Unsystematic Likes #3

Interesting pieces from around the web

Tricks of the trade-offs

“How economists got Africa’s AIDS epidemics wrong”, Center for Global Development, Justin Sandefur

Economists are trained to look for trade-offs. This is good intellectual discipline. Pursuing “Investment A” means forgoing “Investment B.” But in many real world cases, it's not at all obvious that the realistic alternative to big new spending proposals is similar levels of big new spending on some better program. The realistic counterfactual might be nothing at all.

In retrospect, it seems clear that economists were far too quick to accept the total foreign aid budget envelope as a fixed constraint. When in practice, as PEPFAR proved, the total size of the foreign aid budget was very much up for debate.

Rule the world

“Lorraine Daston on the History of Rules”, Public Books

A great deal of our ways of thinking are now being shaped by the hours and hours and hours that we spend interacting with algorithms. The most intuitive way I can think of to make this vivid is learning how to search for something on Google as opposed to preparing a conventional index. Almost without realizing it, we formulate the syntax of searches in terms of queries rather than as nouns modified by qualifying phrases: “When was the Wars of the Roses?” versus “Wars of Roses, dates.” This is hardly the first time that such technologies have infiltrated our ways of thinking. Writing is the most obvious example, both reading and writing. Knowing how to use search algorithms intuitively has become what is sometimes called a cultural technique, which is more than just a technique. It’s more than just a tool; it becomes a way of thinking.

Insurance policy

“Insurance politics at the end of the world”, How Things Work, Hamilton Nolan

[I]nsurance can tell you things about reality. It resembles global investment firms in this: The people running them may be greedy, and the clients may be evil, but the business is all about understanding the true and unvarnished state of the world in order to manage risk in order to protect wealth, and therefore these firms do their very best to operate according to what is true, whereas politicians, for example, often do their very best to lie. This is why every leftist and revolutionary should read the Wall Street Journal. There are far fewer lies when money is involved.