YouSaid · the spoken record

Christopher Blattman

lines on the record: 56
first: 2022-06-27
most recent: 2022-06-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“So, I guess I wanted us to focus on the activity of really prolonged battling and fighting. The thing where whether at every level, right, at a village, it could be ethnic groups pulling out the machetes and destroying property and setting things on fire day after day after day. And at a gang level, it could be trading bullets day after day after day. And at a country level, it could be sustained pitched battles, right? This is the activity that I wanted to sort of, and I wanted to say this is ruinous and costly and all sides strive to avoid it. And they rather they prefer to compete in other nefarious, bitter ways that are simply not as costly, right? And so, you know, so I'd like to sum it up as enemies prefer to loathe in peace.”
2022-06-27 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Fight, with Christopher Blattman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Science of strategy and game theory for almost 50 60 years people like Thomas Shelling, but I think also goes back to Mao, who and von Klausowitz, so great military generals who have pointed out that politics and warfare are sort of two different means of getting basically bargaining, basically attaining what you want versus your adversary, and that one of them is just bloody and costly. And so we ought to prefer to find politics to bargaining through bloodshed. And so I think it was that it was actually this theoretical point. And then only once I sort of realized that did I start to realize all of the, you know, the selection that I was doing on my own.”
2022-06-27 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Fight, with Christopher Blattman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think after a while, I think I started seeing it everywhere, but it's not so, so, and I start the book off with some episodes of peace and the normal state of peace and gang wars in Medellin, which is a place I've long been working. But I think it was actually a really deep point that has come from.”
2022-06-27 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Fight, with Christopher Blattman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and actually, it's a really deep and common social science concept. I mean, social scientists is called selection on the dependent variable. And it's like one of the most basic analytical areas you can make in any field. And it's, so I could just focus on the hate speech or just focus on the conflict or just focus on the sick and never pay attention to the other cases. Partly that's just going to make you really demoralized, which is not a great situation to be in. But mostly it's a problem because you're going to get you're going to diagnose the situation completely wrongly if you're looking at like this really select set of cases. And so I'm more just sort of pointing out that if we want to understand why these bad things happen, we actually want to compare them to all the cases when they don't. And that's the basis for understanding why we fight.”
2022-06-27 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Fight, with Christopher Blattman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so what I merely want is to do is to sort of put that in context, sort of like a doctor who treats the critically ill but remembers that most of us are healthy and that it's possible to get healthy, to actually remember that the normal state of humanity is not violence and that the really powerful incentives are pushing us to find some other way to divide the spoils.”
2022-06-27 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Fight, with Christopher Blattman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I mean, it's a, you know, I didn't write a book called Why We Don't Fight, so I don't want to belabor this point. I think it's a useful starting point to remember that it's not our natural state. Rather, you know, it also feels like a strange moment to be saying this because we have this sort of looming great power war perhaps and what's going on in Ukraine. But two weeks into that conflict, India accidentally launched a cruise missile at Pakistan and common suit. as it mostly has between India and Pakistan for decades.”
2022-06-27 · Intelligence Squared · Why We Fight, with Christopher Blattman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT