Book Summary: Economics: The User’s Guide by Ha-Joon Chang
I’m prefacing this summary of Economics: The User’s Guide with a disclaimer: There’s a lot that I haven’t summarised, because the book […]
Tag: policy
Game Theory (from Algorithms to Live By)
This post is split out from my main summary of Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Check out that summary to […]
Book Summary: Why We Fight by Chris Blattman
What motivates people to go to war? In this summary of Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to […]
Book Summary: The New New Zealand by Paul Spoonley
Spoonley discusses the demographic challenges facing New Zealand over the next few decades. The book tackles an interesting and neglected topic and its overall message (i.e. that there need to be informed, national discussions about this) seems sensible enough. Unfortunately, however, Spoonley’s writing isn’t great, and he relies too heavily on secondary sources.
Problems with the Total View of Population Ethics
The Total View suggests that we should seek to maximise total wellbeing, including by creating new lives. There are problems with the Total View that have concerning implications in practice.
Book Summary: Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Evicted takes place in Milwaukee during 2008 and 2009. The author, Desmond, follows 8 different tenant families, their landlords, and the events in their lives related to housing. Their stories are interspersed with facts and statistics about housing and evictions more generally.
Causality is so much harder than we normally think
I was listening to a podcast recently that talked about how people’s family situations and upbringings affected how they turned out. It […]
Book Summary: Noise by Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein
There is noise in many areas, more than you think. This book explains the different types of noise, how to measure it, and how to reduce it. There are many examples with citations.
Book Summary: Political Tribes by Amy Chua
The main thrust of Political Tribes is that group identities based on things like ethnicity, religion and skin color are very important but the US has often failed to recognise this in its foreign policy.