Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and I'm Nate Silver. Today
Speaker 1: on the show, Nate, we'll be talking about a topic
Speaker 1: that I think is really exciting. Every single year, I'm
Speaker 1: always eagerly awaiting the announcements of the Nobel Prizes, not
Speaker 1: because I'm in any danger of winning one, but because
Speaker 1: I think you can learn a lot from the people
Speaker 1: who win the awards. So all of the Nobel Prizes
Speaker 1: for twenty twenty five have been given out, and I'm excited,
Speaker 1: probably more excited than you are in Nate to dive
Speaker 1: into the recipients and some of the broader implications and
Speaker 1: broader history of the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, look, I think you owe me not
Speaker 2: to be too gender astorre. I think you owe me
Speaker 2: as sports focused episodes and Maria. But yes, I do
Speaker 2: have some thoughts, particularly on the economics Nobel Prize, where
Speaker 2: I'm an admirer of one of the recipients.
Speaker 1: So Nobel Prizes are something that I actually always follow avidly.
Speaker 2: That makes one of us I think that.
Speaker 1: They're fascinating, and I think so for several reasons. First,
Speaker 1: like when we get the Nobel Prizes in you know, medicine, chemistry, physics,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, I get to learn something about
Speaker 1: the world because it's usually for shit that I had
Speaker 1: no idea existed, and I'm like, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is so cool. Right, You've been doing all this amazing research,
Speaker 1: and that's really interesting, and it's a way, you know,
Speaker 1: of educating myself about things that I don't know about.
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize in literature I'm always really excited about because
Speaker 1: if it's someone who I know and love, I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, finally they get recognition. And if it's someone
Speaker 1: whose work I've never read, I'm like, wow, okay, you
Speaker 1: know this is cool. Something else for me. Economics, I
Speaker 1: also think is always just interesting to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: what is in vogue, so to speak, right, like, what
Speaker 1: ideas are getting rewarded at what time for what reasons,
Speaker 1: Because I do think that there is kind of a
Speaker 1: backdrop for the choices of Nobel Prizes on any given year,
Speaker 1: because they could be awarded at you know, this year
Speaker 1: or next year or never, and when you make that choice,
Speaker 1: you are saying something about I think that this idea
Speaker 1: is very important right now, and the Peace Prize is
Speaker 1: the one that often gets the most attention. You know,
Speaker 1: since Donald Trump has been campaigning for it, it's certainly
Speaker 1: been getting a lot of attention. And I actually think
Speaker 1: that that is the for me, that's the most politicized
Speaker 1: prize and the one that I think sometimes goes to
Speaker 1: people who are depletely undeserving of it, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck, Like, you guys are just trying to
Speaker 1: make a political statement. So the Nobel Peace Prize, I think,
Speaker 1: is one that I most often disagree with. But the
Speaker 1: other reason I love the Nobel Prizes is I really
Speaker 1: love the Nobel Lectures. So I actually, especially in literature,
Speaker 1: I love reading the lectures that people write and deliver
Speaker 1: because there are so many. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: some of the most interesting thinking and writing out there.
Speaker 1: And I often quote from people's Nobel Prize speeches lectures
Speaker 1: because I think that we have the chance to hear
Speaker 1: from some of the greatest minds, some of the greatest writers,
Speaker 1: some of the greatest thinkers in the world. So yes,
Speaker 1: I love the Nobel Prizes. Clearly, Nate, you are not
Speaker 1: a fan, though you are not someone who follows them
Speaker 1: follows along.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm more concerned with the American League MVP Award,
Speaker 2: among many other things. I guess I know somebody who's won.
Speaker 2: Somebody call a friend is one of Nobel. You get
Speaker 2: the call from like you know, some strange plus something
Speaker 2: country code, European number, in the middle of the morning,
Speaker 2: middle of the night. Right, very exciting. I would still
Speaker 2: be up. We're working on some fucking model. I'll be like, hey, Nate,
Speaker 2: you and Maria have finally won. I'd be like, I'm
Speaker 2: Tired's call Maria. I'm tired and I'm busy, busy that
Speaker 2: we can. You get money for the Nobel.
Speaker 1: Prize, right, you get money for the Nobel Prize, different
Speaker 1: amounts for different prizes. My favorite, by the way, speaking
Speaker 1: of middle of the night, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: you saw this night, I shared it because it to
Speaker 1: me it actually says something pretty fundamental about the type
Speaker 1: of thinking that is often required to win a Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1: So one of the people who won, Fred Ramsdell, he
Speaker 1: was unreachable when he won the Nobel Prize in medicine
Speaker 1: and they could not get a hold of him, like
Speaker 1: this is the first time actually in the history of
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize that they literally could not contact a winner,
Speaker 1: not even not immediately, but like for twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: And he was hiking with his wife and off the grid,
Speaker 1: living his best life, as his company said after they've
Speaker 1: reached the company, and the company actually ended up putting
Speaker 1: out a statement on his behalf. So he was just
Speaker 1: completely off off the grid, hiking with his wife. This
Speaker 1: is something that they do, This is something that they
Speaker 1: love doing. They don't have reception, their phones are off.
