In technology, we spend so much time experimenting, fine-tuning, getting the absolute cheapest way to do something - so why aren't we doing that with social policy?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need to apply the same innovative and cost-effective strategies used in technology to the development of social policies.
Esther Duflo highlights a critical observation that while technology thrives on experimentation and optimization to reduce costs and improve efficiency, similar methodologies are often lacking in the realm of social policy. She advocates for a more scientific approach to addressing social issues, encouraging policymakers to adopt rigorous experimentation and fine-tuning to enhance the effectiveness and accessibility of social programs.
In practice
In a speech addressing future innovations in welfare systems.
And there is a lot of idiosyncrasy. But there are also regularities and phenomena. And what the data is going to be able to do - if there's enough of it - is uncover, in the mess and the noise of the world, some lines of music that actually have harmony. It's there, somewhere.
The poor get bored the same as the rest of us. Their happiness might be as important to them as their health.
For millions of girls around the world, motherhood comes too early. Those who bear children as adolescents suffer higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and their children are more likely to die in infancy.
Part of me always wanted to do something useful for the world. It came from my mother. She is a paediatrician and she was active in a small NGO for the child victims of war.
Whenever a technology enables people to organize at a pace that wasn't before possible, new kinds of politics emerge.
Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later.
We know in our hearts that technology at its best should make us feel even more human than we currently feel. Sometimes it makes us feel less human.
We loved cars until the '70s or so. Then they became appliances. They turned into motorized cup holders. Most of it has to do with urban sprawl. What began as pleasure ends up in necessity, as so many things do.
If you look at iPod, iPod wasn't viewed as a success, but today it's viewed as an overnight success. The iPhone was the same way. People were writing about there's no physical keyboard. Obviously nobody would want it.
I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.
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