2020-01-14 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 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/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------------