uh, it's Jeff, producer of conversations with Tyler. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we'll bring you another bonus episode. This time it's Mark Zuckerberg interviewing Tyler Cowen and Stripes CEO Patrick Collison about the need to better understand the nature and causes of progress. Now this was the final interview in Mark's yearlong Siris on technology and society, and you can also find an on Mark's Facebook page. So as you're sitting around the Thanksgiving table this week, take a tip from Tyler and Patrick. Instead of politics. Talk about the paper from do flow of energy that found coaching improved the effectiveness of foreign aid or marvel at how we built the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge simultaneously in four years. How fast did you get your Thanksgiving feast ready? Enjoy Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. Learn more at arcades dot or GE, and for more conversations, including videos, transcripts and upcoming dates. Visit conversations with Tyler dot com. Heh,

everyone and welcome to the next in our series of discussions on the Internet and technology and progress and some of the social issues that we face. We've done a number of these this year focused on topics ranging from regulation to journalism to biomedical research. And today we're gonna focus on a discussion on what progress is itself and how we might study it. And what what academic work is really going on in this space and what we might think about toe look at examples from the past toe. Determine how we can make more progress for humanity going forward. So today you joining me is Ah Tyler Cowen, who is studies economics at George Mason University, was also the co author of the popular Blawg Marginal Revolution and Patrick Collison, who's the co founder and CEO of Stripe, which is a pretty amazing company that does that basically does payments and economic infrastructure for the Internet. So we've been talking about these topics for a while now. I mean, this is something that you guys have both studied in a lot of depth, and you recently wrote a knobhead together I think was in the Atlantic, about how we might have a new or different approach for studying the nature of progress and in order to kind of mine historical examples to figure out how we can we can make more progress in the future. So I think it probably interesting just to start off by, you know, hearing how you're thinking about that. And, um, the basic summary And what what feedback you've gotten on the piece that you wrote

S O. I think, um, one of the most important sort of facts. Ah, in the world instead of the history of civilization, today's eyes that the rate of progress has not been constant. Right? If you look at what happened the world say between zero and 1718 100 thereabouts, the rate of progress bites of any major metric in terms of, you know, average income or average life expectancy or infant mortality. Any of these measures it was either a constant or only vory improving in a very slow rate. Right. And then something happened. Something changed. Rents out a 1717 50.

You know, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, some of those of the advent of kind of something approximating modern science. And once that happened, so many things start to get better together right again. Incomes improved. Life expectancy has increased we start to discover really fundamental knowledge about the world. We started to invent really important new technologies. And these things of, you know, over the last couple of centuries really diffused or in the world, right? So that's interesting and important on DDE. You know, the intuition,

I think, and the thing that really struck our husbands of a focus of both of ours for the past couple of years is thinking about well, you know, we said transition from this regime where we weren't making much progress to one, for we have been making much more. Is this the best we can do, right? Or is there something that looks you know? Compared to Sasko, today was so much better again that it's sort of like a status quo, Exanta, you know, before at the injection revolution and a CZ you look around the world today at you know, on the one hand we see the tremendous importance of the progress that we are generating right and that, for example, number of people in extreme poverty is that line,

but no more than a 1,000,000,000 people since I was born. But on the other hand, there's a lot of suggestive evidence that maybe we aren't as effective at generating progress today. Azaz. We have been in the past. And so, for example, if you look at the U. S. Productivity growth mid century or so between 1920 1970 was maybe about 1.9% a year. Now most economists think it's much lower, you know, maybe around sort of 0.4% year, something like that. So we're least by economic measures, generating progress more slowly than we used to be,

whatever the rate at which were kind of making progress or or sort of, you know, figuring out ways to do things better today, whatever that absolute level is, it'll be much better if we were, you know, doing it more effectively. If we were able to solve the most important problems that faces today in 50 years, 100 years rather than 500 years or 1000 years, right into the matter question that we're really interested in this, how how does progress happen? How do we discover useful knowledge? How is that diff used and how we do it? Better important to understand, I think how much this is an invisible crisis. So if you have a growth rate that is 1% point lower over the course of a bit more than a century,

you could have been three times richer with the higher growth rate. That would be something like the difference between the United States today in Mexico. So by having a lower rate of productivity growth and no given year doesn't feel that bad. But 23 generations later, you're much worse off its order to pay off your debts. Harder to solve climate change, harder to address a whole host of problems.

Yeah, so before we, we kind of dive into, you know, how we could improve

this? What

do you say to the people who question whether all this progress is is positive? I mean, certainly, as we make progress in one area, it creates issues in other areas where that's been a big topic. That and I focused on my work at Facebook over the last few years and a lot of these challenge discussions. But how does that fit into the overall framework of what you're studying and this discipline here?

No, I don't think economic growth is always a positive, but the world in America has serious problems. I would rather address those problems with more resource is rather than fewer, whether it is paying off our debts, addressing climate change, fixing global poverty and knowledge matters, too. So there's a recent paper by Esther Do Flow and obviously Banerjee and they find if you give foreign aid combined with coaching, the rate of return to that intervention is maybe 100 to 400%. That may or may not be true, but what I would like to see is a world where everyone is obsessing over that claim over that debate, working very hard to figure out that it's true. That should be on the front page. People should be talking about it, you know, calling up their siblings.

My goodness, I just read this. What are we going to do? Do you agree or not? Yeah, And look, while again, I think it sort of unequivocally the case in sort of a certain kind of progress in certain places. Or, you know, to a certain extent, can't have harms and externalities and all the rest and, you know, really important part of progress in figuring out How do we medicate those How do we solve them and so on? You know, I think climate change is probably one of the foremost local example today,

but I think it's really important. It is easy for sort of us sitting here in the Bay Area in California, I think, to undervalue the prosperity and the kind of wealth we've been able to generate over the past couple again. 100 years on dso You know, since I was born, for example, global life expectancy has increased. By about six years. Infant mortality has fallen by more than 50%. Uh, again, I mentioned the statistic. You know, the number of people who have left extreme poverty is incredibly important, right? And so I think there's a We're not the first people to say it, but there is a moral imperative to this kind of progress, and we shouldn't lose sight of that fact.

Yeah, I agree. I just I think it's important. You know, a lot of these things, they're not uniform, and I mean, you know, from running a company that you know, when you look at averages and anything, it hides a lot of issues from your example on the rates of poverty. Going down, I think, is an interesting one of this because you know what a lot of people don't particularly want to talk about these days Is that most of the benefit of people coming out of poverty, as happened in China and a lot of other places around the world. Some in some places, poverty has actually increased.

