October 18, 2025 • 40 mins
The 2025 Nobel Prizes have now been announced, and Maria convinces Nate to learn about the winners. They discuss the selection process, the economic award for research on “creative destruction,” and what prizes they should be considered for.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and I'm Nate Silver. Today
on the show, Nate, we'll be talking about a topic
(00:37):
that I think is really exciting. Every single year, I'm
always eagerly awaiting the announcements of the Nobel Prizes, not
because I'm in any danger of winning one, but because
I think you can learn a lot from the people
who win the awards. So all of the Nobel Prizes
for twenty twenty five have been given out, and I'm excited,
(01:00):
probably more excited than you are in Nate to dive
into the recipients and some of the broader implications and
broader history of the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, you know, look, I think you owe me not
to be too gender astorre. I think you owe me
as sports focused episodes and Maria. But yes, I do
have some thoughts, particularly on the economics Nobel Prize, where
I'm an admirer of one of the recipients.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So Nobel Prizes are something that I actually always follow avidly.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
That makes one of us I think that.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
They're fascinating, and I think so for several reasons. First,
like when we get the Nobel Prizes in you know, medicine, chemistry, physics,
all of that stuff, I get to learn something about
the world because it's usually for shit that I had
no idea existed, and I'm like, oh my god, this
is so cool. Right, You've been doing all this amazing research,
(02:00):
and that's really interesting, and it's a way, you know,
of educating myself about things that I don't know about.
Nobel Prize in literature I'm always really excited about because
if it's someone who I know and love, I'm like, yes,
you know, finally they get recognition. And if it's someone
whose work I've never read, I'm like, wow, okay, you
know this is cool. Something else for me. Economics, I
(02:21):
also think is always just interesting to figure out, you know,
what is in vogue, so to speak, right, like, what
ideas are getting rewarded at what time for what reasons,
Because I do think that there is kind of a
backdrop for the choices of Nobel Prizes on any given year,
because they could be awarded at you know, this year
(02:42):
or next year or never, and when you make that choice,
you are saying something about I think that this idea
is very important right now, and the Peace Prize is
the one that often gets the most attention. You know,
since Donald Trump has been campaigning for it, it's certainly
been getting a lot of attention. And I actually think
that that is the for me, that's the most politicized
(03:04):
prize and the one that I think sometimes goes to
people who are depletely undeserving of it, and I'm like,
what the fuck, Like, you guys are just trying to
make a political statement. So the Nobel Peace Prize, I think,
is one that I most often disagree with. But the
other reason I love the Nobel Prizes is I really
love the Nobel Lectures. So I actually, especially in literature,
(03:27):
I love reading the lectures that people write and deliver
because there are so many. I mean, I think it's
some of the most interesting thinking and writing out there.
And I often quote from people's Nobel Prize speeches lectures
because I think that we have the chance to hear
from some of the greatest minds, some of the greatest writers,
(03:47):
some of the greatest thinkers in the world. So yes,
I love the Nobel Prizes. Clearly, Nate, you are not
a fan, though you are not someone who follows them
follows along.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
You know, I'm more concerned with the American League MVP Award,
among many other things. I guess I know somebody who's won.
Somebody call a friend is one of Nobel. You get
the call from like you know, some strange plus something
country code, European number, in the middle of the morning,
middle of the night. Right, very exciting. I would still
(04:20):
be up. We're working on some fucking model. I'll be like, hey, Nate,
you and Maria have finally won. I'd be like, I'm
Tired's call Maria. I'm tired and I'm busy, busy that
we can. You get money for the Nobel.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Prize, right, you get money for the Nobel Prize, different
amounts for different prizes. My favorite, by the way, speaking
of middle of the night, and I don't know if
you saw this night, I shared it because it to
me it actually says something pretty fundamental about the type
of thinking that is often required to win a Nobel Prize.
So one of the people who won, Fred Ramsdell, he
(04:55):
was unreachable when he won the Nobel Prize in medicine
and they could not get a hold of him, like
this is the first time actually in the history of
the Nobel Prize that they literally could not contact a winner,
not even not immediately, but like for twenty four hours.
And he was hiking with his wife and off the grid,
(05:15):
living his best life, as his company said after they've
reached the company, and the company actually ended up putting
out a statement on his behalf. So he was just
completely off off the grid, hiking with his wife. This
is something that they do, This is something that they
love doing. They don't have reception, their phones are off.
(05:35):
His is actually the entire trip in airplane mode, and
he ended up finding out because his wife had hers
not in airplane mode, and so at some point they
came to a place where they had reception exactly exactly,
and she started screaming and he thought she saw a
grizzly bear. So he didn't have a heart attack. He
(05:55):
was fine, but he thought that actually she was in
danger and she's like, you won the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
It would be ironic if you did have a heart attack.
That would be very ironic. Yav I always wonder about
the mechanics of like I guess I was last year
was nominated for a prize which is second only the
Nobel Prize. I was nominated for a Global Poker.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Or you know, some people would say it's actually more
prestigious than the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
So you know, no, I mean it really is.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
You know, I have won a Global poker okay, and
I didn't go.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
They have a ceremony. I hadn't made enough to Vegas
for the year. Didn't go to the ceremony. I kind
of forget that, Like, if I was gonna win, I
didn't win, they would tip me off. Oh they don't.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
They do not tip you off. So these are awards
that are given for various accomplishments in the poker world.
Some of them are for things like best tournament performance,
best breakout player, or something that I was nominated for
once and did not win. Nate, I was Breakout Player
of the Year and lost to This is very funny
(06:57):
ali am Siavich, who no longer plays poker because it
turned out that he was cheating. His breakout performance was
not quite as breakouting in the in the right ways.
So I think that that's uh, that actually is quite funny.
But he won that year. But some of them are
for poker journalism and those those types of awards you
were nominated for On the Edge. I was nominated and
(07:20):
won for the Biggest so my yeah, my, My Global
Poker Award is for the biggest bluff and it's yeah,
it's it's a fun ceremony, but no, you have no idea.
No one is tipped off, and so it's very funny
because there are people who have won and like when
(07:41):
I won, I wasn't at the ceremony and didn't get
my physical award for several years because I kept forgetting
to pick it up and to ask for it. So yeah,
they don't tip you off. And then Nobel prizes, So
this is something quite interesting. I love you know that
this guy was off the grid, and I think that
(08:01):
it's really interesting to think about the importance of you know,
disconnecting and actually letting your brain think and being out
in nature. There's so many things about this that are
actually there's a ton of research on why this is
good for creativity, good thought, et cetera, et cetera. So
yay Fred Ramsdell and yay being so like basically so
(08:22):
secure in your profession that it's Nobel Week and you're like,
fuck it, I'm going off the grid. I don't care.
So it does say a lot about that. But Nate,
there's a really interesting component here about the being tipped off.
There were some controversies surrounding the Nobel Prizes in terms
of polymarket and prediction market betting, where it seemed like
there were tip offs before the announcements of certain prize winners,
(08:46):
most notably the Nobel Peace Prize, which went to Maria
Quorina Machado. And there was before the announcement, were you.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Just replaced the native Spanish speaker there?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
You know, you know, you know, I studied. I studied
Spanish for many years and lived in Spain. Nate, I
studied abroad in Spain.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
So yeah, there was a big surge for her on
poly market and probably other prediction markets, like right before
she won. Right. The theory I've heard is that there
was a lot of maybe some meta data release that
you're preparing a bio, you're preparing like a big like
you know, look, I used to know how to find
poll releases before they were released by typing in certain
(09:32):
URLs and things like that. Right, So, like if you
have an incentive to make one hundreds of thousands of dollars
by getting the sodaity right, and looking for any clues
that you can. It doesn't necessarily have to be inside information.
