Delusion’s a secret to good marriage: Tyler Cowen

A marriage needs to become a self-fulfilling prophecy to some extent, in order to work. Or so, feels Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University in the United States. Cowen, who blogs at ww.marginalrevolution.com, is also the author of several popular books on economics including The Age of the Infovore and Discover Your Inner Economist.

In this interview with Vivek Kaul, he talks about why money can’t buy love, the uselessness of meetings, what impresses a woman in a man, and
other such mysteries of life.

Excerpts:

Money isn’t always the best motivator. Why?
People want to feel good about themselves and feel good about their work.  Money alone won’t do that.  I view recognition as the driving force behind human behaviour.  Of course money is one very important form of recognition, but it is no more than that.  It also depends how wealthy the society is.  Poor people really have to worry about their next paycheck; you can’t eat recognition.  In wealthier societies, the recognition motive becomes paramount.

Why can’t money buy love?
What does it mean to ‘buy love’?  Wealthier men have a better chance of marrying well, especially if they are not so wealthy as to attract gold-diggers.  But there is no guarantee of enduring love, with or without money.

You say often the best way to impress a woman is to do something that impresses other men. How does that work?
Look at the men who are tops in banking or sports or, for that matter, politics and power.  They have access to a very large number of beautiful women.  Is it that all those beautiful women care so much about banking, sports and politics for their intrinsic qualities?  No.  Rather, women will respond to the prospect of high-status men and a lot of that status is set by other men, not by women.  For one man to impress another is really quite a difficult thing to do, and women will respond to that. 

Why is delusion a secret to a good marriage?
From one point of view, marriage is an impossible undertaking.  You have to believe it is going to work and going to last, no matter what.  Then maybe it will.  Without such a commitment, at some point you will stop cooperating. The simple truth is that each partner commits a great many wrongs over the course of a marriage, even under the best of circumstances.  Resentments build up and problems persist.  Marriage can still work, and be very rewarding (mine is!), but it requires an irrational degree of belief in the marriage itself.  Only then can it become to some extent a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Meetings are a general waste of time for all parties concerned, you write…
Meetings signal power relationships in the workplace.  They show which coalitions are more powerful and what those coalitions want.  They show who has the right to speak and who has the right to decide.  I think of meetings as a form of social theatre.  They are often spreading information about social relations and coalitions, rather than solving problems.

But meetings are such a popular technique...
It is no wonder that people find meetings frustrating.  But how would a workplace without meetings function, especially over long stretches over time?  Morale, order, and cooperation would be difficult to achieve and sustain.  And so meetings persist.  One implication is that you can spend so much time in meetings because, in fact, you are probably less productive per hour than you think.  A lot of people don’t like facing up to that fact and so they respond by being very critical of meetings.

It would be easy to make meetings shorter — make everybody stand or make the chairs uncomfortable.  Yet few if any workplaces do that — draw your own conclusions!

Why do you say that brainstorming sessions are a counterproductive way of spending time?
Brainstorming sessions give you the impression that you are getting somewhere and achieving something.  There is a social validation to the effort.  There is lots of feedback.  There is the illusion of problem-solving.  But most of the actual progress of knowledge happens in small groups - very small groups - sometimes often as small as one.  When it’s just you, it’s hard to pretend you are making progress just by chatting.

You say refusing insurance and warranties may appear risky, but it is, often, in reality, the more cautious course of action. Please explain...
Each time you don’t buy a warranty you save money, same with insurance.  Insurance is for catastrophic events that would wipe you out, but most warranties aren’t for very expensive items.  Insure your house and maybe your car, and of course your life if you have loved ones.  No more!

What happens if too much money is spent on insurance and warranties?
You have less money.  You buy a less safe car.  You make cheaper, less safe choices.  You end up in more danger rather than less danger. No way should you buy a warranty against your vacuum cleaner or TV breaking down.  If you can’t afford the loss of a TV set, you shouldn’t be buying a TV anyway.  Keep in mind this —  insurance cannot be any better than a fair gamble and it is usually not even as good as that, as the warranty or insurance company has to cover its overhead.  Over time, insurance is a negative-sum gamble for the person buying it.  You had better be insuring against a pretty dire event.

You write, “People who do feel good about themselves, whether or not the facts merit this judgment, tend to achieve more.” Why is that? 
We all need confidence to get somewhere.  We have to believe that success is possible and that our efforts will be recognised.  Of course many people fail.  But it is best to proceed under the assumption that things can indeed go well and that things are under your control. What’s difficult is to cultivate this attitude and still be able to engage in critical self-inquiry and to receive critical feedback.

Why do you feel that those looking for a great food vacation should choose a country with a great deal of inequality?
Cheap labour makes for cheap food, yet at high quality.  When rich people are bidding for cheap labour, lots of good things happen.  Some of my favorite food countries are Mexico, Thailand, India, and Brazil, all countries where the level of inequality is quite high. 

France and now also Sweden have excellent food, but because wages are high the food is quite expensive.

Countries with a lot of inequality also tend to have very fresh ingredients.  Not everything has been turned into a sterile suburban mix.  Some of the people still live close to nature or farm on a very small scale.  That may not be good for their standard of living, but as a tourist it means you will be in for some very interesting experiences, including in the realm of food.

Which activities make human beings the happiest?
People really like spending time with friends and also being productive in a way which matches the “flow” experience.  People like having sex and they also enjoy getting good sleep and eating good food.  People enjoy it when they reap high social status and when they can take pride in what they have achieved. 

Best of all is when lots of these goodies come packaged together, such as when “flow” work makes you prestigious, which then leads to good friends, a life partner, good food, and so on and it all reflects back on the quality of the original work, which has received social recognition. Furthermore, all of those activities are good for us.  There is really a lot of value to be had out of life.

You write that a lot of culture is coming in smaller and smaller bits. What does that mean and why is that happening?
The classic 1960s rock album has given way to the iTunes single.  The most popular YouTube videos are usually just a few minutes long and most of the time the viewer doesn’t stay for longer than the first ten seconds.  The two-hour weekday lunch is losing ground even in Spain and Italy.  Some radio ads are three seconds or shorter.  Most magazines articles are shorter too. On the web, you now also can find five-word movie and song reviews, six-word memoirs (“Not Quite What I Was Planning”), seven-word wine reviews, and Napkin Fiction, which, as the name indicates, is written on a napkin.

What’s behind these developments? 
Time is short, and there is so much we want to sample.  To take just a bit of everything in takes so much time and attention, and so producers and artistes try to catch our attention by offering up shorter and shorter bits.

Is Google making us stupid?
Google makes smart people smarter, makes most people smarter, because it leads them to information and analysis.  Is it possible that Google makes some already stupid people stupider?  Yes.  It can lead them to further misinformation and polemics.  Yet that is not the dominant effect.  I learn from Google every day, as do most people.  It is one of the great advances of contemporary civilisation.  Best of all: it comes free to users, as it is financed by ads. If you want to find out whether Google is making you stupider, where is the best place to start looking?  You guessed it: Google.

Will instant messaging displace email one day?
Never.  IM is for quick back and forth.  Email is better for strangers, or for presenting queries which do not need to be answered immediately, or for preserving records of exchanges, or for having more systematic intellectual debates with lengthier text.  IMs free-ride upon an enormous amount of background context, which you cannot always assume is there, but is present in some friendships or some work relationships.  In fact the two are rarely substitutes.

Why would anyone ever want Twitter given that we already have email, blogs, cellphones, IM, and good old-fashioned speech, not to mention the handwritten postcard?
Twitter forces people to get to the point and it is easy to scan.  It remains the most undervalued institution on the web.  Many people still think it is ridiculous.  In fact it may be the single most efficient way of learning what is going on in the world on a given day, or which ideas are new.  Twitter is just in its infancy. I have a very well-selected Twitter feed, which I read, and it is worth a great deal to me.

Does Facebook actually make friends more valuable?
Facebook helps you keep in touch with friends, it supplies background context, and it means when you ask “What is new?” you are not starting from scratch each time.  It is also very good for keeping loose acquaintances. Facebook does also degrade or devalue some of your friends. 

You realise, perhaps sadly, that they cannot compete with those who consider themselves your loose acquaintances.  Is that a bad thing?  It depends.  A lot of the time it comes as a liberation, I think.

What is the lowest common denominator effect? And how is it linked to the current information age?
The lowest common denominator effect is when a movie or television program is designed to appeal to the largest possible number of people.  It usually involves some “dumbing down,” often to an extreme.  One of the best things about the web is that it can support so much content for smart people, for niche audiences, for minorities, and so on. 

The Internet helps us avoid the least common denominator effect.  Some web sites are for virtually everybody, but a successful web site doesn’t have to be.
k_vivek@dnaindia.net