Chris Blattman: belief

Transcript context

…I’ve read that murder rates in New York City have fallen by a factor of about 20 from their peak, which was within my lifetime. Do you think the research you’ve done gives us any insight into that, or is that a fully separate phenomenon? I think of it as a fully separate phenomenon. The stories that people tell when they have data, or when they tell something convincing, just sound very different from the kinds of stories that I’m used to thinking about for the kinds of violence I study. Some of the stories that are plausible and have some good evidence, they’re successful efforts to get guns off the street, the police per capita, and then also going back to the old idea of many eyes and many people on the street in more neighborhoods. None of that really helps me understand civil war violence or recruitment of child soldiers or any of the things that I’ve worked on in the past. Twenty or thirty years ago, the nation of Colombia was much more violent and dangerous than it seems to be now. What has changed there? I know there are superficial answers you could give. They’re fighting each other less. Civil war has wound down. But at the most fundamental level, how would you explain the significant decline in violence?…

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