Tyler Cowen

I've always had a blast during my visits, learned a lot, and I recall one time when I gave a talk, we all went out to dinner, and then quite late, well, people didn't go back home, but they all went back to the Jane Street office to play chess, bug house, and other games.

They're better at these games than you might think, so please update your other expectations accordingly.

Thank you again.

I see it differently from Patrick, and he and I have discussed this.

So I think there's basically increasing variance in the distribution.

So young people at the top are doing much better, and they're far more impressive than they were in earlier times.

And if you look at areas where we measure performance of the young, chess is a simple example.

We perfectly measure performance.

Very young people are just better and better at chess.

That's just proven, even like NBA basketball.

You have very young people doing things that they would not have been doing, say, 30 years ago.

And a lot of that is mental and training and application and not being a knucklehead.

So the top of the distribution getting much better.

You see this also in science, internet writing.

The very bottom of the distribution, well, youth crime has been falling since the 90s.

So the very bottom of the distribution also is getting better.

I think there's some thick middle above the very bottom and extending like a bit above the median that's clearly getting worse.

And because they're getting worse, there's a lot of anecdotal examples of them getting worse.

Like students wanting more time to take the test or having flimsy excuses or mental health problems with the young or whatever.

There's a lot more of that because of that thick band of people getting worse.