Category: WEEKNOTES

What I’ve been doing

1-I was finally able to send some of the preliminary paperwork needed to get our scientific nonprofit properly positioned. The paperwork had to be mailed as physical documents, which means I need to be patient on two counts: (i) time needed to ship the documents; (ii) time needed for the government to process the documents and get back to us.

2-We submitted another preprint to a journal. Another manuscript draft is being prepared to be disseminated as a preprint. I’m really grateful to God for the team we have!

What I need to take care of

1-I made small progress on my thought piece on accelerating behavioral research in Africa. I’ll continue chipping away at as I’m able.

What I’ve been reading

1-Finished reading “City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas“ by Roger Crowley (2013). For some reason, I kept expecting to learn about the Medici family – not knowing that I was mixing up Venice with Florence. Regardless, this was a really interesting book. I thought the story of Venice’s role in the 4th Crusade was really wild and that led me down some rabbit holes about the Church history in the 11th – 14th century A.D. If I have the cognitive bandwidth for it, I might share some more comprehensive notes from this book.

2-While learning about Church history, I came across a short book called The Didache. It was a quick read (about 20 minutes), and many sections felt like a mix of the Sermon on the Mount, the New Testament epistles, and the Wisdom books (e.g., Proverbs). That said, some other sections sounded very foreign to my 21st-century sensibilities, e.g., the discussion about no fasts on Mondays and Thursdays to avoid acting like hypocrites. Interesting.

3-Continued working my way through Myles Munroe’s (2010) Rediscovering the Kingdom 

4-Started reading The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe by Elizabeth Eisenstein (2012). I’m reading this for the same reason I picked up ‘City of Fortune’ – I want to understand how people from historical times dealt with systemic overhauls that played out in their lifetimes. Just like today where there’s a pre-LLM world and post-LLM one, the sudden availability of books and its attendant explosion of knowledge due to the ubiquity of the printing press fomented societal change in the 15th – 17th centuries. There might be lessons for us from that era.

5-Still re-reading “A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World” by Gregory Clark (2007). The interesting idea for this week was the negative correlation between a society’s cleaniness and the living standards of its people during the pre-Industrial era. Pre-1800s European cities were filthy, and Clark argues these unsanitary conditions allowed diseases to spread very easily in these cities, which in turn depleted their populations – consequently improving the living standards of those who survived. In contrast, pre-1800s Asian socities were extremely clean, which reduced the ease with which communicable diseases could spread – leading to an increased population and lower standards of living. I’ve read accounts of European explorers recounting their visits to African communities in the 18th-19th century and remarking on how clean those communities were. I wonder to what extent Clark’s theory about the relationship between cleaniness and living standards would generalize to the African context.

What I’ve been doing

1-I made a big dent in refining one of the manuscripts the team and I are working on. I don’t know how I was able to harness the cognitive bandwidth necessary to make this much progress as I’ve been busier than usual at my 9-to-5. Perhaps it’s because I’m actually excited about this one – it’s a mixed methods empirical study on health insurance in Nigeria. A few more late nights and I think this will be ready to be shared as a preprint.

2-One of our preprints was submitted to a journal and now the waiting game begins. Another preprint is currently being prepared for submission to another journal.

What I need to take care of

1-Wasn’t able to complete the additional documentation to qualify for tax privileges. I’ll try to work on that in the coming week

2-The thought piece on accelerating behavioral research in Africa is still waiting for my attention

What I’ve been reading

1-Still re-reading “A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World” by Gregory Clark (2007). The key idea I got this week is that most societies (European or otherwise) before the Industrial era in the 1800s found a way to limit fertility along Malthusian lines. This was likely done through societal norms (e.g., females having the option of marrying late or not marrying at all, or the practice of female infanticide) rather than through deliberate individual actions.

2-Started reading “City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas“ by Roger Crowley (2013), because I’ve been lately fascinated by how people from historical times dealt with systemic overhauls that played out in their lifetimes. Venetian innovations in trade, book-keeping, and bureaucracy, for instance, ultimately ushered in the Renaissance Era.

3-Continued working my way through Myles Munroe’s (2010) Rediscovering the Kingdom 

4-Continued reading Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (1942). Screwtape, the older demon, understands that a person whose walk with God is dependent only on an emotional experience is likely to fall away at some point. The way a marriage will work if both parties continue to put in the work after the honeymoon phase, is the exact same way our relationship with God will deepen over time if we put in the work and consistently do what Apostle Paul called ‘renewing of the mind’ .

