Kyle Roth

I started taking notes later in the book. There were lots of good insights in the first half. Sorry! broadband access permalink Getting the internet to rural communities is a big deal for the rural economy. Just like electricity, it’s something that needs government support because there isn’t the economic incentive for ISPs to reach some of these locations. ethical AI permalink The focus on AI now is not just a fad, but a convergence of several trends that have made AI the next logical step: the increased computational resources, flexible access to compute through the cloud, etc.

Our subconscious not only manages bodily systems but also performs processing of features in our experience that our conscious does not have time to process. This has been proven in lots of experiments where people have been given subconscious cues to help them solve problems, but the people are unaware of this and make up answers when asked to explain how they came to conclusions. It’s important to trust these judgments that seem to come out of nowhere, but if we try to explain them we’ll start trying to provide rational answers, which can be totally false or misleading. (Think about when one of the jurors in the OJ Simpson trial said that race had absolutely nothing to do with their judgment.)

We are extremely lucky to be here, and even more lucky to be able to appreciate it. Let’s not waste it.

This book is about empowering women by giving them the freedom to make their own choices and speak for themselves. She said some important things about stigma in society. She talked specifically about the stigma of not talking about birth control, but she made general statements too. It’s each person’s responsibility to work against stigma and stop the human tendency to cast out others. I need to spend more time thinking about my own stigmas and biases, so that I can help those who are marginalized.

An important question is how much we need to fight income inequality. Is it fair to have 35% growth in the upper class and 3% growth in the lower class? Where is a good balance? We have grown a lot richer since the Industrial Revolution, because we’ve become more productive. Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Globalization is good because it allows us to buy cheaper, better products. We can offset short-run job loss by paying or giving human capital to those who lose their jobs to globalization Policies often don’t do what we intend them to do, because they change people’s decisions for the involved choice. Often, the best way to do policy is to incentivize the appropriate decision. E.g. Tax the purchase of inefficient cars on a scale, so car makers want to produce cheaper efficient cars to compete. Do that instead of simply banning cars with 18 mpg or less. The Fed’s job is to control the availability of credit through setting their interest rates, so banks who borrow from them can adjust their interest rates accordingly. It’s really hard with so many factors, but Bernanke et. al. did an outstanding job. Things that help an economy or nation develop: effective government institutionsproperty rightsno excessive regulationhuman capitalgeography (countries between the tropics have more diseases and less productive crops)openness to traderesponsible fiscal and monetary policy(natural resources don’t matter)democracypeaceinclusion of women in economic production We can help underdeveloped countries, but the question of how is complicated. Certainly, we should open our borders to their products.Jeffrey Sachs – all these countries need is capital, so developed countries should invest in them (e.g. through comprehensively fighting AIDS)William Easterly – We can’t measure effectiveness based on inputs. That’s like rating Hollywood movies by budget size. “Instead we should do small, context-sensitive projects with measurable benefits.“But most of the developing world’s problems come from bad government policy.