The video explores the journey of a Turkish economist who became intrigued by economics due to his experiences during a turbulent political and economic time in Turkey. He reflects on his upbringing in Istanbul, discussing the intersection of politics and economics, and his shift from local education to higher studies at the University of York. This economist emphasizes the importance of passion and perseverance in achieving success in any field, urging the youth to find their passion rather than chasing mere success or financial gain.

The economist discusses the nature of science and academia, highlighting the need for collaboration and diversity in perspectives to build collective knowledge. He addresses the challenges and mistakes encountered in academia, noting the value of learning from failures. The importance of team dynamics, trust, and friendship in scientific collaborations is underscored, using his long-term working relationships as examples. The economist reflects on the impact of technologies and historical forces on science, emphasizing the societal responsibilities that come with technological advancements, particularly with AI.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. collective [kəˈlektɪv] - (adjective) - Involving all members of a group as opposed to functionings based on individual action. - Synonyms: (shared, joint, communal)

collective is the important word. It's not a solitary activity.

2. turbulent [ˈtɜːrbjələnt] - (adjective) - Characterized by conflict, disorder, or confusion; not controlled or calm. - Synonyms: (chaotic, tumultuous, stormy)

You know, these were turbulent times.

3. repression [rɪˈpreʃən] - (noun) - The act of subduing someone or something by force. - Synonyms: (suppression, restraint, oppression)

There was a lot of repression.

4. integration [ˌɪntɪˈɡreɪʃən] - (noun) - The act or process of combining or being made into a whole; inclusion of different groups into society. - Synonyms: (incorporation, assimilation, unification)

But after I went to a regular school, you know, I felt relatively well integrated.

5. incremental [ˌɪŋkrəˈmentl] - (adjective) - Relating to or denoting an increase or addition, especially one of a series on a fixed scale. - Synonyms: (gradual, progressive, stepwise)

...science in every field is incremental.

6. empirical [ɛmˈpɪrɪkəl] - (adjective) - Based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic. - Synonyms: (observational, experiential, evidence-based)

In empirical work, for example, it's very difficult not to make mistakes.

7. vigilant [ˈvɪdʒɪlənt] - (adjective) - Keeping careful watch for possible danger or difficulties. - Synonyms: (watchful, alert, observant)

Open science forces you to be very vigilant because other people are going to check your work.

8. determinist [dɪˈtɜːrmɪnɪst] - (noun) - One who believes that all events are determined by previously existing causes. - Synonyms: (predestinist, fatalist, preordained)

I don't have a technological determinist reading of history.

9. kleptocratic [klɛpˈtɒkrætɪk] - (adjective) - Relating to a government or country led by corrupt leaders who use their power to exploit the people and resources, often through embezzlement. - Synonyms: (corrupt, exploitative, embezzling)

barriers that exist, for example, because of kleptocratic rulers, corrupt bureaucrats.

10. parlance [ˈpɑːrləns] - (noun) - A particular way of speaking or using words, especially a way common to those with a particular job or interest. - Synonyms: (jargon, language, terminology)

In the baseball parlance, that's not easy because science in every field is incremental.

Daron Acemoglu, prize in economic sciences 2024 - Official interview

collective is the important word. It's not a solitary activity. And that's what distinguishes almost everything humans do. And it also distinguishes some of the best things that humans do, such as science.

I got into economics as a teenager growing up in Turkey. I became interested in social issues. Especially I was troubled by the fact that the country had just experienced a military coup. There was a lot of repression. Soldiers were everywhere, including at the gates of our school. So that got me interested in issues of politics, but also economics, because the country was also suffering from various economic problems. High unemployment, high inflation, economic stagnation. And I wondered whether these two things were related. And that was the beginning of my journey into economics.

I grew up in Istanbul. I was born there, and my parents and I were Armenian. And I went to an Armenian school at first, but then from there on I transitioned to a regular elementary school, and I got into one of the exam schools, which is where I studied, until I went abroad to study economics at the University of York. You know, these were turbulent times. My father used to be a professor in the law faculty of the of Istanbul University. And part of the reason why he left the university was because there was a lot of unrest, uncertainty, violence in the university. So you could feel all of that. And as a minority, of course, you felt some of those tensions even more.

