Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation

by Tyler Cowen

KIPP schools have brought very real successes to their students,

being good at “dull, repetitive tasks” and “really wanting to win”

Those are qualities that will serve well the workers of the future.

moderate level of elite education combined with extreme self-education

We simply may have reached the point in some key scientific areas where we are working with levels of explanation that our human brains—even those of Nobel laureates—cannot handle.

Since only humans come up with theories, by construction the theories are within the intellectual grasp of at least some humans, albeit humans who are usually smarter and better educated than average. Once genius machines start coming up with new theories, that constraint will be removed and someday intelligibility will seem like a legacy from a very distant past.

Current model-building in the social sciences is analogous to “grandmaster intuition pre–Deep Blue.”

The measure of self-motivation in a young person will become the best way to predict upward mobility.

If you pose the question “What percent of health outcomes is determined by health care?” you’ll get some pretty modest estimates. I’ve heard figures of no more than 10 to 15 percent.

there is room for some people to win back those healthcare losses by taking better care of themselves.

the predictions of violence tell us more about the predictors than about the likely course of future American society.

Most envy is local.