Ken Opalo on how African countries should react to the tariffs. Normally I would not take something like this seriously, because it reads like a repeated set of talking points to be brought out as the solution for every crisis. But it really does seem like it might be a case of where there are certain obvious problems which are so bad that, actually, your highest utility fixes in every case are more or less the same. (Edit: relevant post by Bryan Caplan on how we’re probably doing things as bad as the tariffs as a matter of course).
Yaw reviews The Problem of Democracy. It’s interesting because today both the left and right in America accuse each other of attempting to limit democracy under the guise of “saving democracy”. But this strain has been part of the American project since the founding, and I think basically everyone has some point where if their democracy leads them down the “wrong path” they would prefer not to have it. This is probably why Chinese intellectuals say things like how democracy would lead to chaos in China, as opposed to the likelier reason that it would mess up all the existing power structures, a similar but not entirely identical thing.
Philo reviews The Man Who Broke Capitalism. I used to believe that all large companies are intrinsically dysfunctional. But recently I’ve transitioned to the idea this is because past a certain size, companies can only really coordinate around a single principle or KPI. It seems to me that most KPIs are actually not that good, perhaps especially those which are excessively abstract or financialized.
Broadstreet post on how immigration worked in the Spanish colonies.
Asimov Press on speeding up feedback loops in biology. There’s a Twitter post by the author stating that his primary concern while writing this piece was to avoid giving the impression that biology is just like programming. But I feel like this is something that is pretty universal, which applies to both programming and biology, rather than something inappropriately ported over.
Cremieux on the Flynn Effect. There might actually be something to the idea of “trust the science” in that in many cases, the current state of the art is not legible enough for most people to derive positive utility from their interpretations. But while that works for more theoretical issues where you don’t need an answer right now, sometimes you actually do need to make decisions under uncertainty. Rather than the standard goal of simplifying information for public consumption, perhaps science communicators should instead try to walk people through the process, teaching them how to deal with uncertainty along the way.
Harry Law on Adolescence, comparing it to other moral panics.
The Booktender on the lack of commercial success of The Great Gatsby during Fitzgerald’s lifetime.
EFD linkthread.