Bryan Caplan - The Signaling Game in Education & Parenting

"Education really signals a package. Sure, it's signaling intelligence... But it's not just intelligence. It's also work ethic. It's also conformity."

"Nature crushes nurture... The theory that people have about all the sacrifices you have to make in order to go and give your kid a decent life, it's just a false theory."

Auren Hoffman (00:01.198)

Hello fellow data nerds. guest today is Brian Kaplan. Brian is a professor of economics at George Mason University. And he's also the author of a number of best selling books, including the case against education, the myth of the rational voter, and recently billed baby built. Brian, welcome to world of deaths.

Bryan (00:19.509)

I am so thrilled to be here in this world.

Auren Hoffman (00:21.902)

I'm very excited that you're here as well. I'm a big fan of yours. Now in the book that in the case, the case against education, you argued that education is like 80 % signaling and maybe only 20 % human capital building. What, where's the cases where like signaling is a good thing?

Bryan (00:41.517)

Most of the answer to that question comes down to compared to what? If there's no other way in the universe to find out who's good and bad, then you can say at least when we've got enough signaling, we want to have enough signaling to rank people. So you want to have a school go on long enough that you've sorted people out. The main thing to realize is that there are a number of alternative methods of signaling. Most obviously the old fashioned one where people just start off at a non -tree level job and then you prove yourself by performance.

The idea that, as well, if that was so great, we'd be doing that. like, well, there's about a trillion dollars of government subsidies per year in the United States alone in favor of the status quo, so we should not think that this is actually the best system.

Auren Hoffman (01:21.346)

people are like, like humans need to signal they're always signaling about what clothes they're wearing. They're kind of dropping hints that, you know, maybe their parents are important people or they summered in an important cool place or they saw concert and they got better seats than other people. Like that's what humans do. They're always signaling. Like is signaling about like where you went to university.

Bryan (01:26.903)

Thank

Bryan (01:34.465)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:45.428)

Like it seems like that might even be better signaling than some other ones or like if we're going to signal anyway, why not just signal about your SAT scores or something.

Bryan (01:53.835)

Right. Well, so let's, let's back up. The main puzzle that I started with in The Case Against Education is why does education pay so much? That is the main puzzle that's on my mind. The standard story that you really are brainwashed with is it's because the stuff that's taught in class is just so damn useful on the job. You've got to know this stuff in order to do whatever job you're going to do. And yet, as I point out, if you pay attention to what's in the curriculum, most of it just seems totally irrelevant to the real world. That's why I do focus on signaling.

The specific signals that we're talking about are the signals that convince employers they want to hire you for a good job and give you a high salary. There's tons of other signals that people are sending, which however, don't generally lead to a better job or higher salary. In fact, they may even go in the opposite direction. My favorite one is this graphic showing every body part you can tattoo and what that signals about you and what the effect is. The punchline of it is if you've got tattoos all over your face and neck, that signals

Auren Hoffman (02:47.404)

You

Bryan (02:52.351)

I will never have a job that pays taxes. So yeah, there's a lot of things that people are signaling with tattoos. My best friend, Robin Hanson, loves to say, well, people are signaling their defiance. It's like, all right, there's a little bit of defiant signaling, but you know what is vastly more important? Signaling abject submission. Yes, sir. I am happy to go along in order to be part of this fine organization and to keep getting my paycheck. That's what I say is going on with education is largely you're trying to signal your employability.

Auren Hoffman (02:54.914)

You

Bryan (03:20.343)

You're trying to go and convince people like hire me, promote me, give me a good job, give me a lot of money. You're right. When you define signaling more broadly as anything that communicates anything to anyone, then yes, it's so big, so amorphous that it's kind of hard to know where to start. That's why I did narrow it down specifically with labor market signaling.

Auren Hoffman (03:37.446)

Today, basically, when an employer is hiring, especially for someone who's relatively new in their career, they're basically hiring how well that person did on their SATs or something. What are better metrics they should be hiring for?

Bryan (03:50.199)

Hmm. Well, so that would be a much better world, honestly. Yeah, so that would be a much better world. A lot of what I say in the case against education is that your education rentals, it's a lot more than just an SAT test or IQ test. And Ian, if that were all it was, then we could skip school. You could just go and get a job with your SAT scores, which as you may have noticed, doesn't actually work very well in the real world. So what I say is that education really signals a package.

Auren Hoffman (04:09.57)

That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it doesn't. Yeah.

Bryan (04:19.527)

Sure, it's signaling intelligence. You look at the MIT grad and you say, all right, genius. But it's not just intelligence. It's also work ethic. It's also conformity. And here is what is really striking about education. If you meet someone who has fantastic SAT scores, they dropped out of high school. Do you think they have average work ethic or average conformity? I don't. Yes, I look at that and say, this person has a problem. This person is

Auren Hoffman (04:29.421)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (04:40.6)

Well, they certainly don't have average. Yeah, they're on some tail somewhere, one of the tails. Or they may have a, the tail could be a good tail, but it's a tail that you need to dive into for sure, right?

Bryan (04:50.977)

Yeah, it's a very rare tale. There were actually some economists saying, well, maybe when you see that someone dropped out of college, you think it's a good thing because it's only the losers that bother to stay. That's a fun theory to toy with. That is not what anyone in the real world assumes. If you tell your parents, I've decided to drop out of college, your parents are like, goody, we didn't realize we had such a winner on our hands. Instead it's like,

Auren Hoffman (05:02.705)

Right.

Auren Hoffman (05:12.526)

Right, totally. Yeah.

Now part of what you're doing, you're doing a lot of really interesting research with data. How would you rate just the overall access to data on things like education, career attainment, like all these other types of data that's out there?

Bryan (05:32.769)

Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say that there is a lot of data. This is one of the most data rich fields in all of social science. Definitely. And yet it is shocking what we don't know. For example, I found it very hard to find a single study in the universe on completion rates for graduate school. Yes, maybe they're still out there. found I was able to find like some. Yeah, yeah. I was able to find some raw averages, but that's very different from

Auren Hoffman (05:52.332)

Really? That's crazy! That seems like that would be an obvious thing to have.

Yeah.

Bryan (06:02.881)

conditional probability I am doing an English degree and these are my GRE scores and this is where I am.

Auren Hoffman (06:06.326)

Yep, or this type of, this type of I'm rich or I'm poor or whatever, this type of income or whatever it is, yeah.

Bryan (06:11.583)

Yeah. Right. So for undergraduates, we've got a lot of data. For high school, we have a good amount of data. For those higher and more advanced degrees, then generally it's actually fairly thin. Then when the part of the book, when I was doing things like estimating completion probabilities in general, you've got some models that have a few basic variables. And compared to the

Very low quality of thought that usually goes on on this issue, adding a few variables is a huge step up because often people will just go and give everybody the average completion probability. It's like, yeah, everybody's not average. It's highly predictable actually. I mean, the really bad thing is that a lot of active researchers, especially when they talk to the media, basically just implicitly treat completion probability as equal to a hundred percent. And then they give advice.

Auren Hoffman (06:49.336)

Yeah.

Bryan (07:03.681)

for both policy and individual decisions as if everyone who tries succeeds and that's totally not true.

Auren Hoffman (07:03.733)

Yeah, interesting.

Auren Hoffman (07:08.118)

What percentage of people in, let's say, trying to do an undergraduate degree, like for a four year college, complete it?

Bryan (07:17.325)

Great question. All right, yes. So if we specify four -year college and they're doing it full -time, then the correct number is about 35 % finish on time. Yes, so that is typical. So five -year completion of a four -year degree is about 55%. Six -year completion of a four -year degree, again, always assuming you're doing it full -time is about 60%. And then it inches up after that.

Auren Hoffman (07:26.624)

on time and what percent finish let's say in six years or

Auren Hoffman (07:40.696)

So, but that's really low. That's a lot lower than I thought. Cause it seems like the worst thing you could do is start a four year degree and not finish it. Cause you don't get like any of the benefits, none of the signaling yet you have all this debt and all this income that you, you know, gave away during that time that you could have been earning. You could have been learning. You could have been doing something in the workplace, et cetera.

Bryan (07:43.339)

Yeah. Yes.

Bryan (08:03.949)

Yeah. So getting no benefits overstated, but your intuition is correct. When you really look at the data, what you'll see is that a very large chunk of the payoff for education comes from graduation year and the other years are a lot less. for high school averaging over a lot of studies, my memory is that the last year gives almost half of the payoff for four years of high school. And for college, it's more like, you know, the undergraduate four year degree is more like 70%.

Auren Hoffman (08:26.293)

Mm

Auren Hoffman (08:30.786)

That's right.

Bryan (08:31.426)

There's probably a good reason why you think those numbers are low. I'm guessing you went to some place pretty prestigious for your undergraduate.

Auren Hoffman (08:37.262)

I guess somewhat prestigious, yeah.

Bryan (08:41.197)

All right, well, so completion rates are much higher at more elite places. On the other hand, when you go down to low rank places, then you often start finding rock bottom completion. Community college, which most researchers sort of forget it exists. That's one where like three -year completion rates for a two -year degree for full -time students are often like 25%.

Auren Hoffman (08:44.214)

Yep. Yep. That makes sense.

Auren Hoffman (09:02.636)

Yeah, yep.

Bryan (09:03.391)

It's the kind of thing you do when your parents say either you get a job or you go to college and then it's like, is community college counts? Like, well, you can't get anywhere else. So I guess community college counts and then just figure away that time.

Auren Hoffman (09:14.04)

Cause there's a lot of people out there like they haven't finished college. have a ton of debt. They could have done, you know, they, they, went and got a, you know, a poly side degree. They could have actually become like a plumber and made all this money and had a great living. Like how do those decisions get made and how do we help those people make, you know, is there a paternal way we help them or is it just more like better data will help people make better decisions or.

Bryan (09:26.923)

Yes.

Bryan (09:41.163)

Wow. I don't mean to butter you up, Arden, but so insightful. Yes. mean, the most important thing to remember about college decisions, I think, is that they're being made by children. Often with some parental advice, although we have this bizarre norm of parents are just supposed to defer to whatever idea their kids have, whatever your dream is, you want to be an actor. It is my philosophical responsibility to pay for four years of acting school for you. I would be a monster if I said, yeah, that's a hobby. That's not a job. I'm not going to pay for that.

Auren Hoffman (09:51.244)

Yes.

Bryan (10:10.69)

I'm going to try to direct you into something that would make sense. So yes, there is this problem that these are very important decisions being made by children with a lot of what can fairly be called misinformation by adults, by teachers, by counselors. A lot of this is under pressure. So back in the old days, it was standard for a high school counselor to go and say, you're not college material. Think about doing it going technical school. These days, that's probably one of the few things that get you fired.

Auren Hoffman (10:25.091)

Yep.

Bryan (10:39.323)

to say, you have all seen, so yeah, you do.

Auren Hoffman (10:39.992)

But it's actually a great thing that people should do. And sometimes you don't even need technical school, which actually means you have to pay or you have to not forgo earning income. There are certain jobs where you can be, yeah, apprentice, where you actually make money. Maybe you only make minimum wage, but you're actually earning something and you're learning at the same time. A lot of trades like electrician, plumber, et cetera, you're learning as you do it. then if you become a good plumber,

Bryan (10:50.433)

Yes. Purchase.

Bryan (10:58.711)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Auren Hoffman (11:09.282)

You know, AI is probably not taking the plumbing jobs any time soon. Like it's just a great, it's a great profession. You get to solve people's problems. You make a ton of money.

Bryan (11:19.007)

I mean, obviously this is also a case where parents have some at least hidden mixed motives, perhaps hidden to themselves. I think most upper middle -class parents would be embarrassed if their kid was a plumber, even if he was making more money.

Auren Hoffman (11:30.06)

That's probably right. They would probably be happy if like the kid had a history degree, but was working at Starbucks than if they were a plumber and they're earning a real living or something. Yeah.

Bryan (11:39.277)

The Starbucks one maybe actually if it came out that way, but the thing is that most parents just have trouble imagining that their kid that goes to college will end up being a worker at Starbucks. They're kidding themselves. I did find actually some really cool surveys where you just ask parents when their baby is born, will your kid go to college and graduate college? The numbers are ridiculously high. So parents do have some fantastic optimism about the long run prospects of their kids.

Auren Hoffman (12:00.256)

Yeah, interesting.

Bryan (12:05.289)

Part of it is not so much that the parents are deliberately trying to steer their kids in a bad direction, but the parents themselves are just very cut off from anyone that would do a job like that. And so they don't really know where would you even start doing something like that. One of my sons is a fantastic chef and I've been sort of looking at, right, so what if he wanted to be a chef and how would that work out for him? And what's so great about going to college anyway? Maybe you should just take that money and train him for that.

Auren Hoffman (12:29.016)

Totally.

Bryan (12:32.181)

I mean, honestly, that's one where I'm very open minded, but he's nervous. Like, I don't know anyone with a job like that. I couldn't survive like that.

Auren Hoffman (12:34.998)

Hehehehe

Auren Hoffman (12:40.194)

And a lot of chefs I know are people who when had a history degree or probably side degree, then they ended up pivoting or something, you know, later on.

Bryan (12:45.751)

Yeah, have a word for that in the social science of education. It's called malemployment, where you have a job that is mismatched with your credentials.

Auren Hoffman (12:57.388)

Yeah. And I think it's also like, if you had a polysci or history degree and you went to Stanford, well, you're going to get a great job. So people kind of sometimes conflate, but it's more like if you have a, if you have one of those degrees and you go to a college people haven't heard of, then it's much, then, you know, you're more likely working at a cafe or it's much harder to actually get a great job.

Bryan (13:19.543)

pointing out one of the big findings of economics of economics of education is that people generally overrate the prestige of the college and underrate the importance of the major. So, mean, the truth is that a poly -sci student from Stanford, a lot of them actually will not do very well, not after graduation and not ever. On the other hand, if you have an engineering degree from, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (13:29.365)

Okay, interesting.

Auren Hoffman (13:36.822)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they may have to go to law school or they may have to actually study for a trade or something, right? You know, you're right. Because if you

Bryan (13:44.491)

right. Or maybe that they wind up somehow getting lucky or maybe they have enough other talent that it can overcome this political science degree. But yes, it's much more important to focus on what you're studying rather than where you're studying. There's probably one of the biggest mistakes that parents make is getting so obsessed with the pedigree, with the prestige of the school and not actually asking enough questions about what are you going to major in anyway? It is true, by the way, that

Auren Hoffman (13:48.924)

a startup or something and they work their way up. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (14:11.042)

What do you think? I'd be interested in your thoughts on the Varsity Blues scandal. So this was a scandal where essentially you had these like parents which were mostly sent to millionaires. And so their kids are probably going to be fine for the rest of their life, right? These are parents who are incredibly wealthy and they were doing illegal things and paying gobs of money to get their kids up like

Bryan (14:15.895)

you

Auren Hoffman (14:36.782)

you know, anywhere between five and 10 slots on the U S news and world report ranking. Like what was going through their heads? Why was this happening? Why is it like so pervading in the parent psyche?

Bryan (14:48.919)

Say when you're that rich, then you probably are not really focusing on getting your kid a good job. For then, a lot of it is bragging rights and what do you tell other parents? yeah, and of course, just shame avoidance rights is perhaps even more important. If your kid's not getting into a very top school, he's at USC.

Auren Hoffman (14:57.666)

You're bragging to your friends at the club.

Auren Hoffman (15:03.106)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (15:09.08)

Well, but they were all, it seems like, like, when I, when I drove into it, they're all going to a good school. they're actually all like, the kids seem like they're all smart enough to get to a good school on their own. And then they're trying to just like move them up a small number of slots to a slightly quote unquote more prestigious school. But like the school that they would have got to on their own was going to be fun. Actually. It wasn't like they're getting into no school or.

Bryan (15:25.708)

Yeah.

Bryan (15:33.963)

Yes. Right. And on top of that, to put so much focus on where they're going instead of what they're studying, pretty silly as well. I like in general, there's a puzzle with what is it like to be super rich in the world? Because the kinds of issues that would be a concern to most people, you might say, well, like, what do you even care? What difference does it make? And yet when you go and meet people who are super rich, they often have mundane concerns. have, let's see.

Auren Hoffman (15:39.852)

Yeah, yeah, it's a good point.

Auren Hoffman (15:54.264)

Correct.

Bryan (16:03.149)

Friend of a friend is sent a millionaire who got upset that his son's girlfriend was doing pay -per -view that she wasn't watching. It's like, what do you care? It's like $10. It's like, it's my money. I, so there's this kind of mentality. it's.

Auren Hoffman (16:16.408)

Right? Okay. Everyone. It's a good point. We're all, we're everyone's different. Everyone's snowflake. Yeah.

Bryan (16:21.451)

Yes. Well, not everyone, but I mean, I remember I once got to do Q and A with Peter Thiel and my question for him is how happy are the super rich? And then he just said, well, I don't see why that's important. I'm like, man, they're miserable then. That's your answer.

Auren Hoffman (16:36.716)

Yeah. And by the way, my unscientific study is that people who are super wealthy are happier. And they have good relationships with their children on average and they have good marriages and they have good friends and all those other things, but that's a separate discussion. Yeah.

Bryan (16:52.973)

Yeah. So yeah, plausible that, you know, so I, like, I was really trying to get to the question of the happiness of people who are just not in any data set. So like billion, what does it like to be a billionaire? And in fact, do they sit around walking them? I think we can say with confidence, they don't walk on air every day. They don't wake up every day and say, wow, what another great day of being a billionaire. They have the same kind of petty problems that other people have. And they may get, they may,

Auren Hoffman (17:00.781)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (17:14.36)

for sure. Yeah.

Bryan (17:17.301)

someone goes and looks at them funny and they feel bad and it's like what difference does that person make you don't need that person

Auren Hoffman (17:22.146)

Right. Now, what are your thoughts on like projects like the University of Austin?

Bryan (17:26.283)

Hmm. So I directly know many people that are involved. What I'll say is they've got a lot of nice ideas and I know they actually are admitting their first actual class this year. I heard that they're letting in a hundred students. Yes.

Auren Hoffman (17:37.004)

Yep. Yeah, I have a friend. And I know one of the kids who's going, who's in the first class and super, super bright kid.

Bryan (17:48.765)

What I'd say is as a parent, I'd be very nervous. What signal is this degree sending? One possibility is you're sending a signal, I'm really right -wing and I'm super anti -woke. And then that means there's a few jobs that are looking for exactly that. And a lot of other jobs where people are like, don't really want to have that kind of person around. We're nervous about that. Another one is like, why not just go to the best?

Auren Hoffman (17:54.424)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (17:59.511)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (18:07.565)

Interesting. Okay.

Bryan (18:14.187)

rank conventionally, best conventionally ranked school you get into, why go and do this weird thing. There is of course the hope that I'd be getting.

Auren Hoffman (18:20.31)

Well, my guess is like the people, like all the students, my guess going are all like somewhat unconventionally, somewhat unconventional themselves. So they're probably more likely to, to be a little bit different. And, know, even if they, sorry. Yeah, maybe a lot different, but it's like, they probably, they may have not fit in as well at the other score. You know, they're, just, you know, they're, they're more creative people or, et cetera.

Bryan (18:29.302)

Right.

Bryan (18:34.603)

Or maybe a lot different. Maybe a lot different. Honestly.

Bryan (18:47.182)

Right, mean another question that I was, at least I have not gotten the answer that I was looking for is, are they basically getting a STEM degree with some unconventional humanities education or unconventional gen ed or you're trying to turn out a new generation of humanities professors or what is even the goal? Possibly someone does know the answer to that but I was not able to get an answer that satisfied me when I talked to people directly involved. I of course all startups are hard, educational startups are especially hard.

precisely because the whole idea of the signal is people value it because they know what it means. And a new thing, it's like, well, what does it mean anyway? I don't really know what it means yet.

Auren Hoffman (19:21.389)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (19:25.346)

Now you homeschool your kids, homeschool your kids, what advice would you give other parents that are kind of considering homeschooling or some sort of hybrid or some other type of thing?

Bryan (19:35.699)

I homeschooled all four of my kids during COVID. And during COVID, I said everyone should homeschool their kids without exception because they don't go to physical school anyway. They don't make any friends. So yes, yes, yes. Yes. So when it's just a matter of either you can be the teacher or you can be the enforcer for the teacher, obviously it's better to just be the teacher. However,

Auren Hoffman (19:45.742)

got it. you mean during the time when they would have gone to like online school.

Auren Hoffman (19:57.912)

Yep.

Bryan (20:00.733)

outside of that very special period, then I say homeschooling does not work for most people. It's got to be a combination of you've got a flexible enough job or other responsibilities and you enjoy doing it enough and your kid enjoys doing it with you. So put all that together in terms of your future. That again was my main concern. Am I screwing up my kids future by homeschooling them? I started doing it. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (20:21.634)

Yep. Cause it's unconventional quote unquote.

Bryan (20:25.931)

Yeah, so I started doing it for middle school where I just knew for a fact that no one ever knows what you did in middle school. It's just not on your record. So basically there's just two years where you can be as weird as you want to be and the world will not find out. yes, worst time in my life, that's for sure.

Auren Hoffman (20:36.886)

Yep. And middle school is also like a weird time for most kids, right? They're going through body and their change, body changes, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. Man, too. Yeah.

Bryan (20:47.243)

Now, once my kids were thinking about continuing for high school, that's where I did get serious about, what signal does it really send? What do we need to do in order to make this work? If anything will work. It's very hard to get reliable information on this because most people that talk a lot about homeschooling are true believers in homeschooling. And there's no use denying that. I was able to find a researcher at Stanford who seemed to have basically no dog in the fight. And I considered him the most reliable person. I'm blanking on his name.

Auren Hoffman (21:06.2)

Yep.

Bryan (21:16.535)

But really what he said is, look, a big part of US college admissions is spikiness, spikiness, where admissions committees are looking for someone who stands out in some particular singular way. And therefore he said, if you use homeschooling to be spiky, then even though there probably is on average a modest negative, still you can turn it into a positive by just doing something incredible that cannot be done due to the time conflict in regular school.

Auren Hoffman (21:45.666)

Yeah, that makes sense.

Bryan (21:46.207)

So yeah, so that's what I did with my older sons and their college admissions worked out fantastically well. Basically a lot of what we did is they became true history prodigies. had an academic publication in high school. They're probably the youngest kids in the whole country to do all three history AP tests and get fives on all of them. We did a lot of other stuff too, but they really heavily emphasize the history angle and that seemed to work out great for them.

Auren Hoffman (22:13.806)

That's cool.

Bryan (22:14.497)

Yeah, but you know, like for any kid that I'm doing homeschooling with, what happened after COVID is my younger kids were, honestly, they've never been as excited about homeschooling as my older sons. My older sons, it was a godsend. And then for my younger kids, it's more like, well, what's the other option? So anyway, my younger kids, after schools reopened, they went back to in -person school. And then we just said, like, well, you can do what you want to do. My daughter wanted to stay in regular school to be with her friends. And my younger son said, no, I want to come back and I'll learn from you.

And so that's what we've been doing. But for each kid, really do try to customize it and to say, well, what do you actually want to do? What are you interested in? What are you good at? And try to go and design it around that. That's one of the big advantages of homeschooling is you don't need to stick to a standard curriculum. You can try to find out what will work for the kid and what they want to do.

Auren Hoffman (23:03.34)

What do you think of, where do you think like AI will have implications in how we teach our kids?

Bryan (23:10.059)

My honest answer is I think very little because the system is broken. It's just totally dysfunctional. mean, let me put it this way. There's this really cool article that I read about evidence -based pedagogy. And it just went through a lot of different pedagogical techniques where they have actually done proper experiments to causally evaluate their efficacy. right, now one of the sections of the paper was highlighting.

Auren Hoffman (23:15.096)

Yep.

Bryan (23:35.787)

just literally taking out a marker and highlighting and they just did experiments. Some people highlighted, some didn't, tried to measure how much highlighting actually improve retention. And the answer was zero. Highlighting is a totally useless thing to do if you just want to learn material. All right, great. Now, then once I went to a back to school night and the teacher there who was very nice said, and we're going to be doing a lot of highlighting this class. And my reaction was,

Auren Hoffman (23:51.084)

Hmm. Cut.

Bryan (24:02.135)

Do I raise my hand and say, I've read a summary of all the, you have all the actual science on this. And it says, this is a waste of time. Don't bother. And I'm like, that will not work. This person is very nice, but like, which is my honest view of almost all teachers. They're nice people, especially the ones who teach younger kids are of course very nice people, but they're not very logical. They're not very evidence -based. They are just not interested in coming up and finding with finding.

Auren Hoffman (24:04.066)

Hold to it, you're gonna embarrass your kids.

Bryan (24:30.679)

pedagogical pedagogical pedagogical techniques that actually lead to learning that leads to retention or application. They do change their methods, but almost totally based upon fads and ideology. So now you'll suddenly say, we're all going to be doing group projects. Yeah. Yes. Right. Yeah. At least in my area, normally it's set at the county level and then the county establishes, we have a new philosophy. You know, I remember being at back to school night and then now our philosophy is like, I don't really want a teacher with a philosophy.

Auren Hoffman (24:42.924)

Yeah. Or the principal or the school says we're moving in this direction or something.

Bryan (25:00.897)

Like, why do you have a philosophy? How about you just go and... Yes, I mean, you say, that's a philosophy too, right? But yeah.

Auren Hoffman (25:03.628)

like teaching facts and help them learn.

Auren Hoffman (25:11.106)

One of the things I think people like a lot of parents figured out in COVID was like just how little their kids were learning based on the amount of time they were learning. And it seemed like they were basically in the seven hours they're spending in school, they might be learning one or two hours worth of things or something.

Bryan (25:20.151)

Mm

Bryan (25:32.97)

Right. Right. And then also, if you just look at tests of adult academic skills, so about a third of the adult US population is pretty much enumerate and illiterate. You know, they do know the numbers and letters, but in terms of being able to do very basic tasks, right. And I think a lot of this is just lack of time on task where you have someone who can't read English well and you make them do a foreign language requirement. It's like, no, what a ridiculous thing to do.

Auren Hoffman (25:50.552)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (25:57.42)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get better at learning English. Yeah. Now, one of the recurring themes in your work is that self -reported data is overrated. Instead, you should look at what people do and not what they say, especially when coming to make like when it comes to making like policy decisions. What are some areas where you see like the biggest divergence to what people say they value and what they actually do?

Bryan (26:21.367)

Hmm. Wow. So many good ones. But if you just start with, know, like what's most important in a job than standard reactions, like, know, like to be able to help people. And yet, yeah, when you actually look at the jobs that people do, that is a far, you know, the most, you know, the much better predictors are just things like money. I mean, you see this obviously in things like what law students say they want to specialize in when they start law school versus what they actually do when they get out.

Auren Hoffman (26:31.894)

-huh.

Auren Hoffman (26:42.368)

money yeah

Bryan (26:50.093)

And it's like, yeah, well, I went in saying I want to do public interest law. And I come out wanting to be a corporate lawyer because I actually want to make a lot of money. So that is a big part of it, obviously. There are, was actually some very cool evidence on abortion where if just ask people hypothetically, would you aborted Down syndrome baby? Then only about a third of people say they would. But when we actually look at people who are really in that circumstance, it's more like 90, 95 % of people do it. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Sarah.

Auren Hoffman (27:15.061)

my gosh, I had no idea it's that high. That's crazy high.

Bryan (27:19.233)

Almost everybody in that situation will in fact do it, even though it doesn't sound very good. know, the simpler things like, did you vote? Did you go to church? People, know, the claimed attendance, claim voting are quite a bit higher than actual. Let's see. I obviously things like what's most important in a partner looks is way more important than people would admit to. So people say, know, like, are they a good person? Are they a good person? It's like, all right, well.

Auren Hoffman (27:24.54)

wow.

Auren Hoffman (27:32.369)

-huh.

Auren Hoffman (27:43.522)

Mm

Bryan (27:48.321)

There's probably a little bit of weight on that, but that is not in fact the best predictor of being able to get a partner. So that's another one. Let's see. mean, some of my favorite ones actually come down to people saying things like, you know, it's totally hell to live in New York anymore, totally hell to live in LA. It's like, hmm, well then why do you live there? Right. And when, I mean, here's the thing is telework is removed.

Auren Hoffman (28:07.438)

Right. Why are you some small number of people are moving, but why are less than 1 % of people moving or something like that?

Bryan (28:14.155)

Yeah. know, telework has made it even more obvious. If you have a teleworker who says they hate living where they're living, and it's like, yeah, are you aware there are other places in the universe and that the rent is less than what you're paying? And this is one where I it's pretty obvious what's going on, which is that people do love to complain. So they will say, the traffic and the parking and the noise is so terrible. And yet, yes, actions speak louder than words. When you see that someone

Auren Hoffman (28:20.812)

Right.

Auren Hoffman (28:34.21)

Yeah, people love complaining. Yeah.

Bryan (28:41.707)

willingly pays a lot of money to live in a place that has a lot of traffic and parking and noise problems. It's got to be because there's a bunch of other offsetting things and not, it's not even close because people pay triple the rent live in this place. And it's like, yeah, well, why is it you don't spend anywhere near as much time saying it's so wonderful to live in place with such great restaurants and such great friends and great people and so much culture and great job opportunities. Just to

Auren Hoffman (28:54.007)

Yeah.

Bryan (29:09.773)

play into my new book here. So Build Baby Build, the Science and Office of Housing Regulation. One fact about land use meetings is it's pretty much 100 % complaining. All that happens there is complaining, practically.

Auren Hoffman (29:20.418)

Yeah, that's all it is. That's basically every city council meeting period. It's just people complaining.

Bryan (29:27.013)

And yet an obvious thing about where people want to live is people don't want to live in a place where there would be no complaints. You don't want to live in a place in the middle of nowhere. If you live, there's no one of any neighbors in a mile then it's like, I'm bored. There's nothing to do. That's your last complaint left. But people would rather go and live in a place with a lot of problems caused by population in order to get a bunch of good things caused by population.

Auren Hoffman (29:42.542)

Holy.

Bryan (29:52.589)

And the net is actually clearly positive and yet this would never come out in a town meeting. There actually is a book called neighborhood defenders where they got a transcript of basically every word spoken in every land use meeting in the state of Massachusetts for a long period. And it's all complaining pretty much. the complaints are the pettiest things you can think about. It's like a bird nest would be disrupted. So you can't build a $50 million apartment complex.

Auren Hoffman (30:06.56)

my gosh. Yeah, that word cloud must be crazy.

Bryan (30:19.533)

I was just talking to a friend who's at the university of Wyoming. There was a developer who wanted to build 30 new homes and the neighbors all said, that's terrible. It's got to be stopped. Why? Because we don't want the light pollution because we want to look at the stars. And it's like, how about you walk 10 more minutes and look at the stars then and don't go and stop a development. And anyway, then then the compromise of the city council was 23 houses.

So seven homes get prevented because of this ridiculously petty complaint about the light pollution.

Auren Hoffman (30:52.162)

Yeah, that seems like it's happening everywhere. Now, are there data sets that you would love to see, but just can't access either for like ethical reasons or legal reasons or like just not available?

Bryan (31:04.599)

I mean, the ethical ones, that's actually where I start. I am a big defender of voluntary human experimentation. And I think that whatever people say they're willing to do is fine. And the standard of, can't give informed consent to a new thing is I think absurd. This is actually a standard part of it. It's like, how about I know this is a new thing and it's hard and unclear what's going to happen. And I consent anyway, that seems to me totally fine consent. So there's a lot of classic experiments that are just really hard to do, like the Milgram experiment.

Auren Hoffman (31:27.384)

Yeah.

Bryan (31:34.593)

That was finally actually nearly replicated with just the most objectionable parts removed. But you probably know the Milgram experiments, right? All right. So anyway, there's just a lot of stuff like that, which we have rules based upon actual medical experimentation with injecting chemicals into people, which are then used for psychological experiments, all on some totally made up theory that people are traumatized for life by something like the Milgram experiment.

Auren Hoffman (31:44.438)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The shock, shocks one. Yep.

Bryan (32:04.671)

even though there we know the data and like hardly anyone said to be, they were traumatized at all by it. So it's just made up and someone saying, well, I would have been traumatized. We have to stop this, protect people, give me a break. So yeah, I would really like to go and see a very wide range of psychological experiments.

Auren Hoffman (32:18.606)

What about just like, like, like imagine like merging more sensitive data sets. we've got like the IRS data set and the Medicare data set, and we've got some, you know, crime data sets and somehow we merged them and you, could, you could querying them anonymously. You would never know it's Brian Kaplan or Orrin Hoffman, but somehow you can get like the, the overall population data. What about those types of things?

Bryan (32:36.631)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

I think that people like Raj Chetty are actually able to get that. You may say be good if it were more broadly accessible. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I would just like there to be data sets that had personality measures and economic measures. So there are a bunch of psychological data sets. There's a bunch of economic data sets, but usually there's just very little overlap. So it's hard to find out. know, there are definitely some papers on

Auren Hoffman (32:46.986)

Yeah, it's it's Raj Chetty and Raj Chetty. that's like like Brian Cowboy. You don't have access to it, right? Other great academics don't have access to that data.

Auren Hoffman (33:06.444)

Yeah.

Bryan (33:11.627)

which personality types make more money and things like that, but they don't have the control variables that you'd be hoping to get in other data sets.

Auren Hoffman (33:16.174)

Yeah, and those are hard. Yeah, they're hard to get. Like, it's an N of 20 or something, right? Or something.

Bryan (33:21.497)

So that is, I would say, a pretty big problem. At least be nice if you could go and get that stuff. Let's see. What else? I like I said, just to have more data on the predictors of completion of educational degrees. Here's the thing is that when you go and read economics of education, there are hundreds of papers on very picabune topics. then...

Auren Hoffman (33:36.162)

Yeah, that would be awesome.

Bryan (33:46.999)

hardly anything on something which is a much bigger deal, which is, what's college completion for this person going to be? And I think there really is a kind of noble lie idea underlying it of, well, if we want to study that too closely, wind up saying that a bunch of people shouldn't go to college and everybody should go to college, of course. And it's like, yeah, that could be wrong, right? Like, why is it so great for everyone to go to college?

Auren Hoffman (33:52.429)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (34:03.49)

Yes.

Auren Hoffman (34:07.778)

Well, certainly if we, if we push someone to go to college and it turns out to be a negative ROI for them, which either they completed into negative ROI or they don't complete it and it's very negative ROI, then we did, you know, we did a bad thing to that person. especially if we could have somehow predicted that they would have a high likelihood of having a negative ROI.

Bryan (34:33.825)

Yeah, absolutely. Right. and on top of that, it's also worth remembering that a lot of young people run out of patience. The idea that a lot of people have is, well, everybody should try college and that doesn't work out for you. Then you can go and try something else. I think there's a lot of people, especially young guys, if they do what they're supposed to do and it doesn't work out, they're just like, screw it. And I'm just going to go and get whatever the most basic job that I can get is.

Auren Hoffman (34:57.016)

Yeah.

Bryan (34:58.477)

That's why I'm a big fan of starting vocational education options at 12. Before young guys actually have the option, really have the option of saying, I'm giving up on this. Well, how about we just go and give you a bunch of things and let you try.

Auren Hoffman (35:04.0)

Absolutely.

Auren Hoffman (35:12.622)

Right. Imagine if you're like, you were 18 and you could get a really good job. and then you, you still, you could choose to go to college, but you also have this opportunity to make a good living, like right away. Like that'd be pretty cool.

Bryan (35:17.761)

Yeah.

Bryan (35:25.257)

Yeah, very standard in Germany and Switzerland. Switzerland seems to be standing true to its systems. The Germans actually are moving in the American direction. The way that I put it in the case against education is people have this idea that vocational education is very narrow and you're basically pigeonholing a person. You're just a plumber. That's all you can ever be. Whereas if you send someone to college, then it opens up endless horizons.

Auren Hoffman (35:27.968)

Exactly.

Bryan (35:50.487)

For most people, college opens up no horizons because they don't study anything that actually directs them to any particular job. And it's better to prepare someone for one career than no careers.

Auren Hoffman (35:58.722)

Yeah. And also like actually being a plumber or electrician actually does prepare you for many, many, many other things. Like those are really hard, rigorous jobs where you learn a lot about a lot of stuff.

Bryan (36:10.923)

mean, it's especially the basics of showing up on time and speaking respectfully to customers. Honestly, this is a standard problem, especially for young males to have is just, don't feel like taking orders. don't feel like getting along with other people. my own man. And it's like, yeah, like that's not a constructive attitude actually. I'm sorry.

Auren Hoffman (36:13.464)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (36:28.94)

Yeah, now you've been critical of the level of statistical literacy, especially in social science. Like what are like the core concepts you think are most understood in academic research?

Bryan (36:43.741)

I would say that I'm compared to my satisfaction with the statistical literacy of the general population, I social scientists are doing great. So that's honestly my main issues. say most social scientists are definitely way above average in terms of thinking quantitatively. I say the main issue in social science is not so much thinking statistically as being willing to do it on forbidden topics.

Auren Hoffman (36:51.254)

Yeah, yes, for sure.

Bryan (37:10.251)

Most social scientists actually do reasonable number crunching as long as they don't feel like their core ideology is being threatened by the answer.

Auren Hoffman (37:17.998)

All of a sudden it says like there's like this is related to IQ or something or something that kind of like freaks people out.

Bryan (37:23.807)

Yes. Right. Yes. Or if it turns out that criminality is inherited, right? Or if it turns out that you can go and predict criminality based upon juvenile iniquency, things like this. Yes.

Auren Hoffman (37:37.602)

But that's, that's, that's more like pressure from others in some ways. Like I have a friend and he, he did a, he ended up doing a study on nicotine and he's a very much a, a, you know, very much like against lung cancer and all these other things. the, the, exactly. Yeah. But his study came out, at least this particular study came out like, kind of like nicotine was not as much of a factor and he got a lot of pressure from his.

Bryan (37:55.034)

I'm against lung cancer too. Yes.

Bryan (38:04.737)

Yes.

Auren Hoffman (38:05.772)

fellow researchers not to publish it.

Bryan (38:09.035)

Yes. I mean, you know, it's funny you should mention that just because I did read a whole pro -nicotine essay from a guy saying, look, tobacco is terrible, but nicotine is awesome. And I'm like, hmm, all right. So, you know, interesting anyway. I mean, I do think that the main issue with social science is ideological and especially it's important to realize that many more things are ideological than an outsider would realize. For example,

Auren Hoffman (38:16.776)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking myself about maybe I should start it as I get older. Yeah.

Bryan (38:36.103)

return to education is high, that is a highly ideological issue in social science. People do not like it when I go and start criticizing the work and saying that the return to education is overrated. And there is an idea of that could go and lead fewer people to go to school, which is evil. And no, we should be encouraging everybody to go to school. It's like, what's the point of all the calculating numbers if the numbers cannot actually end up with giving people any different advice from what you're currently giving them? So there's that.

Auren Hoffman (38:52.504)

Yep.

Bryan (39:03.917)

You know, like another great example actually is there's a whole literature estimating the effect of national education on national GDP. So it's similar to what you do for an individual. Send one individual to school is income goes up. Therefore, is it true that if we go and get education in Haiti yet by another year that Haiti will get 28 % richer or whatever? And again, the answer here is that.

Auren Hoffman (39:16.429)

Yeah.

Bryan (39:27.269)

all other issues aside, it's the researchers generally had a lot of trouble going finding the answer they wanted, which is that education is a great way to make countries rich. And then there's a whole literature where people are of desperately saying, gee, like, what are we doing wrong? We know we're doing something wrong. Can we get better data, better data being defined by just the right answer?

Auren Hoffman (39:42.488)

Well, there was something, was something I did see some studies that said to a certain point, you know, getting people through eighth grade or through high school or something like that as the U S kind of started to do that in the late 1800s and early 1900s and stuff like that was it just like, at some point it seems like it asymptotes out, I assume.

Bryan (40:01.547)

I'd say that's not even true either. That's sort of another story that at least kind of salvages people's sense of the world is just and it's okay. I mean, I'd say actually when like, basically the studies that get publicized say the kind of stuff you're saying. However, if you just go and look at the full sample of published work, which itself is subject to considerable publication bias and so on.

Auren Hoffman (40:03.264)

Okay, really? Okay.

Auren Hoffman (40:15.191)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (40:19.779)

Yeah.

Bryan (40:23.691)

I think actually the general result is at minimum, it looks like the payoff for a country of getting education up is a lot less than for an individual, which by the way is exactly what my signaling model predicts because it says, look, one, you get more education, you look better than other people, right? But you have the good stamp on your forehead. Then you get pulled out of the pack and treated better. But if everybody has stamps, everybody cannot be treated like a star, of course, unless you actually learned how to do something in the real world.

Auren Hoffman (40:35.714)

Yeah, you got to be better than you got to be better than your peers. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (40:47.906)

Yes.

Bryan (40:52.201)

If a country that can do stuff can be richer, but a country that is well pedigreed or well certified, the whole country can't do better.

Auren Hoffman (40:57.71)

What percentage of like, let's say people over 30 have four -year college degrees in the U .S.?

Bryan (41:05.709)

Let's see, think now we're up to like 35, 37 % of the way of the way. Usually we would actually do like 20 ages, 25 to like 59 would be a pretty typical window because you're trying to throw out the retirees. but also don't want to count the people that are taking a little too long to finish. So yeah, I think that's got, that's gotten up to a bit over a third. There was a period of long period of plateau, and then we managed to go and push it up another five to 10 percentage points. So that's where we are now.

Auren Hoffman (41:08.907)

And.

Auren Hoffman (41:15.168)

Yeah, yeah, okay. Yep. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (41:22.595)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (41:33.134)

got it. it was, it was, let's say 27%. Now it's 33%. And like at one point 50 years ago, it's probably like 12 % or something, right? So it's probably, you know, three X the number in the population or something.

Bryan (41:37.193)

Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah, less than that. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So basically like in 1945, about 25 % of Americans over the age of 25 had a high school degree. Right. And if you think about it, doesn't that mean that high school dropouts were in management positions? Of course. Yes. It wasn't considered to be an insuperable obstacle. Like you didn't finish high school. Well, like, so what? Hardly anyone finished high school in those days. What's the difference? He can still do the job.

Auren Hoffman (41:53.996)

Wow, that's crazy.

Auren Hoffman (42:00.034)

Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (42:05.728)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (42:10.444)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you wrote a lot on immigration. You're kind of grappling with lot of measuring intangible factors like cultural effects. How do you think about like quantifying some of those like harder to measure variables?

Bryan (42:25.421)

What I'd say is always start with the easiest measures and just see if you get anything out of that. So for example, for culture, the easiest measure we have a culture is just language acquisition. So we go and we see, all right, first generation immigrants, what's there to the US? What does their English look like? Second generation, third generation. So that's one that has been studied very well and where we know the answer, which is almost everyone who arrives in the US as a child acquires fluent English, like 95%.

And on the other hand, almost no one who doesn't fluently speak a language by the age of 25 ever becomes totally fluent. All right. This is not something that has changed over time. There people who have an idea of back in the Ellis Island days that every immigrant started and was able to speak fluent English after a while. It's like, no, it depends upon age. It is super hard to acquire truly fluent speaking language and become fluent at too old.

Auren Hoffman (43:16.012)

Yeah, especially if you're moving into, you know, a neighborhood where you have social support of other people that speak your language. You can make friends of other people, speak your language.

Bryan (43:24.875)

Right. But even like, no matter how hard, like the truth is like, no matter how hard you try, if you or I, when interests tried to become fluent in another language that we haven't spoken yet to the point of passing for a native, it's probably just beyond our capabilities. I just don't think we can do it. Yes. Right. And like even to become good enough to give a lecture, like you've gone to your, gone to your, gone to your head if three years prep time, like could you really like, you you might wind up not being able to pull it off actually.

Auren Hoffman (43:37.846)

Yeah, yeah, we'd have an accent for sure. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (43:43.724)

I would -

Auren Hoffman (43:52.041)

I have a random question for you. So I love Indonesian food. And in the US, it's like basically impossible to find a good Indonesian food restaurant. There's 200 million people in Indonesia. why don't they show and I've never met an Indonesian in the US. I met people from so many countries in where I never meet an Indonesian anywhere in the US like they're in Australia, they go to they go to the Netherlands because that was their colonizer at one point. Like, why don't

Bryan (43:56.0)

You

Auren Hoffman (44:20.312)

It's like certain countries like have relations, like big countries like that have relationships with the U S and that they immigrate here.