But after I went to a regular school, you know, I felt relatively well integrated. You know, I was. I had friends from the Armenian community, and I also had many friends from the Jewish community and the Greek community. But the majority of my friends and acquaintances were from my school and much more broad spectrum of Turkish society.

I got into research because I was curious about these questions, and I loved economics. And I continued to be intrigued by the intersection of economics with other questions of social science. And what has propelled me throughout my career is that I enjoyed. I continue to enjoy what I do. And I think success in everything depends on luck, but it also depends on putting a lot of hours. You can do that just because you want to be successful, but it's not easy. It doesn't work so well. I think it's much, much more productive and straightforward if you find something that you're passionate about.

So my first advice to young people is find something that you're really passionate about. Don't just think what can get me very successful or what can make me most money, but do something that you love. And the second one is put the hours, unless you put a lot of effort hours, sometimes sleepless nights, because you're passionate about something that is very Important for success. And then the third one is be lucky.

If you are doing something you're passionate about, then you also want to be successful and influential and impactful. And one way of doing that is to be ambitious to swing for defenses. Meaning you don't just try to score a few points, but you try to get the big home run. In the baseball parlance, that's not easy because science in every field is incremental. We start from the established wisdom, we build on other people's work, and I think that's very important. So it's a particular challenge to follow the scientific best practice, but at the same time to try to be ambitious so that you don't just continue what other people have done, but you try to do something new.

Oh, failures and mistakes. My career is full of them even now. I think I make a few of them every day. Well, look, I think academia is what attracted me after I got interested in these issues. What I didn't know at the time was how cutthroat academia was. It's a tough business. You know, one of the things that I only understood after I started writing papers and submitting them to journals is, you know, you sometimes spend a couple of years on a paper and it goes to somebody anonymous and they slaughter it. So you need to be thick skinned and you realize you've made mistakes.

Sometimes people are unfair, but if they reject your paper and that has happened, you know, hundreds of times to me sometimes, often they have a point that's a failure. And you make mistakes all the time. You know, there are topics that I thought I should work on and then I said, ah, no, I don't want to do it. And then I realized I should have spent much more time on this or, or I sometimes get into projects and I realize my premise is faulty and that happens. I think everybody makes mistakes. The important thing is to recognize your mistakes and learn from them.

In empirical work, for example, it's very difficult not to make mistakes. And sometimes you use the wrong variable or you do a statistical procedure that is not the right one in theory. Sometimes you think you've proved something and it's not a proof there was a mistake, there's a logical error. All of those have happened to me and I bet you all of those happen to almost everybody. What distinguishes, I think good science is that you check and check and you learn from your find out your mistakes, you correct them and you learn from that.

And that is, I think, one great part of open science. Open science forces you to be very vigilant because other people are going to check your work. You know, you should have the passion that you want to do the great correct thing, but it's also important that you're under that constant threat of other people that are going to come and check my work. And that's, that's a wonderful sort of dynamic. So we all learn from our mistakes and hopefully one day I will start making fewer of them.

I think that success has a way of getting to people's head. And one great thing is to make sure that you don't take yourself too seriously. And you could go to the other extreme. You can doubt yourself so much that you think you're an imposter or something. But I believe there's a healthy balance, that you don't consume yourself in self doubt, but you also don't become arrogant. It's a constant struggle, especially after the wonderful news of the Nobel Prize. I think it's more important that people should try not to get too arrogant. I'll try to work at that.

One of the great things in modern science, both in social science and natural sciences and engineering, is that it's become more of a team activity. And that's wonderful because otherwise, and I've written papers by myself, it's very solitary. You work years without anybody really seeing what you're doing. So with a team, you're sharing the successes, you're sharing the intermediate steps, you're sharing the failures. But that also means that it's really important that you have the right team. Not just in terms of what each person brings to the scientific endeavor, but also in terms of friendship, in terms of trust.