Speaker 1: His is actually the entire trip in airplane mode, and
Speaker 1: he ended up finding out because his wife had hers
Speaker 1: not in airplane mode, and so at some point they
Speaker 1: came to a place where they had reception exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: and she started screaming and he thought she saw a
Speaker 1: grizzly bear. So he didn't have a heart attack. He
Speaker 1: was fine, but he thought that actually she was in
Speaker 1: danger and she's like, you won the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2: It would be ironic if you did have a heart attack.
Speaker 2: That would be very ironic. Yav I always wonder about
Speaker 2: the mechanics of like I guess I was last year
Speaker 2: was nominated for a prize which is second only the
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize. I was nominated for a Global Poker.
Speaker 1: Or you know, some people would say it's actually more
Speaker 1: prestigious than the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2: So you know, no, I mean it really is.
Speaker 1: You know, I have won a Global poker okay, and
Speaker 1: I didn't go.
Speaker 2: They have a ceremony. I hadn't made enough to Vegas
Speaker 2: for the year. Didn't go to the ceremony. I kind
Speaker 2: of forget that, Like, if I was gonna win, I
Speaker 2: didn't win, they would tip me off. Oh they don't.
Speaker 1: They do not tip you off. So these are awards
Speaker 1: that are given for various accomplishments in the poker world.
Speaker 1: Some of them are for things like best tournament performance,
Speaker 1: best breakout player, or something that I was nominated for
Speaker 1: once and did not win. Nate, I was Breakout Player
Speaker 1: of the Year and lost to This is very funny
Speaker 1: ali am Siavich, who no longer plays poker because it
Speaker 1: turned out that he was cheating. His breakout performance was
Speaker 1: not quite as breakouting in the in the right ways.
Speaker 1: So I think that that's uh, that actually is quite funny.
Speaker 1: But he won that year. But some of them are
Speaker 1: for poker journalism and those those types of awards you
Speaker 1: were nominated for On the Edge. I was nominated and
Speaker 1: won for the Biggest so my yeah, my, My Global
Speaker 1: Poker Award is for the biggest bluff and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a fun ceremony, but no, you have no idea.
Speaker 1: No one is tipped off, and so it's very funny
Speaker 1: because there are people who have won and like when
Speaker 1: I won, I wasn't at the ceremony and didn't get
Speaker 1: my physical award for several years because I kept forgetting
Speaker 1: to pick it up and to ask for it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't tip you off. And then Nobel prizes, So
Speaker 1: this is something quite interesting. I love you know that
Speaker 1: this guy was off the grid, and I think that
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to think about the importance of you know,
Speaker 1: disconnecting and actually letting your brain think and being out
Speaker 1: in nature. There's so many things about this that are
Speaker 1: actually there's a ton of research on why this is
Speaker 1: good for creativity, good thought, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: yay Fred Ramsdell and yay being so like basically so
Speaker 1: secure in your profession that it's Nobel Week and you're like,
Speaker 1: fuck it, I'm going off the grid. I don't care.
Speaker 1: So it does say a lot about that. But Nate,
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting component here about the being tipped off.
Speaker 1: There were some controversies surrounding the Nobel Prizes in terms
Speaker 1: of polymarket and prediction market betting, where it seemed like
Speaker 1: there were tip offs before the announcements of certain prize winners,
Speaker 1: most notably the Nobel Peace Prize, which went to Maria
Speaker 1: Quorina Machado. And there was before the announcement, were you.
Speaker 2: Just replaced the native Spanish speaker there?
Speaker 1: You know, you know, you know, I studied. I studied
Speaker 1: Spanish for many years and lived in Spain. Nate, I
Speaker 1: studied abroad in Spain.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there was a big surge for her on
Speaker 2: poly market and probably other prediction markets, like right before
Speaker 2: she won. Right. The theory I've heard is that there
Speaker 2: was a lot of maybe some meta data release that
Speaker 2: you're preparing a bio, you're preparing like a big like
Speaker 2: you know, look, I used to know how to find
Speaker 2: poll releases before they were released by typing in certain
Speaker 2: URLs and things like that. Right, So, like if you
Speaker 2: have an incentive to make one hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 2: by getting the sodaity right, and looking for any clues
Speaker 2: that you can. It doesn't necessarily have to be inside information.
Speaker 2: There's a whole longer combinate conversation about like inside information
Speaker 2: and prediction markets and non prediction markets too, that we
Speaker 2: should maybe have for some for other period of time. Right.
Speaker 2: I mean, the one thing where I think polllymarket did
Speaker 2: a bad job was for the Pope. Right, that was
Speaker 2: a case where shit didn't leak.
Speaker 1: That's because there were line Nate, there were no pockets
Speaker 1: of data or anything.
