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today I'm very happy to be speaking with Tim Harford Tim is a long-standing columnist for the financial times he's on BBC Radio all the time presenter of 50 things that made the modern economy and also the series more or less he's the author of
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at least seven books including the million selling the undercover Economist his TED Talks have been watched by more than 8 million people he is an honorary fellow of the royal statistical society and he was made an officer of the order
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of the British Empire for quote services to improving economic understanding and now he has a new podcast series out called cautionary tales Tim welcome I'm delighted to be here the the prospect of talking to you Tyler is both the most
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exciting and also the most terrifying engagement I have on my podcast promotion tour so I'm looking forward to it these are all easy questions so let's think about public speaking which you've done quite a bit of on average do you think extroverts or introverts are
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better public speakers I am an introvert I I've never seen any Research into this so it should be something that one could test empirically but as an introvert I love public speaking because I like being alone and you're never more alone
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than when you were on the stage no one is going to bother you when you're up there so I find it a a great way to interact with people because they don't talk back what other non-obvious traits do you think predict being good at
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public speaking H you need to be willing to rehearse and also willing to improvise and make stuff up as you go along and I think the it's hard for somebody to be willing to do both I think the people who like to rehearse end up rehearsing too much and being too
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stiff and not being willing to adapt to circumstances whereas the people who are happy to improvise um don't rehearse enough and so they're comments are ill formed and Ill considered so you need that capacity to do both so you were at
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one point the world school's persuasive speaking Champion is that correct uh it is correct although it's a little bit like boxing I think there there were probably numerous people who could have CL that at the same time but yes but
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still any heavyweight champion at all is pretty Fierce uh what is persuasive speaking so persuasive speaking at that time was giving a speech of about 10 or 12 minutes which seems like a long time when you're a kid is not a long time as
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a grown-up that is arguing a particular case and in my particular case I was arguing that nuclear fusion was underrated and we should invest more in it and it held great promise and perhaps in 1991 when I was doing it this was a I don't know what I mean I still
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underrated one could one could say exactly the same thing well I have to say that it's underrated because uh partly for consistency and partly because my sister works on nuclear fusion it's it's one of one of those long shots isn't it that we we continue
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to think it might work and if it worked it would be absolutely wonderful but we've been told for a very long time that it's just around the corner and so far we haven't reached the corner so what makes you persuasive I think in that case it was a
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mixture of analogies explaining to people what this thing was and people didn't understand so I was explaining a technical subject I now realize I've done quite a lot of that in my life so was drawing people into a world and
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explaining to them about something they didn't know engaging their curiosity making them want to learn more and then having done that you can then it's fairly easy there're on your side they're open-minded you can then make the case and I've since discovered
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various pieces of research and and also through my introspection discovered this to be true if you can engage people's curiosity you have a shot at changing their minds I mean d Daniel Kahan who studies cultural cognition and tribal
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thinking has found that a curious mindset tends to be one of the few antidotes to tribal thinking if on the other hand you're in a situation where you're you're not telling people anything they feel they don't already know you're just challenging them with
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the same old facts that they've heard they've had shouted at them before and they they just they very easy to dismiss you so that's curiosity is an important thing how good is your own self- understanding of what makes you
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emotionally persuasive well I suppose if I had a tremendous degree of self- understanding and if I had no self- understanding I would give you exactly the same answer right so um am I emotionally persuasive when I worked on a book called adapt I became very
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interested in feedback and very conscious of how rarely we get good feedback and I am aware that I rarely get good feedback as a speaker you step off stage and you say to people how how was that was it any good and people say yeah it was great and of course they say
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it was great because it's difficult to get on stage and give a talk and no one's going to say actually you sucked so you don't get any good feedback and so I've taken to to saying to people can you think of one thing that you would
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recommend I do differently next time it's astonishing how rarely people are able to give you one specific piece of actionable feedback but I did once get specific actionable feedback from one of the senior people in the Ted
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organization he he saw me give a speech I thought it went very well it was about Innovation and lessons from building the Spitfire a particular fighter plane that was very influential in the second world war and I stepped off stage and people
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gathered around and said that was a great speech and I thought to myself yeah it was a great speech and I became aware that this gentleman was standing just off to one side and that when everybody had cleared he came over to me
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and said yeah you did well but um many of the people you were talking to uh were not British they don't have the same cultural references as you do they will not know what the Spitfire is so next time you should show them a photograph of a Spitfire and that that
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was a very useful piece of feedback it was very specific it explained what I should do differently in future and I'm astonished at how rarely such feedback is given even when you explicitly seek it out I found it's easier to get
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negative feedback on a public talk from women in the audience I'm not sure why that is uh interesting I haven't observed that but I I haven't tested it systematically either so now you are also UK under 18 debating Champion correct yes which is a similar skill set
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but requires a great deal more uh improvisation because the persuasive speech you prepare and you memorize and you deliver whereas the the debating you're constantly tweaking what you're saying in response to what's being said at you you have someone very smart
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trying to make you look very stupid are you more competitive than you seem to be at first glance I I've lost my taste for it actually I I was very competitive as a as a young debater uh I then went to Oxford and I hung around the Oxford
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Union and I'm a little younger than Boris Johnson our new prime minister but there were all those types around uh and I didn't find it very appealing they weren't the kind of people I felt at home with I felt a little bit bit