Bryan (44:28.231)

One of the best established facts about immigration is that it's subject to what's called diaspora dynamics. To be the first person from a country to go to another country is really scary. To be the second person is quite scary, not quite as scary. And then it snowballs. If you don't get that initial wave, then you often won't get the snowballing. This gets compounded by the law because the fundamental base of US immigration law is family reunification. We have a tiny bit for work, very little.

Auren Hoffman (44:36.812)

Yeah, it's really scary.

Auren Hoffman (44:41.419)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (44:54.466)

Yeah, that's right.

Bryan (44:57.933)

We have a lottery, which actually is another weird thing, but the main basis family reunification. you've got to go, basically step one is you got to get some people into your country for some reason other than family, because otherwise you don't have the initial people, because the first person can't come through family reunification, right? By definition. And then once that happens, then family reunification does snowball. I wouldn't be shocked at all if Indonesians actually became a large group in the U .S. 1980, there are virtually no Indian Americans.

Auren Hoffman (45:09.058)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (45:12.385)

Okay.

Auren Hoffman (45:26.862)

Correct. Yep.

Bryan (45:27.789)

And how did it happen? Well, a combination of getting in through those work visas. then once you're in, family unification is the key. And the way that family unification has worked in the US since 1965 is you can bring in siblings. And if you can bring in siblings, they can bring in their spouses. And those spouses come, they can bring in their siblings and so on. And that is the secret of chain migration, which was, by the way, totally accidental. The people who wrote the 1965 Act

Auren Hoffman (45:48.17)

Yeah, so then slowly snowballs.

Bryan (45:56.737)

Their goal was basically to keep America a white country without saying we're going to try to keep it a white country. When you read the actual legislative history, the statements, they did not want to go and open the border, but they just didn't really realize how many people in the third world would love to come to the U S if they got any opportunity at all. And on the other hand, how few people from European countries are excited to come. Because yeah, like

Auren Hoffman (46:17.804)

Yeah, yeah, it's the best place to come to.

Bryan (46:24.171)

Here's the thing, like if you have some relatives in Italy, they're probably not desperately asking you to come. They might want to, but it's not a transformation of their lives from dire poverty to the opulence of the United States. But on the other hand, if you've got relatives in Indonesia, you are very popular because you are their ticket to 10Xing their income for the rest of their lives. See, I wouldn't be surprised if, like once the Indonesians get a foothold, then they would be able to go and expand.

Auren Hoffman (46:40.312)

Correct.

Auren Hoffman (46:45.772)

And their kids too.

Bryan (46:53.131)

And again, it's not like it's easy enough to get into Australia or the Netherlands that they're all going there because anyone who wants to leave can go there. It's nowhere close to that.

Auren Hoffman (47:00.684)

Yep. Well, selfishly, I hope it happens because I love Indonesian food. So I would love to have a few more restaurants out here.

Bryan (47:07.077)

Yes, I think the one such meal I ever had was precisely in the Netherlands. And I have a good memory of it, but I don't even remember what I ate.

Auren Hoffman (47:10.792)

Okay, yes, and it's amazing.

Well, I can tell you, you probably had a good time. It's incredible. Now the, in Build Baby Build, what areas or countries like do well today? Like where would you, if we had to like point to something like, you know, sometimes people point to like Houston or something, like where would you point to say like, this is a place we could follow?

Bryan (47:36.717)

I'd say the whole state of Texas is really good. Not everywhere equally good. Austin is worse. Well, even Austin, basically comes down to you have to drive 30 or 40 minutes to get to the cheap stuff. Which if you're in the Bay area or LA, it's like 30 or 40 minutes to get to the cheap stuff. Yeah, that's fantastic. That's amazing. Like here it's more like you got to drive to Palmdale or Lancaster 90 minutes north of downtown LA.

Auren Hoffman (47:38.837)

Okay.

Auren Hoffman (47:47.223)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (47:53.794)

That's great. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (48:02.158)

Totally, yep.

Bryan (48:03.221)

in order to get something that's reasonably priced. And even that's probably not that good anymore. So yeah, so Texas looks, winds up looking really good, especially you just, even if the actual city is not so good, you just arrive a little bit and then you're in a different jurisdiction. And then once again, there is a whole lot of construction going on. A lot of people internationally talk about Japan. It's very plausible that they're right. The main issue I have is it's just so hard to get anything written in English about Japan.

Auren Hoffman (48:29.751)

Yeah.

Bryan (48:30.637)

So you're like, in general, like once I said, I'm going to read everything written in English about poverty in Japan. And then I read 20 articles, like I can't find anything else. Like that's everything that exists in the world.

Auren Hoffman (48:37.614)

And these things that is it just that they don't have a good research because there's a lot of great translators now.

Bryan (48:45.131)

Yeah, I think it's a combination of there's not much research happening there with they, there's not much interest in Japanese poverty in the West. So not many people here working on it. I actually, I keep going and broadcasting that I really want someone to go and redo some big studies of what's called the success sequence that have just been done in the U S and redo them for East Asia. Cause it basically does why it say that, you know, well, just, to back up the success sequence is a really simple idea. It just says that.

In the United States, you can avoid poverty with near certainty by doing three really easy things. One is graduate high school. Two is get a full -time job. Three is don't have any kids until you're married. Do those three things and you'll almost certainly not be in poverty. Right now what's interesting is we know that East Asia, basically almost nobody, almost everybody does those three things in East Asia. And so by this logic, there should be almost no poverty in East Asia. If you just look at some official numbers where they measure it by

Like, well, people who are at half the median, then they still have quite a bit of poverty. My thinking is you need to go and look a little bit harder. And I think you will see, in fact, that really serious poverty actually probably barely does exist in East Asia. And it's hard to get the right measure.

Auren Hoffman (49:56.558)

Yeah, and it could be that those are people who are, you know, under 25 and they're just kind of starting their career or something like that or.

Bryan (50:02.478)

Yeah, yeah, there's that too. But anyway, so I'm really looking for someone who's got the language skills to redo the stuff for East Asia. anyone who wants to date a project and have the languages.

Auren Hoffman (50:09.964)

Okay, that'd be super interesting. And by the way, those three things are like, they're so obvious. Like there's just so like, we don't teach those three things enough. literally just do these three things. It's not that hard and you will have at least an okay life.

Bryan (50:16.705)

Yes. Yes. Right.

Yes.

Yes, I mean, there are a lot of people who get angry about this and says, well, like that stuff is not actually easy. Right. And this is where I'll say, see, like actually, actually it is really easy. like most U S high schools will graduate you purely on showing up and trying. That's just fact. Second of all, most poor people themselves say it's not hard to get a full -time job. And third of all, knowledge of human reproduction is extremely prevalent. Actually there, there, there have actually been some people think, maybe

Auren Hoffman (50:30.722)

Well, it might not be easy, but it's doable. Everyone could achieve that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (50:40.141)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (50:45.107)

Hard all. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Bryan (50:52.941)

teams who get pregnant don't understand where babies come from and that's been studied quite closely. Like, no, they know. So it's not that. This is not saying like you have to cure cancer to get out of poverty. That would be, right, fine. That would work too, but hardly anyone can do that.

Auren Hoffman (50:58.274)

Yeah, yep.

Auren Hoffman (51:02.156)

Now, I'm

Auren Hoffman (51:07.616)

One thing I'm super interested in is like Americans are moving like way less than they used to. Why is that happening?

Bryan (51:12.098)

Mm

Bryan (51:15.461)

Yeah, so part of it is one of the main things you want to do when you move is move to a better job. And as I show in Build Baby Build, in the past that used to work really well because housing prices did not vary very much by part of the US that you were in back in say 1940 or 1960. Now, however, if you move to a place with high wages, normally, especially for a lower skilled worker, the extra housing costs will eat up more than 100 % of your salary gain. So there's no point going and moving from an area with

low income to high income now for most people. For stars, there still is. If you're a programmer, you actually will probably net a larger amount if you move to Silicon Valley or something like that. But for a janitor, not true.

Auren Hoffman (51:58.272)

Is that really true? Because like, you know, if you are, if you can only get a job at, let's say, you know, the fast food restaurant, and then, you know, you can move to North Dakota right now and probably now, yes, your housing costs will be significantly higher, but you could move to North Dakota and probably get a extremely high paying job there. And it could be on your way to doing something pretty exciting. Like, that actually true or

Bryan (52:25.425)

So these are all based on averages, like almost everything in social science. So it doesn't mean that there are zero such options, but it just means it is a lot harder than it used to be. And the typical person who has a low income right now, if they just moved to a similar job in a higher income state, they would first of all get a raise. But second of all, that raise would generally not cover the extra housing costs. That would not be worth it. Your idea, it is a good one.

Auren Hoffman (52:26.711)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (52:45.471)

Eat up.

Auren Hoffman (52:50.274)

up

Bryan (52:52.875)

Definitely during, so especially during COVID and when people are talking about hiring shortages, I actually did do some blog posts saying anyone who ever wanted a better job and doesn't, and didn't want to go and get more credentials, now is your time. Go and just try to talk your way into a job for which you don't officially have the right credentials, but to sell yourself and maybe you can go and save years of your life. And I actually did get a few emails back from people said I tried it.

