Lessons from 2023
I am slightly less ignorant
2023 was overall a cool year. I got to do a student research visit at Princeton this spring, have a nice summer, take my final masters courses at the University of Copenhagen, and prepare and send my PhD applications. I met many interesting people. Some lessons:
Productivity
Research is a non-linear process: I had lots of time this spring to work on my own projects. I did not move as far as expected. This was quite frustrating. Then, while browsing papers on a project without much promise (a very dark hole of active labor market policies), I found some data that perhaps could answer a question I had encountered the year before. I had not tried to be that excited about data before, and I could take big steps quickly. This was a combination of reading a lot and luck. But it definitely was not planned.
Planning encounters: I’ve definitely not perfected this one yet (one never will), and this was not a new discipline to 2023, but 2023 give practice. While visiting the states this spring, I got to meet a lot of people, where I had to prepare some sort of self-presentation and points of conversation. This went mostly well, and I got to meet people that had perfected the “coffee-encounter”, running through who they were, what they were working on, and giving input on what I was doing.
Habit: This was not new as such, but 2023 was a year where I had a lot of flexibility, and a good deal to do. I had some distinct periods of focus, namely in the application-preparation period, with the GRE, writing sample, and letter writing. I also had the time for an OK workout routine, and gently trended into becoming an subpar tennisplayer.
Look for feedback — then stop to execute: In preparing my materials, I was graced by getting a lot of feedback by people much smarter than me. This helped me a lot. But I also learned, that at some point, you have to stop collecting feedback, and execute.
Personal
This too shall pass: I started 2023 on some serious emotional hangover after my cancer treatment. Or, this was how it felt. I finalized chemotherapy in 2022, and in the fall, I felt like I could walk on water. I survived cancer, I thought, what can stop me know? This caught up to me in the winter, where I went through a short (4 week-ish), but intense depression. This was distressing throughout, and at a very vulnerable moment, I did a meditation on “Waking Up”, which was an “Glass box meditation”. The message was simple. This too shall pass. And indeed it did, although the pain was painful.
What doesn’t kill you doesn’t always make you stronger: Related to the above. One rationalization of hard times is that they make you stronger. This is true to some extent, but they also give you a vulnerability, that one shouldn’t neglect. And that’s fine, because everyone meets their challenges, and must deal with it accordingly. But there is no harm done in recognizing that this won’t transform you into superman.
Academically
The Habitus of the Academic Talk: This was definitely the prime new lesson from visiting the states. Understanding how the effectively present, elaborate, and defend an argument is an art. Understanding what constitutes a meaningful question, and when it is meaningful, is an art.
Law and Economics: I had public law and a course at the econ department on the welfare state this fall. It was enriching to have both perspectives at once. To some extent, the perspective of economics is utility-maximization. The pitfalls of an economic situation is when an agent overexploit their position to the harm of others (or in some sense, pricing in negative externalities). The perspective of law is to regulate harmful behavior, and ensure the rights of minorities. The problem is to enforce or devise law that effectively overcomes this aim.
People are predisposed: People try to make neutral arguments. This is good. It’s easy to say that this is unattainable, and that there therefore are no neutral arguments. But that people are predisposed doesn’t prevail us from getting closer to some truth. Take the Author-Splinten vs. Piketty-Zucman-Saez debate. These are both serious actors working in good faith, arriving at diametrically opposite conclusions. Where’s the truth? Probably somewhere in between. Their various predispositions have forwarded are understanding of the world, and then we can build from there.
Political
Leaders matter: This is my prime lesson from the Danish center majority government, led by traditional adversaries Socialdemokratiet and Venstre, and the new center party, Moderarterne, led by former Venstre leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen. It’s quite confusing. But I have learned, that leaders have a great deal of space to make decisions, and that they shape their ideology, rather than their ideology, or the ideology of their constituents, shaping them. Leaders matter.
Personal experiences matter: The picture at the top is from Princeton, where the Canadian Wildfires blew through for several days. I had previously been highly skeptical of “weather event” papers, where people experience extreme weather, and then update their preferences. I am much less skeptical now, seeing how my own salience and policy outlook quickly shifted while experiencing unbreathable air, due to an event half a continent away, and then forgetting it much to quickly when it passed.
From Books
Napoleon was a complicated character: I read Alexander Mikaberidze biography, which was great. Chapter 13 is fantastic. He outlays how Napoleon had one foot in modernity, and the other in tradition. He made great strides to civilizational progress (through the code civil etc), but the aim of the empire was to extract rents, not to develop Europe. The description of the barbaric treatment of civilians in occupied Spain and Italy also gives pause. If you were as disappointed in the movie as me, read the book.
Politics in Time: This was an eyeopener. Pierson basically argues that one must place politics in time. Hard to elaborate on in brief. Has given a lot of food for thought on the study on the welfare state.
People, who don’t know anything about social science, actually have little interesting to say: I read E.O. Wilson’s consilience, which was a major disappointment. I’m sure the book would have impressed the 20-year-old me, and that speaks to positive personal development during the course of my studies. The grander lesson is that it is hard to develop a philosophy of science without knowledge of the though questions that the frontier of the discipline is trying to answer. It also makes me rate a pluralistic understanding of knowledge higher, without wanting to engage with that too much and tread across the boundary of negativity.
Jens Otto Krag was a big deal: I read Bo Lidegaards 2021 biography of the former prime minister, which was great. This was also a source to appreciate the fact that leaders matter. Being a Danish prime minister was also a markedly different task in the 1960s. You could be a less perfect person (in terms of talking with the press, personal history etc.), but you had to be a more competent administrator. Or, given that the welfare state was being built and the scope of responsibility of the state was expanding so quickly, there were much larger requirements to shape and develop the workings of the state. This is contrary to today, where prime ministers benefit from a developed administration, and where change is much more incremental.