All of Wei Yang Tham's Comments + Replies

What has the experience of New Things Under the Sun becoming so popular been like for you? For instance, has it changed how you write or what you decide to write about? And what do you think is hard about writing NTUS that might not be widely appreciated?

1mattclancy1yIt's been great that people I respect like the project, but the most important thing about it becoming popular is that I now get paid to do it. People sometimes say if you get paid to do something you previously did for fun, it kind of ruins it for you because it becomes work. That hasn't been my experience, probably because (1) I don't stress about view counts or anything anymore, and (2) I work on it a few hours each M-Th, but it's not my entire professional life (much less my whole identity). The main thing that has changed as the project has become bigger is that it's more ambitious than it was at the outset. Mostly you can see that in the length of the articles, but also a bit in the work I put into the site infrastructure. I still write what I think is interesting, though other stuff I'm working on at the Institute for Progress and now at Open Philanthropy has some influence on what I think is interesting. Probably the hardest part is knowing how much cool stuff is out there that I don't have time to get to!

AMA: Matt Clancy, Open Philanthropy

Wei Yang Tham1y1

What areas of economics do you think the economics of science and innovation might want to draw upon more? More theory? More behavioral economics?

1mattclancy1yI don't think we necessarily need more economic theory related to innovation, unless it's informed by new data and facts (which it is sometimes!). I just feel like we had that in spades for decades. The biggest blindspot for economists of innovation that I worry about is that, actually, incentives just don't matter as much as we think. Engineering innovation may be much more a problem of finding the right people (not just right skills, but have a creative personality open to novel solutions), bringing the right people together, and so on. I'm not sure the right field to learn from on these topics though; still it's something I think a lot about!