Auren Hoffman (53:06.723)

Yep.

Bryan (53:17.761)

failed a few times, and then it worked. And now I'm this much better job, and I've got less education than everyone else here, but it totally worked.

Auren Hoffman (53:24.012)

And even people who work remotely, it doesn't seem like they're moving very much. Right. you could move to a lower cost place as you were kind of mentioning before, but it doesn't seem like they're, there seems like there's like, least it seemed in the water that people are just less risk taking. They're less willing to try something new. I, but maybe I'm, maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Bryan (53:45.993)

There's probably some of you that there is this idea that as people get richer, then they're basically willing, you have to pay them more in order to go and disrupt their lives. Although that doesn't really fit with the fact that it's actually high education people who are more likely to move.

Auren Hoffman (53:52.824)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (53:58.796)

Yep. But then they figure, it's easier for me to hire for, you know, help for my kids, or it's easier for me to like take a plane ride back or something like that.

Bryan (54:08.501)

Yeah. So, so it could be that story or, like I always tend to go back to personality stories and say, well, there's differences in ambition and more ambitious people are more likely to go and get a better job and also more likely to be willing to just uproot their lives. They're more likely to identify with work colleagues rather than just relative relatives. So that's not always the right story, but that is where I tend to start is just thinking about, how are the people different in their hearts?

Auren Hoffman (54:20.077)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (54:37.986)

And one of your books is called The Selfish Reason to Have More Kids and basically arguing that parents should have, I'll say a little bit more of a hands -off approach to raising kids. Why is it that like, when I was a kid, the only insane parents were the immigrant parents and they were like in their kids' lives. Today, every parent is like those immigrant parents. Every parent I know is like insane and they're all like literally like just spending, like all their kids are on

Bryan (54:55.949)

you

Auren Hoffman (55:07.342)

travel teams and they're doing all this, they're just spending so much time on their kids. And so that as soon prevents them from having more kids, like what has gotten people psyche that they have to spend so much time on

Bryan (55:21.005)

I think there is just a theory that people have that the cause of success has to be parenting. So when you see that kids from successful families tend to be more successful themselves, people are very quick to say correlation, therefore causation, that must be the actual secret. Essentially, this is a answer to a question people have been asking. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (55:40.984)

But even if it was parenting, why is it that spending more time would equal like, there seemed like there's some sort of laffer curve of parenting, right? If you're like, if you're overseeing everything your kid does, that doesn't seem like a good, which, know, which myself and all my friends who are parents do, that doesn't seem like it's like a successful strategy to raise resilient kids.

Bryan (56:08.083)

Yeah, I'd say like, as soon as you're talking about laffer curves, you're at a level of sophistication way beyond almost everyone. the idea that you can push a good thing too far, think that's, if you put it that way, say, all right, fine. But we're just nowhere near that. like, and like, and rather, I think people would say, look, you know, my kid is competing with the kids in the varsity blues scandal. So I've got to do even more in order to give my kid a prayer chance. So there is this very popular theory that

Auren Hoffman (56:13.29)

Okay, sure, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (56:29.164)

Right, totally. Right, right.

Bryan (56:34.347)

The reason why the children's successful parents succeed is because of the parenting. It's got to be this very high effort and expensive both time and money style for it to work. I think it's one where I can see where the idea comes from because the correlation is there. However, if you like the whole idea behind my book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is to say, hmm, is there some other possible reason, some other alternative theory about why successful parents tend to have successful kids?

The obvious one, which has been around for thousands of years as a candidate, is heredity. People don't like this idea. What, it's just heredity, so you have the good genes and that leads to success? Maybe, maybe. Anyway.

Auren Hoffman (57:17.858)

there's also just like a simple model. Like you have parents that seem to love each other. You have parents that, you know, you, feel like confident love you. They occasionally have read to you before when you were a kid, they, they seem like they have a job and they, they, they go to the job and they're relatively happy with the job. Like just that alone, I feel like puts you in like the 98th percentile or something.

Bryan (57:43.339)

Right, probably too much, although here's the thing is that there's actually been a lot of very hard -nosed research on this very question on the idea of, you just need to have loving parents. There's a very famous cool study of just kids who had one parent die in an accident. And huh, seems like that kind of single parenting didn't actually disadvantage the kids noticeably. It's like, so you don't have two loving parents? Well.

Auren Hoffman (58:05.026)

Yep, yep, yep. Well, they had at least one parent who loved them for sure, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bryan (58:11.541)

is not, I mean, that doesn't mean just because one parent dies doesn't mean the other parent is actually kinder or, I mean, it's basically just saying, huh, so it doesn't seem like just having only one parent is the problem. So anyway, there have been many decades where people have spent actually saying, well, what if we go and just race nature versus nurture? And the punchline of this is something most people don't want to hear, but...

Auren Hoffman (58:17.262)

Sure. That's a point. Yeah.

Bryan (58:36.545)

Says, well, let's look at kids that are adopted. Let's look at twin identical versus maternal twins. Let's really try to measure the effect of upbringing versus genetics. And the punchline is that especially in long run, nature crushes nurture. And then from there, that's where I say that just the theory that people have about all the sacrifices you have to make in order to go and give your kid a decent life, it's just a false theory. Right? And you could have donated to a sperm bank and your kid would

Auren Hoffman (59:00.45)

But it seems like the trend lines are not, you're kind of Don Quixote against the trend lines right now, right? They're moving, like we're moving toward a direction where we're all becoming, like the whole world is becoming South Korea. We're all going to invest just like an incredible amount of time in this one little entity. And we're to put all of our resources on this one entity. And we're going to think about this one entity all the time and put all of our time and effort into this person.

Bryan (59:16.587)

Yes.

Bryan (59:28.267)

Yeah. Or maybe zero kids. Maybe you'll put, which is also a very common response to this theory. Yes.

Auren Hoffman (59:30.326)

Or maybe zero eventually, yeah.

Right, right, because it's just not worth it at some point. So then you're just like, okay, I don't want to be in the rat race.

Bryan (59:39.851)

Right. So, you know, the title of the book comes from a pretty simple insight. It's like, well, if the sacrifice is at minimum greatly overrated in terms of how much of a difference it will make for your kids' outcomes in adulthood. yeah, step one is give yourself a break. But then step two is, well, maybe you should rethink the number of kids that you want to have. If you would assume you had to ruin your whole life to have even one kid, I understand why you don't want to have two kids, but...

Auren Hoffman (59:51.308)

Right, then you may as have more.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:01.526)

Yeah, totally.

Bryan (01:00:04.481)

But if on the other hand, if you have a much happier parenting style, then having more kids would make sense. So I've only got four myself, but yeah, I wish I had a lot more because I do not regard raising them as a chore. I have actually had people point fingers at me and say, you giant hypocrite Brian, you're a freaking homeschooler. There was a critique of me in the Atlantic just saying this giant ridiculous hypocrite and like.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:29.774)

Right, if you really didn't care, you just let them do whatever they wanted.

Bryan (01:00:34.373)

And like when I started homeschooling, actually wrote an essay on this very point. And I said, look, first thing, like I'm, what I said in the book is the thing that you have the most actual effect on your kid is how happy their childhood is. You probably can't even have much effect on their adult happiness, but you can totally change their childhood happiness. And I just saw that my kids, my older ones, especially were super unhappy in regular school and I brought them to homeschool. And I just saw they got big smiles on their faces and.

Auren Hoffman (01:00:54.712)

They just were unhappy. Yeah.

Bryan (01:01:02.401)

That's not a perfect experiment, but it's so close. Like, like there's just no doubt in my mind. They were way happier being homeschooled because they just hated regular school and they love the atmosphere of homeschool. So that I said, that's the main reason I homeschool my kids just to give them a better childhood. And that is totally consistent with what I said in my book. Cause I that is the kind of thing that you actually have a lot of influence over. And then the other thing I said is.

Auren Hoffman (01:01:11.522)

Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan (01:01:26.121)

If you really want your kids in a very different future, you've got to go and do something radically different. You got to go way outside the norm because all the research is based upon people that make it into datasets. So like, well, that stuff doesn't seem to work. You've to try something really different. You know, like we know that almost basically no one learns a foreign language in regular high school. Does that mean that no one can learn a foreign, no one can learn a foreign language in high school? No, it just means that nothing normal works.

So what do have to do if you really want it to happen? It's like, yeah, we got to move to another country. You want to do something, something way out of the range. And that was also my thinking for my twins. I said, well, look, instead of going to middle school, they're going to be brought to the economics department at George Mason university. And instead of hanging out with 12 year olds, they're going to hang out with the professors. And instead of doing the stuff for babies that they do in regular school, they're going to take college classes. Right now.

Auren Hoffman (01:01:56.834)

Yeah, totally.

Bryan (01:02:20.417)

That even then I didn't, said, look, maybe that won't work, but at least that's the kind of thing you would have to do if you really wanted to get a big difference is just something radically outside the norm.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:25.325)

Have fun.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:32.174)

All right, two more questions we ask all of our guests. First one is what is the conspiracy theory that you believe?

Bryan (01:02:34.786)

All right.