5-Two artifacts stood out for me this week. The first is Ezra Klein’s (2023) essay ‘Beyond the ‘Matrix’ Theory of the Mind’ where he highlights how LLMs can produce a ton of information in a second, but someone somewhere has to spend brain power making value judgements about the utility of that information. This can’t be done by having someone upload information directly into your brain. Rather, you must slow down, invest time, make connections to what you already know (domain expertise) and attend to the thoughts bubbling up within you in that context. The second is a video I stumbled across on YouTube showing Terrence McKenna high on mushrooms and speaking in something that sounds like other tongues. His glossolalia topographically sounded like a Christian’s prayer language – but McKenna clearly wasn’t filled with THE Spirit! I have also heard people approaching Biblical narratives with rational lenses arguing that the fruit that granted Adam and Eve knowledge of good and evil may have had psychoactive properties that altered states of consciousness. Interesting.

What I’ve been doing

1-I got notified that my scientific non-profit is now formally registered with the government. To be honest, it happened faster than I expected! What’s left now is a few more submissions to qualify us for certain tax privileges.

2-In last week’s update, I talked about how we’ve published some of our work as preprints. The thing about preprints, however, is that they are not peer-reviewed. So, the next logical step for us is for us to send our work out for feedback from other experts in our field. This past week, the team and I got one of our preprints submitted to a journal. Sometimes, this could be a somewhat engaged process as each journal has their different formatting requirements. The bottom line, however, is that we got the paper submitted – and now we wait for their feedback.

What I need to take care of

1-I made a tiny pinch (not quite a dent) into one of the 4 manuscript drafts the team and I are working on. I need to try to make a bit more than a respectable dent this coming week.

2-As I mentioned in the previous section, there are a few more documentation I need to submit in the coming week to qualify the non-profit for certain tax privileges.

3-The thought piece on accelerating behavioral research in Africa is still the works. Adding this item to this section is just a way of keeping this at the front of my mind. I’m giving myself till the end of June to at least get a second draft ready for feedback.

What I’ve been reading

1-I’m currently re-reading “A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World” by Gregory Clark (2007). Here’s some of the ideas that resonated:

• Clark was able to keep track of the price of commodities and labor as far back as 13th century England. Obviously, this was possible because there were records documenting these details. Sometimes, I wonder how much of sub-Saharan Africa history has been lost to time because of the impermanence of their record-keeping practices (e.g., griots, oral tradition).
• Some modern African societies have wage rates that are below what was obtainable in pre-industrial England. Despite these, their populations continue to grow at rates higher than that of pre-industrial Europe.
• Clark uses some really interesting variables as a proxy measure for living standards. One was calories consumed per day. Hunter-gathers had a more varied diet than pre-industrial Europeans.
• Engel’s Law: The poorer the family, the larger the proportion of its income that will be spent on food. A corollary of this law is that poorer families will also devote a large portion of their income to cheap calories, such as rice, wheat, while spending a lesser proportion on expensive calories, e.g., meat, eggs, milk, pepper, or tea.
• If the majority of income in a society is spent on food, much of the labor in that society will go towards food production – leaving little for aesthetics, or cultural refinement
• Black Americans who colonized Liberia in the 19th century had high death rates from local diseases – suggesting that sub-Saharan Africans, perhaps did not have any genetic protection from the diseases prevalent in the area at the time.
• In pre-Industrial England, workers often worked 10 or more hours a day for 300 days in a year. The work was also often continous and monotonous. In comparison, hunter-gatherers had much lower labor inputs. For instance, they might conusme about 1700 kilocalories a day, yet only “work” (i.e., hunt or forage) for less than two hours in a day – a remarkable return on labor input!
• Marshall Sahlin’s findings: hunter-gatherers have “primitive affluence” whereby they have an abundance of leisure, rather than material commodities.

2-Two essays stood out for me this week. The first is Elan Barenholtz’s essay You’re an LLM. Deal with it. Think about it. When you speak, most times, you only have a general idea of what you want to say. The exact order with which the words come out of your mouth is at best a very rapid prediction based on your experiences and personal history. Which is somewhat the same way LLMs work! The second is Ines Lee’s For anyone worried about being replaced by AI: The Theory of The T-Shaped Professional where she talks about being a T-shaped professional who can “can combine deep expertise in one area (the vertical stem of the “T”) and broad, functional knowledge across multiple disciplines (the horizontal bar of the “T”)”

What I’ve been doing

I feel I have to provide some context for this update to make sense. So, last year, I soft-launched a scientific non-profit. You can read this two-pager to get a quick overview of the kind of research we’re doing. I’m currently in the process of getting it formally registered. Right now, there are two full-time research associates and one intern on the team. We also work with two more senior researchers on a project-to-project basis. So far, we have managed to put 5 preprints out the year, with the most recent one published earlier this week.

