About ninety minutes, written only, almost entirely new material. A lot of philosophy. Here is one episode:
Tyler Cowen: I think if you read [John] It’s gray for most people, it’s less gray. That’s not a complaint. I love reading John. I love him. I like to talk to him a lot. But I agree with your points.
But what I find more compelling about Mill than Sidgwick, Mill understood the importance of his intellectual enterprise in the broader sweep of history in a way that there is no clear evidence that Sidgwick ever did. So the Hegelian for me, you might say, becomes more sympathetic to Mill. He read something like The Subjection of Women, which is a work of philosophy, although not basic philosophy. And I don’t think Sidgwick produced such a work, which is why I’m going to put Mill over Sidgwick.
Aashish Reddy: I didn’t read much Sidgwick, personally –
Tyler Cowen: Too much is boring! I mean, Ethics is the place to go.
Aashish Reddy: – Yes, I met him a lot in the history of Keynes, by Skidelsky. Sadly, Gray’s book on Hayek contains an amusing throwaway line, in which he speaks of “the pernicious influence of GE Moore on the history of ideas.” Do you agree that Moore has had a negative influence on the history of ideas, especially as it relates to Keynes?
Tyler Cowen: Well, I would say that over time John Gray has become very Moorean –
Aashish Reddy: Agree, I also think this is bad!
Tyler Cowen: Eh! I don’t know, you have to deal with questions of beauty somehow, and it’s never going to be comfortable because making beauty compatible with freedom will always be tricky. There is something special about the idea of beauty, perhaps in an inescapable way.
Moore never influenced me. This book bored me. I think his biggest influence was his physical presence and his roles in Cambridge, a member of the Apostolic Society, and so on. So I’m not a Moore fan, but so many, so many smart people thought so much of him, I’m reluctant to just dismiss it.
Keynes himself took the aesthetic route. It didn’t make him unfree, but it gave him the wrong inclination.
Aashish Reddy: Do you think that the elitist form of aestheticism influenced Keynesian economics in a negative way?
Tyler Cowen: In my opinion. But then again, it’s easy to dismiss Moore without clarifying, well, how do I best incorporate beauty into my philosophy? So that would be my indirect, circular defense of Moore.
It’s interesting throughout, including the Peter Thiel bits in two separate parts. And I say what I really think about Chomsky, my Bayesian review of God, and who on the internet is a really good writer, among other topics. He and I will be doing the next interview later in the year.
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