzzling activity. I just treat it almost as a game, rearranging the words, trying to fix things.
I’ll say to all of my grad students, you can do that for 10 minutes every single day, regardless of what else is going on in your life. You can always find that 10-minute slot. So that is the thing that I make sure I do. And that means even big projects slowly move along because then, when you get the big slice of time, the three or four hours at the weekend or something, it’s actually top of stack. You know where to go because you’ve been puzzling away at it and chewing on it every day, even if it’s only for 10 minutes.
COWEN: I give the exact same answer, by the way.

Not ground breaking advice by any means. But it applies well, specifically to editing.

10 minutes of edits a day and eventually you’ll have a finished piece.

Also, Adam’s suggestion for the best way to travel through Germany:

I would say travel. Get on the train. Unless you’re a car nut, and you want to experience the freedom of driving a Porsche at 200 miles an hour, which you can do if you do it at 2:00 am. The roads are clean enough, and they’re smooth enough.
But other than that, ride the train. Sit in an ICE going at, absolutely no kidding, 200 miles an hour, powered by solar power, and watch your coffee not even vibrate. It’s absolutely stunning. They have to put speedometers into the trains to make people aware of how fast they’re going.

Enjoyable. Watch in its entirety here:
A Friday Morning Gift: Tim Ferris interviews Tyler Cowen

March 6th, 2020
An incredible way to start Friday. Tim and Tyler cover:
- Tyler’s Emergent Ventures program
- His writing process
- And what your open browser tabs say about you
Do have a listen:
Write like a Plumber. Tyler Cowen’s interview with Ross Douthat

September 27th, 2019

Conversations with Tyler is my must listen podcast.

Tyler’s interviews have introduced me to disciplines I’d never consider exploring.

He speaks with urban planners, novelists, economists, tennis players, journalists, doctors – an incredible array of minds.

The final part of his interviews is called the Production Function. It’s where he asks his subject – What’s your productivity secret?

I found journalist Ross Douthat’s response helpful:

But there is a sense in which writing a column is — it’s like you’re a plumber. The toilet has to be fixed, so you fix the toilet. The column has to be written, so you write the column…

On approaching journalism with a tradesman’s mindset:

But journalism is a trade, right? I mean there is obviously an intellectual component. And we wouldn’t have been able to sit here and have this conversation with me babbling at you if I didn’t have intellectual pretensions. But the work of journalism — this is less true in the age of the internet — but it is linked to a very physical thing that comes out every week, or every month, or every day, and it comes out and it has to be filled.

And when there’s space to be filled, you write the column:

There is a place on the New York Times, on the printed New York Times, that would be blank or have an ad stuck on it if I didn’t write my column. And so you write the column. You write the column. And it’s useful for journalists to think about it this way — it’s useful for anyone inclined to over-romanticize or over-admire journalists to think about it this way.

On not sitting around waiting to become the next George R.R. Martin:

Certainly I like to imagine that — or at least something that sold as well as George R. R. Martin. But it also might be the case that if I had spent my life sitting around with my unfinished novels, I never would have produced anything interesting. And so it’s better to be a tradesman, and that’s at least part of how I think about my job.

Listen to the interview in its entirety here

Or read the transcript here