There's a whole longer combinate conversation about like inside information
and prediction markets and non prediction markets too, that we
should maybe have for some for other period of time. Right.
(09:53):
I mean, the one thing where I think polllymarket did
a bad job was for the Pope. Right, that was
a case where shit didn't leak.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
That's because there were line Nate, there were no pockets
of data or anything.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It was totally It's the exception that proves day of
the Internet in the Vatican that they probably have the Internet, right,
they need it for grinder. Sorry, nay, come on, when.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
They're in conclave. They absolutely do not have access to
the Internet. Nobody does. But they do have somebody who
can access everything externally in case of medical emergency, et cetera,
et cetera, as we talked about in our fascinating deep
dive into the Conclave.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Have you judged awards before? I have a park poker.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah I have, indeed, And this is just to say
that the Nobel does try to keep it very close
to the best. Have you judged awards before?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah? I did. A rotating two years to the higher
journalists were people, you know, to judge the Pulitzers for
like a two year stint and then Yester's wait another
decade before they invite you back. But that was fascinating,
right You spend is it like two or three days
up at the Columbia campus, and like for the Pulitzers,
you were given like a gigantic stack of applications in
(11:17):
your category. Right, I love the spirit of it. It's
a fun day. You get to meet I guess I
call myself a journalist among other things. I get to
meet like real journalists and interesting people, right, and with
different perspectives. But you're like, you're going through this shit
very fast. I'm not sure if it like applies the
same way to the Nobel Prize. Right, you know, one
(11:40):
thing I would know in general, if you're applied for
an award that's like judged by some panel or committee,
it's almost like student applications to some elite institution, right,
Like half of it to two thirds to three quarters
can be dismissed out of hand pretty much, right. You know,
(12:02):
if I'm a journalist and I'm judging different stories, there
are some stories that are prize bait, right, where like
aimed in this way. It's feature style and blah blah,
but it's important here's some person who overcame hardships, or
here's a person who took on city hall, right, and
like sometimes it's good, but it's sometimes not necessarily all
(12:23):
that impactful, right, Yep, it's kind of a little bit
paint by numbers, And like when I'm on the committee,
I don't particularly care for that type of story, right,
I kind of care more about like what maye be
a big splash in the world this year, Right. I
guess when I was doing it, was it during the
first Trump term race before COVID. Right, there's a bunch
of me too stuff. There was a bunch of Trump
(12:45):
Russia stuff right by the way. You know, you have
your group that makes a recommendation that can be overridden
by like the board of the poetry Prizes, which you
know might sound like it's having a heavy hand on
the scale, but like, but they're inherently political kind of things.
I think the poltries do better than some jobs, but
like it it. You know, it probably helps to to
(13:09):
know people I suppose.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yeah, no, absolutely, And that's why I said that, you know,
some of the I think some of the prizes are
much more political than others. And even it's interesting because
in the Nobel Peace Prizes, that's very you know, that's
just egregiously the case. And by the way, that's not
a knock on this year's winner, who I think is
(13:33):
incredibly deserving. I'm not trying to subtly suggest that this
year's winners should not have a should not have one.
I do want to very strongly suggest that there are
past winners who should not have one, but she is
not among them. But even you know, even Peace Prize aside,
I do think that the Nobels have become more than
(13:57):
just oh, we think that this is the person most
deserving of a prize for their literary output, for instance.
And I say become, but this has always been the
case to some extent, and where there are political considerations
of all sorts. So I think with the Nobel Prizes
in literature, just you know, in recent years, the committee
(14:20):
was accused of having you know, too many white men,
too many Europeans, Americans, et cetera. And they're like, okay,
so how much of that is because we just have
a committee who's reading habits are inherently biased because of
who they are, right, Like, they're not trying to be biased,
but they just are not aware of a lot of
other literature. That's you know, that's painting them in a
(14:45):
non aeroditelite saying, you know, you haven't made those sorts
of comparisons. But sometimes then it's kind of like, you know,
it's a really it gets into really murky ground where
we're like, well, are we trying to have like a
quotea sistem right for Nobel prizes in literature where we
don't have you know, enough women, We don't have enough
(15:07):
people from you know, non u et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. And I think that part of it is
just a lack of knowledge, a lack of exposure, a
lack of translation. Right, that's that's another important thing, Like
you need who sits on the committee? We don't know,
by the way, these are things that are very closely
(15:28):
guarded secrets. So like I do not you can't google
like who is the committee for the Nobel Prize in X?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Like have you sold a French edition of The Biggest FLA?
I have not.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Actually I have not sold French. I have not so
the French. I have not sold a single one of
my books in France ever. And my books this isn't
a brag, but like my books have been translated into
over twenty languages, right, like we sold rights all over
the world. France has never bought one of my books.
(15:59):
The first one. I was like, well, it's about Charlock Holmes.
It's very English, right, so maybe there's like an inherently
anti English bias, but yeah, no, the French do not
like buying American books, and.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I like France. I'm by the way, isn't the World
Bookage or the whatever European booked are back in Paris
next year.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Poker Stars is coming back to Paris in February with
the I will not leave until both of us have
sold our postil.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Both of us have books translated into French. I like wine,
I like coffee, I like lounging around, I like steak freez.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And there's so many amazing things about France. But yes,
they do not love our books, Nate, But you know
this is an issue, right, Translation is a problem. Like
the Winner this year, not all of his books have
been translated into English, and some have just been translated,
by the way, that's Lasno krasno Hork. He is Hungarian,
(16:55):
and I loved that. His last book, which I have
not read, is four hundred pages and contains one period
in the entire book. So so that should be an interesting,
interesting read.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
As a purveyor of run on sentences myself, I'm officially
a fan.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, there you go, there you go. So you know,
but but you know, you get these you get these
winners who already are who already won the prize, right,
someone like this year's winner, And not all of his
books have been translated into English, and so I assume,
you know, other languages also suffer from that. Now, imagine
(17:33):
you're someone who hasn't like and he's someone who already
rose to that level of prominence. So there are issues
that end up, you know, making the prize a little
bit more politicized than one would think. And I said that,
you know, in recent memory, people have been pressuring the
committee saying, you know, you're you're representing too many similar voices.
(17:56):
And yet this has been an issue for a very
long time. So there have been two times that I
know of in history. Because deliberations are eventually made public.
I don't remember how many years after it's decades, but
you eventually, you eventually do know who was nominated and
like you do understand, you know why some people were
(18:17):
shot down, so I can. There are two instances in
history where I'm like, are you guys, are you kidding me?
And it shows different sources of biases. One, which I
think is the single most egregious one is w. H.
Auden did not get the Nobel Prize in literature. He
was gay. He was very openly gay. He was, you know,
(18:40):
very vocal about it. And this was not it's not
like it's there's a line that says we are not
giving him the prize because he's gay, But you can
read between the lines, and he did not get it
because of his sexual orientation. He's one of the greatest
poets writers of the twentieth century and the fact that
(19:00):
he wasn't given the Nobel Prize because of a sexual
orientation is horrible. Now, second one shows a very different
sort of bias. White streat Mail. This time Tolkien j R.
Tolkien did not win the Nobel Prize because people were
biased against the types of books that he wrote and said,
you know, oh you know, fantasy is not real literature.
(19:22):
It's not going to stand the test of time. But
the year that Tolkien was up, the person who won
that year, like I have no idea who the fuck
that is, and like no one remembers that name, and
everyone knows Tolkien's name, and like it's one of those
things where I'm like, wow, you guys are just there
(19:43):
have been closed minded biases around this prize for a
very very long time, basically since its inception. So instead
of saying, this is the prize for the you know,
single most deserving author, just like with all everything, I
think we need to caveat it. Right that has risen
to a certain level, whose works have been translated, and
(20:04):
we don't take issue with the type of writing you do,
the type of person you are, et ce cetera, et cetera.