Bryan (01:02:38.445)

Hmm. Conspiracy theory that I believe. Let's see. Crypto -communism is actually a really big deal in the history of the 20th century. it's a John Birch Society word, or at least made popular by them. Crypto -communist means secret communists. So the idea that there are secret communists in the world who gambed a power pretending they're not communists, and then once they're in power, they've got a big plan in order to actually go and bring their country into communism.

Auren Hoffman (01:02:48.838)

explain this.

Bryan (01:03:08.683)

So I say that there's a number where it's just completely clear on the historical record. Castro was a crypto communist. He did not say he was a communist until after he had a stranglehold of power in Cuba. And then the mass comes off and says, yes, I am a Marxist -Leninist. Right. And another example. So I am a big Spanish civil war buff and

The view that at least a large part of the Spanish Republican government were crypto communists, and of course they also had open communists, but out of the remaining ones were crypto communists. And that if the Republicans had won, they would have turned Spain into a communist state. I think that's true. And then there's a lot of other cases where I'll just say, once you appreciate the role of crypto communism in history, I went with the fact that someone said that there's like a U S coup against someone and they said, well, but he said he wasn't a communist. Like, okay, well, what do think he's going to say? So.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:01.294)

You

Bryan (01:04:02.209)

So Mozadegh in Iran, if you go and read the history of that, do we know he was a communist? I'm not sure, but he certainly had a lot of communist friends. He's a plausible crypto communist or Benz in Guatemala. Another case where people get so upset that this democratically elected leader was overthrown. It's like, what if he was planning on establishing a communist dictatorship? how do you know he wasn't? It seems like there's a lot of, yeah, yeah, plausible.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:17.32)

And and stuff. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:23.054)

Okay, I love it. This is a good, this is a good conspiracy theory. Last question we ask all of our guests, what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice? And I think we went over like 20 of them already in this podcast. So what else do you think is conventional wisdom? Do you think it's generally bad advice?

Bryan (01:04:33.791)

Hmm. Hmm.

Bryan (01:04:39.115)

Hmm.

think want to give a good one for this. Let's see. I think I will probably my favorite one is that you should not go and just cold approach strangers and ask them out for a date. So when you're I'd say I think there's a general view. You'll see, let me listen. I think most people are terrified of this and partly, partly the partly the social anxiety.

Auren Hoffman (01:04:59.116)

Wait, people say that? There's like advice that says don't do that?

Auren Hoffman (01:05:05.976)

Well, certainly people are terrified, but wouldn't the advice be just like go up to somebody in the supermarket and ask them out? Like, isn't that the advice you would normally give someone?

Bryan (01:05:14.679)

I think it's the kind of thing that is practiced by a small number of extreme extroverts. And then I think the rest of the population, like, you think about it this way, if you were to go and ask your friend, should I go and do this? think the normal advice is, God, you can't do that. Some of it is social anxiety. Hmm. Yeah, so like, at least when I talk to younger people, college students,

Auren Hoffman (01:05:19.992)

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:05:29.143)

really? thought the I think the normal advice is you should definitely do it just no one ever does it because it's so scary.

But maybe I'm wrong, yeah.

Bryan (01:05:42.157)

You know, especially like, like even like my daughter is a 12 year old. She'll say, you should definitely not do that. That's creepy, dad. That's creepy. Don't do that. You know, like part of it is the idea that it just equals harassment. And it's like, well, like, like you don't know that they want you to ask, well, how am I supposed to find out? Unless I go and ask. It's like, you don't find out. It's like, well, how, like, how, how will people meet other people? Like you have to go on an app. that's the only way anyone can meet anyone.

Auren Hoffman (01:05:48.206)

okay.

Auren Hoffman (01:05:52.856)

Yes.

Auren Hoffman (01:06:06.648)

Well, certainly it feels like in real world, in real life, the, the people, like just the amount of times people talk to strangers has gone down dramatically. Like I don't talk to anyone anymore. I, when I'm sitting on an airplane, no one ever talks to me when I'm on an airplane. I don't even talk to my Uber driver. Like it's just like, it just feels like it's moving. You always have stuff in your ear when you're walking around. Yeah.

Bryan (01:06:30.079)

Yeah, it's plausible. You actually are. if you let me rephrase, let me actually give a more generalization. Like the direct approach is best. This is what like in dating, the direct approach is best. So like you're not maximally direct, but still like, like much more direct than what most people are currently doing.

Auren Hoffman (01:06:34.859)

Okay, yeah.

Direct, okay.

Auren Hoffman (01:06:46.754)

Guys, so if like, if you want to go on a date with someone instead of like beating around the bush, just say, hey, I would like to take you to coffee or something.

Bryan (01:06:51.905)

Yes. Yes. I mean, I would even go further than that. Just like saying, I'll see how exactly. Well, so like I actually did two essays on this one for men, one for women. And for women, I just said, like any guy that you think is promising, but is just a little bit shy, just tell him you seem very promising and to see what happens. that, you see very promising. It's it's it's very close.

Auren Hoffman (01:07:11.528)

Okay, you see very promising but not like I want to go on a date with you like you seem like very

It's very close. And just see what the person says. Okay.

Bryan (01:07:20.173)

We do ask you to directly ask, but this is what I tell my 12 year old daughter. And I said, look, the kind of like in the future, guys will start asking you out. And the guys with the courage to do that are totally are unrepresentative of normal males. These are basically like the five to 10 % most extroverted guys. they're and I say, like, avoid those guys. They're trouble. We want to go is find guys that check all of your other boxes, but they're little, but they're too shy to ask you. And then you just go and tell them, tell them you seem promising, not.

Auren Hoffman (01:07:35.446)

Right. You might not want that. might be a bad selection. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (01:07:46.988)

Yeah.

Bryan (01:07:49.665)

the subtle thing where you drop a few hints, but just look them in the eye and say, you seem promising and see what happens. think actually you got.

Auren Hoffman (01:07:57.42)

Right, the hints are bad because it's really hard to pick up on the hints like, you know, the bad at eyelash or stuff like, like no one's going to people are not going to. Yeah, exactly. Just like clearly just tell them right up front.

Bryan (01:08:00.597)

Yes, exactly.

Yes.

Yes, so the very direct approach, strongly recommend it.

Auren Hoffman (01:08:12.088)

What's the advice to boys use it or men?

Bryan (01:08:15.169)

Yes. I mean, so like my main advice there, this one is more conventional, although I still think it's good, is like put way less attention on looks. Put way less attention on looks. You could be dating a supermodel, but if they have bad personality, you will be miserable in a month and you'll be miserable for the rest of your life. Far better to go and find someone with a good personality who you consider of average looks. And that's what you should really, that's totally what you should focus on.

Auren Hoffman (01:08:28.961)

Yes.

Auren Hoffman (01:08:37.208)

Well, I feel like this is a very easy advice to give, but very hard to take.

Bryan (01:08:41.761)

Hmm. So like, like it comes down to like, like, well, what has your experience been like so far? Yeah. I haven't been happy. All right. Well, there's this classic definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting something different to happen. So yeah, I would say, I would say that. we can focus much more on personality than on looks. I mean, I'd say the same thing to women too, but I think that's a smaller problem for women. I mean, for women, I would just say like the.

Auren Hoffman (01:08:48.79)

Yes, okay.

Auren Hoffman (01:08:54.136)

Yep.

Auren Hoffman (01:09:05.485)

Yeah.

Bryan (01:09:08.075)

Don't wait around to BS, go and profile guys that you think are a good match. then don't quite say, hi, let's go out on a date, which is probably just a, just one click too strong. Just go back one step from that. seem promising there. If the guy's interested in all the guy doesn't get that hint then.

Auren Hoffman (01:09:27.982)

I love it. I have a 12 year old daughter as well. I don't want to give her that advice yet, but maybe in a few years I'll give her that advice.

Bryan (01:09:33.893)

Hmm. Honestly, in the modern world, I'm way more worried about kids never dating than dating too early. Like, way more worried, actually. Like, I'm, the loneliness is so terrible and just the childlessness is so terrible. Like, you know, like, you know, if you, like, you know, like to me, like, like teen, like, so, you know, someone where you like your teen gets pregnant, I'm like, okay, well, compared to someone whose teens never have kids, you're actually very fortunate.

Auren Hoffman (01:09:40.044)

Yeah, that's probably right. That's probably right.

Auren Hoffman (01:09:59.074)

Right, good point. All right, this has been awesome. Thank you, Brian Kaplan for joining us in World of Dazs. I follow you at Brian underscore Kaplan on X or Twitter, whatever we call it. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage with you there. This has been a ton of fun.

Bryan (01:10:01.207)

Yeah.

Bryan (01:10:09.164)

Mm

Bryan (01:10:14.349)

All right. Yeah. Awesome. And yes, my sub stack is bet on it and you can get all of my books. There are many on Amazon.

Auren Hoffman (01:10:20.15)

Okay. Yes. And I highly recommend your sub stack as well. I'm a huge fan of your sub stack too. Yeah, this is great. Thank you, Brian.

Bryan (01:10:24.397)

Right. Right. Thanks a lot, Erin.