Tag Archives: Society

Alleviating Poverty – Poor Economics by Banerjee & Duflo (2)

Part 1 of Review available here.

“To progress, we have to abandon the habit of reducing the poor to cartoon characters and take the time to really understand their lives, in all their complexity and richness.”

I’d heard before that on average, tall people earn more money. What I hadn’t heard was that apparently if you control for IQ, that difference disappears – tall people are smarter and so have higher wages. A suggested explanation is malnutrition, which both reduces height and lowers IQ, and poses a significant challenge to poverty. This and other fascinating studies make up the bulk of Poor Economics, as Banerjee and Duflo follow their own advice and turn to the data to understand the challenges of development.

If you want to help the poor, say Banerjee and Duflo, you need to give up grand theories and ideas of structural change, no matter how appealing a silver bullet may be. Rejecting Why Nations Fail, they argue that poverty is not the product of grand institutional failures, but rather is an individual or local condition, making cookie-cutter remedies useless. Development must be achieved by a series of small, well-thought out and well-tested steps, gradually accumulating into big changes, not grand designs with little relevance to the lives of the poor.

To do so, they point out, it is essential to first actually understand the lives of the poor. Arguments often rage over whether the poor are in a poverty trap, the concern being that had they only a little more money for health, schooling, or business, they could invest and increase their wages, starting a positive cycle of investment and returns. B&D, however, dismiss the arguments of Sachs, Easterly, and others, and point out that the answer can only be found in the data, through randomized control trials and empirical work, not through theory or ideological debates.

They do make some broader claims. Without a stable job, for example, they suggest there is little incentive to save, invest, or plan for the future. As a result, the creation of jobs with job security may be justified even if it is an inefficient method of job creation, because of the indirect benefits. I’m not sure if I agree or not, but it’s an interesting point.

Perhaps the one criticism I have of Poor Economics is that their attempt to stick to economic rationality, though understandable, can feel forced. At several times in the book, as when they’re discussing how some households will borrow at a 24% rate of interest in order to save it at 2%, psychological or behavioural explanations seemed like a natural next step in the discussion, and I was disappointed when they neglected them. Still, the book adds a much-needed voice in the discussion of economic development, one driven by data, not ideology.

Still interested? You can read my summary of their lessons for development here, or sign up for the Subtle Illumination reading list to your right! Or, you could always head to Amazon and get the book your yourself (or in the UK or Canada).

(Honest) Truth About Dishonesty by Dan Ariely

“The gates of hell are open night and day / Smooth the descent, and easy is the way” – Virgil, The Aeneid

Are you a liar? We tend to assume some people just are: that they consistently cheat in life. An Enron theory of dishonesty, if you will. Ariely, though, argues in The (Honesty) Truth About Dishonesty that the reality is that almost everyone cheats a little given the right circumstances. The key, he says, is to still be able to tell ourselves that we’re a good person: after all, we haven’t cheated that much.

Unfortunately, this means we can’t just assume people cheat when the money is good. Instead, he points to experiments where people cheat more when they’re knowingly wearing counterfeit brand clothes, when they’re representing a cause that doesn’t benefit them, and when tokens exchangeable for cash, not cash, is the prize. What’s worse, he also shows we usually aren’t aware of the effect, with individuals unconsciously preferring art from one gallery over another if they’ve been told the funding for the experiment came from that gallery (and even showing increased activity in their brain’s pleasure centers when they see “their” logo), while remaining completely certain of their objectivity.

There is hope, however. Dishonesty diminishes when it becomes harder to self-justify an act: we might take a coke but we wouldn’t take a dollar bill from a fridge, for example. Even small reminders of morality reduce cheating, whether trying to remember the Ten Commandments (even if you only remember one or two), or signing a commitment to an honour code at the top of the page (even if the honour code is fictional). If we can stop the small acts of dishonesty, he argues, we can prevent it from gathering momentum and becoming contagious.

For me, the implication is that if we’re trying to stop a firm from committing fraud or a politician from lying, the answer isn’t to fire the bad apples or even have them declare conflicts of interest. It’s environmental and psychological factors that encourage us to cheat, and environmental and psychological factors that can help discourage us from doing so. All of us run the risk of drifting into dishonesty, a little bit at a time, while remaining convinced that we are acting morally. In a high paced, modern lifestyle, we may never get the chance to stop, reflect, and reset those patterns, but it may be ever more important that we try.

Interested? Keep reading (or in the UK or Canada). Readers might also like Ariely’s earlier books, Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, about the irrationalities that drive us and their potential benefits. Or, join the Subtle Illumination email list to your right!

Sugar as Toxin – Fat Chance by Robert Lustig

“If the food comes in a wrapper, the wrapper has more health benefits than the food.”

Added sugar is everywhere. Something like 80% of all food items sold in the U.S. contain it, and Americans yearly eat about 130 pounds each. It’s a drastic change from history, when sugar was at best available only seasonally, when fruit ripened.