Speaker 2: It was totally It's the exception that proves day of
Speaker 2: the Internet in the Vatican that they probably have the Internet, right,
Speaker 2: they need it for grinder. Sorry, nay, come on, when.
Speaker 1: They're in conclave. They absolutely do not have access to
Speaker 1: the Internet. Nobody does. But they do have somebody who
Speaker 1: can access everything externally in case of medical emergency, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera, as we talked about in our fascinating deep
Speaker 1: dive into the Conclave.
Speaker 2: Have you judged awards before? I have a park poker.
Speaker 1: Yeah I have, indeed, And this is just to say
Speaker 1: that the Nobel does try to keep it very close
Speaker 1: to the best. Have you judged awards before?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I did. A rotating two years to the higher
Speaker 2: journalists were people, you know, to judge the Pulitzers for
Speaker 2: like a two year stint and then Yester's wait another
Speaker 2: decade before they invite you back. But that was fascinating,
Speaker 2: right You spend is it like two or three days
Speaker 2: up at the Columbia campus, and like for the Pulitzers,
Speaker 2: you were given like a gigantic stack of applications in
Speaker 2: your category. Right, I love the spirit of it. It's
Speaker 2: a fun day. You get to meet I guess I
Speaker 2: call myself a journalist among other things. I get to
Speaker 2: meet like real journalists and interesting people, right, and with
Speaker 2: different perspectives. But you're like, you're going through this shit
Speaker 2: very fast. I'm not sure if it like applies the
Speaker 2: same way to the Nobel Prize. Right, you know, one
Speaker 2: thing I would know in general, if you're applied for
Speaker 2: an award that's like judged by some panel or committee,
Speaker 2: it's almost like student applications to some elite institution, right,
Speaker 2: Like half of it to two thirds to three quarters
Speaker 2: can be dismissed out of hand pretty much, right. You know,
Speaker 2: if I'm a journalist and I'm judging different stories, there
Speaker 2: are some stories that are prize bait, right, where like
Speaker 2: aimed in this way. It's feature style and blah blah,
Speaker 2: but it's important here's some person who overcame hardships, or
Speaker 2: here's a person who took on city hall, right, and
Speaker 2: like sometimes it's good, but it's sometimes not necessarily all
Speaker 2: that impactful, right, Yep, it's kind of a little bit
Speaker 2: paint by numbers, And like when I'm on the committee,
Speaker 2: I don't particularly care for that type of story, right,
Speaker 2: I kind of care more about like what maye be
Speaker 2: a big splash in the world this year, Right. I
Speaker 2: guess when I was doing it, was it during the
Speaker 2: first Trump term race before COVID. Right, there's a bunch
Speaker 2: of me too stuff. There was a bunch of Trump
Speaker 2: Russia stuff right by the way. You know, you have
Speaker 2: your group that makes a recommendation that can be overridden
Speaker 2: by like the board of the poetry Prizes, which you
Speaker 2: know might sound like it's having a heavy hand on
Speaker 2: the scale, but like, but they're inherently political kind of things.
Speaker 2: I think the poltries do better than some jobs, but
Speaker 2: like it it. You know, it probably helps to to
Speaker 2: know people I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely, And that's why I said that, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the I think some of the prizes are
Speaker 1: much more political than others. And even it's interesting because
Speaker 1: in the Nobel Peace Prizes, that's very you know, that's
Speaker 1: just egregiously the case. And by the way, that's not
Speaker 1: a knock on this year's winner, who I think is
Speaker 1: incredibly deserving. I'm not trying to subtly suggest that this
Speaker 1: year's winners should not have a should not have one.
Speaker 1: I do want to very strongly suggest that there are
Speaker 1: past winners who should not have one, but she is
Speaker 1: not among them. But even you know, even Peace Prize aside,
Speaker 1: I do think that the Nobels have become more than
Speaker 1: just oh, we think that this is the person most
Speaker 1: deserving of a prize for their literary output, for instance.
Speaker 1: And I say become, but this has always been the
Speaker 1: case to some extent, and where there are political considerations
Speaker 1: of all sorts. So I think with the Nobel Prizes
Speaker 1: in literature, just you know, in recent years, the committee
Speaker 1: was accused of having you know, too many white men,
Speaker 1: too many Europeans, Americans, et cetera. And they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: so how much of that is because we just have
Speaker 1: a committee who's reading habits are inherently biased because of
Speaker 1: who they are, right, Like, they're not trying to be biased,
Speaker 1: but they just are not aware of a lot of
Speaker 1: other literature. That's you know, that's painting them in a
Speaker 1: non aeroditelite saying, you know, you haven't made those sorts
Speaker 1: of comparisons. But sometimes then it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a really it gets into really murky ground where
Speaker 1: we're like, well, are we trying to have like a
Speaker 1: quotea sistem right for Nobel prizes in literature where we
Speaker 1: don't have you know, enough women, We don't have enough
Speaker 1: people from you know, non u et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And I think that part of it is
Speaker 1: just a lack of knowledge, a lack of exposure, a
Speaker 1: lack of translation. Right, that's that's another important thing, Like
Speaker 1: you need who sits on the committee? We don't know,
Speaker 1: by the way, these are things that are very closely
Speaker 1: guarded secrets. So like I do not you can't google
Speaker 1: like who is the committee for the Nobel Prize in X?