S o. I generally agree with the premise, Bond. I think studying this stuff will well, generally help us tow make more progress in those places. I mean, that may be a good example, because perhaps looking at some of the examples of what has done well in China could be applied to other places where where there have been issues. But before we dive into the discussion on this, I just wanted to make sure that we didn't cover this in a way that that comes across as if, like, every step forward, it comes without a cost. And I'm sure as we talk through, the different the different examples. I mean, that'll come up is well,

yeah, well, and we should emphasize that, you know, when we talk about the phenomenon of progress, I think GDP. Your GP per capita is, ah, sort of pretty good first approximation measure of it. And it correlates strongly with many things I think we care about, but they're definitely the same thing. I think an important question for anybody kind of you're interested in this area to think about is, well, how should we define progress right on and water the you know, better and worse kind of issue and again in GDP. We kind of have, ah,

relatively effective metric we can use across countries. But you know, they're already is interesting work on what my better measures be. And I think that's really important to study. Let's say you want to improve the lot of people in West Virginia. One growth enhancing way of doing that is to make it easier to build, say, in Washington, D. C. In the Bay Area. Right now, to move from West Virginia, say to Menlo Park, it's extraordinarily expensive. You can't just pick up and show up here and hope to get a job washing dishes the way one might have done in America 50 years ago.

So by having more building more economic growth, also more GDP, it would increase more opportunity. So economic growth and opportunity, they do tend to be correlated. And sometimes the problem is we don't have enough growth. Not that we have too much. Look, hammer this point too strongly. But you did invite the people who wrote the piece about progress here. Uh,

I was most of the time actually talking about that. I'm trying to make sure that we hit that

up front. So what are you when you're talking about? You know, there are a lot of

people who already were studying this in different ways right there. Historians, economists. When you're thinking about what the field is when you're talking about trying to create a new science of studying progress Whatmore, do you think needs to get down or what do you envision on that? I mean, I know you have a fund that you've put together emerging ventures, Virgin Factory, and then where you're basically finding, um, academics who are studying, uh, examples of where there's of progress in the past to start this field. But I mean, but what does this kind of add up to? How do you think? What form does this take? Over time,

one view of mine is that not enough? Philanthropy is long term oriented In this regard. I've been influenced by your Chance Zuckerberg initiative and also in philanthropy. There are too many choke points that can say no. So foundations become their own bureaucracies. They become very risk averse. So Emergent Ventures is a new kind of philanthropy. There's one layer of yes or no people are encouraged to apply if the payoff is 30 40 years down the road, the attitude is great. Take a lot of chances. I worry about getting some winners and some risk and not expecting the median project to be something that necessarily looks good when taken to a board. So that's one way that thinking in terms of progress helps us restructure at the micro level. Particular decisions we're making, yeah, strongly agree. That's it. If there's a lot of really important work already happening across multiple disciplines that is relevant to these questions and,

you know, part of what I like the idea of there being a new science of progress that's not sort of quite that was the headline placed on the article, but they're not exactly what we're saying. Uh, what we're arguing is that the work that's already happening, she receiving more attention and there should be much more of it on just to give us a couple of quick examples. S O. You know, there is strongly suggested evidence that we can teach management practices such that people can run. Firms were effectively right. So there's, you know, a couple of studies on this. There's a good one from some folks in Sanford I did have around my child in India and that there's a really neat when they come out, I think, last year from Michaela George Kelly,

looking at a firm's initially and showing that, like over 15 years after it again, a management training program with and natural, some natural vandalization. But again, those firms were employing more people, paying more wages, being more successful on another, a randomized trial in Mexico conduct over the past couple years against 600 firms, ensuring that just teaching better Imagine practice actually makes those companies much better off. If that's true, that's amazing. Low hanging fruit, right? We should be investing much more in the area, which is figuring out which kind of management training work better and worse and others is generalized all countries.

How can we actually influence and execute this in the world? More broadly, that's gonna one second is you know, if you take Tyler, mention this point about sort of, you know, geographic mobility, right when you think about sort of how do we grow GDP? Or how do we generate progress, Maybe kind of housing policies, that kind of the first thing we're naturally drawn to thinking about. However, if you look at the world in, say, the USA in 1919 80 about 40% of people when they took a new job, move somewhere else,

right? Those things went together much more if you looked last year, about one in 10 people moved when they took a new job, right? And so within the U. S. Geographic mobility really declined. That is in large part because tthe e costs of movement have enormously increased as housing costs have increased, especially in our most productive regions over the past couple of decades. Now, if you look into that more closely again, the rest of economists have been studying thes questions quite closely with past couple of years. Thes two guys Shane Moretti published a paper in updated versions of a previous paper this summer claiming are putting forward a model showing that, uh, if you if you look at the zoning restrictions that existed in the Bay Area and New York, uh,

between 1964 in 2009 on, do you kind of imagine a counterfactual world where there was sort of much more supply elasticity in these places? We both weigh more homes here in the Bay Area and in New York. In that counterfactual world, average US income would be in their model $3700 per person higher again not just for people in those places but across the country. Write that that that's a huge effect size. And so again, we should be studying these questions much more closely. Industry figures. Okay, well, if that's true, what are that? One of the policy prescriptions? How do we actually go act upon that? It's amazing low hanging fruit and then just to give 1/3 1 you know,

I mean, as those two examples show, funding, science is incredibly important. But there's surprisingly little work about how we should be funding science and how great that most effectively and actually sort of. Beneath the surface, it's been changing a tremendous amount, you know, here in the U. S. Or the past couple of decades on their important policy questions. Is that a good thing? And so, for example, in 1980 12 x more dollars. Uh oh,

the N I h spent 12 x more dollars on researchers under 40 than researchers over 50. So, you know, they predominately fund the younger people. Today they spend five X Maur dollars on people over 50 than under 40. And so it's really inverted. It's kind of gone from, you know, primarily funding the these young investigators, this kind of gerontocracy where their funding older scientists. Maybe that's good. Maybe that's bad, you know, I don't know. But that seems like a very important question to answer. And so part of our point in arguing for progress studies is when you really look at the kind of the expansive version this of all the different things that con's of,

uh, influence our ability to discover new, useful knowledge, t generate economic growth, that the set of questions is super broad, and we should be trying to kind of synthesize this effectively. Yeah. So let's

go deep on medical research here for a second because this is an area that you wrote this paper about before about how the progress of the field might be slowing. And like you mentioned, I mean the Chance Zuckerberg initiative, the philanthropy that I run with my wife. I mean, a big focus of it is on medical research and trying. Thio, you know, we have this aspirational goal that we want to help build tools that can help scientists cure, prevent or manage all diseases by the end of this century. And basically, the math of how you get there is starting about 100 years ago. Call it, um, you know, there was really this uptick in medical research where we started doing randomized control experiments, treating it more like an experimental science.