That's why if you look at my career, you will see I have written with the same people over and over again, because those are the people I get along with. I am at the right frequency. And that applies doubly to Simon Johnson and James Robinson, who were awarded the Nobel Prize together with me for the joint work that the three of us did, as well as the work that I did with James Robinson. And you know, they are some of my closest friends. We get along, we enjoy discussing things together, thinking about existing questions, new questions, and I trust them. And I think that's been a very important part of it.

And we also complement each other. We bring different things to the team sometime and we've learned to work with each other. And I think that is part of the joy of this journey. I believe that in every field of scientific inquiry or knowledge building, so broader than scientific inquiry in engineering, in companies, economics, of course, Included, we are in the business of generating collective knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.

collective is the important word. It's not a solitary activity. And that's what distinguishes almost everything humans do. And it also distinguishes some of the best things that humans do, such as science. We learn from each other. We build on the shoulders of giants and on each other's shoulders. And that becomes most meaningful if different people have different perspectives and different bring different things. Variation is good. If we were all doing our own thing, it wouldn't matter. You and I could be doing the same thing, but we're running in our own lanes. But if we're going to collaborate, it's good that I do something different. I ask a different question than you ask.

So that sort of variation or diversity, I think, is essential for the incremental building of collective knowledge. And that diversity requires diversity of perspectives. In social sciences, that means not everybody should have the same ideological leanings, should not have the same preoccupations. It requires diversity of experiences. It's very important that some people are in the ivory tower, but not everybody's in the ivory tower. It requires different genders, ethnicities, religions, all groups in terms of their histories and experiences, bring different things to the table, different questions, different approaches. And I think we can try to make best use of it in this collective knowledge way.

Idea creation is what perhaps the most important part of the scientific and academic inquiry. And one thing I tell my students is the worst thing you can do is sit down at your desk and say, today I have to generate an idea. It just doesn't work that way. So in my case, I believe almost every idea I got, some good ones, some very bad ones, came as a byproduct of something else I was doing while driving, while reading the newspaper, while reading a book, sometimes reading a paper. You know, you read a paper and you realize they're doing something interesting. But I would have done it differently. And that starts the beginning of an idea.

Or you listen to the news and you hear something from a politician or a journalist that either you had heard before or not, but it suddenly leads to a train of thought that you hadn't had yourself before. Or you can see parallels that weren't obvious to you before, that other people had made some arguments, but you see similarity between them that had not occurred to you. Almost all of those, in my case, have occurred as by products.

Sometimes that byproduct is in the process of science. So I'm working on a project and I get an idea about something else. Rarely it has even happened That I work on a project and I get an idea on that project. But that's very rare if you look at history, and I often do, because that's an important part of my motivation and inspiration. Many important transformative periods have coincided with new technologies. I don't have a technological determinist reading of history. I don't think technology by itself shapes history, quite the opposite. But new technologies create myriad challenges and opportunities.

In fact, I said quite the opposite because I think it is historical forces, political forces, social forces that often make us use our scientific knowledge in one way or another, or develop a particular type of technology in one of the possible manners that we could have developed. But put these two things together, it creates something very important for our understanding, scientific inquiry, and our sort of engagement as citizens, which is that periods in which there are new technologies are both going to be transformative, and they are going to increase the importance of social, technical and economic choices that we make.

How do we develop these technologies? Who are going to be the winners and losers? What is socially responsible? How can we ensure that these technologies are not used for bad, but they are sort of steered in the direction of the social good? All of these questions, I think, are central for AI. You can be an AI optimist, AI realist, AI pessimist, but I think most people will agree. Artificial intelligence is going to be disruptive. Artificial intelligence is going to destroy jobs. Artificial intelligence is going to take some people's privacy away. It's going to increase some surveillance.

It may provide much better information. It may increase productivity. It may give us completely new perspectives, new scientific methods. All of these are possible, but which ones we are going to prioritize. Who is going to bear the burden and who is going to enjoy the riches? There's nothing deterministic about this. Somebody might tell you it's all an act of nature. There is a process of science that's going to go by itself. I don't believe that's the case. Science is what we do. It's our choices. There isn't a ladder that we have to climb. There are thousands of ladders.