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excluded and so I just I stopped debating and I'm I'm now much less interested in that very competitive format I'm still competitive in in in other ways I very competitive board games player but generally I you know I I seek cooperation and agreement more
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more than competition I still think though that debating is is um underrated in that people think of it as being this very elitist thing it's practiced by Elite people from very Posh schools and very privileged backgrounds and it favors a certain kind of
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education and those things are all true at the same time in a debate you are protected by certain rules you given a certain amount of space and time and people are not allowed to interrupt you except in certain formalized ways that
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you don't have to accept and I became aware once I became an adult and entered into uh corporate spaces and corporate meetings that you know all all the all the old men were talking all over the young women and they wouldn't they'd
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interrupt and they wouldn't let these younger people get a word in edgeways and I realized that debating actually does protect anybody it requires a certain skill set yes but it it also carves out that protected space which is very valuable should public conferences
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present more of their material or more of the event in the form of a debate I think rather than talks panels we all hate talks and panels right yeah well talk a good talk is fine a panel is almost always terrible and a panel is terrible because people tend to agree
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with each other and uh they don't feel they got permission to disagree even if they they do disagree a debate if you choose the the motion well a debate could be great you get to see both sides of the argument you really get to see
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propositions tested Under Pressure I think we should do more yes has Twitter raised or lowered your opinion of public debate uh lowered I well I find Twitter to be uh good for some things but very rarely good for the standard of argument
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because it favors outrage and put downs and disrespect and don't all debates favor outrage and put Downs I've done Intelligence Squared debates and they were full of outrage and put down it's not coming from me by the way uh I'm
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sure not coming from you but you at least you have time to stand your ground and to make your case and people can observe and they can see Tyler speaking for 10 minutes and they can say there seems to be a reasonable fellow who's
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willing to listen to the other side and willing to make a reasoned argument and on Twitter you have no there's no chance of doing that so any elastic Supply improves debates fixed amount of time you can't talk anymore Twitter there's
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always someone else to to ratio you but it's it's all but also everything comes in these these bite-sized chunks just the other day I tweeted my most viral tweet I didn't notice it was it was a quote from a conservative MP who had
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left the conservative party and uh said something very negative about her own party and about brexit and all I did was quote her and link to the financial times piece that she had written and uh went away and played a board game with some friends and came back and it had
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been retweeted um over a thousand times which very rarely did my even though I have a lot of followers my tweets never go viral I think because I very rarely am interested in Outrage but people found this particular expression of of
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contempt the The Insider rejecting the previous uh the organization she worked for people found that very engaging and everyone loved that but I don't know if anyone's really the wiser or learned anything they didn't already know now
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that you bring up brexit I do have a few questions for you at the conceptual level how exactly did British politics get so weird no matter what your point of view it feels like something very few people had predicted six years ago what
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happened what variable didn't we see yes uh I'm not sure I have a good answer even in hindsight we had a situation it is very curious we got to a situation where people suddenly identified very strongly with a proposition that they had not previously identified strongly
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with I don't fully understand the processes whereby that happened but both on the remain side and the leave side people started expressing a great deal of contempt for the for the other side not listening to what was being said not
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taking the arguments seriously um and uh a lot of people just sorted themselves into Echo Chambers in a way that I hadn't seen before the Curious Thing That polarization I think is familiar to anyone who studies American politics but the Curious Thing is that it it was
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crosscutting so it came at the electoral system sideways via a referendum with both major parties split on what to do about it and most members of parliament convinced that brexit was not a very good idea and so and we've just been
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dealing with that awful Log Jam ever since and no s we're having this conversation before the election it'll be broadcast after the election there is a reasonable chance the election will break the Log Jam but there's a reasonable chance that it won't I guess
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we'll see when I go to England which I do fairly often frequently I have the feeling that this is such a sensible culture and what strikes me is that when people say something so often they feel compelled to give a reason and they give
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the reason in a fairly even or or not so emotional tone of voice and I contrast this with my native United States of America is my impression just off are the English actually not any more sensible than anyone else culturally I I wonder if there is an impression you're
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you're seeing it differently because you're coming as an outsider they treat you differently as an outsider no even public pronouncements or what people say on TV there's so often a reason given and it's presented as if the reason is
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why you should do the thing you're being asked to do yes one well I mean I'd like to think that people are giving genuine reasons but I do seem to remember one of these pieces of psychological research I forget who did it uh testing persuasion
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it may have been chelini but uh people cut in line there was a line for to do a yeah and people cut in line and sometimes people would just say sorry can I do this and would cut in line and people didn't like that but if people
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gave a reason even if the reason was utterly vacuous people found that perfectly acceptable so if somebody cut in line and said do you mind if I cut in line I have to make some copies well obviously you have to make some copies
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because you're queuing up at a photocopy I have to make some copies too because I'm also queuing at the photocopier so the vacuous reason was nevertheless persuasive so maybe the the lesson is that the the British have simply learned
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that it's good idea to provide a reason and it doesn't need to be a good reason so under that hypothesis the English are actually a more manipulative culture yeah I would I think I mean we we I I have as you as you kindly mentioned I I am an officer of the order