Since around that time, the average life expectancy is increased by 1/4 of a year every year. Relatively linearly, um, it's there's no guarantee, of course, that that continues, but if we're able to have that continue, then that would imply that by the end of the century we will generally have had to have either cure, prevent or be able to manage most if not all of the diseases that that we're aware of now. So there's some trend that suggested this should be reasonable and the approach that we're taking in the work it's easy. I is largely about building tools to help compound the rate of science. So, you know, what we see is that, um,

you know, like you mentioned the government is is the largest and most important funder of science. And, you know, it's basically funds the the whole establishment of scientists across the country. But the grants tend to be very, very spread out across a lot of people. They're not typically put into kind of big infrastructure projects. And that's the niche that we felt through sees the eye that we could maybe help to fill. It is you're investing instead of a $1,000,000 in a lab, put $100 million or a couple $100 million over time into building up really important scientific assets for the community, like helping toe fund scientists to go put together this human cell atlas almost like the I kind of think about it. It's almost like the periodic table of elements, but for biology, of all the different kinds of cells and in the human body. And the goal is just,

you know, if you look throughout the history of science, at least most major scientific breakthrough has been preceded by the invention of new tools that help people look at things in different ways. And the theory is kind of similar to what you're going at of how do you increase the compounding rate of progress? But they're a couple of different directions that I think we could We could go in here And one is I'm curious what you've seen in your studies in the space that suggest to you that the rate of progress is actually slowing. And I'm also curious. What are the examples that you've seen overall, of how the science on studying progress would potentially lead Thio a different approach or different portfolio of how this kind of work gets done? So I know where you want to start with that there's a

lot here to d'oh. Here's what worries me, and it should worry you, too. So as you mentioned us, life expectancy is basically going up in linear fashion. But if you look at expenditures, we used to spend a few percentage points of GDP on health care, and now it's about 18%. So we've got yeah, up to 18% and we're not even boosting the rate. I'm not saying it's the fault of any one group of people, but something has gone wrong. There's some kind of last mile problem. You can turn to the newspapers and read all kinds of fantastic stories new research, new ideas, new tools.

But when the rubber hits the road, people living longer we're spending more and more and more for exactly the same returns. So if that trend continues and you see a similar trend in many areas also crop yields feeding the world other areas, the question becomes, you know, where does all the progress go? So the idea that you need to look at each structure and encourage more risk taking better decisions with the money, less bureaucracy ization, maybe in some cases, more centralization, whatever it takes, but that there is this invisible crisis and people are distracted by the headlines about crisp or whatever. But actually what you get for the money performances so so I think. Yeah. And so what We wrote in this article a year ago about what's going on in science. If you look at it by sort of the most kind of macroscopic measures,

right, Like the the number of PhDs in the U S. Like active PhDs has grown by, you know, you take all the macroscopic measures. They're all grown about a factor between the 5th 50 and 100 right number of PhDs. Number of papers published every year, just like actual dollars into the science funding and so on. So if you're in a very stylized way, if we look in the first half the 20 century estimate, the second half just like way more kind of input in the second half of the century and on again, but not by 50%. But what kind of orders of magnitude. And so then I think the question for all of us would be well know in which half of the century did we get home or out in terms of kind of useful scientific knowledge, you know? And whichever we think I did better,

you know? To what degree? Right and again that is a very difficult question. Answer. How do you weigh kind of scientific knowledge? And so you have to kind of look at this, I think, in various applied context, like life expectancy or semi conductors or ta dimension crop yields or whatever. And And I think what's interesting and we should be concerning is that for almost every conceivable to applied measure, we seem to be getting, you know, at best, constant returns. That's really bad, because,

you know, we've exponentially increasing inputs and be constant return outputs like that. That is gonna almost by definition, you're not a process that we can sustain now. You know this too, I think, broad possibilities there. One is just getting intrinsically harder toe to generate progress and to discover these things. And, you know, who knows? Maybe some significant of that is true, but the other possibility is that somehow Maur institutional, right? It's Morgan a contingent. It's more sociological,

and again we do have suggested evidence that our institutions well, they're certainly kind of older than they used to be on. There also could have, as in the kind of and I h funding example, there are no changes happening beneath the surface and so on. That may or may not be good, so I don't think I should write off the possibility that it's actually, you know, it's not inevitable and that there is or there do exist alternate forms of organization where things would work better and again If we sort of, you know, dig a little bit into the the evidence there, you know, you see things like, um, there's there's a science funding program that obviously you're familiar with called HD my, uh,

the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. If they give grants sort of along the lines of house easy ideas where you know the longer term, they're kind of more open ended. And so on P. R. Is late. M. I. T. Wrote a paper a couple years ago and trying to look out well, if you take, you know, ostensibly identical scientists who, some of whom received H migrants, some of whom don't you know how much more successful either h to my recipients on, You know, he concluded there about twice as likely to produce a kind of top 1% paper by visitation count again. That's really suggested

their top 1%. If they

do what they're about. Twice, like t produce a top 1% paper by Citation count. If they say so, if they receive an agent to my grant,

well, I might be Correlation causation.

Is he trying to do get a lot of the best people, eh? So he tries to control for National. He's a refill methodology for it, but some of that could totally be sort of that just selection effect. But again, I think it's very suggested that maybe there are things we could do at the wood. Ah, better enable this kind of this kind of discovery, and, you know, this might seem like a bit of a red herring, but I think it is kind of, ah, again suggestive that in many other domains where we can objectively assess progress, it's very clear that our productivity has fallen off a cliff on, and for reasons that we could be pretty sure are not that it's it's getting intrinsically harder.

And so, for example, when New York decided to build a subway in 1900 right, uh, they decided to build a 4.7 years later, they opened 23 subway stations and in $2019. They spent just over a $1,000,000,000. Think so? Right, So 23 stations just over a $1,000,000,000 when you're excited, build a Second Avenue subway in year 2000. 17 years later, they opened three stations on four and 1/2 $1,000,000,000. Right? And so kind of our productivity in in subway construction has a taste in New York, you know,

decreased by a factor of 40. You know, here in the Bay Area, we decide to build the Golden Gate Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. Starting in 1933. Both projects finished within four years. And then to celebrate us, we decide to build a manmade island and we both that island in 18 months, and I haven't tried. But, you know, I would wager that if one tried to build a new island in San Francisco, it would be difficult to do so today in 18 months. And so were you. And I mean California of high speed rail perm.

