Nerdy questions Tyler Cowen has taken to asking new people he meets:
- What do you maximize?
- Can you offer a simple model of yourself, using one a few equations or a paragraph or less?
- What is it you hate? (NB: My colleague Bryan C. suggests there are fine but important distinctions between hating, despising, mocking, and scorning. I might add that I am not much of a hater. More generally, many people’s hates are only ‘pretend hates,’ and what they hate is perhaps the fact that they don’t really hate their stated hates at all. But I will settle for a ‘pretend hate’ answer to this question.)
- What is your most absurd view?