Tyler Cowen
22 statements across 5 episodes · 3 bullish · 4 bearish · 4 people on the record · first statement May 2, 2018 by Patrick Collison · said 14 times in 6 episodes since 2018 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Tyler Cowen's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Patrick Collison (5), Bret Taylor (3), Balaji Srinivasan (3), Shane Parrish (1), Ryan Holiday (1), Derek Sivers (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2018 5 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Tyler Cowen, oldest first
May 2, 2018 neutral
Aug 21, 2018 negative
Cowen: Simple, boring digital habits beat ambitious tech as killer apps
“I think my intuition is people like simple, boring things, ah, much more than you might imagine. I mean, people just love spending time on Facebook and sending back and forth short, silly, or not very informative messages. And that's been the killer app for so…”
Aug 21, 2018 neutral
Cowen: Regional economic divergence rather than convergence will continue
“I think countries and also regions within countries we won't see so much convergence. We'll see a lot of divergence. So it used to be in America, in the post-war era, America's poorer cities were essentially catching up to the wealthier cities. But nowadays, s…”
Aug 21, 2018
Cowen: America exhausted the low-hanging fruit of early industrial technologies
“We exhausted a lot of the low-hanging fruit from combining fossil fuels with powerful machines and electricity and communications, and that, that's all to the better, but we've now entered a world where people find it hard to imagine a future very different fr…”
Aug 21, 2018
Tyler Cowen: Complacent societies cannot survive indefinitely without restoring economic dynamism
“But that said, a country cannot remain complacent forever. And I argue that eventually, you know, something has to give, you need a way to pay the bills, you need dynamism again, and you start seeing disruptions in your complacent life.”
Aug 21, 2018 positive
Aug 21, 2018
Cowen: Books lose their world-shaking transformative power as you age
“When you're young, it's quite easy to read books that will shake everything you know, and those are the quake books. So for me, you know, a quake book was reading Friedrich A. Hayek. A quake book was reading the early science fiction I read in my life. A quake…”
Aug 21, 2018
Cowen: Incremental learning compounds over decades to create massive intellectual advantages
“Another way to think about it is the value of compound interest. I refer to it as the value of compound learning. Like, just keep on learning. Let the years pile up in your favor. Learn X percent a year. It will compound and stay alive on this earth, and maybe…”
Aug 21, 2018 positive
Cowen: Expose teenagers to quality adult friends as external role models
“Expose your child in teen years to as many of your friends who might be possible role models as possible. Like at some margin, they're just not going to listen to you anymore. They're not going to watch your behavior anymore. They know what you're about. They'…”
Aug 21, 2018 positive
Aug 21, 2018
Tyler Cowen: Capturing attention is hardest among high-income earners
“Of course, it's much harder to get everyone's attention. Most of all, people who have high incomes because there are so many demands on their time, but there's your email flow, there's Twitter, there's Facebook, there's being texted.”
Aug 21, 2018 negative
Cowen: Rational individual choices for safety make society collectively worse off
“So a lot of these decisions to settle in and be safe and comfortable, they're individually rational. Like, it's good to be safe, right? Stress is, is, is a bad thing. But when our society collectively makes this decision, there are ways in which we're all wors…”
Aug 21, 2018
Aug 21, 2018
Cowen: Trying to prove yourself right in arguments is usually a mistake
“I would say on average you're right less than half the time because there's so many fights where both sides are wrong. So trying to be right or establishing being right or proving being right is usually a mistake. Most of the time you're wrong, and it's hard t…”
Aug 21, 2018
Cowen: Source evaluation is a vital skill, yet most people do not improve
“If you're going to be a generalist, one of the best things to be a generalist in is evaluating the quality of sources in your Twitter feed, online, everywhere. That is so important, and it's skyrocketing in significance. Most people, they're not getting that m…”
Aug 21, 2018
Cowen: Intellectual improvement requires actively confronting personal analytical errors
“You want to really figure out what are your mistakes. You're like, most of the time, not making the best chess move, intellectually speaking. And if you face up to that, you'll improve. If not, at some point, you'll ossify, and you can play devalue and dismiss…”
Aug 21, 2018 negative
Aug 21, 2018 negative
Cowen: The 'devalue and dismiss' intellectual habit severely impedes learning
“There's an intellectual move, which I call devalue and dismiss. And you know, try not to do devalue and dismiss. You learn much less. And it's always justified, right? Again, unless it's Magnus Carlsen playing chess, or maybe a computer program playing chess, …”
Aug 21, 2018
Cowen: Finish only one in ten books you start reading
“Classics I read cover to cover. Almost by definition of a classic. Most books I don't finish. Very good books I finish. Maybe one book in 10 I'll finish. But I don't mean that as any slight to the books. You've always got to think, Well, you know, chapter seve…”
Mar 13, 2020
Growth-rate thinkers model change while base-rate thinkers model continuity
“Growth rate people model how the world can change. Base rate people think about how the world is basically going to stay the same. And so the growth rate people are often mathematical. They're used to exponential growth for things like iPhones or Facebook or B…”
Nov 7, 2023
Nov 26, 2024 neutral
Holiday: AI Will Eliminate Average Workers but Boost Elite Leverage and Pay
“These technologies aren't eliminating They're going to be eliminating large chunks of the people who are able to do that thing. But the people who could do that thing at an elite or an excellent level will probably it's leverage will be better at it and be mor…”