What I need to take care of

1-I made a post on LinkedIn in 2024 where I talked about how microgrants may accelerate behavioral research in Africa. Since then, I have been working on a thought piece to better explain how that could play out. It’s about 60% done but I probably won’t be done with it for another month or so as I’ve been busier than usual in my 9-to-5. I’m just putting it out there as a form of soft committment to complete this piece.

2-In my non-profit, we have about 3 – 4 drafts in different stages of completion. I recognize that I’m somewhat of a bottleneck in the process of getting these drafts ready to be shared as preprints. I plan to move the process along on at least 2 of these drafts next week. Hopefully, I’ll have updates on that front by the time I’m providing updates next week.

What I’ve been reading

1-I’m currently re-reading “A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World” by Gregory Clark (2007). Here’s some of the ideas that have resonated so far:

• The technological advances during the industrial age in the 1800s led to short-term increases in income that were eventually lost due to increases in the population
• Prior to the industrial revolution, human economies were subject to the Malthusian trap where things like wars, violence, bad sanitation, and other similar issues reduced population pressures and increased the standards of living for those who survived. Whereas, other interventions, such as stability, order, public health, and similar positive developments caused the population to explode while impoverishing societies
• I had always thought that institutions were the difference between societies that thrive and those merely surviving. Clark argues that it’s not that simple – these institutions were in existence long before the economic explosion in the 1800s happened. If anything, institutions play a minor direct role in the economic performance of a society
• In the period between 1600 and 1800, China and Japan were headed in the same direction as England in terms of values and the kinds of institutions in place. Yet, the Industrial revolution did not take place in the aforementioned Asian nations. Clark argues that this could have played out because English elites had more children that the non-elite, whereas in the Asian societies, the elite there were only marginally more fecund that the non-elite.
• Societies with a long history of settled agarian practices had a cultural advantage that translated into the development of institutions that made economic productivity more possible down the line. Clark goes on to argue that modern production technologies developed by rich countries are designed for labor forces that are disciplined and engaged. To maximize productivity, error rates need to be kept low. When workers are lacking in discipline and engagement, the production technologies only become useful when little is needed from workers – so as to keep error rates as low as possible.
• People’s happiness is often not determined on their own well-being, but how well they are doing relative to some comparison group.
• The substinence income in a Malthusian society doesn’t necessarily mean that the people were teetering on the brink of starvation.
• William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet argued that poverty and misery in the world wasn’t due to human nature but due to weak institutions. Malthus, on the other hand, argued that these vices were not due to institutions, and as a consequence, changes in these institutions cannot fix these issues. He further argued that any efforts to redistribute income to the poor would lead to more poor people in the long run who are maybe employed. In other words, during the Malthusian era (pre-industrial 1800s), good government would have only been able to improve material living standards in the short-run before population growth made things worse for everyone in the long-run.

2-I’ve wanted to get into C. S. Lewis for sometime now. I read a few chapters in Mere Christianity (1952) some weeks ago, but recently pivoted to Screwtape Letters (1942), which I’ve been enjoying. Here’s a few notes from my reading this week:

• When thinking about the spiritual realm, people tend to fall into 2 categories: (1) the materialists who don’t believe in anything beyond what can be sensed with the five senses and accessed through logic; (2) the pie-in-the-sky spiritual idealists who are so engrossed on the unseen that they are useless in day-to-day activities
• Back in Lewis’s day, it was the weekly press that was fighting for man’s attention, today, we have social media and LLMs. The more things change, the more they remain the same!
• Screwtape is a seasoned demon providing his nephew, Wormwood, strategies for depleting the Kingdom of God and converting man to the devil. Screwtape warns Wormwood against using arguments to win over man – because once a man’s cognitive capabilities are awake, he may see the rationale in going the way of God. Personally, I don’t think you can reason your way into faith in God. At some point, reason will have to take the back seat.
• I found it funny how the senior demon advises against using the hard sciences as an argument against the existence of God. I’m assuming it’s because the book was written closer in time to when quantum physics was disrupting what had been known about the nature of reality.

3-I’m also working my way through Myles Munroe’s (2010) Rediscovering the Kingdom but won’t be sharing any notes from that here, at least not yet.

4-Two essays stood out for me this week. The first is Bea’s How to curate your personal canon and the importance of creation of a personal collection of artifacts (books, songs, essays, movies, conversations, etc) that have shaped your worldview – not because they are trending or viral, but because they affected you. The second is Lionel Page’s Why and how political ideas matter where he compares two different views of ideology: Karl Marx’s view which sees ideology as a tool used by the elite to justify inequality; and Max Weber’s view that ideology has independent power to influence society’s behavior. Ma(r)x vs Max.