The Museum of Communism

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I did this in graduate school when i didn't want to do my real work. I spent a lot of time reading stuff that was totally, at leat least mostly wasted time careerwise. And en yet, frmemer the are the very early years of the internet, when all the suppressed urges that i had to go and pontificate suddenly had an outlet. The first time that the web was working well enough where you could actually do this raleast were ot where i had enough knowledge to make it work.

"No single paper is that good", says Bryan Caplan. To really understand a topic, you need to read the entire literature in the field. And to do the kind of scholarship Bryan's work requires, you need to cover multiple fields. Only that way can you assemble a wide variety of evidence into useful knowledge.

But few scholars ever even try to reach the enlightened interdisciplinary plane. So how does he do it?

Tyler explores Bryan's approach, including how to avoid the autodidact's curse, why his favorite philosopher happens to be a former classmate, what Tolstoy has that science fiction lacks, the idea trap, most useful wrong beliefs, effective altruism, Larry David, what most economics papers miss about the return to education, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded April 17th, 2018 Other ways to connect

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