Bryan Caplan: Book projects I wish my other colleagues would pursue. … Tyler Cowen should write that I call a “book of answers” with the working title Social Intelligence: What I Know About People That You Don’t.
Quite interesting! Not implausible given "Create Your Own Economy"--Sherlock Holmes comes to mind when thinking about Cowen's reputed predictive abilities about people!
It's likely because he's got wicked aspergers but has enough extra brain processes to compensate by constant analysis. Over the years he has internalized an ability to make predictions about people.
This ability is not developed in the average person because their intuition is largely embedded, not constructed.
That's my theory anyway. Speaking from experience, obviously.
I don't see why. People are just not made with seeking the truth in mind. According to evolutionary biology 101, they are made to generate descendants. It's a whole different problem. Truth seeking - when it happens is pretty-much an incidental byproduct.
Any theory on why Tyler has this ability? His voracious reading (fiction and non-fiction--fiction I believe is linked with empathy) as well as his chess background (learning to anticipate others, learning how chessmasters think) strike me as possibly useful places to look.
Bryan proposes Robin explain the problem of disagreement - and answers all the attempts to explain away the problem.
I am not sure I can see the problem. People mostly disagree because they have different goals from one another. Updating each others beliefs often fails because agents want to signal their confidence in their own views to others by appearing to be unwavering, in order to manipulate them. Updating each others beliefs also sometimes fail because this is time-consuming - and the agents are poorly motivated to update the views of others.
If there's a big mystery here, I am not sure I can see it. Attempts to explain the mystery often start off by assuming that the agents concerned are honest, truth seeing, truth-spreading agents. That's the problem, right there.
Quite interesting! Not implausible given "Create Your Own Economy"--Sherlock Holmes comes to mind when thinking about Cowen's reputed predictive abilities about people!
It's likely because he's got wicked aspergers but has enough extra brain processes to compensate by constant analysis. Over the years he has internalized an ability to make predictions about people.
This ability is not developed in the average person because their intuition is largely embedded, not constructed.
That's my theory anyway. Speaking from experience, obviously.
"I’m not at all sure the world will reward him on net for such honesty, but it would still be his greatest contribution. "
Because the net intelligence of the world is garbage?
I don't see why. People are just not made with seeking the truth in mind. According to evolutionary biology 101, they are made to generate descendants. It's a whole different problem. Truth seeking - when it happens is pretty-much an incidental byproduct.
Truth-seeking is a much easier theory to have of yourself than of other people.
Non-truth-seeking is a much easier theory to have of other people than of yourself.
Any theory on why Tyler has this ability? His voracious reading (fiction and non-fiction--fiction I believe is linked with empathy) as well as his chess background (learning to anticipate others, learning how chessmasters think) strike me as possibly useful places to look.
Bryan proposes Robin explain the problem of disagreement - and answers all the attempts to explain away the problem.
I am not sure I can see the problem. People mostly disagree because they have different goals from one another. Updating each others beliefs often fails because agents want to signal their confidence in their own views to others by appearing to be unwavering, in order to manipulate them. Updating each others beliefs also sometimes fail because this is time-consuming - and the agents are poorly motivated to update the views of others.
If there's a big mystery here, I am not sure I can see it. Attempts to explain the mystery often start off by assuming that the agents concerned are honest, truth seeing, truth-spreading agents. That's the problem, right there.
Where can I find out more about Tyler's ideas? What exactly are we talking about here - ordinary people's hidden motivations?