- Arvind's Newsletter
- Posts
- Arvind's Newsletter
1.New research from the University of Amsterdam’s LieLab reveals that you can spot a lie by focusing on how detailed and rich the story is.
If the descriptions are full of specifics, the story is probably true. Paying attention to this one signal makes it easier to spot a fib than if you try to consider multiple factors like body language or how convincing or emotional the story is, the study found. Study participants using the method could detect lies vs. the truth nearly 80% of the time, while those relying on intuition or multiple strategies did no better than random chance
2.Historian Ramachandra Guha opines that a new commentary offers a fresh perspective on Ambedkar’s ‘Annihilation of Caste’. Ambedkar’s programme for transforming Hindu society is far more thoroughgoing than that advocated by the Gandhians.
Guha writes, “In my personal list of books every Indian must read, four stand paramount. These, in order of their year of first publication, are MK Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909), Rabindranath Tagore’s Nationalism (1917), BR Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste (1936), and Jawaharlal Nehru’s The Discovery of India (1946). These works are both timely and timeless, speaking to the India in which they were published but continuing to speak to an India that would exist long after the writers themselves had gone.” Read on
3.China does not pick – or create – winners when giving subsidies to firms
This is based a new study by Lee Branstetter, Guangwei Li, and Mengjia Ren.
“Each year governments worldwide spend an enormous amount of money subsidising businesses. This column investigates the relationship between the allocation of government subsidies and total productivity for Chinese listed firms. The authors find little evidence that the Chinese government consistently ‘picks winners’. Firms’ ex-ante productivity is negatively correlated with subsidies received by firms, and subsidies appear to have a negative impact on firms’ ex-post productivity growth.”
4.Tim Ferris Show is one of my favourite podcasts. It can be listened to on Spotify or Apple podcasts. His recent interview with Michael Mauboussin of Morgan Stanley Investment Management and author of The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports and Investing, is worth listening to . The interview is wide ranging from how Great Investors Make Decisions, Harnessing The Wisdom of Crowds, Lessons from Race Horses, and More . The transcript is enclosed
https://tim.blog/2023/03/03/michael-mauboussin-transcript/
5.As Classic Novels Get Revised for Today’s Readers, a Debate About Where to Draw the Line
Agatha Christie, Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming. Classics are being reworked to remove offensive language. But some readers wonder, when does posthumous editing go too far?
The estates of several revered literary figures are altering portions of well-known works to conform to current sensibilities, stirring a heated debate among readers and the literary world over whether, and how, classics should be updated.
In Agatha Christie’s novels, terms like “Oriental,” “Gypsy” and “native” have been taken out, and revised versions of Ian Fleming’s “James Bond” books will be scrubbed of racist and sexist phrases. Classics by Roald Dahl have been stripped of adjectives like “fat” and “ugly” along with references to characters’ gender and skin color.
While some changes have been made to books published in decades past, often with little fanfare, many of the current attempts to remove offensive language are systematic and have drawn intense public scrutiny. The effort has left publishers and literary estates grappling with how to preserve an author’s original intent while ensuring that their work continues to resonate — and sell.
Finding the right balance is a delicate act: part business decision, part artful conjuring of the worldview of an author from another era in order to adapt it to the present.