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of the British Empire we ran This Global Empire I don't think you get to run a global Empire from a small island without learning some some sort of tricks to manipulate how other people behave now on brexit am I correct in
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thinking you have been and are still Pro remain uh yes although I'm in the an awkward situation of of fact checking um I fact check the referendum I fact check the general elections and the BBC I'm working for the BBC while I do that that job the BBC is of course
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neutral and independent and balanced so I'm in that mode where I'm trying to be as neutral as possible I'm sure I don't always succeed I find that quite addictive it's quite nice to sit there and see both sides to everything but then in my financial times columns I can
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say what I like and uh although I don't tend to express myself strongly like most economists and indeed like most people with a degree level education in the UK and like most people who live in the southeast of England just like my
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tribe I think that this was a terrible idea and will do a lot of harm and it will particularly do a lot of harm to the people who voted for it in economics I'm sure you're familiar with the equity efficiency tradeoff the notion that you
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would give up some output to have a more Equitable outcome yeah and this you find a reasonable idea however you might wish to make particular trade off yes well it it seems that Equity is a thing to aim for and efficiency is a thing to aim for
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and they probably are often intentions so yes there's a trade-off so if someone says there's also a trade-off control versus efficiency being master of your own fate as a nation you would accept that that's a valid trade-off uh yes is
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control well you would consider being poorer to have more control over your own schedule for I would consider being poorer to have control over my own my own schedule but but the the hypothesis that this links this to brexit is the idea that oh well if we give some
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politicians in London more control that's desirable versus some politicians in Brussels but surely the politicians in London are more accountable to the British public or maybe English public in the future uh than are those in
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Brussels or Berlin you would think they were more accountable in general I have found the European Union to be because of course everything needs to be agreed by everybody it it does tend to be a defense against politicians taking extreme positions in nation states
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whether they're extreme protectionist positions or extreme in other ways it's hard for them to get away with that so I tend I have tended to find Brussels in general a defense against particularly stupid domestic politics although it's
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not a fullprof defense and Brussels does its own stupid things too but still that might be an argument that Brussels rule is more efficiency it's not an argument that it's more control yeah the englishbritish system is pretty clean so
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to speak right and we've already established the English people are highly reasonable yeah so but then one needs to return to the question of control over what so freedom to do what so uh if if my concern is I would like
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to control the kind of people I see around my town I see too many people with Foreign Accents and I want to control that and prevent so many of these people arriving then the European unions um definitely interferes with that control because you have free
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movement of people from across the across the union so people come from Poland from Lithuania so if that is what I'm worried about I might feel out of control if on the other hand from my privileged Oxford perch I feel that what
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I what I would like control of is my ability to go to Dublin to go to Berlin to go to to Rome to travel widely to give speeches to work in any of these places uh and not to not to worry I have more control over that as a member of the single market so I I I wouldn't
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emphasize control as a single virtue it's always a question of well control over what and who is exercising that control and the European Union reduces our control over some things and increases our control over others Paul Krugman has given the very rough
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estimate that brexit might lead to say a loss of two to three% of GDP in the steady state does that strike you as roughly in the ballpark of what would be the case yeah I think we've probably already lost that due to the persistent
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uncertainty and the fact that we keep but you've had a higher growth rate than Germany we keep promising to make a decision and then postponing the decision but but less than we had I mean one never knows but yeah that order of magnitude uh maybe I think some of the
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some of the analysis from coming from inside the UK suggest it might be twice that it might be more like 6% if nothing else doesn't the current experience simply show how hard it is to do brexit it seems everyone can agree with that so
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if doing brexit is really hard it will only get harder so staying in is a kind of irreversible choice so when you're making irreversible choices the cost benefit calculus has to be very strongly in favor of an irreversible investment
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right like by ratio of 3:1 4:1 very high hurdle rate so if someone just says well we want more political control we want sovereignty to answer to the people here we understand we're giving up a few percent of GDP we'll earn that back in a
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year and a half if we stay in we're stuck forever my goodness we're sensible English people why shouldn't we get out yeah what's your response it it's been rare to see that argument articulated the argument has tended to be more along
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the lines of uh look at how much more money we can give to the NHS and oh sure that's silly right you fact checked that into Oblivion like well I think we fact checked it too much um and called too much attention to it um but also oh turkey is about to join the EU aren't
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you worried about all these Turkish people who are going to show up so one of the things that has worried me is the the poity of the arguments that I have seen in favor of leaving I think there are arguments to be made and you you're
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making them but I think it's telling that those arguments are rarely made and there's your own book right adapt why success always starts with failure a great book the notion that you want experimentation a lot of the experiments at first may not look so great but over
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time you have more wisdom in the system with more distinct units of governance if anyone should be at least sympathetic to the brexit cause it would be you now yeah but but again it depends what uh level you're measuring these things at
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so Alberto Al a paper from maybe 20 years ago now American Economic Review if you can agree Global standards this empowers um smaller economic units you can have city states you can have small nation states and to some extent the the
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European Union potentially allows that it was much more credible to suggest for example that Scotland could break away from the rest of the UK when the whole lot was in the EU the ambiguity of whether Northern irand is in the UK well
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legally politically is in the UK but it would be nice to pretend that it's also part of Ireland lot of people would like that well you can you can have your cake and eat it if you're in the EU so the the EU prevents certain kinds of
