2020-01-14
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Here's a quote from:
Conversations with Tyler -podcast
with
Patric Collison and
Tyler Cowen
Published: April 12, 2017
https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/patrick-collison/
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COLLISON: You've written several books about
culture, but among them Creative Destruction, and
this is, at least as I read it, on the face of it, a
defense of the effects of globalization on culture,
right? And that while globalization might cause a
decrease in across-country cultural diversity, we
shouldn't look at it at some God's eye view, objective
level. We should instead be focused on the individual,
the subjective, and the operative level of diversity.
Here in San Francisco, we see the fruits of all that
globalization, right? But you also say in the book,
you do acknowledge the point, that there might be a
decrease in total global cultural diversity as a
consequence of globalization. If you think culture is
so important and so underinvested in and so
understudied, is it not too hasty to advocate for a
force that's producing a net reduction in the quantity
of it in the world?
COWEN: Well, there are multiple readings of a number
of my books. And I would say, when you're looking at
the globalization of culture, we've engaged in a
rather significant cashing-in exercise. Say you have a
very small community, Inuit in Canada or artists
in Bali, they're very small in number. And until
they're in some way reached by larger, richer cultures
they can trade with, in many instances, they're not
that creative. They have some tradition, but it's not
fully mobilized. Then there's this intense cultural
interchange, and it's very fruitful. There's a
flowering, there's more commercial sale. Top creators
come to be, more genres are defined. There's more
diversity within the Balinese world or within
Inuit sculpture, say.
But eventually, that peters out as the smaller
communities are absorbed by larger ones. Over the last
century, we've done an unprecedented amount of this
cashing in, by having smaller cultures obliterated.
Now, one way to look at it is, well, they're there and
if you never touch them, that's a shame. Is there an
optimal rate of cashing in? I'm not sure that's a
variable you can control. But I think along some
critical dimensions, our next century will be less
creative than the last because we've cashed in on such
a large number of small groups. And I worry about this
with Ireland, too, a place you're familiar with. The
Irish literary tradition flowers, arguably, in the
first half of the 20th century.
COLLISON: Right.
COWEN: And I worry now that people in Ireland hear too
much American English, too much English English, and
that style of writing, talking, joking, limericks, is
becoming somewhat less distinct. Still many wonderful
writers from Ireland, but again, it's like an optimal
stock depletion problem, and maybe we've pressed on
the button a little too hard.
COLLISON: The transaction costs should be higher?
COWEN: Should be. But again, it's a hard variable to
control. With the tech world, in some ways, the tech
world might be growing too quickly. People very
quickly shift to Facebook, and that allows them to do
much more socializing. And that, in some ways,
actually limits the diversity of the world. They're
happier individually, but that's another instance of
cashing in that actually may not be socially optimal.
COLLISON: Is it that you believe that we can't do
anything about this, and so we should appreciate the
consequences as best we can and make the best of it?
Or you think that we should not do anything about
this?
COWEN: As an individual, there are definitely things
you can do. You can be quirkier. You can be eccentric.
You can partake in some networks rather than others,
and subsidize things that otherwise might have their
stocks depleted too quickly. At the macro level, it's
hard to steer.
The Nassim Taleb case -- that free trade gives you
too much monoculture -- I take it seriously at an
intellectual level. But the amount by which you would
need to cut off trade to really create separately
existing independent parts of the world that would
give us greater protection against existential risk,
it seems you would literally need to go back to 1500
to do that. And that's not feasible; it wouldn't be
desirable.
But I think he's getting at a tradeoff that a lot of
the rest of us aren't sufficiently willing to admit.
That in some ways, we're investing in literally a
monoculture of diversity. And that's a little
dangerous.
Like every city has restaurants. I saw a Guam
restaurant on Mission Street when I was walking
today. I ate at a Cambodian restaurant. Two days
before, I was at Mandalay, a Burmese restaurant.
And many cities have these. And we call it
"diversity" but we have to be careful also not to
just be fooling ourselves.
COLLISON: So is connectivity the worst thing that ever
happened to global culture?
COWEN: You need connectivity. Today's world has much
longer life expectancy, people are happier, they're
better off, we produce more things. But there's a
danger in connectivity. And the extreme acceleration
of connectivity through tech, I would say, is a huge,
non-controlled experiment that we need to be a little
cautious about.
COLLISON: You wrote with Derek Parfit back in the
early '90s about how our intuitions about the discount
rate we should have for the future are wrong. The
discount rate should be much lower, and we should care
way more about people in the distant future. And if
you believe that, shouldn't that, on this particular
cultural point, cause you even more concern? Because
500, 1,000, 5,000 years' time, we're not just slightly
but enormously decreasing the amount of culture that
they can expect.
COWEN: But keep in mind, if you don't mine the stocks
of these smaller diverse cultures, their outputs
deteriorate and decay. So there's so much from the
past we'll never have a clue about because it's gone,
and we never "exploited" it. That's most of the
culture, completely a closed book to us. If we're
worried about the future, you actually want to do
exploitation plus preservation. Now, maybe we haven't
done enough preservation. But it doesn't steer you
away from the exploitation, caring a lot about the
very distant future.
COLLISON: You point out that Taleb says that the
things we'll have to do in order to counteract this
effect will be so totalitarian that they're not really
even worth taking seriously. On the micro level, or on
the local level, is there anything we can do to . . .
perhaps we can't solve it, but we can reduce the
effect somewhat?
