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Conversations with Tyler / episode intelligence

Chris Blattman on Development, Conflict, and Doing What's Interesting

14 Mar 2018 24 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Chris BlattmanTyler Cowen

Claim mix

belief 11evaluation 7uncertainty 2preference 2commitment 1prediction 1

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

24 published records

02 / commitment

What happened in your childhood was a reaction to a series of political and economic shocks and a search for equilibrium after that. It’s possible that we will see very dramatic political and economic shocks to destabilize that many countries again, but I don’t see them coming very soon.

“What happened in your childhood was a reaction to a series of political and economic shocks and a search for equilibrium after that. It’s possible that we will see very dramatic political and economic shocks to destabilize that many countries again, but I don’t see them coming very soon.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

03 / belief

What I liked about it the most, actually, was less about what we learned about violent conflict than what we learned about authoritarian politics, mostly the fact that it got the average American reader to get on board with election stealing and terrorist violence by putting them in the position of either the elite or the subjugated group.

“What I liked about it the most, actually, was less about what we learned about violent conflict than what we learned about authoritarian politics, mostly the fact that it got the average American reader to get on board with election stealing and terrorist violence by putting them in the position of either the elite or the subjugated group.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

04 / uncertainty

I don’t know this very well, but I would have suspected that one thing that might be true is that there is a peculiar set of circumstances that exist in East Asia and Southeast Asia that have made it hypercompetitive in this particular sector.

“I don’t know this very well, but I would have suspected that one thing that might be true is that there is a peculiar set of circumstances that exist in East Asia and Southeast Asia that have made it hypercompetitive in this particular sector.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

05 / belief

If you can go and spend a long period of time, like a couple of months, which most people can’t, then I think trying to find an excuse to live in a village is an incredible experience.

“If you can go and spend a long period of time, like a couple of months, which most people can’t, then I think trying to find an excuse to live in a village is an incredible experience.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

06 / belief

I think of the time that I’ve spent helping people think through what their options are, and reevaluating those opportunities suddenly changes all of their returns to investment.

“I think of the time that I’ve spent helping people think through what their options are, and reevaluating those opportunities suddenly changes all of their returns to investment.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

09 / belief

If you look at the data, as I think Jeffrey Herbst just pointed out, among others, there are quite a few fairly small countries — Lesotho, Gambia, Guinea, Sao Tome.

“If you look at the data, as I think Jeffrey Herbst just pointed out, among others, there are quite a few fairly small countries — Lesotho, Gambia, Guinea, Sao Tome.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

10 / belief

You have a famous paper on sweatshop jobs in Ethiopia, and one thing you found, I believe, is how often people quit these jobs, or they become unhappy with the jobs.

“You have a famous paper on sweatshop jobs in Ethiopia, and one thing you found, I believe, is how often people quit these jobs, or they become unhappy with the jobs.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

11 / belief

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.

“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.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

15 / preference

I think if you don’t know anybody deserving of help or that needs something, or if you don’t have a personal connection to a place, as an impersonal way to give effectively, it’s probably the best way we have.

“I think if you don’t know anybody deserving of help or that needs something, or if you don’t have a personal connection to a place, as an impersonal way to give effectively, it’s probably the best way we have.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

16 / evaluation

Going back to this question you had earlier about why was there so much instability in the years after the war, I think a set of misdrawn borders and trying to find a political equilibrium where all of these groups have to live together is one source of that political shock and instability.

“Going back to this question you had earlier about why was there so much instability in the years after the war, I think a set of misdrawn borders and trying to find a political equilibrium where all of these groups have to live together is one source of that political shock and instability.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

17 / preference

I would say I would spend one week in Kenya and Tanzania seeing a mix of the large popular and small never-visited wildlife parks, partly because they’re amazingly well run, and they deserve to be rewarded with tourist dollars, but also because they’re incredible experiences.

“I would say I would spend one week in Kenya and Tanzania seeing a mix of the large popular and small never-visited wildlife parks, partly because they’re amazingly well run, and they deserve to be rewarded with tourist dollars, but also because they’re incredible experiences.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

18 / prediction

If war happens, then it’s going to be that much more catastrophic, which is maybe a pattern we’ve seen over the past century. But it comes back to this calculus of not feeling like there’s some equilibrium level of violence that just happens because violence happens, but that this is something that is often strenuously avoided because it just pulls people so far back.

“If war happens, then it’s going to be that much more catastrophic, which is maybe a pattern we’ve seen over the past century. But it comes back to this calculus of not feeling like there’s some equilibrium level of violence that just happens because violence happens, but that this is something that is often strenuously avoided because it just pulls people so far back.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

19 / evaluation

I don’t like to be that crude because I’m actually a little bit of a skeptic of this knee-jerk to policing: “We need more police, and we need more investment in security resources.

“I don’t like to be that crude because I’m actually a little bit of a skeptic of this knee-jerk to policing: “We need more police, and we need more investment in security resources.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

20 / evaluation

There’s an answer to what I think my production function looks like, but the answer for most people — when I was in my maybe third year, and you do something, as you know, in academia called your third-year review, where your senior colleagues debate what you’re doing right or wrong, and then give you basically no feedback.

“There’s an answer to what I think my production function looks like, but the answer for most people — when I was in my maybe third year, and you do something, as you know, in academia called your third-year review, where your senior colleagues debate what you’re doing right or wrong, and then give you basically no feedback.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

21 / evaluation

I tend to think we’re maybe a bit glib about saying that people are resilient because there’s a lot of pain or problems that don’t necessarily show up in our data but turn out to be really important.

“I tend to think we’re maybe a bit glib about saying that people are resilient because there’s a lot of pain or problems that don’t necessarily show up in our data but turn out to be really important.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

22 / evaluation

People use it to think about something that we think of as bargaining and the commitment problem, which is that massive power shifts can lead to war, partly because it becomes difficult for the temporarily powerful person to be paid off not to exercise their advantage and, through a first strike, eliminate.

“People use it to think about something that we think of as bargaining and the commitment problem, which is that massive power shifts can lead to war, partly because it becomes difficult for the temporarily powerful person to be paid off not to exercise their advantage and, through a first strike, eliminate.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

23 / evaluation

I think of Africa, which is the site of many of these wars, as undergoing a period of political instability followed by consolidation after a rapid and unexpected decolonization — at the same time that you’re having experimentation with economic systems and political organizations that turned out to be failures, which interacted with that to make it so much worse.

“I think of Africa, which is the site of many of these wars, as undergoing a period of political instability followed by consolidation after a rapid and unexpected decolonization — at the same time that you’re having experimentation with economic systems and political organizations that turned out to be failures, which interacted with that to make it so much worse.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

24 / evaluation

Any description of African society, African culture, conflict, or politics that relies on this, I have to believe it’s there because so many people have written books. But it doesn’t seem to be a first- or even second-order determinant of what’s going on when I think about the conflicts I know, the politicians I know, and the decisions that get made.

“Any description of African society, African culture, conflict, or politics that relies on this, I have to believe it’s there because so many people have written books. But it doesn’t seem to be a first- or even second-order determinant of what’s going on when I think about the conflicts I know, the politicians I know, and the decisions that get made.”
Speaker
Chris Blattman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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