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experiments but it allows other kinds of experiments so I don't I don't see that as decisively cutting either way and I should also say in adapt I do emphasize the importance of uh small experiments to give you a tremendous amount of
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information at the lowest possible cost and not sure brexit has yet qualified but I think you could say that about the EU as well the EU is clearly not a small experiment at a small cost cost is a very big experiment if something like the Boris Johnson Plan passes through
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Parliament and that might even have happened by the time this podcast comes out do you think the Scots will leave the United Kingdom I I I don't know I mean I I would have thought it's a it's a tossup uh and I don't have any special
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insight into that I think it's it's quite plausible they will quite plausible they won't so call it 50/50 part per I I would like to check the the betting markets because that would um that would tell me more because I I I'm a believer in betting markets for at
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least providing some information incidentally the night before brexit I was uh speaking at a dinner and I was asked and it was it was in France and it was an international crowd and I was asked for my opinion as to what would happen the night before the referendum
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and I said I don't know the betting markets say there's a 25% chance that we will leave the EU and the host of the dinner said oh there's no chance the that you'll vote to leave the EU it'll be a crushing victory for Romain and I
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said I I hope I hope you're right in the morning we came down for breakfast everyone was feeling a little glum after the result and somebody said well you you got that one wrong I thought well I said I didn't have any special Insight in the betting Market said it was a 25%
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chance I don't think I got it wrong at all but there we go people people will interpret these things in different ways why do we seem to be moving away from an interest in messy music so in one of your books you give the example of Keith
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Jarrett improvising on this terrible piano producing a masterpiece miles Davis often recording under questionable circumstances and so much music now it seems to you is autotune dynamic range is compressed everything sounds perfect every note in
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place where has messy music gone and why uh I I don't know I think it's a good question and it's puzzling and the dynamic compression we understand this is this is competition to be heard in uh public spaces to to be heard in the
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Jukebox to be heard on on radio to be heard on streaming although I understand that Spotify and other streaming services now basically equalize all the sound of everything so there's now no longer any competitive gain from Dynamic
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compression and trying to make everything super super loud so maybe Spotify for all its faults will um will fight against this but it's not what I would expect what I would expect is uh more improvisation because the technology
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allows many more experiments at much lower cost and you can you can pick what you like out of it so talking to Brian Eno as as I did for the book The Great producer ambient composer worked with Bowie and many other people um he he was
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emphasizing how much easier it has become to experiment you just record digitally and see what happens and if it doesn't work out you do it again but doesn't that elevate the relative influence of the Tor Swifts because we're drowning in experiments there are
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so many who are confused we watch Disney movies and we listen to Tor Swift and messiness is diminished by competition or or it's possible that we don't there was an incredibly messy process but we we don't perceive it as messy because
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the output can be edited until it absolutely is perfect even if what was going on in the studio was just unbelievably chaotic Hollywood comedies have lots more improvisation than they used to but it's not clear that they're perceived as being more improvised and
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that's because you know you can just do a take do another take do another take just keep keep busking keep making stuff up see what's funny it's easy to edit it all together whereas in the days of expensive film stock um you couldn't
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afford that process you couldn't afford all the film you couldn't afford all the editing and so you would try and be as funny as you could on paper and the actors would read the script but would do we perceive Hollywood comedy as being
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more improvised I'm not sure that we do because I perceive it as being mostly gone we see yeah we see period given the educational success of the TV show Sesame Street why hasn't there been more good online education for younger people
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do I fully accept the premise of the question there there is uh there is Ted Ed which is good for teenagers and for but say street is for eight-year olds right yeah or actually for four year old fours yes um so I haven't looked in as much detail as
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I should have done at the subject but my impression is that what is going on is you're you have everything is on YouTube and things are being algorithmically selected for and the algorithms are generally favoring more clicks which
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whatever attract the attention of toddlers cuz toddlers can pick their own stuff if as a parent one sat down with the iPad and the toddler and carefully selected and created uh what the toddlers were watching one might get a different result but I suspect that is
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not generally what is happening or at least not what what is mostly happening but can't an intermediary enter Khan Academy or Tim Harford for that matter oh here's the 15 videos to show your six-year-old marginal Revolution
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kindergarten exactly yeah perhaps on its way it's well and it maybe that's the equilibrium in the in the long run I mean I mean it's interesting that baby shark for example which is this viral thing that has been the late the viral
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version has been created by uh pinkfong uh a Korean company they're an educational company in principle they're supposed to be teaching Korean kids to speak English it just so happens that the the videos that they're producing to
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teach Korean kids to speak English are also being watched by English and American Kids uh for whom it is probably far less educational but yes there's a possibility but but um Alexis Madrigal had a great piece about this a few months ago in Atlantic and he pointed
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out that there is a there's a service called YouTube kids it's it's very high quality it's curated YouTube also seems to spend no effort whatsoever in calling anybody's attention to it he said I'm I'm a parent of toddlers it wasn't until
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researching this piece of Journalism that I found out YouTube kids even existed so I don't know why YouTube don't push that more uh but one suspects it's about the advertising why haven't you ever owned a television uh I find them to be very
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timec consuming and distracting they might be less distracting if I grew used to them I I I was sitting on the on the plane as I came over here from from the UK and um the person next to me on the plane was watching a movie and I've just
