Results for “knausgaard” 69 found
My Conversation with Atul Gawande
Here is the podcast and transcript (no video), Atul was in top form. We covered the marginal value of health care, the progress of AI in medicine, whether we should fear genetic engineering, whether the checklist method applies to marriage (maybe so!), whether FDA regulation is too tough, whether surgical procedures should be more tightly regulated, Michael Crichton and Stevie Wonder, wearables, what makes him weep, Knausgaard and Ferrante, why surgeons leave sponges in patients, how he has been so successful, his own performance as a medical patient, and much more.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: A lot of critics have charged that to get a new drug through the FDA, it takes too many years and too much money, and that somehow the process should be liberalized. Do you agree or disagree?
GAWANDE: I generally disagree. It’s a trade-off in values at some basic level. In the 1950s, we had no real FDA, and you had the opportunity to put out, to innovate in all kinds of ways, and that innovation capability gave us modern cardiac surgery and gave us steroids and antibiotics, but it also gave us frontal lobotomies, and it gave us the Tuskegee experiment and a variety of other things.
The process that we have regulation around both the ethics of what we’re doing and that we have some safety process along the way is totally appropriate. I think a lot of lessons about when the HIV community became involved in the FDA process to drive approaches that smoothed and sped up the decision-making process, and also got the public enough involved to be able to say . . . That community said, “Look, there are places where we’re willing to take greater risks for the sake of speed.”
People are trying to treat the FDA process as a technical issue. When what it is, is it’s an issue about what are the risks we are genuinely willing to take, and what are the risks that we’re not?
And:
COWEN: The idea of nudge.
GAWANDE: I think overrated.
COWEN: Why?
GAWANDE: I think that there are important insights in nudge units and in that research capacity, but when you step back and say, “What are the biggest problems in clinical behavior and delivery of healthcare?” the nudges are focused on small solutions that have not demonstrated capacity for major scale.
The kind of nudge capability is something we’ve built into the stuff we’ve done, whether it’s checklists or coaching, but it’s been only one. We’ve had to add other tools. You could not get to massive reductions in deaths in surgery or childbirth or massive improvements in end-of-life outcomes based on just those behavioral science insights alone. We’ve had to move to organizational insights and to piece together multiple kinds of layers of understanding in order to drive high-volume change in healthcare delivery.
Definitely recommended, this was one of my favorite “episodes.”
My pick for a summer beach read
The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest
By Cixin LiuChinese science fiction, or Chinese ghost story, or maybe even Chinese reinvention of the novel? These are the works of fiction I am most enthusiastic about since Elena Ferrante and Karl Ove Knausgaard. I say read a plot summary of the first volume before starting the book, unless you are inclined to read it twice, as I did. — TYLER COWEN
That is from Bloomberg, the link has picks from other regular contributorrs.
What I’ve been reading
1. Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy. LitHub wrote: “Even in the wake of Knausgaard and Ferrante it is hard to find a literary phenomenon that has swept Europe quite like the autobiographical project of Édouard Louis.” I don’t know that I enjoyed this book very much, but it was an effective fictional experience. Most of all it scared me that such a tale of poverty and abuse could be so popular in Europe these days. Recommended, but in a sobering way; I would rather this had been a bestseller in 1937.
2. Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs. A novel about the consequences of a Delhi terrorist bombing that is both deep and compelling to read, full of surprises as well. Here is a useful NYT review.
3. Edward T. O’Donnell, Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age. This focuses more on George’s connection to social and labor movements, and less on George as an economist or land theorist, than I would have liked. Still, it is an information-rich narrative that most of all brings the times and movements surrounding George to life.
4. Andrew Marr, We British: The Poetry of a People. A good introduction to its topic, most of all for the mid-twentieth century, with plenty of poems reproduced. Here is a Louis MacNeice poem, Snow:
The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes —
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of your hands —
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
What I’ve been reading
1. Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds. A super-fun but oddly uneven biography of Kahneman and Tversky, a meditation on the nature of collaboration, and a history of the early stages of behavioral economics (economics?) and for that matter a history of Israel in some of its early decades. There are cameos from Rapaport, Thaler, Gigerenzer, and others. Why did the Israelis take so readily to the idea of an economic psychology, compared to the Anglos?
2. Michel Faber, Undying: A Love Story. The pages are arranged like poems with stanzas, but it reads more like prose. It is the moving story of the death of Faber’s wife by cancer, very short and interesting throughout. So far published only in the UK.