So I think that that's something that's really important to
keep in mind. And you would think that the other prizes,
like you know, medicine, physics, economics, that they're a little
bit potentially, especially with something like physics more straightforward. And
(20:28):
I actually, just to be perfectly honest, I don't know literature.
I've done a lot of deep dives into the history
because it's something you know, it's my field. It's something
that I feel very passionately about. And I wouldn't be
surprised if I went down the line of you know,
physics and realized how much controversy there was there. I
do know that there is controversy and who exactly gets
(20:49):
prizes for discoveries right? Because sometimes if you know that
a certain discovery is going to win the prize in physics, medicine,
et cetera, how do you divide it? Right? How do
you actually decide who's going to get it? Who's going
to get credit for this? Does one person get it?
To two people get it? Do three people get it?
Because sometimes it is split. This year's prize in economics
will split three ways. One person got half the prize
(21:10):
and then two people had to split the other half.
So you have to make determinations like that all the time.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
You have to be alive too, You have to be alive.
That's actually interesting, that is huge.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That's actually really important. So like when Daniel Konnoman won
the Nobel Prize for his work with Tabarski, Tierski couldn't
win it, right, even though he did, he did half
the research. Right, he was half the team, but Conoman
was alive. Twarski was not.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
My grandparents who are passed away, you know, they would says,
how do you guys stay married for for fifty years
or became sixty years eventually?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
My grandfather was always like, well, there are three key components, right,
get married young number one, stay together and don't die.
The don't die a part is really it's really quite
important for winning a Nobel On for other things.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
And we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
You want to talk a little b about the Economics
Prize of one thing that I kind of you know,
I don't know the other two I do know Joel,
I always thought it was mochr m ok y r.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I don't actually, yeah, I don't know how it's more okay.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
He's Dutch, Israeli, American. You know a lot of different
ingredients here. But he does work on economic history in particular.
I'm going to do very basic stuff, right. If you know,
if you study economic history, then very stylized competition in
the facts. Right, you learn that progress is unusual, Right,
(23:01):
that like humanity has spent most of its existence barely
eking out a living where innovations are slow to come by,
there's wars, you might have empires, the empires die out
after some period of time. And then in the Industrial
Revolution we had this spark and things began to catalyze
(23:23):
and into revolution we've had We've had growth. Right at first,
the growth might be zero point five percent per year
on top of population growth, although population growth is also important,
and then it gets up to one percent, two percent, three percent,
it begins to compound, and so you know, I think
a history is like a vitally undercovered topic. I think one,
(23:44):
you know, the average liberal or conservative, this is where
I think both sides like are full of shit, right.
I don't think they understand that, like that progress is
not the default by any means for human history. Right.
In some ways, its a very pessimistic interpretation of human history, right,
you know, I mean, you know, now people who think
that we're on the verge of an ai singularity of saying, okay,
(24:05):
we're gonna have like an in my book on the
Edge the Art ofversking everything from publishers ever worre no
I in my book, you know, I'm using the revolution
as a paradigm for like what might happen if you
had very rapid ai growth, right, and the revolution. Of course,
you had a lot of change of institutions. You have
the Enlightenment, you had the American Revolution, you had the
(24:26):
French Revolution. There is always some debate about what came first, Right,
did you have this technological shock and then institutions catered
to that. You know, that period of time, maybe things
that were more a liberal, right, like land didn't matter
as much now labor power data, and that changes the
way that all society relates to one of You also
(24:47):
have wealth that people are not just at subsistence. People
are not just presents anymore. Although it takes a long
time to expand that franchise and so forth, right and
so like, I was very glad to see economic history
get it to do. I think, you know, the critique
of economic historians that they're neither economists nor historians. Jill
Muker Again, I don't know, the two is excellent. I
(25:07):
think at both. And you know, considering the stakes of
like why does humanity, why do civilizations grow or stagnate
or die out, it seems like a very high stakes
question that most people don't know very much about. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Absolutely, and I'm especially grateful in the present day and age,
where people seem to be devaluing the importance of history
and historians in general. I think it's it's very important
to to illustrate just how important economic I mean history
in general is, but economic history specifically. And the other
two winners, by the way, are Peter Howitt I think
(25:47):
I got that pronunciation correct, and Philippe Agill. And sorry
if I butchered that one, because you know, I have
not heard these names pronounced. I've only ever read them.
And they were awarded it for their work on creative destruction.
So the concept of creative destruction, so the process by
(26:07):
which something new, something innovative, will replace older technologies and businesses.
And that was originally to put a little more history here.
It was originally coined in a nineteen forty two book Capitalism, Socialism,
and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter. Schumpeter, how do you pronounce it?
I don't know how to pronounce any of these last names, Nate,
(26:30):
this is going to be riddled with riddled with a
mispronunciation episode.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of become a little bit
of a buzzword in Silicon Valley where it can be.
You know, hey man, let's go to burning man do
some creative instruction kind of thing. But yeah, look, one
of the core basic foundations of both capitalism and democracy,
which is why they have some correlation often repaired together.
(26:57):
I mean, they both ideally should believe in competition, right.
I mean this is why I think people, you know,
and I'd put these both under liberalism. Like people are flawed.
It is hard to predict the future. It is hard
to know what's going to work, hard to no ideas
what find a market, right, and so and so you
want them to compete instead of to have central planning, right.
(27:18):
And this is more of a risky business kind of topic, right,
But like you know, a lot of it is the
value of of optionality. Right. You know, if I were
living in some small town and I could like commission
the perfect restaurant in my town, right, maybe I'm some patron, right,
I'd rather have like five in a food hall or something, right,
and then the best ones can can survive because there's
(27:41):
uncertainty because like you know, because it creates proper incentives.
And it also means that like that older institutions sometimes
have to be replaced and destroyed, right, I think ironically
and ironically, I guess ironically only because we're talking about Europe,
you know, but like small things like that, like making
(28:03):
it hard to fire unsuccessful employees or making it hard
to dislodge businesses, that having him with the government. But
like that's it's very it's very important. And you know,
the thing about economic history too, is like again for
our audience, it's kind of like a one oh one concept,
but the notion of like compounding growth when you're looking
(28:24):
taking the truly long term perspective. I probably said versions
of this before, but like you know, I am worried
in the Trump era about America like squandering its leadership
in various ways, including its economic leadership, and that having
compounding effects. Right, I mean, the US has like a
big lead over the rest of the world, and a
(28:47):
lot a lot of advantages, a lot of advantages, worlds
leading currency, world's largest or you know, most effective military, right,
world's most number of founders, I guess, effectively, right, you know,
we're in a very we even very America is a
beautiful country. You got lots of good land. Whoops, almos
(29:08):
knocked over a lamp, and like we're starting from a
very high point, and you know, fortunately every other country
is fucking up too, right, But like, but yeah, when
you go from like three percent to two percent to
one percent to negative one percent GDP growth per capita
over time, then you really notice that after a generation
and and you know, you kind of need more of
(29:30):
an economic history of perspective, comparative perspective at least to
understand the implications of that.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah. Absolutely, And mok here is someone who's definitely thought
a lot about the implications of creative destruction and kind
of how how you need to think about it in
order to enable long term growth, right and not just
like have this short like let's move fast and break
(29:56):
shit type of mentality, because one of the elements of
his work, of all three of their's work, is that
in order for the innovations to have lasting positive impact,
you need to actually support the individuals who were affected
(30:18):
by the changes and be able to protect the workers
and move them to kind of more productive other jobs.