Speaker 2: Like have you sold a French edition of The Biggest FLA?
Speaker 2: I have not.
Speaker 1: Actually I have not sold French. I have not so
Speaker 1: the French. I have not sold a single one of
Speaker 1: my books in France ever. And my books this isn't
Speaker 1: a brag, but like my books have been translated into
Speaker 1: over twenty languages, right, like we sold rights all over
Speaker 1: the world. France has never bought one of my books.
Speaker 1: The first one. I was like, well, it's about Charlock Holmes.
Speaker 1: It's very English, right, so maybe there's like an inherently
Speaker 1: anti English bias, but yeah, no, the French do not
Speaker 1: like buying American books, and.
Speaker 2: I like France. I'm by the way, isn't the World
Speaker 2: Bookage or the whatever European booked are back in Paris
Speaker 2: next year.
Speaker 1: Poker Stars is coming back to Paris in February with
Speaker 1: the I will not leave until both of us have
Speaker 1: sold our postil.
Speaker 2: Both of us have books translated into French. I like wine,
Speaker 2: I like coffee, I like lounging around, I like steak freez.
Speaker 1: And there's so many amazing things about France. But yes,
Speaker 1: they do not love our books, Nate, But you know
Speaker 1: this is an issue, right, Translation is a problem. Like
Speaker 1: the Winner this year, not all of his books have
Speaker 1: been translated into English, and some have just been translated,
Speaker 1: by the way, that's Lasno krasno Hork. He is Hungarian,
Speaker 1: and I loved that. His last book, which I have
Speaker 1: not read, is four hundred pages and contains one period
Speaker 1: in the entire book. So so that should be an interesting,
Speaker 1: interesting read.
Speaker 2: As a purveyor of run on sentences myself, I'm officially
Speaker 2: a fan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, there you go. So you know,
Speaker 1: but but you know, you get these you get these
Speaker 1: winners who already are who already won the prize, right,
Speaker 1: someone like this year's winner, And not all of his
Speaker 1: books have been translated into English, and so I assume,
Speaker 1: you know, other languages also suffer from that. Now, imagine
Speaker 1: you're someone who hasn't like and he's someone who already
Speaker 1: rose to that level of prominence. So there are issues
Speaker 1: that end up, you know, making the prize a little
Speaker 1: bit more politicized than one would think. And I said that,
Speaker 1: you know, in recent memory, people have been pressuring the
Speaker 1: committee saying, you know, you're you're representing too many similar voices.
Speaker 1: And yet this has been an issue for a very
Speaker 1: long time. So there have been two times that I
Speaker 1: know of in history. Because deliberations are eventually made public.
Speaker 1: I don't remember how many years after it's decades, but
Speaker 1: you eventually, you eventually do know who was nominated and
Speaker 1: like you do understand, you know why some people were
Speaker 1: shot down, so I can. There are two instances in
Speaker 1: history where I'm like, are you guys, are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: And it shows different sources of biases. One, which I
Speaker 1: think is the single most egregious one is w. H.
Speaker 1: Auden did not get the Nobel Prize in literature. He
Speaker 1: was gay. He was very openly gay. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: very vocal about it. And this was not it's not
Speaker 1: like it's there's a line that says we are not
Speaker 1: giving him the prize because he's gay, But you can
Speaker 1: read between the lines, and he did not get it
Speaker 1: because of his sexual orientation. He's one of the greatest
Speaker 1: poets writers of the twentieth century and the fact that
Speaker 1: he wasn't given the Nobel Prize because of a sexual
Speaker 1: orientation is horrible. Now, second one shows a very different
Speaker 1: sort of bias. White streat Mail. This time Tolkien j R.
Speaker 1: Tolkien did not win the Nobel Prize because people were
Speaker 1: biased against the types of books that he wrote and said,
Speaker 1: you know, oh you know, fantasy is not real literature.
Speaker 1: It's not going to stand the test of time. But
Speaker 1: the year that Tolkien was up, the person who won
Speaker 1: that year, like I have no idea who the fuck
Speaker 1: that is, and like no one remembers that name, and
Speaker 1: everyone knows Tolkien's name, and like it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where I'm like, wow, you guys are just there
Speaker 1: have been closed minded biases around this prize for a
Speaker 1: very very long time, basically since its inception. So instead
Speaker 1: of saying, this is the prize for the you know,
Speaker 1: single most deserving author, just like with all everything, I
Speaker 1: think we need to caveat it. Right that has risen
Speaker 1: to a certain level, whose works have been translated, and
Speaker 1: we don't take issue with the type of writing you do,
Speaker 1: the type of person you are, et ce cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So I think that that's something that's really important to
Speaker 1: keep in mind. And you would think that the other prizes,
Speaker 1: like you know, medicine, physics, economics, that they're a little
Speaker 1: bit potentially, especially with something like physics more straightforward. And
Speaker 1: I actually, just to be perfectly honest, I don't know literature.