3. Robert R. Reilly, Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music. A highly useful and to the point guide to classical music for the periods you probably do not listen to. It is strongest on the “intermediate” composers, such as Vagn Holmboe, Robert Simpson, and Edmund Rubbra. It makes a persuasive case for the 17 string quartets of Heitor Villa-Lobos, we’ll see if that was $40 well-spent.
4. Karl Ove Knausgaard and Fredrik Ekelund, Home and Away: Writing the Beautiful Game. This book is a series of letters, mostly about soccer. They are more substantive than you might be expecting, but still you have to love both Knausgaard and soccer to enjoy this one, on those I am only one for two.
5. Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis. Staying ahead of the Curve. This is about how cities are failing the middle class throughout much of the world. At the same time, suburbs are seeing a new poverty and urbanization is not always translating into rising living standards around the world. This book is where the problems of urban economics “are at” right now.
“If you could recommend only one book for me to read…”
That is a question from a very smart person, over thirty years of age, who claims not to have read very much (I don’t know how much).
So which book should I recommend?
Conditional on the person knowing me, the idea of simply introducing economics is not going to win, even if that would be the correct recommendation for many others. And “Collected Works” are not allowed.
How about a broadly philosophical novel, such as Don Quixote or Homer’s Odyssey or In Search of Lost Time? Moby-Dick? A play of Shakespeare? A current favorite, such as Ferrante or Knausgaard?
How about a perfectly constructed travel book, touting the virtues of a new and magical place? But most travel books I find dull, unsatisfying, and too scattered with wasteful, overly subjective sentences about sunsets and train trips.
A didactic, moralizing book, perhaps on charity or Effective Altruism?
For many people music may be more powerful than the written word, so perhaps the recent Jan Swafford biography of Beethoven, or John Eliot Gardiner’s book on Bach, or any number of good books on Mozart. A critical guidebook to some of the best movies available? Almost everyone can glean new ideas for their Netflix queue, even if they already have seen lots of films.
I don’t know of a biography which is inspirational for everyone or even most people, and I figure an intelligent person older than thirty already has been exposed to the world’s major religions.
How about a book which is a compendium for a hobby, such as a bird watcher’s guide, a Sotheby’s auction catalog, or a Fuchsia Dunlop cookbook?
I keep finding myself drawn to recommend a book which leads the advice recipient away from books, rather than toward them. Is that a strength or weakness of the book medium?
Tuesday assorted links
1. “And moreover, the moment that anyone expresses outrage, he will call them a “mood affiliator…””
2. “You can say anything you like about sex nowadays, but the moment the topic turns to fiscal policy, there are endless things that everyone knows, that are even written up in textbooks and scholarly articles, but no one is supposed to talk about in public.” That is David Graeber, in one of the most bizarre pieces I have read of late.
4. Will the Cadillac Tax boost wages? Is Spotify hurting the music industry?
5. Knausgaard on Houllebecq does not disappoint.
6. The arms race for anti-drone weapons. And Google wishes to enter drone delivery.
What I’ve been reading, and viewing
1. Stephen Witt, How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy. Most of all, Learned how much hard work and ingenuity was behind the MP3 standard, in any case a good and useful book.
2. P.W. Singer and August Cole, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War. More of a speculative exercise than a traditional novel — what if the Chinese could beat the Americans? — but still a fun read and a book that people are talking about at high levels.
3. Vendela Vida, The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty: A Novel. To the point and lots of fun. A recently divorced woman travels to Morocco and surprises start to happen. Occupies that intriguing space between “not deep” but also “not superficial.”
4. Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend. This writer has been called a “female Neapolitan Knausgaard,” arguably a deliberate oxymoron. It took me my second read through to “get it,” which I suppose means I am not the natural target audience. But I am very glad I gave it that second read, and this is in fact the female Neapolitan Knausgaard, in four volumes by the way.
5. Red Army, a film documentary about the hockey team of the Soviet Red Army, its rise and fall. Chock full of social science, I loved this movie, philosophical too, even though I am not especially interested in hockey. One of my favorite documentaries.
What I’ve been reading
1. The Seventh Day, by Yu Hua. This is perhaps my favorite of all the contemporary Chinese novels I have read: “Lacking the money for a burial plot, he must roam the afterworld aimlessly, without rest.”
2. Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman, The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation. Have you ever wondered how recipes, fashion, fonts, and comedians’ jokes function without strong intellectual property protection in the classic sense? We have needed a book on that and now we have one, this is both fun and instructive.
3. Stanley G. Payne and Palacios, Franco: A Personal and Political Biography. This is readable, reasonably comprehensive, and unlike many competing books shows clearly that Franco, whatever his flaws may have been, was no buffoon. A useful corrective to the usual treatments, even if many readers will feel the authors go too far in their sympathies for Franco.