So he's not saying that you need to protect specific jobs.
You know, jobs are going to get replaced, right, because
that's the nature of the way the world works, But
you do need to know how to actually protect productivity
(30:42):
and protect workers. And if you don't do that, right,
if you don't actually do everything together and have a
full vision for how this will work with long term
societal impact, you might be negatively surprised. So this is
I think something that a lot of people don't realize,
right when they're like, oh, well, we just need to innovate,
But they don't realize that they're actually ways of innovating
(31:04):
successfully that have long term positive economic implication and ways
of doing it in a much less successful way. And
people don't normally couple those things together necessarily. They're like, yeah,
the market will just figure it out.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, And kind of when you look back at history
with a very long lens, right, you're like, oh, there
was political turmoil during this time, right, and you don't
live through that turmoil necessarily, right. Yeah. It's particularly interesting
in the case of AI where explicitly some of the
(31:44):
leaders in Silicon Valley are saying they're not saying we're
going to create millions of new high paying jobs, right,
some of them are saying, we're going to create a
life of leisure for people where you can create weird
Soora videos of furries having sex and I don't know
what you're going to do right in neglecting like the
(32:06):
dignity of work or the fact get like you know
you're gonna have like a political of people is a euphemism, right,
you know, if you kind of like take everyone's jobs,
you might have a revolution or something, right, and ignoring
kind of that history lesson, even though some people, you know,
Patrick Collison is the CEO of Stripe, and he and
(32:29):
Tyler Conwan economists have kind of like founded a field
called progress studies, which in this kind of the like
same vein potentially, but like the politics and the economics
are intertwined. I think probably there's too much of saying
we have to preserve these kind of coal miners jobs,
and you have like parochial interests and things like that.
But if you have very widespread destructions of existing institutions
(32:54):
and you don't have a good plan to create new institutions,
then that could get very messy. Potentially. I'm not sure
it's a good precedent. You know. Again, I worried about
the combination of rapid technological change with declining institutions, right,
and and the fact that the technologies involved in some
(33:15):
ways people checking out from civic life. I mean again,
after World War Two, we kind of had a new
world order somewhat literally. We also had the development of
the atomic bomb. It probably is another episode, right, but
you also did the development of the United Nations, which,
whatever you think of it, I get annoyed because it
makes it a fucking nightmare to commute to the East
(33:37):
Side for a couple of months every year when they
have a conference.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Good, and by the way, the building is the building
is not super and I feel like that you went
you a fucking better building.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
I'm just gonna do a total caveat on our Nobel
episode to just complain. So that was the United Nations
was meeting when we were trying to rent a car
and drive to Vermont and rented the car in Midtown
because I'm an idiot and forgot and had to wait
for an hour basically to leave the garage because the
(34:08):
block the car was on had dignitaries staying on it,
and then everything was blocked off. Anyway, it was just
such a nightmare and I was like, Okay, I'm just
never going to go to Midtown Manhattan when the UN
is meeting ever again. Anyway, that's a big caveat. But yes,
you can be annoyed by that. But your broader point
(34:29):
it is an incredibly important one, and I want to
make sure that we stay with it, which is that
the institutions that came out of it were actually incredibly important,
and that you need multiple prongs for stability, and that
you might have issues with a lot of the kind
of UN directions, you might have issues with the UN traffic,
you might have issues with more important things that the
(34:50):
UN does, But the fact that you do have this
societal structure is something that helped prevent innovation with negative
kind of with the negative social disruptions that might have
otherwise accompanied it, with the social displacements, with the revolutionary
forces that people tend to gloss over.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And we'll be right back after this break, Mariet, what
would you give yourself a Nobel Prize for nothing?
Speaker 1 (35:34):
I don't think I deserve a Nobel prize, Nate. If
I were to give you a Nobel prize, Nate, I
would give you the prize in economics, and you would
get it for some of your statistical stuff. And I'm
sure that by the time you get your Nobel Prize,
you will have come up with some, you know, great
statistical innovations that help us forecast and project more accurately,
(35:58):
and hopefully, because we're friends, I'll be able to profit
off of that by placing very nice bets on prediction markets.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Because I would give you the prize in literature because
I know.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I have written fiction, and I hope you're very good writer. Well,
I appreciate that night, and yes, and I hope to
write more fiction in the future. So that is something
that I'm definitely I feel.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Like we're probably being in puckle world. We probably both
deserve the Noble Piece Prize for listening to bad beat
stories over the years.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah, we could collectively. I think we could collectively take
a Nobel Piece Prize for listening to bad beat stories
and not actually physically harming anyone who tells us a
bad beat story, even though sometimes I really really want tonight.
There are some people who you just when they're like Maria, hey,
do you want to grab dinner? I'm like, oh no, no, no,
(36:51):
no no. You probably know some of these people and
you just want to run away, and when you actually
are cornered and end up in a conversation with them
or at a dinner with them, and you smile and
nod through the whole thing. You do feel like a
mediator who's made world peace possible.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Can you believe that that flush came in on that river? Again?
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Can you believe the idiot who stayed in the hand
until the river? The odds were so bad? How does
this fish ever make any money? By the way, Nate,
this is totally off Well, it's not off topic with
the poker bad beats, but have you noticed that there's
a certain type of person who whenever they tell you
hand histories, this usually goes hand in hand with bad
beats stories. It's always like the whale in the one
(37:30):
seat did this, and then the fish did this, and
then the idiot did this. It seems like every single
person at their table is a whale, a fish, an idiot,
a donk, a something bad and no one is actually
and from their descriptions, I'm like, wow, I want to
play in that tournament, you know, seems like seems like
a great field. No.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
The way you can learn a lot from the causes
of death. I once called it in a poker tournament, right,
and once like created a texta one and they're like
thirteen ways to die, right, and how do you die?
You know, I go up, sometimes I go with a
bluff some times a life. If you're only losing poker
tournaments when you take a bad beat, it's often the
sign of people who are who are too nitty and
(38:14):
risk averse that you chip down, you chip down, chip down,
chip down right, because you're not taking any chances, and
then yeah, you'll lose it seventy thirty, or you lose
aces versus kings. Maybe if the kings against the aces
can't avoid that kind of thing, right, But like, you
know someone who is never busting out of a tournament
by saying, look, I made a big bluff here, it
(38:37):
didn't work. I made a big fold here, I got
shown the hand. It was wrong, and then I was
down low on chips. Right, I made a big call
and that was wrong. I tried to slow places. I
thought it was the right play, and you caught the
perfect card and I lost all my chip. Like, if
you're never like admitting to like making a bold poker play,
then then I kind of think you're probably an inferior player.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah, you know, yeah, what matters is all the decisions
that led up to that point not the actual bad
being at the end. I think that that's that's an
important thing to remember when you're a warding the Nobel
Prize in poker. Bad beat stories, Nobel Committee, these are
all things that we need to that we all need
to keep in mind. Nate, you will have created a
(39:21):
statistical model that tells us how to avoid the people
who will tell us the bad beat stories. You'll you'll
get us maps of the Paris and Horseshoe ballrooms so
that we know the best routes to take to avoid
bad beat storytellers. And I will incorporate them into my
novel and we will we will bring this to the
(39:42):
Nobel's attention. But that was a I really enjoyed that.