Speaker 1: I've done a lot of deep dives into the history
Speaker 1: because it's something you know, it's my field. It's something
Speaker 1: that I feel very passionately about. And I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised if I went down the line of you know,
Speaker 1: physics and realized how much controversy there was there. I
Speaker 1: do know that there is controversy and who exactly gets
Speaker 1: prizes for discoveries right? Because sometimes if you know that
Speaker 1: a certain discovery is going to win the prize in physics, medicine,
Speaker 1: et cetera, how do you divide it? Right? How do
Speaker 1: you actually decide who's going to get it? Who's going
Speaker 1: to get credit for this? Does one person get it?
Speaker 1: To two people get it? Do three people get it?
Speaker 1: Because sometimes it is split. This year's prize in economics
Speaker 1: will split three ways. One person got half the prize
Speaker 1: and then two people had to split the other half.
Speaker 1: So you have to make determinations like that all the time.
Speaker 2: You have to be alive too, You have to be alive.
Speaker 2: That's actually interesting, that is huge.
Speaker 1: That's actually really important. So like when Daniel Konnoman won
Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize for his work with Tabarski, Tierski couldn't
Speaker 1: win it, right, even though he did, he did half
Speaker 1: the research. Right, he was half the team, but Conoman
Speaker 1: was alive. Twarski was not.
Speaker 2: My grandparents who are passed away, you know, they would says,
Speaker 2: how do you guys stay married for for fifty years
Speaker 2: or became sixty years eventually?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: My grandfather was always like, well, there are three key components, right,
Speaker 2: get married young number one, stay together and don't die.
Speaker 2: The don't die a part is really it's really quite
Speaker 2: important for winning a Nobel On for other things.
Speaker 1: And we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2: You want to talk a little b about the Economics
Speaker 2: Prize of one thing that I kind of you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know the other two I do know Joel,
Speaker 2: I always thought it was mochr m ok y r.
Speaker 1: I don't actually, yeah, I don't know how it's more okay.
Speaker 2: He's Dutch, Israeli, American. You know a lot of different
Speaker 2: ingredients here. But he does work on economic history in particular.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do very basic stuff, right. If you know,
Speaker 2: if you study economic history, then very stylized competition in
Speaker 2: the facts. Right, you learn that progress is unusual, Right,
Speaker 2: that like humanity has spent most of its existence barely
Speaker 2: eking out a living where innovations are slow to come by,
Speaker 2: there's wars, you might have empires, the empires die out
Speaker 2: after some period of time. And then in the Industrial
Speaker 2: Revolution we had this spark and things began to catalyze
Speaker 2: and into revolution we've had We've had growth. Right at first,
Speaker 2: the growth might be zero point five percent per year
Speaker 2: on top of population growth, although population growth is also important,
Speaker 2: and then it gets up to one percent, two percent, three percent,
Speaker 2: it begins to compound, and so you know, I think
Speaker 2: a history is like a vitally undercovered topic. I think one,
Speaker 2: you know, the average liberal or conservative, this is where
Speaker 2: I think both sides like are full of shit, right.
Speaker 2: I don't think they understand that, like that progress is
Speaker 2: not the default by any means for human history. Right.
Speaker 2: In some ways, its a very pessimistic interpretation of human history, right,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, you know, now people who think
Speaker 2: that we're on the verge of an ai singularity of saying, okay,
Speaker 2: we're gonna have like an in my book on the
Speaker 2: Edge the Art ofversking everything from publishers ever worre no
Speaker 2: I in my book, you know, I'm using the revolution
Speaker 2: as a paradigm for like what might happen if you
Speaker 2: had very rapid ai growth, right, and the revolution. Of course,
Speaker 2: you had a lot of change of institutions. You have
Speaker 2: the Enlightenment, you had the American Revolution, you had the
Speaker 2: French Revolution. There is always some debate about what came first, Right,
Speaker 2: did you have this technological shock and then institutions catered
Speaker 2: to that. You know, that period of time, maybe things
Speaker 2: that were more a liberal, right, like land didn't matter
Speaker 2: as much now labor power data, and that changes the
Speaker 2: way that all society relates to one of You also
Speaker 2: have wealth that people are not just at subsistence. People
Speaker 2: are not just presents anymore. Although it takes a long
Speaker 2: time to expand that franchise and so forth, right and
Speaker 2: so like, I was very glad to see economic history
Speaker 2: get it to do. I think, you know, the critique
Speaker 2: of economic historians that they're neither economists nor historians. Jill
Speaker 2: Muker Again, I don't know, the two is excellent. I
Speaker 2: think at both. And you know, considering the stakes of
Speaker 2: like why does humanity, why do civilizations grow or stagnate
Speaker 2: or die out, it seems like a very high stakes
Speaker 2: question that most people don't know very much about. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and I'm especially grateful in the present day and age,
Speaker 1: where people seem to be devaluing the importance of history
Speaker 1: and historians in general. I think it's it's very important
Speaker 1: to to illustrate just how important economic I mean history
Speaker 1: in general is, but economic history specifically. And the other
Speaker 1: two winners, by the way, are Peter Howitt I think
Speaker 1: I got that pronunciation correct, and Philippe Agill. And sorry
Speaker 1: if I butchered that one, because you know, I have
Speaker 1: not heard these names pronounced. I've only ever read them.