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couldn't draw my eyes away from this movie that was playing on the screen just just across the aisle I found it was constantly trying to figure out what was going on because I couldn't so I find them very distracting I I don't get anything done and the quality when I
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made the decision not to buy a television in 1992 when I left home the quality was very poor I hear rumors that apparently TV is quite good now but there's so many other things to do there's the internet and there there's board games and there's um there's
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podcasts I'm a loyal listener to conversations with Tyler and there are books and there you know everything has a cost what do you think is the best economic Insight we have nonobvious about relationships love online dating
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what has popular economics taught us about those areas so for a long time as you know I edited a semi-serious semi joking column for the financial times called deer Economist which would sadly no longer with us but the people would
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write in with their relationship queries or etiquette queries and I would I would write back using the principles of economics the Curious Thing was that was sort of supposed to be a joke and yet half the time half the time that I thought the economic advice was
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brilliant and half the time I thought the economic advice was was terrible and I was constantly flipping between the two and so I was never quite sure what what voice I should be in the most obvious Insight is that there generally
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gains from trade right there most things aren't Zero Sum Thomas shelling taught us this there's always some possible gain you just need to figure out what it is but I suppose less less obvious is behavioral economics taught me to think a lot about reframing so is there a
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different way to look at what is basically the same problem that con SHP away some of the conflict uh from it and I I still find that when I'm dealing with the problems of my friends and talking to my wife and we trying to solve social problems or problems for
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our children very often there's a way to reframe the problem that doesn't actually change its Essentials and yet somehow gives a lot more clarity is there a higher implicit tax on popular economics today because the world has
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become more politically correct people are more sensitive matters having to do with gender or sex and popular economics in a sense ignores those factors you work through the model it gives you an answer may or may not be a correct answer but it's not necessarily what
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Ordinary People would consider to be a moral answer yeah so to put that forward in people's faces are we now living in a time where you you can't do it anymore or it feels in poor taste it's it's certainly changed when you think about I
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think the best pop economics books before free economics were a hidden order by David Freedman yes uh very very good and the armchair economist by Steven lansberg also very good and they were particularly lansberg relished
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winding people up and being Politically Incorrect it's part of his thing and I think it's still part of his thing um but now that now sits less easily but I wonder whether the the real tax on popular economics is just that economists themselves have taken the
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reputation of the profession has taken a real pounding since the financial crisis when free economics came out in 2005 you could plausibly say hey these economists are super smart they can solve any problem much much harder to make that
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case in 2009 and so popular economics shifts instead to being Dan arieli saying the economists are wrong about everything by the way but here's a new way of thinking about things so the the nature of what popular economics is has
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changed but the politicization as well of everything puts economists in a difficult position because as any scientist who's written about climate change or vaccines will tell you people love scientists until they get into politically controversial territory well
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for an economist almost everything we write about is politically controversial whether as with with your book big business or whether we're talking about inequality uh whether we're talking about um GDP growth the environment
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taxation I mean it's all politically contentious and nobody wants to be told what to do when they've already made up their minds I've read all of your books I've read close to all of your columns maybe all of them in fact and I'm going to ask you a question I also asked Reed
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Hoffman so you know the truths of Economics plenty of empirical papers why aren't you weirder I I've read things by you that I disagreed with but I've never once read anything by you that I thought was outrageous why aren't you weirder I
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probably want to be liked too much so this is one difference between me and Steve levit I mean Steve levit is also much smarter than me and much more successful than me and that doesn't bother bother me at all but he's um he
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also doesn't care what what anyone thinks about it or doesn't seem to care what anyone thinks about him uh I actually do care what people think about me I'd quite like people to think I'm a nice guy and so I'm probably self-censoring at times saying oh maybe
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I won't say that because people wouldn't like that and that's probably a fault in a newspaper columnist you probably shouldn't care what people think about you but that that's the way it is what was it like playing poker with Steve
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levit now that you mention him so Le so i' I've met Steve uh many times over the years generally whenever he has a book out I end up interviewing him playing poker with him is very hard partly because he's much better at poker than I
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am I don't really play I know that I know the theory but I don't really play and there's there's only so much you can do without practice but also you have the additional challenge of asking him questions listening to his answer making
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a note of what he says and writing the whole thing up for the newspaper afterwards which just adds a whole level of complexity to the whole um uh the whole thing but it was fun and I did very nearly beat him I made a small error and was very unlucky and um uh was
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destroyed by uh by that and that was which seems like a classic Poker Story a small error uh disproportionately punished by the the poker Gods what else do you think economists are on average quite good at you yourself being an
33:16
economist relative to the to the average person even the average academic I think we're pretty good at mathematical thinking I think we're pretty good at stripping away um unnecessary complexities obviously there were the mathematicians are better right are they
33:32
they work in such complicated mathematics depends what kind of math our goal is to at least try to simplify into a testable proposition so um there's there's obviously a risk in stripping away too much complexity you strip away something that turned out to
33:44
be very important but I think that in principle I think we we aspire to be and often are quite good at drawing an allergies with where things do not seem to be analogous and to say actually this this thing is is actually quite like
33:57
this other thing and drawing Insight from that but there is also this very very basic fundamental Insight of Economics which is that it's possible for things to get better it's possible for people to cooperate even if they're
34:09
not very nice people and it's possible for for gains to be created and I think if you have that view baked very deep into the way you see the world you that's changes the way you you see things and and is very beneficial for your your just gen your general outlook
