Conversations with Tyler
Tyler Cowen pushes guests to make falsifiable claims, across economics, history and ideas
52:01Contrarianism Is Imitation Too: AI Will Weaken Social Contagion
In an age of contagion, escape is not the cure. Burges bets that AI will actually weaken social contagion, and, drawing on Catholicism and on Cluny, argues that the real work is rebuilding intermediary institutions.
55:38Liberalism Died of the Educated Elite, Not Automation
Acemoglu dismantles three myths: liberalism is dying of the educated elite rather than automation; AI productivity will not break out for a decade; regulating algorithms is not a restriction on speech, and pro-worker AI is the direction.
55:14The Soviet Union forged its women into supermen and spoiled its men into uselessness
27 million Soviet citizens died in the Second World War, and men became a scarce resource; the state used an abortion ban, rewards for children fathered outside marriage, and the decriminalization of domestic violence to forge its women into supermen and spoil its men into uselessness — an order that still underwrites Putin's patriarchal mobilization.