Speaker 1: And they were awarded it for their work on creative destruction.
Speaker 1: So the concept of creative destruction, so the process by
Speaker 1: which something new, something innovative, will replace older technologies and businesses.
Speaker 1: And that was originally to put a little more history here.
Speaker 1: It was originally coined in a nineteen forty two book Capitalism, Socialism,
Speaker 1: and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter. Schumpeter, how do you pronounce it?
Speaker 1: I don't know how to pronounce any of these last names, Nate,
Speaker 1: this is going to be riddled with riddled with a
Speaker 1: mispronunciation episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of become a little bit
Speaker 2: of a buzzword in Silicon Valley where it can be.
Speaker 2: You know, hey man, let's go to burning man do
Speaker 2: some creative instruction kind of thing. But yeah, look, one
Speaker 2: of the core basic foundations of both capitalism and democracy,
Speaker 2: which is why they have some correlation often repaired together.
Speaker 2: I mean, they both ideally should believe in competition, right.
Speaker 2: I mean this is why I think people, you know,
Speaker 2: and I'd put these both under liberalism. Like people are flawed.
Speaker 2: It is hard to predict the future. It is hard
Speaker 2: to know what's going to work, hard to no ideas
Speaker 2: what find a market, right, and so and so you
Speaker 2: want them to compete instead of to have central planning, right.
Speaker 2: And this is more of a risky business kind of topic, right,
Speaker 2: But like you know, a lot of it is the
Speaker 2: value of of optionality. Right. You know, if I were
Speaker 2: living in some small town and I could like commission
Speaker 2: the perfect restaurant in my town, right, maybe I'm some patron, right,
Speaker 2: I'd rather have like five in a food hall or something, right,
Speaker 2: and then the best ones can can survive because there's
Speaker 2: uncertainty because like you know, because it creates proper incentives.
Speaker 2: And it also means that like that older institutions sometimes
Speaker 2: have to be replaced and destroyed, right, I think ironically
Speaker 2: and ironically, I guess ironically only because we're talking about Europe,
Speaker 2: you know, but like small things like that, like making
Speaker 2: it hard to fire unsuccessful employees or making it hard
Speaker 2: to dislodge businesses, that having him with the government. But
Speaker 2: like that's it's very it's very important. And you know,
Speaker 2: the thing about economic history too, is like again for
Speaker 2: our audience, it's kind of like a one oh one concept,
Speaker 2: but the notion of like compounding growth when you're looking
Speaker 2: taking the truly long term perspective. I probably said versions
Speaker 2: of this before, but like you know, I am worried
Speaker 2: in the Trump era about America like squandering its leadership
Speaker 2: in various ways, including its economic leadership, and that having
Speaker 2: compounding effects. Right, I mean, the US has like a
Speaker 2: big lead over the rest of the world, and a
Speaker 2: lot a lot of advantages, a lot of advantages, worlds
Speaker 2: leading currency, world's largest or you know, most effective military, right,
Speaker 2: world's most number of founders, I guess, effectively, right, you know,
Speaker 2: we're in a very we even very America is a
Speaker 2: beautiful country. You got lots of good land. Whoops, almos
Speaker 2: knocked over a lamp, and like we're starting from a
Speaker 2: very high point, and you know, fortunately every other country
Speaker 2: is fucking up too, right, But like, but yeah, when
Speaker 2: you go from like three percent to two percent to
Speaker 2: one percent to negative one percent GDP growth per capita
Speaker 2: over time, then you really notice that after a generation
Speaker 2: and and you know, you kind of need more of
Speaker 2: an economic history of perspective, comparative perspective at least to
Speaker 2: understand the implications of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And mok here is someone who's definitely thought
Speaker 1: a lot about the implications of creative destruction and kind
Speaker 1: of how how you need to think about it in
Speaker 1: order to enable long term growth, right and not just
Speaker 1: like have this short like let's move fast and break
Speaker 1: shit type of mentality, because one of the elements of
Speaker 1: his work, of all three of their's work, is that
Speaker 1: in order for the innovations to have lasting positive impact,
Speaker 1: you need to actually support the individuals who were affected
Speaker 1: by the changes and be able to protect the workers
Speaker 1: and move them to kind of more productive other jobs.
Speaker 1: So he's not saying that you need to protect specific jobs.