Lustig thinks that sugar is toxic, evil, causing the obesity epidemic, and a poison, and that’s before he really gets warmed up. Not only have food companies started adding sugar to almost everything to encourage consumption, he says, but they also remove the fiber to improve shelf life. Yet it is fiber, Lustig points out, that helps us process sugar. This is why eating a fruit is fine, but fruit juice is not (calorie for calorie, fruit juice is worse than pop): the fiber is destroyed by the juicing process.

The answer to obesity, says Lustig, is threefold. First, we must control the environment in which we live, reducing our intake of substances like sugar that destabilize our bodily hormones and lead to overeating. Second, we need to increase our consumption of fiber. Third, we need to exercise. An overweight person who exercises may well outlive a thin person who does not, and 15 minutes of exercise a day appears to add about 3 years to a lifespan.

I can’t say I found Lustig’s analysis of public policy compelling: it’s not his area. On nutrition, on the other hand, he’s an expert. That said, I must admit this may be one of those (very) rare instances it may be easier to just read the news article or watch the video interview. Unless you want to understand the biology behind it all or really want a broader perspective on the issue, saying sugar is bad doesn’t really take a full book.

What Fat Chance has done is reinforce my impression that the chief advantage of most diets, regardless of content, is that they make you think about what you’re eating. Both vegetarians and non-vegetarians can be healthy, but vegetarians have to think about what they eat, and that matters. But if I were you I’d cut out sugar too. Maybe throw in some extra fiber.

Keep reading (and in the UK or Canada). Or if you want to stay up to date with reviews, subscribe to the subtle illumination email list! The sign-up is on the right of the screen.

Why Introverts are Awesome – Quiet by Susan Cain

“The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it’s a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers — of persistence, concentration, and insight — to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems, make art, think deeply.” – Susan Cain

Action. Boldness. Charisma. Harvard Business School and modern society are unanimous on the importance of these values. Not achieving them, therefore, signals failure: that we are too introspective, too reflective, and too contemplative. Susain Cain disagrees, and in Quiet argues that society grossly undervalues introversion. Choosing not to go to the party, or indeed to hide in the bathroom when you’re at the party, is not a sign of weakness: rather, it’s simply a preference for a life with less external stimulation, a model society might do well to learn from.

To understand introversion, she traces it back to childhood. Highly reactive children, ones who respond strongly to stimulus, are actually more likely to be introverts than low reactive children. It is people who find external stimulation overwhelming who therefore seek to limit that stimulation, and so become more inwardly focused. For Cain, it’s a biological difference, not disadvantage.

Studying fish, she points out that bold fish are more likely to rush into traps and get caught than shy fish, but once in captivity, bold fish start eating the food earlier than shy fish and have a much higher survival rate. For humans, introversion predicts academic success in university better than cognitive ability, and an introvert’s focus on reflection means that in the lab they spend longer on tasks and do better at them. A world with less decisiveness and more forethought, therefore, might well be a better world. There is, after all, “zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

As befits a book written for introverts, Cain has written a book inspiring both action and reflection. At times it reads as a cheerleader for self-conscious introverts, encouraging them to be proud of their status, but it also relies on theories of learning and child-development to understand possible benefits to introversion and how people develop such traits. Of course, in serving as cheerleader for introversion, her examples of extraverted individuals can sometimes feel caricatured, and her description of introverts can sometimes feel like it includes all possible virtues. A few sections can also feel a bit slow, not contributing much to the thrust of the argument. Still, for any introvert feeling self-conscious in a world of extroverts, the book is a must read.

Want to learn more about the advantages of introverts? Keep reading (or in the UK or Canada).

Using Games in Life? Reality is Broken by McGonigal

“The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.” – Brian Sutton-Smith

When was the last time you leveled up? Found a power up? Got a wisdom +1? These motivate us in video games, and Jane McGonigal argues in Reality is Broken that actual reality needs more of them. Millions of people use games to escape reality – why, she asks, can’t we use games to improve reality?

McGonigal thinks games can confer an evolutionary advantage on those who play them, helping us develop our strengths, treat depression and obesity, foster collaboration, increase democratic participation, fix education, and maximize our potential as human beings. As a result, Reality is Broken is stuffed full of interesting examples and facts, and the book shines because of them.

Whether discussing poker in graveyards to remind ourselves of our own mortality; Chorewars creating quests like doing the laundry; Quest to Learn as the framework for a charter school (with among other things students teaching concepts to AI avatars as quizzes); or God games like the Sims, Black and White, and Spore fostering the long view and developing ecosystems thinking, the games she analyzes are exciting. 69% of heads of household in the US play video games, and 97% of youth; this is a resource, she argues, we need to tap.

I’m always a little nervous about these kinds of claims; they remind me of Play Pumps, the systems installed in parts of Africa in which children playing could pump water. When the children bored of the idea, women were left to turn roundabouts by hand, making their task even more laborious. That said, games also have enormous potential to change our lives for the better.

My takeaway though is optimism about humanity. Whether in games or in real life, it’s inspiring to see millions of people seek out challenges to test their limits, working together to build things larger than themselves. World of Warcraft Wikis may not be what all of us would choose to build, but it is nonetheless a common project, and in scale an awe-inspiring one.

Want more games in your own life? Keep reading (or order from the UK or Canada).