And next year I hope, Nate, that you will be
a little bit more engaged in the Nobel Prize given
now that you understand why some of them can be
so interesting to follow, and now that you know some
of the controversy behind.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
The scenes, you can bet on it.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, yeah, we can bet on it all right. Next
year we can do Nobel brackets.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Nobel brackets. Yeah, Okay, Maria will have to be one
another's Nobel Prize for now, So Thank you listeners, and
we'll see you soon.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova and I'm Nate Silver. Today
on the show, Nate, we'll be talking about a topic
(00:37):
that I think is really exciting. Every single year, I'm
always eagerly awaiting the announcements of the Nobel Prizes, not
because I'm in any danger of winning one, but because
I think you can learn a lot from the people
who win the awards. So all of the Nobel Prizes
for twenty twenty five have been given out, and I'm excited,
(01:00):
probably more excited than you are in Nate to dive
into the recipients and some of the broader implications and
broader history of the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, you know, look, I think you owe me not
to be too gender astorre. I think you owe me
as sports focused episodes and Maria. But yes, I do
have some thoughts, particularly on the economics Nobel Prize, where
I'm an admirer of one of the recipients.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So Nobel Prizes are something that I actually always follow avidly.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
That makes one of us I think that.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
They're fascinating, and I think so for several reasons. First,
like when we get the Nobel Prizes in you know, medicine, chemistry, physics,
all of that stuff, I get to learn something about
the world because it's usually for shit that I had
no idea existed, and I'm like, oh my god, this
is so cool. Right, You've been doing all this amazing research,
(02:00):
and that's really interesting, and it's a way, you know,
of educating myself about things that I don't know about.
Nobel Prize in literature I'm always really excited about because
if it's someone who I know and love, I'm like, yes,
you know, finally they get recognition. And if it's someone
whose work I've never read, I'm like, wow, okay, you
know this is cool. Something else for me. Economics, I
(02:21):
also think is always just interesting to figure out, you know,
what is in vogue, so to speak, right, like, what
ideas are getting rewarded at what time for what reasons,
Because I do think that there is kind of a
backdrop for the choices of Nobel Prizes on any given year,
because they could be awarded at you know, this year
(02:42):
or next year or never, and when you make that choice,
you are saying something about I think that this idea
is very important right now, and the Peace Prize is
the one that often gets the most attention. You know,
since Donald Trump has been campaigning for it, it's certainly
been getting a lot of attention. And I actually think
that that is the for me, that's the most politicized
(03:04):
prize and the one that I think sometimes goes to
people who are depletely undeserving of it, and I'm like,
what the fuck, Like, you guys are just trying to
make a political statement. So the Nobel Peace Prize, I think,
is one that I most often disagree with. But the
other reason I love the Nobel Prizes is I really
love the Nobel Lectures. So I actually, especially in literature,
(03:27):
I love reading the lectures that people write and deliver
because there are so many. I mean, I think it's
some of the most interesting thinking and writing out there.
And I often quote from people's Nobel Prize speeches lectures
because I think that we have the chance to hear
from some of the greatest minds, some of the greatest writers,
(03:47):
some of the greatest thinkers in the world. So yes,
I love the Nobel Prizes. Clearly, Nate, you are not
a fan, though you are not someone who follows them
follows along.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
You know, I'm more concerned with the American League MVP Award,
among many other things. I guess I know somebody who's won.
Somebody call a friend is one of Nobel. You get
the call from like you know, some strange plus something
country code, European number, in the middle of the morning,
middle of the night. Right, very exciting. I would still
(04:20):
be up. We're working on some fucking model. I'll be like, hey, Nate,
you and Maria have finally won. I'd be like, I'm
Tired's call Maria. I'm tired and I'm busy, busy that
we can. You get money for the Nobel.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Prize, right, you get money for the Nobel Prize, different
amounts for different prizes. My favorite, by the way, speaking
of middle of the night, and I don't know if
you saw this night, I shared it because it to
me it actually says something pretty fundamental about the type
of thinking that is often required to win a Nobel Prize.
So one of the people who won, Fred Ramsdell, he
(04:55):
was unreachable when he won the Nobel Prize in medicine
and they could not get a hold of him, like
this is the first time actually in the history of
the Nobel Prize that they literally could not contact a winner,
not even not immediately, but like for twenty four hours.
And he was hiking with his wife and off the grid,
(05:15):
living his best life, as his company said after they've
reached the company, and the company actually ended up putting
out a statement on his behalf. So he was just
completely off off the grid, hiking with his wife. This
is something that they do, This is something that they
love doing. They don't have reception, their phones are off.
(05:35):
His is actually the entire trip in airplane mode, and
he ended up finding out because his wife had hers
not in airplane mode, and so at some point they
came to a place where they had reception exactly exactly,
and she started screaming and he thought she saw a
grizzly bear. So he didn't have a heart attack. He
(05:55):
was fine, but he thought that actually she was in
danger and she's like, you won the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
It would be ironic if you did have a heart attack.
That would be very ironic. Yav I always wonder about
the mechanics of like I guess I was last year
was nominated for a prize which is second only the
Nobel Prize. I was nominated for a Global Poker.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Or you know, some people would say it's actually more
prestigious than the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
So you know, no, I mean it really is.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
You know, I have won a Global poker okay, and
I didn't go.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
They have a ceremony. I hadn't made enough to Vegas
for the year. Didn't go to the ceremony. I kind
of forget that, Like, if I was gonna win, I
didn't win, they would tip me off. Oh they don't.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
They do not tip you off. So these are awards
that are given for various accomplishments in the poker world.
Some of them are for things like best tournament performance,
best breakout player, or something that I was nominated for
once and did not win. Nate, I was Breakout Player
of the Year and lost to This is very funny
(06:57):
ali am Siavich, who no longer plays poker because it
turned out that he was cheating. His breakout performance was
not quite as breakouting in the in the right ways.
So I think that that's uh, that actually is quite funny.
But he won that year. But some of them are
for poker journalism and those those types of awards you
were nominated for On the Edge. I was nominated and
(07:20):
won for the Biggest so my yeah, my, My Global
Poker Award is for the biggest bluff and it's yeah,
it's it's a fun ceremony, but no, you have no idea.
No one is tipped off, and so it's very funny
because there are people who have won and like when
(07:41):
I won, I wasn't at the ceremony and didn't get
my physical award for several years because I kept forgetting
to pick it up and to ask for it. So yeah,
they don't tip you off. And then Nobel prizes, So
this is something quite interesting. I love you know that
this guy was off the grid, and I think that
(08:01):
it's really interesting to think about the importance of you know,
disconnecting and actually letting your brain think and being out
in nature. There's so many things about this that are
actually there's a ton of research on why this is
good for creativity, good thought, et cetera, et cetera. So
yay Fred Ramsdell and yay being so like basically so
(08:22):
secure in your profession that it's Nobel Week and you're like,
fuck it, I'm going off the grid. I don't care.
So it does say a lot about that. But Nate,
there's a really interesting component here about the being tipped off.
There were some controversies surrounding the Nobel Prizes in terms
of polymarket and prediction market betting, where it seemed like
there were tip offs before the announcements of certain prize winners,
(08:46):
most notably the Nobel Peace Prize, which went to Maria
Quorina Machado. And there was before the announcement, were you.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Just replaced the native Spanish speaker there?
Speaker 1 (08:59):
You know, you know, you know, I studied. I studied
Spanish for many years and lived in Spain. Nate, I
studied abroad in Spain.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
So yeah, there was a big surge for her on
poly market and probably other prediction markets, like right before
she won. Right. The theory I've heard is that there
was a lot of maybe some meta data release that
you're preparing a bio, you're preparing like a big like
you know, look, I used to know how to find
poll releases before they were released by typing in certain
(09:32):
URLs and things like that. Right, So, like if you
have an incentive to make one hundreds of thousands of dollars
by getting the sodaity right, and looking for any clues
that you can. It doesn't necessarily have to be inside information.