Speaker 1: You know, jobs are going to get replaced, right, because
Speaker 1: that's the nature of the way the world works, But
Speaker 1: you do need to know how to actually protect productivity
Speaker 1: and protect workers. And if you don't do that, right,
Speaker 1: if you don't actually do everything together and have a
Speaker 1: full vision for how this will work with long term
Speaker 1: societal impact, you might be negatively surprised. So this is
Speaker 1: I think something that a lot of people don't realize,
Speaker 1: right when they're like, oh, well, we just need to innovate,
Speaker 1: But they don't realize that they're actually ways of innovating
Speaker 1: successfully that have long term positive economic implication and ways
Speaker 1: of doing it in a much less successful way. And
Speaker 1: people don't normally couple those things together necessarily. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the market will just figure it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And kind of when you look back at history
Speaker 2: with a very long lens, right, you're like, oh, there
Speaker 2: was political turmoil during this time, right, and you don't
Speaker 2: live through that turmoil necessarily, right. Yeah. It's particularly interesting
Speaker 2: in the case of AI where explicitly some of the
Speaker 2: leaders in Silicon Valley are saying they're not saying we're
Speaker 2: going to create millions of new high paying jobs, right,
Speaker 2: some of them are saying, we're going to create a
Speaker 2: life of leisure for people where you can create weird
Speaker 2: Soora videos of furries having sex and I don't know
Speaker 2: what you're going to do right in neglecting like the
Speaker 2: dignity of work or the fact get like you know
Speaker 2: you're gonna have like a political of people is a euphemism, right,
Speaker 2: you know, if you kind of like take everyone's jobs,
Speaker 2: you might have a revolution or something, right, and ignoring
Speaker 2: kind of that history lesson, even though some people, you know,
Speaker 2: Patrick Collison is the CEO of Stripe, and he and
Speaker 2: Tyler Conwan economists have kind of like founded a field
Speaker 2: called progress studies, which in this kind of the like
Speaker 2: same vein potentially, but like the politics and the economics
Speaker 2: are intertwined. I think probably there's too much of saying
Speaker 2: we have to preserve these kind of coal miners jobs,
Speaker 2: and you have like parochial interests and things like that.
Speaker 2: But if you have very widespread destructions of existing institutions
Speaker 2: and you don't have a good plan to create new institutions,
Speaker 2: then that could get very messy. Potentially. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: it's a good precedent. You know. Again, I worried about
Speaker 2: the combination of rapid technological change with declining institutions, right,
Speaker 2: and and the fact that the technologies involved in some
Speaker 2: ways people checking out from civic life. I mean again,
Speaker 2: after World War Two, we kind of had a new
Speaker 2: world order somewhat literally. We also had the development of
Speaker 2: the atomic bomb. It probably is another episode, right, but
Speaker 2: you also did the development of the United Nations, which,
Speaker 2: whatever you think of it, I get annoyed because it
Speaker 2: makes it a fucking nightmare to commute to the East
Speaker 2: Side for a couple of months every year when they
Speaker 2: have a conference.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Good, and by the way, the building is the building
Speaker 2: is not super and I feel like that you went
Speaker 2: you a fucking better building.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do a total caveat on our Nobel
Speaker 1: episode to just complain. So that was the United Nations
Speaker 1: was meeting when we were trying to rent a car
Speaker 1: and drive to Vermont and rented the car in Midtown
Speaker 1: because I'm an idiot and forgot and had to wait
Speaker 1: for an hour basically to leave the garage because the
Speaker 1: block the car was on had dignitaries staying on it,
Speaker 1: and then everything was blocked off. Anyway, it was just
Speaker 1: such a nightmare and I was like, Okay, I'm just
Speaker 1: never going to go to Midtown Manhattan when the UN
Speaker 1: is meeting ever again. Anyway, that's a big caveat. But yes,
Speaker 1: you can be annoyed by that. But your broader point
Speaker 1: it is an incredibly important one, and I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that we stay with it, which is that
Speaker 1: the institutions that came out of it were actually incredibly important,
Speaker 1: and that you need multiple prongs for stability, and that
Speaker 1: you might have issues with a lot of the kind
Speaker 1: of UN directions, you might have issues with the UN traffic,
Speaker 1: you might have issues with more important things that the
Speaker 1: UN does, But the fact that you do have this
Speaker 1: societal structure is something that helped prevent innovation with negative
Speaker 1: kind of with the negative social disruptions that might have
Speaker 1: otherwise accompanied it, with the social displacements, with the revolutionary
Speaker 1: forces that people tend to gloss over.
Speaker 2: And we'll be right back after this break, Mariet, what
Speaker 2: would you give yourself a Nobel Prize for nothing?
Speaker 1: I don't think I deserve a Nobel prize, Nate. If
Speaker 1: I were to give you a Nobel prize, Nate, I
Speaker 1: would give you the prize in economics, and you would
Speaker 1: get it for some of your statistical stuff. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure that by the time you get your Nobel Prize,
Speaker 1: you will have come up with some, you know, great
Speaker 1: statistical innovations that help us forecast and project more accurately,
Speaker 1: and hopefully, because we're friends, I'll be able to profit
Speaker 1: off of that by placing very nice bets on prediction markets.
