We return to ask some stupid questions of the smartest people on Earth and, once more, our Nobelists oblige.
the fence Have you ever emailed something to yourself for safekeeping, received the email notification, thought ‘Ah, an email’, before realising it’s just the very email that you sent a second before?
pierre agostini (physics, 2023) Don’t think I ever did.
anthony leggett (physics, 2003) No (but I’ve done many similar things).
angus deaton (economics, 2015) Perhaps. We were not evolved to deal with email.
paul milgrom (economics, 2020) No. I do occasionally email things among my accounts, but I have a well-organised Mac file system that lets me find the things I’m searching for with great reliability.
Editors’ note: Prof Frances Arnold (chemistry, 2018) remains the only Nobelist to have admitted to this folly.
tf Without looking it up: is your father’s first cousin your second cousin or your first cousin once removed?
pierre agostini I guess second cousin.
anthony leggett I think he/she would be my first cousin once removed.
paul milgrom First cousin once removed, I believe. My father’s cousin’s kids are my second cousins.
angus deaton I don’t even remember whether my father actually had any cousins, let alone how I ought to think about them.
Correct answer: second cousin, once removed.
tf Who do you believe is the smartest person you have ever met?
pierre agostini There are many. I’d say Harm G. Muller.
anthony leggett Maybe Richard Feynman.
angus deaton If I give you a name, it will get me into terrible trouble. But I do want to say that ‘the smartest persons’ are a danger to themselves and to others. Halberstam’s book The Best and the Brightest is about how they lost the Vietnam War and divided the country. The US today, and my profession of economics, in particular, is greatly overemphasising ‘smarts’ and underemphasising other virtues. It is a curse.
jon fosse (literature, 2023) Steve Jobs (but we never met – sorry).
paul milgrom I think it has to be Ken Arrow. He was a polymath who seemed to know about everything in quite some detail, and his analytical skills led him to some of the deepest results in economic theory. There are legends about his knowledge, including one evening when his grad students decided to prepare for seeing him by reading a decade-old scientific article about the mating habits of gorillas. As he approached, they started discussing that article. Ken looked puzzled for a moment and then remarked something like: ‘You seem to be talking about an old theory that was debunked a few years ago. We understand now that…’ I also had a couple of personal encounters with him. In one, I had read about the health effects of pollution, and he described the paradox that pollution measurements, usually taken at the top of tall buildings, were more highly correllated with health outcomes than they were with similar measurements at the bases of the same buildings. Another was when I sat almost in awe listening to him argue with Robert Aumann, a religious Jew, about the meaning of certain Bible passages.
tf Name something an otherwise smart and accomplished person might say or do that immediately reduces your sense of their intelligence.
pierre agostini Talk politics.
anthony leggett A real-life case: Feynman’s remarks about ceasing to study Japanese when he discovered that in that language the word for ‘garden’ can depend on whether it is the speaker’s or the listener’s garden.
jon fosse That English is the best language for poetry.
paul milgrom Hiding ignorance of lack of knowledge about something. People who are afraid to acknowledge what they don’t know do badly in filling the gaps in their knowledge and make what they say less reliable.
angus deaton Can’t come up with an example. As I tried, I realised that I am more concerned that I myself will do so. All of us have blind spots, perhaps surprising areas of ignorance. I never had a real education in economics – a couple of courses as an undergraduate, and no postgraduate courses – so I spent much of my professional life worrying that I would say something to reveal my lack. A Nobel prize makes it worse, as in, ‘How could a Nobel laureate say something so stupid?’ In fact, a sense of my sometimes gaping ignorance has been a positive force in trying to learn new things. Still working on it!
tf This is a safe space for petty indulgence: what is the most satisfying moment you’ve been able to reveal to someone that you’re a Nobel laureate?
pierre agostini This moment is still to come!
anthony leggett Normally, the only context in which I spontaneously reveal it is in the signature line of humanitarian and similar appeals to foreign dignitaries. It’s satisfying to think that however many their titles, this is one distinction they are probably never going to get (but then reality kicks in, and I realise that the petition is most likely never going to be read by the big man himself, only by some low-level secretary).
paul milgrom I don’t do that. There are so many highly accomplished people without Nobel prizes that I hope to refrain from acting like I’m special.
angus deaton In a taxi, on the day of the announcement, and what made me happy was the evident and immediate joy of the taxi driver. Prizes can do that.
tf Would you like to fire a machine gun?
pierre agostini Not really!
anthony leggett No, nor any other type of gun – I had my fill of that more than 70 years ago in my high-school cadet corps.
paul milgrom No, that is a weapon of war or mass murder. I have never fired a gun at all, but thought it would be something I’d want to do some time.
angus deaton No way. I am sure I would be flat on my back, with bullets spewing everywhere, including falling on me.
tf Cats or dogs?
pierre agostini Cats.
angus deaton Dogs. Big ones.
anthony leggett Cats.
jon fosse Dogs.
paul milgrom Dogs for sure. I’ve enjoyed dogs and their loyalty and trainability. They are almost friends. Cats are not.
tf Is there a theory or hypothesis that is widely supported by peers in your field, but which you consider total bunkum?
pierre agostini Don’t see one right now although I have the feeling there must be. I am still debating with myself what a photon could be.
anthony leggett Yes, the belief in ‘spontaneously broken U(1) symmetry’ in condensed matter physics.
paul milgrom There is a tendency in economics to think that one theory of behaviour applies to everyone, and I’m certain that is a mistake. When I work on real-world auction design, I look for things that are simple and robust, that mostly perform well even when some or many people behave irrationally.
angus deaton That randomised controlled trials can discover causality or, indeed, that causality can be inferred from data.
tf Do you collect anything?
jon fosse Fountain pens, new and vintage. I tried to stop at 100 but didn’t manage.
anthony leggett Well, my wife professes to believe that I collect teapots (which lets her off the hook on my birthday and Christmas, and has cluttered up a whole shelf in our reception room). However, this belief is in fact quite without foundation.
paul milgrom Maybe ‘prizes’? I don’t really collect, but I display many of the ones I get on my office wall, so perhaps that counts.