And when France decided to build, you know, the TGV, it's it's it's high speed rail. It opened the first line. After five years, California start pursuing high speed rail 11 years ago, they forecast, we forecast being finished in 2033 so we project a 25 year project. But of course, that's a projectionist end up much longer still, right? So and you know, this is a domain where it's hard to imagine it getting into the building infrastructure has gotten intrinsically harder, right? Like the passions aren't physically heavier than they used to be right on.

So clearly there's something institutional sociological going on with infrastructure. You know, Larry Summers talked about the idea of the sort of promiscuous distribution of the veto power on just how much harder it is to sort of get things done, inasmuch as that's true. Then there's the question of Well, uh, you know, have other institutions have other sort of progress generating mechanisms in our society? Have they also got less efficient? Ah, and if so, you know what we do

about it. It's as an aside if you're watching this, Patrick collects these examples of of projects, historical projects that went fast and that you can't imagine how they went that fast. If you google his website, he has like a ah, hold a whole list of these that I think is pretty interesting and compelling when you when you

go through all of that, I think it was important to understand, Ah, how effectively we as a as a species, how effectively we can do things when we're organized the right way. Humanity is pretty amazing on Dhe when your possibilities are unlocked, when no efficacy is enabled, we can do great things. Sometimes it is a matter of actual will. So for the last 40 years getting around for almost all Americans, it is slower. And before that we had a period from 1800 state in 1970 when it got quicker and quicker and quicker. And now even flying in airplanes for most people is slower. Traffic is worse. Those air solvable problems. Manhattan should have congestion, pricing and a stiffer form of it.

Then they're likely to opt for so the notion that people have lost the ability to imagine a future much different and much better than what they know To me, it's one of the most worrying aspect of where we are now. Yeah, and this was up quantitatively. I mean, if you look at sort of the percentage of Americans who think that their kids lives will be better than theirs. That has been, instead of Montagne IQ that line not strictly on time but generally defining since World War Two. And so on an empirical basis, Americans are getting less hopeful about their futures, their kidsfutures. And that's a really bad thing because it could be kind of an also catalyzing process in a self fulfilling prophecy. And we're supposed to be the most optimistic forward looking country. The data on France, how many people think their kids will be worse off? That's much more worrying yet,

and there may be a self fulfilling prophecy to this. If you think the future won't be so great, you'll invest less. You won't work is hard. You'll contract your risk taking and you end up with the kind of social and economic malaise. And indeed, you see falling rates of economic growth in most of the Western world.

So I'm curious how you would think about going about in studying these kind of organizational changes. We're going back to biomedical science, for example, because this is an area that we do a lot of work in. You know, the woman who runs our who runs Sesay Eyes Science Initiative Cori Bargmann. She's a A very renowned scientist, and she has this theory about that. A lot of the granting process that n h does, but also h h m I. It basically encourages very individualistic work, right? You give people grants, they work on their own. You're not incentivizing people to work together. People actually want to work together. They want to coordinate on When I was talking about the human sellout Lys,

um, you know a lot of the issue there that needed to get dealt with. It was a lot of people were working on Cell Atlas is for different parts of the body. Okay, The liver cell at list. You know, whoever and but the world in different data types and format. So that way you couldn't compile. Ah, holistic thing. So a lot of what she did and the work of C Z, I was basically, um, helping to coordinates that way when these grants were given everything like that, the team's work together, the data types were similar.

So it all added up to a bigger thing. And that certainly seems like one of many theories that one could have for how you could organize this stuff better. But there's this question of how much of progress, whether that's something that one could have determined just through historical data versus this, the type of thing that you need people or the government or foundations to go out and just run different experiments and see. See how this works? And I'm curious how you think about in terms of studying us how much this is like is history and kind of history of science based on data that's already out there versus we should just try different models of things and encourage more creativity and and more competition and try different things.

It's striking to me. If you look at American universities, the list of the top places in 1920 the list today it's completely the same, except we've added on California. Otherwise, no change. Top 50 universities if you look at these very different Cos. Inc. Of course, even from 19 eighties, even the Dow with decade over decades a list

of the top 10 companies by market cap almost completely turns

over procedures for tenure in the top 50 research universities almost exactly the same. Whatever you think of those, there's something gone wrong in the sector. There's not enough experimentation with how you reward people. More schools should experiment with a different kind of tenure or reward people more on the basis of practical impact. And again, you might object to any particular solution. But the extent to which experimentation has died at the institutional level, to me a striking. And to underscore that point, if you look at the top 25 universities in the world today or, you know, the times of ranking of lots of them. And seven of the top 25 are American universities that were started a single 30 year period between 18 61 and 80 91 on, If you look at well where those universities come from and what were the people behind them thinking they were very deliberately said specifically, reform minded, progress minded?

Absolutely. They thought, Well, you know, obviously academic institutions exist, you know, Harvard, Yale and so on, you know, already around. But they saw the success of the German sort of research university model. They saw the possibilities of the U. S. And they saw ATTN. least what they thought was required for the future. And,

you know, they very deliberately decided we will try something different on again that yielded what now? Seven of the top 25 universities today on. So I think it is strongly, you know, empirically underscores the value of the kind experimentation you're talking about, you know, fully agree. I think we should be historically informed. But ultimately, a certain amount of sort of commitment, decision and just willingness to experiment is going to be required. The other thing, I think your point with the teams get sash. Is there these really thought provoking examples of just, like,

productive cultures through history? Right. If you look at Vienna 18 80 toe 1940 or something, you know, you have in so many different fields. You have people who do this sort of incredibly formative working you, Clint. And you, too, Mahler and your mark in physics. And you had, of course, you know, Austrian economics and fund meses and Hayek and all the rest you'd Freud, and you'd victim Stein, you know,

like, Vienna was sort of amazing in this period on. Do you know when you kind of dig into the specific stories. He realized a lot of these people knew each other and and they were sort of inspired by Joe that they kind of give credit to each other for again across multiple disciplines, a sort of, you know, different parts of their thinking. Or if you look at Edinburgh, it's a drink. You know, the Scottish Enlightenment, Uh, again, a tiny place in Edinburgh A at the time saying in 17 80 was like the size of Santa Cruz, Right? I get you guess.

