Bryan Caplan
26 statements across 1 episodes · 3 bullish · 10 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Jan 2, 2019 by Bryan Caplan · said 7 times in 3 episodes since 2019 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Bryan Caplan's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Marc Andreessen (7)
tap a year for its mentions
2024 2 mentions in 1 episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 4 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Bryan Caplan, oldest first
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Caplan: Education credentials drive labor market rewards independent of actual learning
“Even after you throw the whole kitchen sink in, every possible adjustment anyone's ever thought of, There still seems to be this lingering and substantial labor market reward of education that is unexplained by anything other than you've got the credential.”
Jan 2, 2019
Caplan: Job competence requires domain-specific practice, not general critical reasoning
“The answer seems to be practicing that specific job. You know, the way that you get to be a good pilot Is not by taking a critical reasoning class. It's by, you know, getting in the simulator, getting in the cockpit, and learning to deal with a thousand differ…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Caplan: Standard credentials and seniority do not predict actual teacher effectiveness
“The main thing known is none of, like, the obvious social science measures of teacher quality predict teacher quality. So, having credentials from better schools, or having more credentials, or even more experience, none of the standard things that are in the …”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Caplan: Cut public education budgets by one-third and fund vocational training
“The system where they cut overall spending by a third, and then reallocate, say, half of the money that we currently spend in junior and high school to vocational education. That seems like a very, very reasonable revision.”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Caplan: Vocational education builds practical skills rather than signaling social status
“If you take signaling seriously, the really good thing about vocational education is it seems like it's much less about impressing others. In fact, there may even be a little bit of a stigma against it, and more about acquiring actual concrete practical skills…”
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Caplan: Vocational education boosts long-term earnings and employment rates
“First of all, there's quite a bit of research on just the selfish gains to the individual student, so even for students that do go into college, there's still pretty good evidence that, you know, vocational education in the long run rates your earnings and emp…”
Jan 2, 2019
Caplan: Financial stakes force people to reason more objectively
“When there's no money on the table, people form their beliefs in a very emotional way. But this is not a fixed trait of human nature. It's not like they have to be emotional. Rather, they're selectively emotional and in ones where there's some real stakes, som…”
Jan 2, 2019
Caplan: Schooling signals worker capability rather than teaching practical skills
“Well, if you go and do well in your Aristotle class, your foreign language class, this, though useless in terms of what you will do, it is impressive. It is convincing. It's a way of selling people on your value as a worker.”
Jan 2, 2019
Caplan: Parents prioritize college admissions and emotional fit over standardized test scores
“Parents aren't that concerned about getting their kids test scores up. So they may want them to have high SAT scores, but in terms of state standardized tests, most parents don't care about that stuff very much. And instead, they're mainly concerned about gett…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Caplan: Teaching students "how to learn" is mostly wishful thinking
“In the book I review what educational psychologists have determined about this, and the main result is that most of this learning how to learn or learning how to think stuff is wishful thinking. Most of the time when someone learns a subject, the most that the…”
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Caplan: Rising general education levels intensify social stigma against non-degree holders
“In terms of competitiveness, there's much better in 1950 to be a high school dropout because in those days there were so many high school dropouts that there just wasn't that much of a stigma against it. And the reason is precisely that the higher the educatio…”
Jan 2, 2019
Caplan: Democracy is a shared water pool used simultaneously as trash disposal
“Rather than thinking about democracy as a supermarket, think of it more about as like a common pool of water that is also our trash disposal system. And so people simultaneously are throwing in all of our intellectual garbage, but it's also where we drink.”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Caplan: Average adult knowledge of core school subjects is near zero
“I've got data on knowledge of history, government, science, and foreign languages, in addition to literacy and numeracy. Literacy and numeracy, at least there's a credible story, but the other things that I just mentioned, there if you go and look at what adul…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Caplan: Schools should replace credentialed teachers with enthusiastic young non-graduates
“So, basically, it seems like we'd go and replace a lot of teachers from, you know, better schools, and with master's degrees, and with more experience, with just enthusiastic, fun, young teachers. You know, maybe people haven't even finished high school.”
Jan 2, 2019
Caplan: Educational signaling explains why students cheat to impersonate high achievers
“Signaling explains why students cheat. And I'm like, yeah, of course, but it never occurred to me until you told me, yeah, the whole point, you know, you cheat in order to impersonate a good student, so you want to be treated like an A student even though you'…”
Jan 2, 2019
Caplan: Voters avoid direct mistake costs, unlike consumers who shop
“There's a fundamental difference between shopping and voting. When shopping, if you make a mistake, you pay the price. Where in voting, if you make a mistake, you were just tipping the scales a little bit towards all of society having a worse outcome.”
Jan 2, 2019
Caplan: Broad educational attainment simply inflates employer hiring requirements
“There is this treadmill or rat race effect where for any one individual that would give them more opportunities, and that's true, but if you go and give a whole generation more opportunities, the result is just that employers jack up the educational expectatio…”
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Caplan: People fail to apply knowledge across subjects without explicit prompting
“People are very bad at applying what they've learned. Especially without external prompting, so there's a lot of experimental evidence where you'll teach, for example, either math and science or science and math, and you'll sort of randomly assign which order …”
Jan 2, 2019 negative