There's a whole longer combinate conversation about like inside information
and prediction markets and non prediction markets too, that we
should maybe have for some for other period of time. Right.
(09:53):
I mean, the one thing where I think polllymarket did
a bad job was for the Pope. Right, that was
a case where shit didn't leak.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
That's because there were line Nate, there were no pockets
of data or anything.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It was totally It's the exception that proves day of
the Internet in the Vatican that they probably have the Internet, right,
they need it for grinder. Sorry, nay, come on, when.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
They're in conclave. They absolutely do not have access to
the Internet. Nobody does. But they do have somebody who
can access everything externally in case of medical emergency, et cetera,
et cetera, as we talked about in our fascinating deep
dive into the Conclave.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Have you judged awards before? I have a park poker.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah I have, indeed, And this is just to say
that the Nobel does try to keep it very close
to the best. Have you judged awards before?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah? I did. A rotating two years to the higher
journalists were people, you know, to judge the Pulitzers for
like a two year stint and then Yester's wait another
decade before they invite you back. But that was fascinating,
right You spend is it like two or three days
up at the Columbia campus, and like for the Pulitzers,
you were given like a gigantic stack of applications in
(11:17):
your category. Right, I love the spirit of it. It's
a fun day. You get to meet I guess I
call myself a journalist among other things. I get to
meet like real journalists and interesting people, right, and with
different perspectives. But you're like, you're going through this shit
very fast. I'm not sure if it like applies the
same way to the Nobel Prize. Right, you know, one
(11:40):
thing I would know in general, if you're applied for
an award that's like judged by some panel or committee,
it's almost like student applications to some elite institution, right,
Like half of it to two thirds to three quarters
can be dismissed out of hand pretty much, right. You know,
(12:02):
if I'm a journalist and I'm judging different stories, there
are some stories that are prize bait, right, where like
aimed in this way. It's feature style and blah blah,
but it's important here's some person who overcame hardships, or
here's a person who took on city hall, right, and
like sometimes it's good, but it's sometimes not necessarily all
(12:23):
that impactful, right, Yep, it's kind of a little bit
paint by numbers, And like when I'm on the committee,
I don't particularly care for that type of story, right,
I kind of care more about like what maye be
a big splash in the world this year, Right. I
guess when I was doing it, was it during the
first Trump term race before COVID. Right, there's a bunch
of me too stuff. There was a bunch of Trump
(12:45):
Russia stuff right by the way. You know, you have
your group that makes a recommendation that can be overridden
by like the board of the poetry Prizes, which you
know might sound like it's having a heavy hand on
the scale, but like, but they're inherently political kind of things.
I think the poltries do better than some jobs, but
like it it. You know, it probably helps to to
(13:09):
know people I suppose.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yeah, no, absolutely, And that's why I said that, you know,
some of the I think some of the prizes are
much more political than others. And even it's interesting because
in the Nobel Peace Prizes, that's very you know, that's
just egregiously the case. And by the way, that's not
a knock on this year's winner, who I think is
(13:33):
incredibly deserving. I'm not trying to subtly suggest that this
year's winners should not have a should not have one.
I do want to very strongly suggest that there are
past winners who should not have one, but she is
not among them. But even you know, even Peace Prize aside,
I do think that the Nobels have become more than
(13:57):
just oh, we think that this is the person most
deserving of a prize for their literary output, for instance.
And I say become, but this has always been the
case to some extent, and where there are political considerations
of all sorts. So I think with the Nobel Prizes
in literature, just you know, in recent years, the committee
(14:20):
was accused of having you know, too many white men,
too many Europeans, Americans, et cetera. And they're like, okay,
so how much of that is because we just have
a committee who's reading habits are inherently biased because of
who they are, right, Like, they're not trying to be biased,
but they just are not aware of a lot of
other literature. That's you know, that's painting them in a
(14:45):
non aeroditelite saying, you know, you haven't made those sorts
of comparisons. But sometimes then it's kind of like, you know,
it's a really it gets into really murky ground where
we're like, well, are we trying to have like a
quotea sistem right for Nobel prizes in literature where we
don't have you know, enough women, We don't have enough
(15:07):
people from you know, non u et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. And I think that part of it is
just a lack of knowledge, a lack of exposure, a
lack of translation. Right, that's that's another important thing, Like
you need who sits on the committee? We don't know,
by the way, these are things that are very closely
(15:28):
guarded secrets. So like I do not you can't google
like who is the committee for the Nobel Prize in X?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Like have you sold a French edition of The Biggest FLA?
I have not.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Actually I have not sold French. I have not so
the French. I have not sold a single one of
my books in France ever. And my books this isn't
a brag, but like my books have been translated into
over twenty languages, right, like we sold rights all over
the world. France has never bought one of my books.
(15:59):
The first one. I was like, well, it's about Charlock Holmes.
It's very English, right, so maybe there's like an inherently
anti English bias, but yeah, no, the French do not
like buying American books, and.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I like France. I'm by the way, isn't the World
Bookage or the whatever European booked are back in Paris
next year.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Poker Stars is coming back to Paris in February with
the I will not leave until both of us have
sold our postil.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Both of us have books translated into French. I like wine,
I like coffee, I like lounging around, I like steak freez.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And there's so many amazing things about France. But yes,
they do not love our books, Nate, But you know
this is an issue, right, Translation is a problem. Like
the Winner this year, not all of his books have
been translated into English, and some have just been translated,
by the way, that's Lasno krasno Hork. He is Hungarian,
(16:55):
and I loved that. His last book, which I have
not read, is four hundred pages and contains one period
in the entire book. So so that should be an interesting,
interesting read.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
As a purveyor of run on sentences myself, I'm officially
a fan.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, there you go, there you go. So you know,
but but you know, you get these you get these
winners who already are who already won the prize, right,
someone like this year's winner, And not all of his
books have been translated into English, and so I assume,
you know, other languages also suffer from that. Now, imagine
(17:33):
you're someone who hasn't like and he's someone who already
rose to that level of prominence. So there are issues
that end up, you know, making the prize a little
bit more politicized than one would think. And I said that,
you know, in recent memory, people have been pressuring the
committee saying, you know, you're you're representing too many similar voices.
(17:56):
And yet this has been an issue for a very
long time. So there have been two times that I
know of in history. Because deliberations are eventually made public.
I don't remember how many years after it's decades, but
you eventually, you eventually do know who was nominated and
like you do understand, you know why some people were
(18:17):
shot down, so I can. There are two instances in
history where I'm like, are you guys, are you kidding me?
And it shows different sources of biases. One, which I
think is the single most egregious one is w. H.
Auden did not get the Nobel Prize in literature. He
was gay. He was very openly gay. He was, you know,
(18:40):
very vocal about it. And this was not it's not
like it's there's a line that says we are not
giving him the prize because he's gay, But you can
read between the lines, and he did not get it
because of his sexual orientation. He's one of the greatest
poets writers of the twentieth century and the fact that
(19:00):
he wasn't given the Nobel Prize because of a sexual
orientation is horrible. Now, second one shows a very different
sort of bias. White streat Mail. This time Tolkien j R.
Tolkien did not win the Nobel Prize because people were
biased against the types of books that he wrote and said,
you know, oh you know, fantasy is not real literature.
(19:22):
It's not going to stand the test of time. But
the year that Tolkien was up, the person who won
that year, like I have no idea who the fuck
that is, and like no one remembers that name, and
everyone knows Tolkien's name, and like it's one of those
things where I'm like, wow, you guys are just there
(19:43):
have been closed minded biases around this prize for a
very very long time, basically since its inception. So instead
of saying, this is the prize for the you know,
single most deserving author, just like with all everything, I
think we need to caveat it. Right that has risen
to a certain level, whose works have been translated, and
(20:04):
we don't take issue with the type of writing you do,
the type of person you are, et ce cetera, et cetera.