COWEN: Well, spend less time on Facebook. Use Google
in funny ways. Right? Be careful --
COLLISON: Should we just use Bing?
COWEN: Well, Bing is too much like Google. Simply
being a weirdo with Google will suffice, I think. Be
careful how you use Netflix streaming. If what's
streaming on Netflix is your filter, you are part of
the problem, I would say.
COLLISON: But these are all actions for the
individuals. I mean, us as a society, are there any
policies we can enact or that we ought to follow?
COWEN: Well, our main policies toward the arts, more
and more, have to do with copyright, patent, and
intellectual property. I think, for the most part,
those are too strict. We could improve them, and we'd
get more creativity and more borrowing. But I don't
think, at the margin, those changes, good though they
may be, will have a major impact on this issue. Just
the core: How do ordinary people spend most of their
time? That's the big driver here. Other than having
drastic changes in policy, I think most of what we
have to do are these small steps at the individual
level toward the much better world.
And more randomization. Think more carefully about
physical space. When I was growing up, I would drive
my car into a town, maybe Philadelphia, with my
friend, Dan Klein. First thing we would do is get
to a telephone booth. Remember those? And like evil
people, we'd rip out the pages for used bookstores and
then drive around and try to find them. And we would
find them by basically yelling out the window and
asking people where some street might be.
COLLISON: [laughs]
COWEN: And that seems horribly inefficient.
COLLISON: It does.
COWEN: But I think keeping a memory of why those odd,
bizarre practices have some efficient elements when
thought of as search algorithms. Preserving that
knowledge is very important. And I think people who
write or think or communicate with others can do that.
COLLISON: Would this all suggest that we should be
even sadder than we are in the decline of various
languages around the world?
COWEN: Yes . . .
COLLISON: Spoken language.
COWEN: We should try to preserve them when we can.
Nahuatl is actually my favorite language when I
hear it, and it still has well over a million
speakers. It's not in immediate danger, but I would
predict, in less than 200 years, it will be gone.
Gaelic has made somewhat of a comeback, but it's still
up in the air, perhaps.
COLLISON: On this point, would you write the same book
today?
COWEN: Not the same book. But when I reread that book,
I think I capture the multiple layers of how
globalization is dynamic and creative and welfare
enhancing, but dangerous and stock depleting and
giving us this funny monoculture of extreme diversity,
patting ourselves on the back, but all being a bit
diverse in the same way. I think that's in the book,
and I'm happy about that. We love to play at diversity
theater.
COLLISON: Say more.
COWEN: That's one thing striking to me about the
current world. You need different kinds of
representation. But the kind of moves you make to get
there often create a monoculture of its own. And you
see this when you compare the coasts to other parts of
America.
I once wrote a blog post saying, "Well, there's a
lot more diversity amongst supporters of Trump than
supporters of Hillary Clinton." This got me in a lot
of trouble. People wrote to me, outraged, "How can
that be?" But there's many kinds of diversity. For
instance, a simple principle is, our correct point of
view will be less diverse than people who are wrong
because there are many more ways to be wrong.
[laughter]
COWEN: If you're completely right about something,
that's a way in which you're not very diverse, even if
you sort of feel you're religiously, ethnically,
otherwise more diverse. So whether the kinds of
diversity that matter are the kinds that are elevated
in current American political discourse, that's so
taken for granted, especially on the coasts. And I
think, actually, most of America doesn't necessarily
agree with that.
COLLISON: Can you say a bit more about the concept of
diversity with regard to culture or ideas or whatever?
In particular, do you think diversity in some
particular directions or some particular kinds of
diversity matter more than others, or are you just for
more heterogeneity in the broadest sense?
COWEN: Well, let's try thinking about highly creative
groups because we're in the Bay Area. There's some way
in which they need to share something that's quite
common: common language. Language in the broad sense
of the term and a common framework.
In the sciences, the great co-authorships, they're
very often people who are alike, and not completely
different. It's a little counterintuitive, but I think
that's true. But at the same time you want an optimal
insulation from too many other frameworks. You don't
want to be obsessed with all problems. You don't want
all the knowledge of the ancient Mesopotamians in your
head. Whatever people know a thousand years from now
will only distract you. A lot of what the Bay Area
does is make you non-diverse by focusing your
attention on this semi-diverse monoculture. And the
monoculture part of it is what's effective.
It's like Renaissance Florence, where they didn't
think too hard about China or what was going on in
Sweden. They had a particular set of problems based on
satisfying a certain set of patrons; integrating the
Christian religion, but with clever twists and being
somewhat Straussian; having a positive sense of
life; realizing they were rediscovering antiquity;
using a shade of blue that had this wonderful,
beautiful glow; and at the same time, having a kind of
cynical commercial attitude about their own art, which
they knew was done for money and profit. That blend
was just perfect, and you didn't want it destroyed by
these outside elements.
COLLISON: Are successful clusters places with the
right kind of diverse monoculture?
COWEN: Yes. And the right kinds of implicit barriers
to too much outside influence. But they also tend to
be stimulated by some major outside influences, such
as in the Renaissance, rediscovering technologies from
China and the Arabic world, rediscovering antiquity --
a huge prod.
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