You know, sort of modern economics from Smith. You've Hume, you have, you know, the birth of modern geology, Uh, amazing literature, poetry and so on. Andi. So clearly there was something, you know, extent in Edinburgh in 17 80 there was not there in Dublin in 17 80 on, I think, you know, it's hard to pin down like,

what was that? But at the same time, you know, the difficulty in defining it doesn't mean it wasn't there or it's not important. I would say this. I'm sitting here with two university dropouts. That's notable to me. The Bay Area is our modern Vienna, you know, Bravo to the Bay area. But we're not working nearly hard enough to build other new Vienna's and other places, and I don't really think it's quite Manhattan anymore. It's a wonderful city, amazing place to go. But it is not a world leader for ideas in the way it was, say, the 19 twenties three with the 19 eighties

people study this right. I mean, so what? I would have been the main things that people have learned so far from studying Vienna, Edinburgh.

I don't think there's a rich literature of lessons from those places of See lots has been written about them. They're great historical accounts. I've enjoyed reading them, Uh, but I I mean, well, it's an intrinsically very difficult thing to do to figure out well, you know which things causally mattered. The and these things. There's a certain degree to which they might be kind of over determined on dhe s. So I think it's very hard to, you know, you don't have counterfactual sze of you can front trials and so I think it is a very difficult question to answer on dhe, I think for understandable reasons, people setting these questions are reluctant to take definitive stances that this is what mattered in 1900 Vienna. But one of us and I would say that the Scottish islands people moved to Edinburgh, right?

Vienna. You have Jews coming in from the pal of settlement, the Bay Area people coming from all over the world. And indeed you're from Ireland. So immigration immigration is not a guarantee of things going well, but the bringing together of different ideas and cultures. And the new clash of opposing perspectives has been correlated with a lot of these Vienna's in the world history. Very true. Although I'm pretty sure that in 19 hundreds, Paris had more foreigners than Vienna was like 2% in Vienna. So I joined you go from the Scottish Islands to Edinburgh 17 40. That's a huge difference. It's a bigger difference. Maybe then, you know Mexico to Los Angeles today.

If you're thinking about what kind ofwork thio fund in terms of studying historical progress, what's your framework for? Figure out where to even begin study? Because I mean we're talking about here is, um, basically studying the economic and scientific result of immigration, which is obviously a massively socially important debate. That's you know the center of a lot of political debates and has been for a long time. So from one perspective, it would be very it's It's sort of surprising that it would have been studied in more detail to understand the impact of it. But that's very different from kind of a biomedical science type stuff that we're talking about a second ago.

Do you

have a framework in your head for how you, um, would would think about her prioritizing studying in different areas? Or is it mostly just about finding really sharp people who have new ideas and funding them to do different kinds of work? Or how do you think about that? Over

people who are curious people who have bold ambitions, people who have what I call stamina? They just don't ever stop people who are working in productive small groups that maybe through WhatsApp, in fact, or it could be their next door neighbors, their colleagues at a university. When those say four items come together, then I think you have possibly what is a very good funding decision and I would take a lot of chances on those people not worried too much about the micromanaging and let talent rip and let groups form and see what

happens. Got it? So it's very much like entrepreneurship. In that way, you're betting on the person more than

division, right? There has to be a vision, and there are plenty of successful entrepreneurs who are not curious. So for intellectual progress to really put curiosity very highly, it's part of my philosophy. Yeah, and one of them carefully were, on the one hand, not only served to be acknowledged that an immense amount of very important, insightful work has already being created on its that work. That, to a large degree, has, I think, inspired but both of our viewpoints in that, for example,

the paper sort of Tyler mentioned about declining research productivity in in semiconductors, crop yields and a couple of other fields that was done fairly close to here. You know, that is work squarely relevant to these questions that I think is really important, and we may not be here in the same way without it. On the other hand, it is simultaneously true that major sways of these questions really are surprisingly under investigated and so again just return to biomedical funding and the n I H. As far as I can tell, there are no books assessing How well is the n I H. Working, and I don't have a strong view on on the answer to that question. But I do have a strong view on the importance of knowing, Ah, and which parts of the N H are working better and worse. And inasmuch as the night has changed over the last couple of decades, was the old and h better or the new one,

like this stuff is so important. And so while it's the case that there is a huge amount of good research happening today with fantastic researchers, in a sense there aren't enough of them on a lot of the central questions are still unanswered. Yeah, interesting. Do you think so?

You were talking a minute ago about the explosion and costs and health care. Then on. Right now, I think one of the defining aspects of the moment that we're in is a lot of the basic costs of living. For a lot of people are have just increased a lot right where you know, the story that we tell about our society is that you have technology and you have competition and drives down prices. So, you know, if you if you bought a TV today if you if you bought a TV from, you know, a 10 year old TV today, it would cost, you know, 5% of what it costs 10 years ago. Eso Clearly the value and inefficiency has increased a lot there. But then, in things that matter so much like health care,

education, uh, rent those things have have generally just increased right. And in, like, the normal dynamics that you would be hoping would play out, um aren't and to some degree, for the quality of life for a lot of people, the increases in those costs may even be dwarfing all the other advances

and everything. So do you think

that that is that those things were all related? Or do you think I mean, I think you used the phrase cost disease, right? When when when referring thio, you know the cost explosion of things like health care and education, student debt. Ah, and and rent. Um, do

you think that that's a different type of problem,

or do you think that that is fundamentally related. Two. The rate of progress in, um in biomedicine. As an example.

I think there are common features to these problems, though each one is different. Restrictions on entry is one highly bureaucracy ized institutions sometimes a lot of third party payment, which may be required in the case of catastrophic health care but nonetheless has distorting effects. Areas where people are very strong moral feelings. I think we often make worst decisions about. We're not analytical enough, and you put all of those together. But I would stress, say, health care If you go to Singapore Healthcare there. I think it's about 4% of GDP. They have slightly higher life expectancy than we do. Their system is by no means perfect, but we can see through comparative analysis. There are ways of doing this better. The NIMBY problem cost of living getting an apartment in Japan,

it is mostly solved because building in Japan tends to be regulated at higher levels than the city or the county, so more gets built. Living in Japan is cheaper, the cost of renting an apartment so often we kind of know the answers we shy away from really focusing on a concerted effort to get to doing them in this country. Agree with all of that, And I would just underscore the entry costs aspect. And the entry costs aren't always think, take different forms right in that sort of impurity. The entry costs of forming a new university are really high. But that's not because there's a kind of formal told you have to pay. It's It's it's not. It's not like zoning, where they're kind of deliberate, specific kind of legal restrictions that prohibit you from doing so. But But just as a practical matter, you know,

sociologically institutionally accreditation dynamics, who knows? It's apparently almost impossibly difficult to create a successful new university today, and so I well, I think answering the cost Aziz question is one of the most important set of some components in this broader question of what is it that enables our progress and at an over arching level. It's just surprising to me that we don't have sort of a more definitive on dhe on clear answers there, Alex Tab Rock, a colleague of Tyler, got along uh, exactly last summer, and there are other papers, you know, analyzing the also analyzing the question, but it's a surprisingly sparse literature. You know, Alex's list of citations was not that long on you.

