The world is fragmenting and we’re not ready. At the risk of banging on – why walking in nature is the perfect antidote to today’s ills. How AI is transforming the way we do science. More on the Adani saga. Happiness boils down to the quality of our social connections.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I understand Spinoza best not in the library but in the mountains” (Nicholas Kristof in the second article of this week’s selection)
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
Kristalina Georgieva, The Price of Fragmentation
(Foreign Affairs, September/October 2023)
Not a happy reading but a necessary one because this is the world we are facing. The world is fragmenting, and the IMF’s Managing Director warns us that the global economy is not ready to confront the shocks ahead. Fragmentation begins with increasing barriers to trade and investment and could end with countries’ breaking into rival economic blocs. Whatever its severity, fragmentation will hit global growth and will make the current weak economic picture even worse. Georgieva’s conclusion: “It’s going to be a bumpy ride; the international financial system needs to buckle up” (metered paywall that may require prior registration – reads in about 15 min).
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Nicholas Kristof, Hungry Mosquitoes, Irritable Bears and the Glories of Wilderness
(The New York Times, 26 August 2023)
As we are about to embark on a (reduced) Tour du Mont-Blanc with a group of friends who’ll be attending the Summit of Minds, this piece from the celebrated columnist is all we need to understand why walking in nature is so vital. Wilderness (or nature) offers an antidote to today’s ills. “It is deep. It is enduring. It is soothing. The antonym of X is wilderness.” And “Wilderness backpacking is a profoundly healing experience. It restores my soul” (gifted article – reads in 5-7 min).
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Eric Schmidt, This is how AI will transform the way science gets done
(MIT Technology Review, 5 July 2023)
A deeply optimistic take on AI. Google’s former CEO argues that, with the advent of AI, science is about to become much more exciting, and in many ways unrecognizable. “We can build a future where AI-powered tools will both save us from mindless and time-consuming labor and also lead us to creative inventions and discoveries, encouraging breakthroughs that would otherwise take decades.” And this will benefit all of us, says Schmidt, but this comes with a proviso: “If we play our cards right, with sensible regulation and proper support for innovative uses of AI to address science’s most pressing issues” (metered paywall – reads in 6-8 min).
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Andy Mukherjee, As the Adani Saga Gets Murkier, India’s Parliament Must Step In
(Bloomberg, 31 August 2023)
Last January, Hindenburg Research issued a report about Indian tycoon Gautam Adani, claiming that he had pulled off “the most egregious example of corporate fraud in history”; and yesterday, the FT published a scoop about a secret paper shielding the identity of two Adani investors from regulators and the public. Adani claims these are “recycled allegations.” and his supporters see this as a sign of Western jealousy over one of India’s most formidable entrepreneurs. To end this saga, a joint parliamentary probe is urgently needed (gifted article – reads in 6-8 min).
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Harvard conducted an 85-year study on happiness. Here’s what it found
(World Economic Forum, August 2023 (video))
Happiness (or subjective wellbeing in the academic jargon) is an aspiration for which there is no single recipe. The longer and best-known study on what it entails has been conducted at Harvard over the course of almost a century. Its conclusion: happiness much depends on ‘social fitness’ – the quality of the connections we make with our family, friends and also our broader community) and physical health (free access to this 1min and 30 seconds video).
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