The Spider Man Principle - If You Could Just Kill Baby Hitler

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Sinai: There would be some kind of eternal, horrible punishment for holding power and not having a very high degree of epistemic rationality. If that were widely believed by people of power, i think there would be a lot more effort to actually double checkat what they're doing really makes sense. Sinai: Any time there's likea small number of power hungry people where there's at least a moderate risk that they're eventually going to do what they want, just to go and kill them peremptively is a tough one.

"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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