All of jablevine's Comments + Replies
Another case study I'd throw out is Somaliland.[1] Somaliland is the top bit of the horn of Africa, usually labeled as part of the better-known Somalia.
It's one of those fascinating corners of the world which is in the grey area between country and not.[2] Its government exercises sovereign authority within its borders, it fields an army and enforces its borders, it issues and backs its own currency; compared to Somalia, Somaliland is far more stable and democratic. However, it is only recognized as a sovereign state by Taiwan (not a UN state itself), and ...
Summary: Good news!! If you read this post last year, about 50,000 fewer people are dying each year than you thought.
I'm very sceptical of the WHO estimate of 81,000-138,000 annual fatalities. Following the citations:
- That WHO stat (citation 6 in the report linked in footnote 2, note that link automatically downloads a pdf) cites Gutierrez et al. 2017.
- Gutierrez et al. have a range of 81,410 to 137,880. This range is not a confidence interval, but "combined upper estimates of mortality" (page 2) — meaning these numbers are each upper bounds. Gutierrez
Compare to "The best and worst experiences you had last week probably happened when you were dreaming."
tl;dr - Compared to waking life, dreams are pretty wild and emotionally intense. Example - in a dream last week all my teeth fell out which was pretty distressing, and nothing as interesting happened to me in waking life. How emotional/ extreme an experience is seems like a good proxy for how good or bad it is. So probably the best and worse experiences you've had last week were whilst you were dreaming.
And also gwern's comment:
...My own observat
I downloaded A Swim in a Pond in the Rain and read "Master and Man" and "And yet they drove on" because of this post. Thanks for recommending!
"Elite Capture of Foreign Aid" is a relatively recent (and high-profile) attempt at quantifying the loss of foreign aid to "leakage". Here's the abstract:
...Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management, but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks such as civil conflicts, natural disasters, and financial crises, a
Yeah, the conflict in Laascaanood is a bit of a damper. But the rebels control less maybe 15% of the country's land area, and ~5% of its population.[1] Further, Somaliland has never really asserted its sovereignty over the city,[2] and it's not particularly important.[3] It wasn't clear in Phillips why Somaliland attempted to include the Sool region in their secession from Somalia, as it voted against the constitution in a referendum. This current flare-up is a continuation of the (longer border conflict with Puntland)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puntlan... (read more)