I think the problem I have today is that I believe AI has empowered a lot of people and risks disempowering a lot of people as well. And it need not be so. AI is an amazingly powerful and versatile technology. There are many different ways in which we can develop it. There are many different ways in which we can use it. There are ways in which AI could be useful to some of the poorest people in the world. Or there are ways in which AI could turn into a very potent weapon in the hands of dictators that rule over these millions of billions of people.

There's a way in which AI could perhaps help workers in Indonesia or Malaysia. There's a way in which it can completely take away all the jobs and tasks that they perform. So those choices are really important, and I don't think they are being debated enough.

You know, the economics discipline perhaps, perhaps started with Adam Smith. There were many economists before him. But a lot of the ways that we think about economic questions are shaped by Adam Smith's wealth of nation. He was talking about wealth of nations, and when he was writing, the gap between the richest and the poorest countries was probably something like fourfold. Today we live in a much more advanced, hyper globalized, hyperconnected world, and the richest 10 or so countries are about 70 times as rich as the bottom 10 countries.

That's just a staggering, staggering gap. And that gap is not getting any smaller. So if the point of international cooperation and economic development and all of the scientific knowledge and policy was to narrow the gap between poor and niche countries, that's not happening. And I think it is very desirable that it happens. It's not going to happen by itself. Using the correct knowledge, correct understanding of economic incentives and opportunities is important, but it's not an engineering problem. It's not something that we have the best economics formula, and we can apply it in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And then we make sure that the Democratic Republic of the Congo starts getting a bit richer. It doesn't work that way.

And that's what actually motivated me to get into economics and social science. It's the political economy that's central meaning. What are the incentives on the ground? How can you mobilize the people? How is it that you incentivize them? And how is it that you actually overcome the barriers that exist, for example, because of kleptocratic rulers, corrupt bureaucrats, firms that coerce their workers, all sorts of problems. You know, the world is more interesting, not necessarily happier, that we live in a complex environment. Every agent, every individual, every firm has their own incentives and their own approaches. So that's that sum total of all of these very different things have to align in order for economic development to happen.

That makes it a really fascinating question. It's not a planning problem. It's really an organic process. But the fact that it's an organic process doesn't mean that you cannot do anything. In fact, we do a lot of things. Technologies, international cooperation, International policies and institutions. You know, what I have spent my life studying is all about disciplining, framing that organic process.

Well, when I started writing on political economy issues, the world was not a widespread democratic environment. There were many democracies, many non democracies, but there was a general optimism that democracy was on the rise. The political scientist Samuel Huntington had written a book called the Third Wave, talking about how a wave was sweeping the world, pushing countries more towards democracy. Today it looks very different. The last 20 years or so have seen more and more threats against democracies, and democracies themselves have not performed that well.

If you look at the industrialized world, support for democracy, especially among young people, is at a modern low. So it is time to ask, first, whether democracy is really important for us, and second, what kind of democracy? How can we do better as democratic nations? My answer to the first one is yes. Democracy is important, desirable, and more essential than ever, my research shows. And of course it uses historical data, or data at least, you know, not the last 10 years.

But if you look at data from the 19th century to around 2010 or so, you will see that democratic countries do better. When a country democratizes, it grows more, it delivers better public services, it delivers better education, health services to its citizens. And democracy is essential for people to have voice, for people to have security, often. But democracy is not popular right now or relative to what it was 20 years ago. Why not?

Because I think democracy has created aspirations and it hasn't risen up to them. Democratic countries have seen huge increase in inequality. They were expecting higher quality public services, education, healthcare. They haven't delivered those. So in some sense, democracy hasn't risen up to the challenge that it sets to itself. Giving people voice, giving people shared prosperity, giving people good, reliable services. So I think we need to renew the democratic compact so that democracy becomes more popular both within democratic countries and around the world.

ECONOMICS, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, SOCIAL ISSUES, AI IMPACT, COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE, NOBEL PRIZE