17 Comments

Love that you threw out questions like Tyler throws out questions -- jumping between subjects.

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Yes that was modelled on him.... very few follow up questions also!

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You guys have never heard of Terrence Tao?!

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Fair shout!

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Unsurprising but interesting that Australians don't apply to Emergent Ventures. We are just not as a people spiritually inclined towards libertarianism imo. Whether that's "good" or "bad" is sort of beside the point.

I always think it's underestimated just how much Australian culture was informed by hostility to the 19th-century wave of Chinese immigration into Southeast Asia. Didn't realise this until I started reading about the history of Malaysia and Singapore. The White Australia Policy and the Malaysian anti-Chinese laws need to be thought of as part of the same historical pattern. There's an alternate timeline where the far north was populated by massive Chinese immigration in the 1800s and Darwin is another Singapore.

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I've been on a Tyler kick and an Australia kick so this was a great thing to drop into my lap. (When he's asked for guests the past couple times I kept pushing Kevin Rudd which is um aspirational.)

Very timely questions about comfort of different Anglo societies have had in admitting an underclass vs overclass.

Vayikra might be my #2 after Shmot. I've definitely had to cultivate that taste, but like if you think of what the Tannaim and Amoraim were doing of course they saw the value in it and not for exclusively practical reasons. Shai Held's divrei torah book has helped with that. It's...ah...a cultural code well worth cracking.

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I guess if you're not Australian yourself you might not know this, but Kevin is one of the weirdest units of all time. He would do the podcast but I don't think he'd be able to understand the libertarian premise that you're supposed to try to accurately describe reality.

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I'm sure you have a better sense of him than I do, but I totally get he can be arrogant including intellectually. But like I enjoyed Amia Srinivasan's episode a lot for example. I think a lot of smart successful people aren't used to being interviewed by someone who can match their breadth and depth of knowledge/sophistication, which is one reason why I think a CwT with him would be fruitful.

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I agree Rudd on CwT would be interesting... he has deep subject matter expertise, was obviously super successful politically, and may get ruffled if prodded the right way....

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Nice one!

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This is great!

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Really good interview. Tyler’s answer to why he accepted the interview was touching. That generous, pay-it-forward attitude is not as common as it should be.

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You should probably mention that The Confessions of Felix Krull is a hilarious, entertaining novel -- anyone who finds Thomas Mann ponderous should read it!

If you want a hand conquering Melbourne, please message me.

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Misha-Tyler collab is excellent!

Next step: Misha-Tyrone collab, which would be fire!

I am sure you arranged your bookshelf in preparation!

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Wow great job landing Tyler!!!!!

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After the Tyler’s chapter on Hayak, it’s occurred to me how good primary research and cumulative assessment books (like GOAT) are yet to become. Basically, Tyler spends the majority of GOAT nailing the mistakes and logical disorders of several luminaries included within GOAT - I assume this kind of time and effort will become less necessary (or fruitful) as “book and research building and publishing” gets better. Furthermore, fundamental errors of form will be reduced, making future contributors like Hyak and Keynes more likely to pass Go in future rounds of Monopoly! Games of GOAT.

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Hmm I wonder about Tyler Cowen’s answer re India. Tirthankar Roy writes about this subject and my recollection is that, eg, the British built a significant network of railways that integrated India and its economy. One result of this was that famines due to droughts were less severe. Here’s a post that talks about this: https://pseudoerasmus.com/2015/06/08/markets-famine-stop-treating-amartya-sen-as-the-last-word/. I’m ~100% sure Tyler Cowen is aware of this; he posted about reading Cormac O’Grada’s work sometime in the last year. I’m curious why he doesn’t mention this or why he doesn’t think it’s significant.

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