He had some suggestions, though. You know what the underlying ideology might be. Um, maybe he's right. Maybe he's wrong, but again, that that's it's your point. It's one of the most pressing questions for American society for global society. In 2019 we really have to know what's happening and to return to something, Tyler said earlier. Part of our hope. You know, it's not too kind of promote any specific solution, any specific, Um,

I know aspect of us, but rather that no. Even though this is not what's kind of folk Aly Central in the headlines today it should be. And as we think of what the world is gonna look like in 50 years or 100 years, it plausibly more than anything else, is going to determine the shape of that. Doesn't entrepreneur? What is it you find most striking about America's dysfunctional economic sectors? Because you intersect with them all the time, right?

Yeah. I mean, I would want to see this scared studied more, but, um, s Oh, there were just so many different factors. And I think part of what is is a little bit confusing. Is that the things that are making health care so expensive? They may have some fundamental link to the things that make college tuition so expensive, but But on its surface, it seems like they're they're also more proximate causes that are quite different, you know? I mean, so with college tuition, the fact that okay, it's really expensive.

So then we do more to subsidize the cost of it. And then by doing so, we're not providing any pressure on colleges toe to make it more efficient. And then the cost just goes up further is a pretty different dynamic. Then then what's going on with health care where we're basically Americans want to know that if someone in their family gets sick, they're gonna be able to get every treatment possible? Um, in order which which ends up. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you've seen all the stats on this, that half of the health care costs that someone incurs or in the last six months of their life on dhe. That's Ah, I guess part of what you're saying is an American moral value, which is that, um,

you know, we believe that you should do everything you can tow help some new sick where's and a lot of other countries I don't know what Singapore situation is, but a lot of the ones that are often cited as more efficient health care systems don't have that approach. They say, Okay, okay. If someone in your family has this form of cancer will do these two treatments, and then we're done. And no part of that is because they may not be able to incur the level of debt Is a country that the U S can, so they may just have to make that trade off. But it creates all these downstream dynamics where Okay, now, if you as a society are willing to say, okay, we're gonna have to treatments for for this kind of cancer, not do not try all seven things than now.

Franciscan go, for example, negotiate with the drug companies and say, All right, I'm only gonna support the two that were the most cost effective. And the other ones, they're out to dry. Where is that? In the American system, you don't have that kind of negotiating

leverage. So it seems

like they're very different things, But I kind of intuitively it seems like at their root, there should be some commonalities and I would be very interested t kind of understand that in more detail. I'm curious why, You know, from what you're saying about so that the literature is sparse

on cottage cheese in particular. Yeah. Why do you think

more people aren't studying this? I mean, given that this is just such a central thing in the lives of most people, right, it's I mean, the cost of living in city is has gone up so much. You have a whole generation of students. I think the the total student debt is now almost $2 trillion or anything. It was 1.7 the last staff that I saw. And of course, health care is you know, the number of people in the country who are within one issue of being bankrupt is just kind of staggering. So

what economists? What's preventing people from studying this I wouldn't say anything is preventing them. The incentive is to build a brick and to build a brick that can survive scrutiny by referees The incentive is not to build a building. In most cases, biomedicine actually is often different. But in the social sciences. So there's so many bricks out there. And so people want to say, Oh, we're already studying this. It's correct. The bricks are there in the millions, but the bricks and the buildings are a different thing. But I have a question for you If I may be allowed to go for it. What is it you would most like to see from academics? And I don't mean research on social media. I mean America, the world. What do you want?

Although I would like

more research actually fun? No, look, I think that

the these issues on exploding costs and why these systems aren't aren't working the way that they're supposed to for people is probably one of the most pressing questions. When I think about, you know, our work over the next decade and it's what are we gonna do that's gonna fundamentally make people's lives better? There's a lot that weaken d'oh, but it's it. But if these problems continue at the rate they're going at, it's actually quite hard for me to imagine how we could do enough good to overcome the increase in costs that people are incurring at things that are so fundamental. So no, we're working on them and and in kind of in somewhat different ways. Where I think health care is difficult because it is so inherently political for the because it touches on moral values where if you wanna have a difference in approach of how we treat the last six months of people's lives, that's something that's more of a Democratic question than, ah, a technocratic one. I think people need to be able to support that. Um, so I I don't personally feel like that's an area that I'm gonna have a huge impact.

A lot of people are focused on that, but the area that I do think we can make a big impact is on long term science research. So if you could just make it more efficient to cure preventer, manage diseases than that over the long term should really be the answer for bringing healthcare costs in line, not the next 10 years, but maybe in over the next 50 years. I'd like to see a solution before that, so I'd love to see more studying of of the health care part of this. But in the science side, I'm quite optimistic about that On housing, I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, there's always the question of what Which forces and technology end up being stronger than it was like which trends end up being stronger. So on the one hand you have this giant mismatch of opportunity where people feel compelled to move to cities because that's kind of where a lot of the jobs are.

But then there's not enough building of supply of housing, so rent just increases. And then that means that even though people are going and doing higher value things, their lives actually aren't benefiting as much from that because so much of their costs are just of the value that they're generating is just going to housing because rent is is getting so high. So I mean, what were historically what if people don't weigh invented cars, right? And, um, freeways that way people could live further out, you know? I mean, maybe, um maybe something like the Hyperloop could extend suburbs like five times this far. So, you know,

that could make it so someone could live quite further away that that would be good, right? If you can increase the effective radius of a city. That's one way to alleviate constraints, political constraints or concerns about people building things. So that way you can get more supply, bring the cost down. But you know, I I happen to have amore. I happen to think a different thing is probably the right solution. In 2019. It's a lot easier to move bits around. Then it is Adam's. So, rather than people moving, inventing a new hyper loop or cars,

I tend to think that the set of technologies around, whether it's augmented reality or virtual reality or video presence, that just let people be where they want to be physically and feel present with other people, wherever they need to be to do their job. I'm connected. The people they care about that feels to me like the better long term solution. Don't make everyone move to cities, make it so people can choose where they want to be and could get access to all the opportunities that want everyone. So those

air, it's hard

for me to imagine Maur important problems at least over the next pressing problems for the next decade. I think over the longer term, you know, potentially climate change is more of an existential issue. But in terms of people's lives today, I think the exploding costs from from these areas is such a profound issue in the trend is so

medical world just three quick points on that and one is I think these questions are often a little bit like the constant questioning. One of the reasons that it's kind of difficult to study is because you don't have to take this very macroscopic and potentially this very microscopic view. And so safe, for example, in science, if it were the case that the administrative burden on scientists had increased by, say, 2/3 over the last four years, not saying it has. And I'm not saying that even if it has, that is in fact the cause of any kind of slowdown. But if it had, that might be quite difficult to observe because it could come in the form of well, that it takes twice as long. On average, for things to be approved in, the forms are kind of longer and you're interrupted Maur.