34:26
on life why is there such an emphasis on mistakes in your work I first really emphasized mistakes in adapt which is my third book but once you start looking at mistakes they become really fascinating um it's partly the general idea that um
34:44
we often only understand how something works when it breaks so looking at error is informative with Medics have long studied people with serious injuries or or pathologies because that gives you an insight into how the healthy body works
34:59
or the healthy the healthy brain works it's partly that it's partly the stories are really good and I'm always interested in stories I know you've warned us not to take stories too seriously but stories are powerful stories are fun and stories about things
35:12
going wrong are more interesting than stories where nothing goes wrong so um but the other thing is just as I said earlier feedback the fact that you can make a mistake and can still be very difficult to really pick apart what went
35:24
wrong or what the mistake was or even that you have made made a mistake that strikes me as something worth um paying continued attention to if you were dropped into a small village in a foreign country without ID and you
35:37
didn't speak the language and you didn't have any money what if you learned as an economist that would help you get home um there must be something I I think that the sense that you will probably be able to get cooperation probably if you ask for it
35:56
people people are generally reasonably Cooperative who would you ask in a small village well you just find the first person you you can and start from there but I think that the basic answer is I'm I'm not sure I've learned very much that
36:09
would uh fit me for that situation unlike you you'd be very comfortable dropped in a village in the middle of nowhere but most of these Villages you've already visited but I think I would find it quite quite a challenge Brian Eno actually asked me a slightly
36:21
different question which I found interesting which was if you were transported back in time to the year 700 what piece of technology would you take or knowledge or whatever what would you take with you from the present day that would lead people to think that you
36:38
were useful but would also not cause you to be burnt as a witch um a hat perhaps a hat if it's the British Isles well a hat is useful I I suggested The langstroth Beehive so langth beehive was invented in um about 1850 uh it's an
36:55
enormously important technology and the domestication of bees it's a vast Improvement on pre- langstroth beehives vast Improvement on medieval beehives and yet it's fairly straightforward to make and to explain to people how it works and why it works and I think
37:09
people would appreciate it and everybody likes honey and and people have valued bees for a long time so that would have been my answer are you up for a round of overrated versus underrated I'm so glad you asked Claude shanon overrated or
37:21
underrated I think he's still underrated I think unlike someone like Alan churing I think a lot of people still don't know who Claude Shannon is I think one of the remarkable things about Shannon he he wrote These two papers in information
37:33
Theory one discussing the transmission of information and showing that if if you did it in the right way you could always guarantee perfect transmission one showing that you could apply Boolean logic to uh electrical circuits and this
37:46
is how machines are going to be thinking both of these papers are basically perfect they create an entire subject they answer every interesting question in that subject and they they closed the book and that's really remarkable
37:59
achievement um so he's I think he's underrated for that but I think he's possibly also underrated by fans of Shannon who are frustrated that he spent most of the second half of his life noodling around building weable computers trying to cheat the casino at
38:15
Las Vegas and uh juggling and sending in weird poems to uh journals rather than actually analyzing things and just seem to behave in a very very frustrating way and never really settle down and ride off the back of his Fame but I I wonder
38:31
whether that that isn't just part of it you can't have the Brilliance without this person who's constantly exploring somebody said that Shannon had this unbounded intellectual courage he would just launch into projects that would terrify most people
38:47
with no knowledge of whether he would be able to solve the problem but it struck me that think about Shannon he was happy to do something and then just drop it so there's no intellectual courage there if you don't feel feel any any compulsion
38:58
to continue if something has has served its purpose and you just stop Tony Blair overrated or underrated I think he's now uh underrated he's still hugely hated by many of the current labor party for uh dragging the UK into the war in Iraq uh
39:16
siding with George Bush hugely unpopular president always hugely unpopular president in the UK and people don't haven't forgiven him for that and it was a serious error I think uh but he was enormously successful at building a
39:29
strong center-left Coalition uh in the UK uh they they spent a lot of money they transformed a lot of Public Services they won lots of Elections I I find it astonishing actually that he's now so totally disowned by his own side Oxbridge uh I think it is remarkable
39:49
that Oxford I mean I can't speak about Cambridge they're the other guys but Ox let's just talk about Ox let's focus on what counts it is astonishing that this organization this institution that is now what about 800 900 years old still
40:01
going is still one of the uh rightly I think one of the most admired universities in the world it is astonishing that you can keep adapting and adjusting and while there are enormous um inefficiencies and and flaws in the way it's governed it's still
40:16
going strong and the as somebody who who lives on the the fringes of Oxford University I go to occasional dinners and I go hang around lectures and I go to the libraries but I'm not an academic it remains a tremendously inspiring place and I I envy the undergraduates
40:34
that I their their experience of of going to this place the legacy of the British Empire overrated or underrated I think it's overrated by the British and uh the the the uh probably correctly rated by the rest of the world but uh we
40:49
still haven't wrestled with the fact that you know we we travel to an awful lot of places and we forced them to do exactly what we wanted committed a tremendous amount of of Cruelty there were uh there were obviously gains the uh abolition the spread of British
41:03
technology to to far off lands but I think the typical British person does not think a lot about imperial history and does not feel very uncomfortable about imperial history and I think we probably should be thinking more and uh
41:17
being more uncomfortable and I speak as an officer of the order of the British Empire which itself is an interest isn't that intriguing yes that is how we to recognize achievement in the UK you be become an officer of the order of the
41:29
British Empire that tells you something what was it like to receive that uh it was great fun the I find small talk difficult but uh there were a 100 people in Buckingham Palace all of whom were getting obes or C or similar Awards uh and so everybody there was unique
41:46
because they were all getting their award for something different but everyone had something in common and so it was tremendously easy to just go up to anybody and say so isn't this great what are you getting your reward for and have a fascinating convers ation with a
41:56
fascinating person and they were more diverse than you might expect in terms of the the gender the racial makeup it was great and I got my award from Prince Charles and he said we're um giving you this award to encourage you to keep
42:08
going and I thought that was tremendously British and brought brought the hint of a tear to my eye just keep going just keep on doing what you're doing I thought it was a tremendously British form of encouragement and did it
42:19
encourage you to keep on going I would have kept on going anyway but uh I was it felt strange to be recognized for something that get paid perfectly well for anyway and I enjoy doing anyway I feel that these Awards should be given out for people
42:32
who have displayed some kind of self sacrifice I don't think I've sacrificed anything in having fun and engaging my curiosity but it was a you sacrificed the television I would have sacrificed that anyway that's no loss um but it was it
