It is (as most conversations should be) gloriously unplanned, and I hope we get to cover a wide range of topics, including the three books that he has written. I’ve read only two of them, so if you’re coming along, see if you can figure out the one that I’m definitely faffing about.
The Fat Labrador serves excellent coffee, and at least one of the two people conversing tomorrow is always worth listening to. The other is hoping to learn as much as you are, so if you can spare the time, please join me in learning from one of India’s best public policy analysts.
Please note that this will not be recorded, it is an in-person event only.
Feel free to drop me an email if you have any questions about the event (or even better, a question for Pranay).
I’m assuming, in today’s post, that you have some knowledge of both economics and of economists, and that you are a student from India.
Feel free to copy these prompts word for word, but the major reason for doing this is to give you ideas about how you might go about constructing prompts yourself. Try modifying these prompts by choosing a different economist, specifying different time periods, or tweaking it however you like. Feel free to go meta too, as one of the prompts below does. But the idea behind this post, which itself is a continuation of yesterday’s post, is to help you learn how to use ChatGPT as your own personal tutor.
What if Paul Krugman could be asked to give you ten introductory lectures in economics?
See what kind of answer you get, and feel free to ask follow-up questions before asking ChatGPT (in this case, aka Paul Krugman) to move on to the next lecture. Note that the “Yes, I do.” in the prompt below is in response to ChatGPT asking me if I had any questions. Also note that these aren’t necessarily the questions I would ask of ChatGPT myself – I’m trying to think of myself as a first year undergraduate student, and am framing my questions accordingly. If you would like to ask slightly more advanced questions, please do so, by all means. And of course, that cuts both ways – feel free to ask simpler questions!
I followed up with another question:
And then on to the second lecture:
Again, if you like, begin with these exact prompts and see where they take you. But I would encourage you to make changes to these prompts to suit your own learning style better (“recommend only podcasts or YouTube videos”, for example).
If only I could have used this next prompt about twenty years ago. Pah.
And if all else fails, go meta:
I know that you’ll be able to come up with better prompts, more suited to your learning style. The idea behind this post is just to get you started. The more you converse with AI, the better your prompts will get, and the better a conversation you will end up having.
The ability to have a personal tutor who can customize learning pathways suited to your interests is what makes this such an exciting time to be a student. For example:
As you might imagine, I’m a big fan of the idea of learning by writing, and preferably, writing for public consumption.
Writing is its own discipline, and it is a wonderful way to make thoughts and concepts clear in your own head. And writing for public consumption forces you to be clearer in terms of how you frame your thoughts, and the internet acts as an extremely alert editor for free. Trust me, writing your thoughts down is great. Try it!
But there’s ways and means to make this process even better, and I chanced upon a nice little essay that gives advice on just this very point:
I usually start by trying to read the most prominent 1-3 pieces that (a) defend the claim or (b) attack the claim or (c) set out to comprehensively review the evidence on both sides. I try to understand the major reasons they’re giving for the side they come down on. I also chat about the topic with people who know more about it than I do, and who aren’t too high-stakes to chat with.
The essay is titled “Learning by Writing“, but I interpret it more as an essay about how to get better at learning by writing. That is, I think the essay is about how to get better at the process of writing – the fact that you will learn by doing so is all but guaranteed.
And to me, the most important part of the process of writing is the quote above, and in particular, the following: “I also chat about the topic with people who know more about it than I do, and who aren’t too high-stakes to chat with”.
Blogging, and writing more generally, is a very solitary endeavour. Reading 1-3 pieces is the easy bit, and is a lot of fun to do. I tend to be a very opinionated reader, so forming an opinion or a hypothesis one way or the other isn’t difficult to do. Taking a contrarian position – a position that is at odds with your take on the issue – is rather more difficult, but I have found it entirely worth my while.
But that last bit – chatting with people who more about it than I do, and who aren’t too high-stakes to chat with, that bit is difficult. Lots of people know much more than I do about lots of things, so there’s no shortage of supply in that regard, but the “aren’t too high stakes to chat with” isn’t easy.