And so, like, actually specifically diagnosing the kind of causal pathways, I think it can really be quite tricky. And I think that generalizes a lot of the fields. And secondly, to your point, about sort of technology, pantry solving the agglomeration become imperative of cities. I think that could be true. Although, you know, here we are in person, but others were watching. People are watching. But even if technology self ash I guess my worry would be that the sort of the socio institutional dynamics that if I kind of ruined cities or made the most effective or whatever and probably also a generalized and apply to other domains on and so we're going to suffer the cost of those same phenomena elsewhere.

And what do you want to ask, Mark? Um Well, um, I guess what have you learned from doing CD I Ah, and that I mean, you launch it five years ago, Um, four years ago. Okay. Yeah. Um, how will the next four years be different? The 1st 4 Well, so

one of the things that we struggle with here is there such long term projects, right? So what were we talked a lot about the scientific research. And we're also doing a bunch of work with education to build tools for teachers to doom or project based learning, more personalized learning for kids, but basically make it so that teachers have have tools to do the work that they want to mentor students and not, you know, just have toe have to lecture and have everyone learned at the same pace. Um, so this stuff, it's we're making progress in all of these areas And I think one of the meta questions and running C z I is at what point? To check in and consider evolving the direction. I mean, obviously there's there's minor execution things that you try to improve along the way. But I want to make sure that we have an awareness that these air fundamentally problems that we're gonna be working on for 10 or 20 years and not. I think a lot of these things just kind of a consistency of approach and in building trust is kind of, um,

you know, um or important and constantly evaluating or potentially thrashing in science. We've had the benefit of taking on a number of different projects right. So the human cell outlets was one of the original one is now one of the next areas that we're really excited to work on is imaging. Um, there's a lot of advances in microscopy there, a lot of things that we still can't see you. And as engineers, I think one of the things that you can probably appreciate is, you know, just you were trying to debug a system you really want to, like, get into the code and see you step through and see where the thing is breaking down. But, you know, we don't really have a way today to see um,

a white blood cell eat, Uh uh, a virus, Right? It's like t like in in Viva. Write it, like in the body to see proteins folding live on. And I think that, you know, there's certain optical levels optical thresholds on the physics that you might appeal to get beyond. But, um, But between that and the advances in a I, I do think that it's possible tow give scientists new imaging capacity. That hasn't been possible before. So a lot of what we're trying to do is it's the human cell Atlas.

We took an approach of his very broad and, um and and collaborative and, um, someone chaotic, even in a way. And I think we were able to learn some of the lessons from that is we're now thinking about how we organize the imaging project about Okay, Maybe it would be helpful to have more clearly established leadership around it up front. Um, you know, maybe there are things that ah, you know, rather than having just 11 big project, they're gonna be areas where we could just build tools that that go into every lab. There's one software package called the Party. You at that? A lot of scientists.

It's like like right now there's the actual technology of microscopes is it's kind of, ah, head of scientists ability to process the data. There's this weird mismatch because it kind of makes sense. If you're, you know, the n h funding supports people. Toe, toe, basically have a lab.

I'm tool building is not really subsidized. Supported that

Well, yeah, but I mean, if you want to have a team of ongoing software engineers, that's like, Okay, you're gonna want an effort that's going on for a while. That's more than a couple of people. So that kind of thing. I think there's a real niche that no one is doing that stuff with skill that it needs to get done. So

so just pushing on both of them. And then there's uniform agreement on that period point from always every biomedical scientist that I speak with, like two buildings under supported. Yes. So I don't know. I'm from a meta

point. I'm I'm a little wary of concluding whether that things have, like which things have worked and not worked well yet. Um, I mean, certainly not everything we're gonna do is gonna work out. That's like

four years is too early to say, Yeah, but like, but it's certainly

interesting. And when I try to push the teams to Dio is make sure that the work that we're doing are things that clearly would not have happened otherwise. What? I think especially a lot of these fields and philanthropy. I think there are a lot of potential issues with this where it's easy to, um, to give money to something and feel like you're doing good, because you probably are

doing some good for the

impending lack, the discipline, Thio say. Okay, am I doing the most good that I can write? And I think we kind of have a responsibility to t to do that. So that's the thing I push our team to do is develop really different theories. I'm quite confident that an education, the work that we're doing is just stuff that that if we weren't trying it, I don't It's not clear that, like anyone else would be doing an effort like this. It's scale. I feel really good about that. I think in imaging something like that is gonna be similar. Even in social advocacy, we're doing a lot of work in criminal justice reform. That's a combination of advocacy and building tools for accountability and working with reform minded prosecutors that they could be more data driven about who they try to bring charges against because they want to be fair,

you know, or at least a lot of folks want to be fair, and they don't have on the data tow either optimize how they run their office or to hold the people in their accountable. So building those kind of tools could be, um, super helpful, and I'm quite confident that if we weren't pushing on that, I'm not. Um I feel good that that's like a good theory toe to at least try to push on. So that's what we try to do in

the work and the work, like the criminal justice work, education, biomedical, what's the underlying viewer inside or experience of yours? That's the common element behind those areas. Like, how do we boil down Mark Zuckerberg philanthropy to a smaller number of dimensions?