42:45
was uh it was a great honor fact checking overrated or underrated I think misunderstood uh fact check good fact Checkers I think understand the limits of what they do but if we take an example from the the referendum there was a tremendous effort
43:01
to fact check a particular lie on the this bus the leave campaign uh had lied about how much the UK could gain from leaving the EU and in constantly trying to rebut that lie the entire conversation about the referendum was derailed so I think a good a good fact
43:23
Checker knows their limits you pick up the lie or the truth whatever you you correct it you set the record straight you show evidence of you're working you provide people with links to find out more and then you move on and I think
43:36
the problem is that we often don't move on and now we see um lies that are designed to be caught out previously politicians would lie and hope that no one called them on it now they will lie and the whole point is to be called on
43:49
it because you want to have an argument about that rather than an argument about something else and fact cheers can try to avoid those pitfalls but they it's just intrinsic to the profession there there's a limit to what you can do
44:00
what's the best Brian Eno album my favorite is music for airports it's an oldie but a goodie most people rate another green world but I just love the the those are my two favorites but I like the bang on a can version of music for airports much more than Eno's own
44:14
recording oh no I haven't have you ever heard it I haven't heard it and I will now go and get it you should get it it's wonderful what's the most underrated technological innovation paper is my favorite it's everywhere we use it to
44:26
coat our walls we use it to for to wipe various things that need wiping uh it's books are still a wonderful technology on paper it's thoroughly underrated and yet whenever when I began researching 50 things that made the modern economy
44:40
everybody said oh you must um you must do the Gooden B press you must do the good andb press of course the gut andb press is important but purely as an economic matter there's no point in Mass producing writing unless you can mass-produce a writing surface and paper
44:53
was the mass-produced writing surface so so paper's my uh my most underrated technological innovation each year how much are you willing to pay for the use of GPS probably quite a bit but it's not nearly as valuable to me as something
45:07
like email but a number please let's say let's say $250 okay per year yeah now I've got used to it you own a car correct I do own a car but I don't drive much then when you use GPS you must know your way around Oxford yeah I know my way London
45:24
I I know my way around Oxford well it's still very useful to get around London and I I got here for example with GPS I think it just becomes a a convenience I probably my answer would be different if you if you said how much would you be
45:36
willing to to pay to to accept a discount on a phone that didn't have GPS would probably be a different answer to the question but yeah I think GPS is fairly valuable put it this way somebody when I wrote about a digital uh minimalist thrust I had in my life I was
45:51
trying to get rid of unnecessary apps I was sent one of these very fashionable designer phones that don't do anything except take phone calls and uh it looks beautiful but I haven't used it and the main reason I haven't used it is because
46:06
I find it very useful to have email on the go but I do think GPS would be valuable now in the New York Times today there was an article I quite enjoyed it was titled on on the online version 10 things Emma Thompson can't live without
46:20
right and these were not the air water of course family yes yes paper but getting into the non-obvious the non-trivial could you give us three things Tim Harford cannot live without so she list Stella McCartney clothing right that might be one of yours no what
46:37
are your three dice dice dice for board games right for board games or particularly for role playing games as a board game you usually need something else but if you're going to give me the the most minimal set of kit that I need
46:48
for a role playing game I need a a randomizer so the dice would be would be the first one I really love my notebook I just have a a red and black notebook and I carry it around and I use it to organize a lot of things take a lot of
47:01
notes so you take the notes by hand uh yes I generally do um I use my computer a lot but to to take notes and to manipulate information quickly to-do lists for example much easier on uh on paper so it be my notebook and Pen uh the third oh gosh
47:20
um at this point I feel I should name a luxury so I'm very fond of Belgian beer so I would say A supplier Bel beer would be would be important even though I don't drink very often when I do drink it's usually Belgian beer and I get a
47:31
tremendous amount of pleasure from it and your daily breakfast would that even crack the top 10 well you said ruling out the non- obvious I mean obviously non obvious but well food in general is obvious enormously obvious but not a
47:44
particular food I find breakfast very important and we live close to a very good bakery that prepares excellent sourdough and so I really like toast in the morning like any good but breakfast is very important to me I I can't be can't be skipping breakfast
47:59
so to segue into the Tim Harford production function what is your philosophy of breakfast um make sure you have it first so a really good cup of coffee filter coffee just with a pore over cone doesn't need to be fancy just needs to
48:12
be freshly ground high quality uh blend I prefer it with milk and toast of some nature and that's just fine but that really needs to be the first thing you do during the day before you before you have a shower before get dressed before
48:26
you do anything have your breakfast and what is the Tim Harford philosophy of lunch so as lived I eat aot I eat lunch alone a lot yes uh as as aspired to I feel I should I should eat lunch with an interesting person every day but in fact
48:43
I'm I am quite an introvert so I find it quite draining to do that and so I always enjoy it when I do it and then I'll just go quiet for a few days what is the thing you know about writing that maybe the rest of us do not I think
48:55
think people underrate stories even when the story is used to convey a complex piece of information so even if I'm trying to explain the ideas of Danny caraman or um some some economic idea or some statistical or mathematical idea I'm always looking for for a little
49:12
story to tell um and Michael Lewis by the way understands this far better than I will ever understand it he's the master but many people I think don't fully understand and often when people talk about stories what they actually mean is examples or anecdotes but a
49:29
proper story has a protagonist and it has a dramatic flow and there are twists and there are highs and there are lows even if it's quite a brief story um it's more than just oh let me give you an example of somebody who did this and
49:41
what's your most unusual work habit most unusual work habit I I have a lot of projects on the go and switch between them I don't know how unusual this is but I suspect it's fairly uncommon I think you would be somebody
49:57
who does this a lot as well absolutely so uh kard called it crop rotation so you work on something and then you put it to one side and then you pick something else up so I gave a TED talk about this I called it slow motion multitasking and I think it's it's
50:10
striking how many very successful people practice this and have these multiple projects on the go they provide um relief when you stuck on something you just pick up you do something else and um you don't get stressed about it because you've youve got something else
50:24
productive to do the projects cross fertilize you never lose momentum right you always feel you're moving forward on something yes but there is there is a risk of losing momentum it is possible to overdo the multitasking um and to and
50:37
to just lose your thread with these different projects so there are like anything there's a sweet spot and it's possible to overdo it but I think that people people fear multiple projects more than they should and if the if you can organize your thinking in in a
50:52
reasonable way you can have a lot of different projects on the go and get lot out of that what is your philosophy of fish and chips I think it's overrated I I prefer Belgian fries to English chips I prefer mayonnaise to vinegar and I
51:06