So I think that that's something that's really important to
keep in mind. And you would think that the other prizes,
like you know, medicine, physics, economics, that they're a little
bit potentially, especially with something like physics more straightforward. And
(20:28):
I actually, just to be perfectly honest, I don't know literature.
I've done a lot of deep dives into the history
because it's something you know, it's my field. It's something
that I feel very passionately about. And I wouldn't be
surprised if I went down the line of you know,
physics and realized how much controversy there was there. I
do know that there is controversy and who exactly gets
(20:49):
prizes for discoveries right? Because sometimes if you know that
a certain discovery is going to win the prize in physics, medicine,
et cetera, how do you divide it? Right? How do
you actually decide who's going to get it? Who's going
to get credit for this? Does one person get it?
To two people get it? Do three people get it?
Because sometimes it is split. This year's prize in economics
will split three ways. One person got half the prize
(21:10):
and then two people had to split the other half.
So you have to make determinations like that all the time.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
You have to be alive too, You have to be alive.
That's actually interesting, that is huge.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That's actually really important. So like when Daniel Konnoman won
the Nobel Prize for his work with Tabarski, Tierski couldn't
win it, right, even though he did, he did half
the research. Right, he was half the team, but Conoman
was alive. Twarski was not.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
My grandparents who are passed away, you know, they would says,
how do you guys stay married for for fifty years
or became sixty years eventually?
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
My grandfather was always like, well, there are three key components, right,
get married young number one, stay together and don't die.
The don't die a part is really it's really quite
important for winning a Nobel On for other things.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
And we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
You want to talk a little b about the Economics
Prize of one thing that I kind of you know,
I don't know the other two I do know Joel,
I always thought it was mochr m ok y r.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I don't actually, yeah, I don't know how it's more okay.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
He's Dutch, Israeli, American. You know a lot of different
ingredients here. But he does work on economic history in particular.
I'm going to do very basic stuff, right. If you know,
if you study economic history, then very stylized competition in
the facts. Right, you learn that progress is unusual, Right,
(23:01):
that like humanity has spent most of its existence barely
eking out a living where innovations are slow to come by,
there's wars, you might have empires, the empires die out
after some period of time. And then in the Industrial
Revolution we had this spark and things began to catalyze
(23:23):
and into revolution we've had We've had growth. Right at first,
the growth might be zero point five percent per year
on top of population growth, although population growth is also important,
and then it gets up to one percent, two percent, three percent,
it begins to compound, and so you know, I think
a history is like a vitally undercovered topic. I think one,
(23:44):
you know, the average liberal or conservative, this is where
I think both sides like are full of shit, right.
I don't think they understand that, like that progress is
not the default by any means for human history. Right.
In some ways, its a very pessimistic interpretation of human history, right,
you know, I mean, you know, now people who think
that we're on the verge of an ai singularity of saying, okay,
(24:05):
we're gonna have like an in my book on the
Edge the Art ofversking everything from publishers ever worre no
I in my book, you know, I'm using the revolution
as a paradigm for like what might happen if you
had very rapid ai growth, right, and the revolution. Of course,
you had a lot of change of institutions. You have
the Enlightenment, you had the American Revolution, you had the
(24:26):
French Revolution. There is always some debate about what came first, Right,
did you have this technological shock and then institutions catered
to that. You know, that period of time, maybe things
that were more a liberal, right, like land didn't matter
as much now labor power data, and that changes the
way that all society relates to one of You also
(24:47):
have wealth that people are not just at subsistence. People
are not just presents anymore. Although it takes a long
time to expand that franchise and so forth, right and
so like, I was very glad to see economic history
get it to do. I think, you know, the critique
of economic historians that they're neither economists nor historians. Jill
Muker Again, I don't know, the two is excellent. I
(25:07):
think at both. And you know, considering the stakes of
like why does humanity, why do civilizations grow or stagnate
or die out, it seems like a very high stakes
question that most people don't know very much about. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Absolutely, and I'm especially grateful in the present day and age,
where people seem to be devaluing the importance of history
and historians in general. I think it's it's very important
to to illustrate just how important economic I mean history
in general is, but economic history specifically. And the other
two winners, by the way, are Peter Howitt I think
(25:47):
I got that pronunciation correct, and Philippe Agill. And sorry
if I butchered that one, because you know, I have
not heard these names pronounced. I've only ever read them.
And they were awarded it for their work on creative destruction.
So the concept of creative destruction, so the process by
(26:07):
which something new, something innovative, will replace older technologies and businesses.
And that was originally to put a little more history here.
It was originally coined in a nineteen forty two book Capitalism, Socialism,
and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter. Schumpeter, how do you pronounce it?
I don't know how to pronounce any of these last names, Nate,
(26:30):
this is going to be riddled with riddled with a
mispronunciation episode.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of become a little bit
of a buzzword in Silicon Valley where it can be.
You know, hey man, let's go to burning man do
some creative instruction kind of thing. But yeah, look, one
of the core basic foundations of both capitalism and democracy,
which is why they have some correlation often repaired together.
(26:57):
I mean, they both ideally should believe in competition, right.
I mean this is why I think people, you know,
and I'd put these both under liberalism. Like people are flawed.
It is hard to predict the future. It is hard
to know what's going to work, hard to no ideas
what find a market, right, and so and so you
want them to compete instead of to have central planning, right.
(27:18):
And this is more of a risky business kind of topic, right,
But like you know, a lot of it is the
value of of optionality. Right. You know, if I were
living in some small town and I could like commission
the perfect restaurant in my town, right, maybe I'm some patron, right,
I'd rather have like five in a food hall or something, right,
and then the best ones can can survive because there's
(27:41):
uncertainty because like you know, because it creates proper incentives.
And it also means that like that older institutions sometimes
have to be replaced and destroyed, right, I think ironically
and ironically, I guess ironically only because we're talking about Europe,
you know, but like small things like that, like making
(28:03):
it hard to fire unsuccessful employees or making it hard
to dislodge businesses, that having him with the government. But
like that's it's very it's very important. And you know,
the thing about economic history too, is like again for
our audience, it's kind of like a one oh one concept,
but the notion of like compounding growth when you're looking
(28:24):
taking the truly long term perspective. I probably said versions
of this before, but like you know, I am worried
in the Trump era about America like squandering its leadership
in various ways, including its economic leadership, and that having
compounding effects. Right, I mean, the US has like a
big lead over the rest of the world, and a
(28:47):
lot a lot of advantages, a lot of advantages, worlds
leading currency, world's largest or you know, most effective military, right,
world's most number of founders, I guess, effectively, right, you know,
we're in a very we even very America is a
beautiful country. You got lots of good land. Whoops, almos
(29:08):
knocked over a lamp, and like we're starting from a
very high point, and you know, fortunately every other country
is fucking up too, right, But like, but yeah, when
you go from like three percent to two percent to
one percent to negative one percent GDP growth per capita
over time, then you really notice that after a generation
and and you know, you kind of need more of
(29:30):
an economic history of perspective, comparative perspective at least to
understand the implications of that.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah. Absolutely, And mok here is someone who's definitely thought
a lot about the implications of creative destruction and kind
of how how you need to think about it in
order to enable long term growth, right and not just
like have this short like let's move fast and break
(29:56):
shit type of mentality, because one of the elements of
his work, of all three of their's work, is that
in order for the innovations to have lasting positive impact,
you need to actually support the individuals who were affected
(30:18):
by the changes and be able to protect the workers
and move them to kind of more productive other jobs.
So he's not saying that you need to protect specific jobs.