4. Karl Knausgaard, Dancing in the Dark, My Struggle volume IV. I like it, and the tales about trying to bed down Nordic chicks as a teenager are compelling and sometimes hilarious, but overall it is not up to the exalted standards set by the first two volumes. So far this is out only in the UK.
5. The Greening of Asia, by Mark l. Clifford, a genuinely useful and informative book about some of the most important environmental dilemmas, very even handed and a model of clarity.
6. Robert P. Murphy, Choice, Cooperation, Enterprise and Human Action. If you want a clear, well-written, 2015-based, non-obscure, non-Galician version of Ludwig Mises, this is your book.
For the specialist I can heartily recommend Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock, by Stephen W. Kress and Derrick Z. Jackson, Yale University Press.
Assorted links
1. Gett: The Trail of Viviane Ansalem is an excellent movie.
2. Galen Strawson reviews John Gray’s latest book.
3. Knausgaard, book four, is now out in the UK. I just ordered mine, it comes in 6-10 business days. And here is an interview with Knausgaard. And here is the new book by his wife Linda.
4. Scott Sumner on Rubio-Lee tax reform.
Is Norway an economically overrated country?
The petroleum sector is about 21% of gdp and half of exports. It’s not just that prices are down, rather quantities produced have been declining throughout the oughties. (That is the less well known angle here.) Currently Norwegian oil production is at about half of its 2000 level, and the sector is now bracing for 40,000 job cuts.
Here is from a recent internal economists’ critique of the country:
The group has documented how Norwegian politicians all too often have approved major investment projects that benefit far too few people, are poorly managed and plagued by huge budget overruns. Costs in general are way out of line in Norway, according to the group, while schools are mediocre, university students take too much time to earn degrees and mainland businesses outside the oil sector lack enough prestige to help Norway diversify its oil-based economy. The group mostly blamed the decline in productivity, though, on systemic inefficiencies and too much emphasis on local interests at the expense of the nation.
Is this entirely reassuring?:
Prime Minister Erna Solberg recently spoke of the need to invest in areas where people actually live…
After you adjust for wage differences, it costs 60% more to build a road in Norway than in Sweden.
“Approximately 600,000 Norwegians … who should be part of the labor force are outside the labor force, because of welfare, pension issues,” says Siv Jensen, the finance minister.
The country has largely deindustrialized, oil of course aside. And there is a fair amount of debt-financed consumption.
The country has falling and below average PISA scores by OECD standards.
Not everyone admires Norway’s immigration policy, and there is periodic talk of banning begging in the country. It seems there are only about 1000 beggars — mostly Roma — in a country of about five million, so you can take that as a sign they are not very good at processing discord. Far-right populist views do not seem to be going away.
For sure, Norway will be fine. Did I mention per capita income is over $100,000 a year and they have no current problems which show up in actual life? Hey, the “over” in “overrated” has to come from somewhere! The country also has the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund and owns about one percent of global stocks. Still, the idea of a rentier economy makes me nervous. When most people don’t “have to” do that well, often cultural erosion sets in.
They’ve made a new film : “Here’s a beautiful video of Iceland and Norway, time-lapsed and tilt-shifted to show the hustle, the bustle, and the beautiful splendor of Scandinavia from a more toy-like perspective. Called The Little Nordics, it was filmed by Dutch design team Damp Design. Happy Friday!”
Sorry Magnus, Karl — I know you guys are still underrated. It’s not for nothing that I used to call it “the Norwegian century.”
Addendum: Here is my earlier post on whether Sweden is an economically overrated country. At least it is cheaper to build a road there.
Assorted links
1. Book preview for 2015. Good stuff, including volume four of Knausgaard, a new Stephenson, a new Gaiman, a new Ishiguro, a Philip Glass memoir, perhaps the Niall Ferguson book on Kissinger will be interesting too. Here is another preview list. And who was nominated for a literary Nobel Prize in 1964.
2. The pick-up culture that is Chinese.
3. Another (right-wing?) view on why the leading public intellectual economists are left-wing. And more from Krugman.
4. Voodoo and Haitian mental health. And the culture that is Singapore.
My favorite fiction of 2014
Overall I found this to be a weak year for fiction, with most of the highly anticipated books disappointing me, including those of Murakami, MacEwan, and David Mitchell. Even the third volume of Knausgaard had extraordinary material through only about fifteen percent of the text; it was worth reading but most of it did not hold my attention very well. Here are the ones I really liked, with the first two being my favorites:
1. Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel. A missionary visits space aliens, some of whom embrace the Bible eagerly, almost too eagerly. Meanwhile he and his wife on earth write letters back and forth, showing they are the true aliens to each other. This is the fiction book this year I enjoyed most, and the one I kept on wanting to pick up after I had put it down. It is one of the most resonant portraits of space aliens I have read. yet without it being a science fiction novel. Here is a useful NYT review, describing the book as “defiantly unclassifiable.”
