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Learn more at Stripe.com. Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.

I'm your host, Julia Galef, and I'm here with today's guest, Michael Webb.

Michael is doing his PhD in economics at Stanford University, and he's the co-author of an exciting recent paper called Our Ideas Getting Harder to Find.

And that is the question we're going to be talking about today. Michael, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

So your paper is actually kind of a

funny exception to the general rule. I think it's called the headline in the form of a question

rule, and the rule goes if some article, you know, using the popular media, has a headline

in the form of a question, the answer to the question is almost invariably no. Right. Like,

you know, are our children getting dumber?

Or, like, could coffee be the cure for cancer?

And the answer is always like, no, actually no.

But the answer to your articles, you know, spoilers, is actually kind of looks like yes.

Yes.

Yeah, the answer to our question is a very strong, strong yes.

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