Well, first off, it's not just me I do with my wife, so

she actually no

well, she's an important element to this because she was a teacher. Actually, she isn't. She's building a school. I mean, she spends a lot of time over there. She is a doctor. So? So if you so if you're looking at the education and health aspect, the domain expertise is more hers than mine. And and and she's quite, I think, compelling and insightful on on, on on some of things that need to get done there in terms of the approach that maybe Maur inspired by me in some ways where, where you know, it's the very long term focus,

which I think it comes from. A lot of the lessons I've learned from Facebook. It's the tool building which comes from having the experience building engineering teams. Um, and it's some of the some of what we've learned just in kind of managing and partnering with folks through through building the company is that it's a lot of what you said. It's like you want to bet on the best individuals in different spaces and and give them room to run. And in managing complex projects, you need to know when something needs to be a little more directive versus when you want it toe. Just be an open thing that could make progress in a more catic way. And that might be more art than science. Or at least until your your field gets fully Selves all these questions. But it's, um But yeah, it's ah, I know it's an interesting set of of of questions and you know it certainly the, um you know,

I guess 11 animating theme certainly is. You know, as our kids grow up, we want to make sure that they live better lives. So it's so these aren't things that are primarily gonna benefit us. If you're trying to benefit us, we will be working on education. I think the that the health work is ah, very long term oriented. If we were focused on kind of our own health, you know, you'd be we probably doing Maur disease specific work rather than fundamental science to try toe or tool building four fundamental science which might even be a level more abstract than fundamental science to try to compound the rate of progress in science. Um, and then a lot of work on equality and making sure you know, the criminal justice work, I think is a lot of,

you know, the way that our country handles this stuff is just such an unfortunate outlier compared toe other countries in the amount of human capital that is locked away. Um, is, um, you know, it's it's it's its own thing that I think I just heard of seven. Ah, lot more than studying. But I mean, certainly I think just improving that would be would be a big a big advance. Um, I don't know. It's interesting. I mean that this conversation is interesting because it's I think it highlights somewhat of Ah, a distinction.

And, um, I guess my approach to learning or studying these things is Maur the, um, try different things and experiment and kind of and then play it forward, generate new data that doesn't exist and see how that goes. Um and, you know, talking to you and seeing the work that you do. And I guess this is pride intrinsic to being an academic too warm or of the work is about, um, you know, looking at data sets that can exist and studying what is already there rather than trying toe kind of create the new data, sets or approaches, it's I mean, they're they're two approaches that I think complement each other but are but are actually quite different in terms of how you kind of approach learning about howto how to do the best work going forward.

Well, I think, uh, I think there is a very important I'm so sort of compliment charity where you know, for any of these kind of really important questions about it, sort of now, how should science be organized or which kinds of policies generally most iconic growth, or how one should support the diffusion of innovation or whatever. I don't think there exists kind of definitive data on that question. I don't think by sort of, you know, just going deep in the literature. You're gonna come up with the clear answers that no one can feel confident in going and executing it or implementing. I think of the data such as it exists and and the existing findings as, as kind of, you know, food for hypothesis generation on,

for example, you know, t return to the management training. That's what one like I I would probably not have guessed the effect sizes would be that large right on. So can I studied Hadn't been conducted. I don't think, you know, I would have ah ascribe sort of particular no sufficient expectation value to the effort of maybe stripe going and doing something there. But now, because of those studies, I think, Well, perhaps there are on the margins things we could do. Maybe there are things that end up being quite materially valuable over time. I think being able to sort of marshal those, you know,

potentially being able to sort of encourage people to dig Maur toe instead of particular directions and then tow a Combine that with a willingness tow experiment on the willingness toe. Frankly, just be wrong. Andi, I think since synthesis of that is really powerful and again if you go back and you look at the on the foundations that I think have really had a significant impact over the past 102 100 years, I think it's that kind of combination in that, you know, if you look at them Warren Weaver, who is the guy? Who is that Rockefeller who funded Norman Borlaug, right. Uh, he had worked with Vannevar Bush at oh SRD during World War Two. He, uh, I think he he he was familiar with Ah ah,

A lot of the data and just give empirical realities of how different kinds of scientific and technological ventures were likely to work. But he was also willing Thio just place a bold best and that, you know, pursue the hypothesis that agronomy could be radically improved. But there was no particularly strong basis no ex ante toe to really have conviction that so I think it's all in the combination.

Yeah, interesting. So I mean, I'm cures to push further on 11 question. That was when you asked me what I was what I would want to be studying. Why don't you think people are studying the the, um the cost questions as Muchas is, it seems like they should be for it. Seems like if these air as big of questions for society, and it certainly seems like they're issues that most people have. Um what What are the structural barriers that are preventing the top people in these fields from, um from deciding to go study It is it is it that the fields don't line up with it is that there's not funding for it. Is it too hard in certain ways? Like what? What are what are the dynamics that air that are going

on here? There are many big questions. It's hard to study them. So at the end, you have quite a speculative answer or set of hypotheses. So the world is a whole isn't sure what to make of that. Is it a real contribution? So the private return to you is a researcher, maybe is unclear. So you tend to get very famous people who are quite well established looking at really big ideas may be a bit later in their career, and I'm not saying that's bad work, but it's not necessarily cutting edge, either. And they spent their whole lives being famous, and they're not necessarily in a position to actually make the breakthrough and then younger people. Their incentive is to first get established and do something that is quite defensible. So I think in general,

big questions are understudied. The 10 year system, I think, increasingly is broken a lot of academics to work pretty hard, but that so much of your audience is a narrowly defined set of beers who write you reference in 10 year letters. I think we need to change and the incentive for academics to integrate with practitioners and learn from them and actually try doing things. We need more of that I've often suggested for graduate school. Instead of taking a class, everyone should be sent to a not so high income village for two weeks. They can do whatever they want. Just go for two weeks. Think about things. No one wants to do this. No one wants to experiment with people who do development, often do it on their own but the notion that every economist should have studied the East Asian economic miracle, the Industrial Revolution and spent two weeks or more in a poor village. It's just not how things are, and I'd like to change that.

So how did how does one go about changing that? So if you're trying to create a network of people who feel like they have an incentive to study this because it's gonna be good for their career, right and it's not and and they're gonna have a network of support of people who might be reviewing the the grants or the work that they're doing and and also think that this is important work to be done, How do you How do you go about establishing

that? I can selfishly site that it. George Mason. Virtually all of our students have very directly studied these questions, and we funded a lot of them to get a live other distant, strange, possibly poor places. Other departments may have more money than we do. It can be done because we've done it at George Mason. So I think again, it's a question of the will and just the ability and desire to imagine that things could be quite different in the sense that I think was more common in the America say of 1958 or JFK, his decision toe put a man on the moon than you see, actually, in 2019.

All right. Is that a good place? Toe to wrap?

Fine by me.

All right, well, thank you, guys. There's been a great conversation.

Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Thanks for listening to conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes stitcher or your favorite podcast app. And if you like this podcast, please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review. This helps other people find the show.