Also, given the fact that I try to post everyday, and my, shall we say, above average procrastination skills make it difficult to meet the deadline of posting on time and having conversations about what I am going to write about.
But in the cases where I manage to do so (chat about what I am going to write about with friends/mentors/experts), I find my own writing to be noticeable better. So not for all posts that will follow, but at least for some of them, I shall try and do exactly this: chat with folks who know a bit about the topic, before writing about it.
The rest of the essay isn’t actually about the point that I have raised over here, but it is still worth a read. Shown below is a table of the author’s outline for writing a piece:
Fridays around these parts are about me dispensing gyaan to students about careers, skillsets and what not. Today’s post is in similar vein, but about a topic that I honestly never thought I would have to write about. It’s about encouraging students to talk to professors more.
What little I personally know of economics I didn’t really learn in classrooms. I learnt about it by talking and arguing with friends (which still happens, thank god), by reading as many books as I could lay my grubby paws on, and through conversations with (some of) my professors. And I’m pleased as punch to report that the first and the third group now have some intersectionality.
Students are finally back on campus, thank god. Not all of them, unfortunately, but hopefully this semester will be the last semester where we have this weird halfway world. Now that students are back on campus though, there’s a bit of a disconnect.
Students who were on campus before the pandemic have a natural ease around them when conversing with me and other faculty members, or when it comes to dropping in to our offices for a chat over a cup of coffee. But with students who I and other faculty members have taught exclusively online, it’s painfully apparent to both parties that the ease is missing.
And today’s blogpost is based around this observation. To every student everywhere who is reading this, if there is a professor who you would like to engage in conversation, don’t wait! Please, go ahead and ask the professor if they could spare the time for a chat. Sure, they might ask you to drop by later if they’re busy, but most (if not all) professors will be only too happy to engage you in conversation.
And these offbeat, random conversations are the best way to learn, trust me. One-on-one conversations over a cup of coffee tend to be more relaxed, more in-depth and more reflective. Best of all, serendipitous projects have a way of falling in your lap while these conversations take place, and you’d be surprised at the kind of work that can come out of a simple conversation.
Books, movies, travel, good places to eat around college, politics, music – everything is fair game. Besides of course, whatever it is that you’re learning about these days, and let me be honest – the occasional dash of gossip. Even us economists are human under certain circumstances!
But if you ask me, it is this that defines the offline college experience. Classes, sure, but in person relaxed conversations is where the real magic happens. Both in college and later.
So if you are on campus, and haven’t yet mustered up the courage to knock on a prof’s door and ask if you could just come in to chat, give it a try.
“Munch would have probably seen any marks from this period of the painting’s life as part of its artistic development. He wanted people to see how his works evolved and changed over their lifetime, and saw any damage they incurred along the way as a natural process, even leaving artworks unprotected outdoors and in his studio, stating ‘it does them good to fend for themselves’.”
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I cannot for the life of me remember how I chanced upon this link – all that I remember is that it came out of an interesting Twitter thread. 10 factoids about The Scream.
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“It’s called the “dinner party problem”: A table of four or fewer people may happily converse as one, but a party of five or more will splinter fairly quickly into separate conversations of two or three four people each. What is it about the number four?”
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It really should be called the panel discussion problem. The conclusion to the short article deserves to be highlighted!
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“It’s possible our brains evolved to manage only the conversations in which we have a chance of swaying the group to our side. Otherwise, what’s the point of talking?”
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I’ll happily admit to the fact that the math is way beyond my capabilities – but it made for enjoyable viewing, if nothing else. The Mandelbulb, or the 3D version of the Mandelbrot set. This is via Navin Kabra, who should immediately be followed on Twitter.
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“Are Indigenous and Western systems of knowledge categorically antithetical? Or do they offer multiple points of entry into knowledge of the world, past and present?”
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.. A very interesting article in the Smithsonian on what is knowledge, and how is to be gleaned, understood and used.
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EconForEverybody 