2. Emmanuel Carrère, Limonov, The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, A Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia. This work blends fiction, non-fiction, and occasional social science (was a non-corrupt transformation of the Soviet Union really possible?, Gaidar ultimately decided it wasn’t), but in terms of the subjective experience of the reader it is most like a novel. In addition to its literary quality, this is a deep book about why liberalism will never quite win over human nature. Here is an interesting Julian Barnes review, although it is insufficiently appreciative.
3. Andrés Neuman, Talking to Ourselves, “Women who know what they want never want anything interesting.”
4. Javier Cercas, Outlaws: A Novel, my earlier remarks are here.
5. Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. The Booker Prize winner, I thought this was at times too sentimental but an excellent story with some depth too. It deals with an Australian in a prisoner of war camp in WWII and his escapades surrounding that time in his life.
I have yet to start the new Colm Tóibín novel, and I often like his work. I read some of the new Sarah Waters, which struck me as a little too belabored for the time I had to give to it, but a quality work which will please her fans. Cesar Aira wrote some more and he continues to be interesting. I continued a reread of Moby Dick.
I am preparing my list of my favorite non-fiction books of the year and that should be ready before the Christmas shopping season starts.
In the meantime, what new fiction can you all recommend to me?
Friday assorted links
1. Is software outpacing hardware? A chess experiment pitting a smart phone against a desktop.
2. Guide to Aphex Twin (the new release is quite good).
3. Wimps.
4. “In Average Is Over, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen delivers good news and bad news with nearly equal enthusiasm.” Joseph Stromberg has a good review.
5. Knausgaard bingo.
Should we hope to live to very ripe old ages?
I say yes. A number of you have been asking me for comments on this now-famous Atlantic piece by Ezekiel Emanuel. You should read his whole argument, but here is one bit:
…here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.
Ezekiel basically wishes not to live beyond age 75. Not that he will do himself in, but he regards that as a limit past which it is probably not desirable to go. Just to be clear, I don’t read Emanuel as wishing to impose or even “nudge” this view on others, he is stating a personal vision. Still, it strikes me as a somewhat strange approach to understanding the value of a life or estimating when that value ends. The value of an individual life is to be sure somewhat ineffable, but for that same reason it is difficult for a life to lose so much of its value.
It is easy for me to see how a person could be a valuable role model for others past the age of seventy-five. I expect Ezekiel in particular to fulfill this function superbly. I still think frequently of the late Marvin Becker, the Princeton (later UM) Renaissance historian, who for me was an important role model at the age of seventy-seven. Marvin often used to say “Oh, to be seventy again!” He had more than his share of aches and pains, but he was always a comfort and joy to his wife Betty, and most likely to his children and grandchildren as well.
Or visit the list of words in Emanuel’s paragraph, cited above. Many people are “disabled” to begin with, and many other lives are “deprived” to begin with, for one thing most of the lives in the world’s poorer countries. But they are still, on the whole, extremely valuable lives. I don’t just mean that external parties should respect the rights and lives of those persons, but rather internally and individually those lives are of great value.
To pick another word from that paragraph, “creativity” is overrated and most of us do not have it in the first place. And if one does have it, perhaps its passing is in some ways a liberation rather than a personal tragedy.
I would rather be remembered as “that really old guy who hung on forever because he loved life so much” than as vibrant. At some points I felt this piece needed a…marginal revolution.
And to sound petty for a moment, I don’t want to pass away during the opening moments of a Carlsen-Caruana match, or before an NBA season has finished (well, it depends on the season), or before the final volumes of Knausgaard are translated into English. And this is a never-ending supply. The world is a fascinating place and I fully expect to appreciate it at the age of eighty, albeit with some faculties less sharp. What if the Fermi Paradox is resolved, or a good theory of quantum gravity developed? What else might be worth waiting for?
I cannot help but feel that Emanuel is overrating some key aspects of what are supposed to be making his current life valuable, and thus undervaluing his future life past age seventy-five. (See David Henderson too on that point.)
It was Dan Quisenberry who once said: “The future is much like the present, only longer.”
More to the point, and coming from the marginalist camp, there is Art Buchwald, who noted: “Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got.”