You know, jobs are going to get replaced, right, because
that's the nature of the way the world works, But
you do need to know how to actually protect productivity
(30:42):
and protect workers. And if you don't do that, right,
if you don't actually do everything together and have a
full vision for how this will work with long term
societal impact, you might be negatively surprised. So this is
I think something that a lot of people don't realize,
right when they're like, oh, well, we just need to innovate,
But they don't realize that they're actually ways of innovating
(31:04):
successfully that have long term positive economic implication and ways
of doing it in a much less successful way. And
people don't normally couple those things together necessarily. They're like, yeah,
the market will just figure it out.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah, And kind of when you look back at history
with a very long lens, right, you're like, oh, there
was political turmoil during this time, right, and you don't
live through that turmoil necessarily, right. Yeah. It's particularly interesting
in the case of AI where explicitly some of the
(31:44):
leaders in Silicon Valley are saying they're not saying we're
going to create millions of new high paying jobs, right,
some of them are saying, we're going to create a
life of leisure for people where you can create weird
Soora videos of furries having sex and I don't know
what you're going to do right in neglecting like the
(32:06):
dignity of work or the fact get like you know
you're gonna have like a political of people is a euphemism, right,
you know, if you kind of like take everyone's jobs,
you might have a revolution or something, right, and ignoring
kind of that history lesson, even though some people, you know,
Patrick Collison is the CEO of Stripe, and he and
(32:29):
Tyler Conwan economists have kind of like founded a field
called progress studies, which in this kind of the like
same vein potentially, but like the politics and the economics
are intertwined. I think probably there's too much of saying
we have to preserve these kind of coal miners jobs,
and you have like parochial interests and things like that.
But if you have very widespread destructions of existing institutions
(32:54):
and you don't have a good plan to create new institutions,
then that could get very messy. Potentially. I'm not sure
it's a good precedent. You know. Again, I worried about
the combination of rapid technological change with declining institutions, right,
and and the fact that the technologies involved in some
(33:15):
ways people checking out from civic life. I mean again,
after World War Two, we kind of had a new
world order somewhat literally. We also had the development of
the atomic bomb. It probably is another episode, right, but
you also did the development of the United Nations, which,
whatever you think of it, I get annoyed because it
makes it a fucking nightmare to commute to the East
(33:37):
Side for a couple of months every year when they
have a conference.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Good, and by the way, the building is the building
is not super and I feel like that you went
you a fucking better building.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
I'm just gonna do a total caveat on our Nobel
episode to just complain. So that was the United Nations
was meeting when we were trying to rent a car
and drive to Vermont and rented the car in Midtown
because I'm an idiot and forgot and had to wait
for an hour basically to leave the garage because the
(34:08):
block the car was on had dignitaries staying on it,
and then everything was blocked off. Anyway, it was just
such a nightmare and I was like, Okay, I'm just
never going to go to Midtown Manhattan when the UN
is meeting ever again. Anyway, that's a big caveat. But yes,
you can be annoyed by that. But your broader point
(34:29):
it is an incredibly important one, and I want to
make sure that we stay with it, which is that
the institutions that came out of it were actually incredibly important,
and that you need multiple prongs for stability, and that
you might have issues with a lot of the kind
of UN directions, you might have issues with the UN traffic,
you might have issues with more important things that the
(34:50):
UN does, But the fact that you do have this
societal structure is something that helped prevent innovation with negative
kind of with the negative social disruptions that might have
otherwise accompanied it, with the social displacements, with the revolutionary
forces that people tend to gloss over.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And we'll be right back after this break, Mariet, what
would you give yourself a Nobel Prize for nothing?
Speaker 1 (35:34):
I don't think I deserve a Nobel prize, Nate. If
I were to give you a Nobel prize, Nate, I
would give you the prize in economics, and you would
get it for some of your statistical stuff. And I'm
sure that by the time you get your Nobel Prize,
you will have come up with some, you know, great
statistical innovations that help us forecast and project more accurately,
(35:58):
and hopefully, because we're friends, I'll be able to profit
off of that by placing very nice bets on prediction markets.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Because I would give you the prize in literature because
I know.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
I have written fiction, and I hope you're very good writer. Well,
I appreciate that night, and yes, and I hope to
write more fiction in the future. So that is something
that I'm definitely I feel.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Like we're probably being in puckle world. We probably both
deserve the Noble Piece Prize for listening to bad beat
stories over the years.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Yeah, we could collectively. I think we could collectively take
a Nobel Piece Prize for listening to bad beat stories
and not actually physically harming anyone who tells us a
bad beat story, even though sometimes I really really want tonight.
There are some people who you just when they're like Maria, hey,
do you want to grab dinner? I'm like, oh no, no, no,
(36:51):
no no. You probably know some of these people and
you just want to run away, and when you actually
are cornered and end up in a conversation with them
or at a dinner with them, and you smile and
nod through the whole thing. You do feel like a
mediator who's made world peace possible.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
Can you believe that that flush came in on that river? Again?
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Can you believe the idiot who stayed in the hand
until the river? The odds were so bad? How does
this fish ever make any money? By the way, Nate,
this is totally off Well, it's not off topic with
the poker bad beats, but have you noticed that there's
a certain type of person who whenever they tell you
hand histories, this usually goes hand in hand with bad
beats stories. It's always like the whale in the one
(37:30):
seat did this, and then the fish did this, and
then the idiot did this. It seems like every single
person at their table is a whale, a fish, an idiot,
a donk, a something bad and no one is actually
and from their descriptions, I'm like, wow, I want to
play in that tournament, you know, seems like seems like
a great field. No.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
The way you can learn a lot from the causes
of death. I once called it in a poker tournament, right,
and once like created a texta one and they're like
thirteen ways to die, right, and how do you die?
You know, I go up, sometimes I go with a
bluff some times a life. If you're only losing poker
tournaments when you take a bad beat, it's often the
sign of people who are who are too nitty and
(38:14):
risk averse that you chip down, you chip down, chip down,
chip down right, because you're not taking any chances, and
then yeah, you'll lose it seventy thirty, or you lose
aces versus kings. Maybe if the kings against the aces
can't avoid that kind of thing, right, But like, you
know someone who is never busting out of a tournament
by saying, look, I made a big bluff here, it
(38:37):
didn't work. I made a big fold here, I got
shown the hand. It was wrong, and then I was
down low on chips. Right, I made a big call
and that was wrong. I tried to slow places. I
thought it was the right play, and you caught the
perfect card and I lost all my chip. Like, if
you're never like admitting to like making a bold poker play,
then then I kind of think you're probably an inferior player.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah, you know, yeah, what matters is all the decisions
that led up to that point not the actual bad
being at the end. I think that that's that's an
important thing to remember when you're a warding the Nobel
Prize in poker. Bad beat stories, Nobel Committee, these are
all things that we need to that we all need
to keep in mind. Nate, you will have created a
(39:21):
statistical model that tells us how to avoid the people
who will tell us the bad beat stories. You'll you'll
get us maps of the Paris and Horseshoe ballrooms so
that we know the best routes to take to avoid
bad beat storytellers. And I will incorporate them into my
novel and we will we will bring this to the
(39:42):
Nobel's attention. But that was a I really enjoyed that.
And next year I hope, Nate, that you will be
a little bit more engaged in the Nobel Prize given
now that you understand why some of them can be
so interesting to follow, and now that you know some
of the controversy behind.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
The scenes, you can bet on it.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, yeah, we can bet on it all right. Next
year we can do Nobel brackets.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Nobel brackets. Yeah, Okay, Maria will have to be one
another's Nobel Prize for now, So Thank you listeners, and
we'll see you soon.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot Fm.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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