Speaker 2: Because I would give you the prize in literature because
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: I have written fiction, and I hope you're very good writer. Well,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that night, and yes, and I hope to
Speaker 1: write more fiction in the future. So that is something
Speaker 1: that I'm definitely I feel.
Speaker 2: Like we're probably being in puckle world. We probably both
Speaker 2: deserve the Noble Piece Prize for listening to bad beat
Speaker 2: stories over the years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could collectively. I think we could collectively take
Speaker 1: a Nobel Piece Prize for listening to bad beat stories
Speaker 1: and not actually physically harming anyone who tells us a
Speaker 1: bad beat story, even though sometimes I really really want tonight.
Speaker 1: There are some people who you just when they're like Maria, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to grab dinner? I'm like, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. You probably know some of these people and
Speaker 1: you just want to run away, and when you actually
Speaker 1: are cornered and end up in a conversation with them
Speaker 1: or at a dinner with them, and you smile and
Speaker 1: nod through the whole thing. You do feel like a
Speaker 1: mediator who's made world peace possible.
Speaker 2: Can you believe that that flush came in on that river? Again?
Speaker 1: Can you believe the idiot who stayed in the hand
Speaker 1: until the river? The odds were so bad? How does
Speaker 1: this fish ever make any money? By the way, Nate,
Speaker 1: this is totally off Well, it's not off topic with
Speaker 1: the poker bad beats, but have you noticed that there's
Speaker 1: a certain type of person who whenever they tell you
Speaker 1: hand histories, this usually goes hand in hand with bad
Speaker 1: beats stories. It's always like the whale in the one
Speaker 1: seat did this, and then the fish did this, and
Speaker 1: then the idiot did this. It seems like every single
Speaker 1: person at their table is a whale, a fish, an idiot,
Speaker 1: a donk, a something bad and no one is actually
Speaker 1: and from their descriptions, I'm like, wow, I want to
Speaker 1: play in that tournament, you know, seems like seems like
Speaker 1: a great field. No.
Speaker 2: The way you can learn a lot from the causes
Speaker 2: of death. I once called it in a poker tournament, right,
Speaker 2: and once like created a texta one and they're like
Speaker 2: thirteen ways to die, right, and how do you die?
Speaker 2: You know, I go up, sometimes I go with a
Speaker 2: bluff some times a life. If you're only losing poker
Speaker 2: tournaments when you take a bad beat, it's often the
Speaker 2: sign of people who are who are too nitty and
Speaker 2: risk averse that you chip down, you chip down, chip down,
Speaker 2: chip down right, because you're not taking any chances, and
Speaker 2: then yeah, you'll lose it seventy thirty, or you lose
Speaker 2: aces versus kings. Maybe if the kings against the aces
Speaker 2: can't avoid that kind of thing, right, But like, you
Speaker 2: know someone who is never busting out of a tournament
Speaker 2: by saying, look, I made a big bluff here, it
Speaker 2: didn't work. I made a big fold here, I got
Speaker 2: shown the hand. It was wrong, and then I was
Speaker 2: down low on chips. Right, I made a big call
Speaker 2: and that was wrong. I tried to slow places. I
Speaker 2: thought it was the right play, and you caught the
Speaker 2: perfect card and I lost all my chip. Like, if
Speaker 2: you're never like admitting to like making a bold poker play,
Speaker 2: then then I kind of think you're probably an inferior player.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, yeah, what matters is all the decisions
Speaker 1: that led up to that point not the actual bad
Speaker 1: being at the end. I think that that's that's an
Speaker 1: important thing to remember when you're a warding the Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize in poker. Bad beat stories, Nobel Committee, these are
Speaker 1: all things that we need to that we all need
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. Nate, you will have created a
Speaker 1: statistical model that tells us how to avoid the people
Speaker 1: who will tell us the bad beat stories. You'll you'll
Speaker 1: get us maps of the Paris and Horseshoe ballrooms so
Speaker 1: that we know the best routes to take to avoid
Speaker 1: bad beat storytellers. And I will incorporate them into my
Speaker 1: novel and we will we will bring this to the
Speaker 1: Nobel's attention. But that was a I really enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: And next year I hope, Nate, that you will be
Speaker 1: a little bit more engaged in the Nobel Prize given
Speaker 1: now that you understand why some of them can be
Speaker 1: so interesting to follow, and now that you know some
Speaker 1: of the controversy behind.
Speaker 2: The scenes, you can bet on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we can bet on it all right. Next
Speaker 1: year we can do Nobel brackets.
Speaker 2: Nobel brackets. Yeah, Okay, Maria will have to be one
Speaker 2: another's Nobel Prize for now, So Thank you listeners, and
Speaker 2: we'll see you soon.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
Speaker 1: out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm.
Speaker 1: Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2: And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
Speaker 2: production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
Speaker 2: by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Speaker 2: Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
Speaker 2: executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please rate and review us
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