prefer my fish to be grilled and ideally with some some chili or some lime rather than deep fried I mean really good fish and chips is great but you so rarely get it it feels like it's not even worth searching out what was your first job as
51:19
a teenager I had a paper round um but beyond delivering newspapers pH newspapers made out of Pap delivering physical newsp our greatest Innovation which was um which was an education it's nice because it gets you out and you
51:31
walk around because one could still do this you didn't need a bike or a car you could walk around the there was enough density to do that but it gave you a sense of what the different newspapers were saying and I think although I wasn't very conscious of it to observe
51:46
how the Daily Mail and the guardian and the Telegraph and the times and the sun these classic British newspapers my to all report the exact same event and to see how different their takes were I think is is a useful education what did
52:02
you do in your job at Shell so at Shell I worked for the uh scenario planning team and the scenario is this very interesting technology that originally I think developed by Rand uh just after the the war so to try and think through
52:17
Cold War outcomes and shell adopted them and I think have been regarded as a Pioneer so there were a group of um various Misfits some from within shell some brought in on suant uh political scientists economists my wife um who was
52:33
not my wife at the time but you met there we met in the workplace which I understand is now no longer encouraged um but a a group of very interesting people uh including somebody who's now a professor of ancient history and studies
52:45
how the Greeks thought about the future through their oracles but the idea of scenario planning is you never know what's going to happen you shouldn't be quantifying too much because people get fixed on the numbers and don't think about the mechanism they don't think
52:59
about the um the analysis and so you you tell stories and you tell at least two stories and the stories are mutually contradictory because humans are built to absorb stories they will remember your story you can tell them a story
53:12
about the future you can make it completely compelling completely persuasive you can awaken their curiosity and then once they're totally drawn in you can say but that's not how it's going to be and then you can tell them a different story with a very
53:22
different vision of the future and because of the way that we respond to stories people can hold those two stories in their heads they can they have a now have a language to talk to each other about this uncertain future space they now I think internalize the
53:36
fact that they don't actually know um and the other thing is the the story the scenario methodology the storytelling methodology is a great way to get lots of different people in the room looking for interesting things to say that will
53:47
wake up people's curiosity rather than arguing um so it was a very very interesting place to work there were frustrations working for an Oil Company partly because it's a huge bureaucracy and partly because you know Oil Company my my wife joins to try to get
54:03
them to stop polluting the planet which turns out she didn't succeed in that um but despite the frustrations I I loved the job and I learned a lot and from there you moved to the IFC in Washington or was there an intermediate stop I uh I
54:15
had an internship at the financial times they told me they would love me to come back sometime okay but they didn't have a job for me then you started thinking in terms of writing so then I went to but I had already drafted the undercover
54:27
Economist and was looking for a publisher so then I I went to work at the uh the World Bank IFC and a department that was part of both organizations that I think was the time we met you invited me you invited me to a bloggers party back when blogging was
54:42
a thing um like a new exciting thing that people did I was doing a Blog for the World Bank but so I did that for two years but while I was doing that I was writing more and more um these dear Economist columns for the financial
54:55
times I was finishing the undercover Economist editing it getting a publisher and I had a very good boss at the World Bank who said well as long as you don't write your dear Economist columns about the World Bank I don't mind if you write
55:06
for the Ft it's quite extraordinary to be working for the World Bank while writing for the newspaper I'm not sure that could happen now but what did you learn at the IFC what did I learn at the IFC uh the country risk analysis was was
55:19
intriguing it was one of those things where we we were trying to sort of figure out what what do we how do we rate the risk different countries that the IFC are supposed to be lending to projects what's the political risk of lending to projects in Bolivia what's
55:30
the political risk of lending to projects in Venezuela and so there was this meeting that I had to chair where lots of smart people would say well here's what I know about Venezuela and I realized that um this was a very weird
55:42
process because in the end we were all sitting in a room in Washington the people who I was talking to were well informed and but still I mean how much could you really know about what's going on in Venezuela from a room in Washington when you're trying to follow
55:54
the whole of Latin America uh and yet the organization needed a number and if the organization needed a number we had to produce a number and so we did we did the best we could so it was an interesting education there uh in the the the the weirdness of of
56:10
quantifying when there wasn't really any point in quantifying it was very very different from the experience of having done scenarios at Shell but I also worked on the um the outskirts of the the doing business team who were doing I
56:22
think fantastic work quantifying regulations around the world and that was just much more engaging because you really felt people were measuring something that mattered and producing genuinely new information for the world to digest that was that was an
56:36
interesting thing to be I don't want to claim any credit for it but I was on the frenes of that team and I found it fascinating to to see them operating and throughout your life do you feel you've taken a long-term perspective or a
56:47
short-term perspective with your decisions in your career short to medium I mean I I rarely think past a couple couple of years but on the other hand no a book is a long-term project but it's not it's not an ultra long-term project
57:00
you write a book the book will be published in two or three years so I rarely look past the next book and that's been fine so far that's all worked out just fine I suppose when you you start thinking about the 20-year time Horizon as an individual there are
57:14
certain no-brainer decisions you can make like we should live somewhere where I we can bring up a family and they'll be happy uh I should save into a pension but beyond that there's so much that outside your control that uh I'm not
57:27
sure that there's any great value in in doing that when i' when I've used scenario thinking in my own life which I have done because of course I married a scenario planner so the two of us understand this technology well she did it at least yeah so we we um well she
57:39
was a scenario planner too so we both we both understand this we would sometimes do scenarios but it would they would tend to be much more shortterm you're thinking through different possible consequences of a decision you might
57:50
make and the impact that might have over the next 2 three years and other than then your new podcast again cautionary tals it's already out is there any other longer term plan you're free to talk about a new book anything yes so by the
58:03
time this podcast is out I will be uh doing the edits on the second book of 50 things that made the modern economy so 50 things season two but the next project in the spirit of multiple projects and slow motion multitasking it's nearly finished I'm looking forward
58:18
to getting back to it the next project is a book uh titled how to make the world ad up that is a book about how to think about the statistical claims that people make uh how to think like a fact Checker but how to hopefully be wiser than just a
58:36
fact Checker and how not to give into utter despair at the sense that there is no objective reality out there I think there is a constructive way forward and that's what the next book will be about Tim Harford thank you very [Music]
58:51
much 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