The value of "front-line DNA"

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At Kapu, the company I work at, we have this value called “front-line-DNA”.

It’s the idea that every week you need to go to the market and talk to our agents and customers. Sometimes it’s to answer specific questions you have, but sometimes it’s just to experience what things are really like, and notice potential issues.

There are three main benefits of front-line DNA:

  1. It allows you to test specific ideas quickly: “Can we give you a sign to display prices?” “No, I don’t have time to update the sign.” Ok, we’ll move onto the next idea.

  2. It lets you understand the problems people face better: For example, certain parts of our app flow take a long time to load on agent’s phones which are way slower than mine

  3. It builds your instincts about how things work in our business. Two I’ve built are “everything has to be 10x simpler than I initially think it should be” and “agents do not read text messages - unless they are about their commissions”

This has changed how I approach problem-solving outside of this particular job. Some examples:

  • Last weekend, my girlfriend and I had an idea for a business doing importing of goods from China to sell to petty traders. Instead of thinking about it in the abstract for too long, we just went downtown and talked to 6 traders and realized most of them already had quite efficient supply chains. Scrap that idea.

  • If I move into an administrative role later in my career, I will be sure to make time each week to talk directly with the end beneficiaries (e.g., customers)

  • If I were to start a charity working in a particular country, I would move to that country (sounds obvious but not everybody does this)

It’s not a universal golden rule though. For example:

  • The more similar your product is to other things already on the market, the less important front-line DNA is

  • Sometimes testing your product with one set of users might be enough to be sure it works with another set.

    • For example Meta has hundreds of millions of users in Africa (especially WhatsApp), but does not do any UX testing on the continent. Maybe they would have a better product if they did user testing in Africa, but they seem to have done alright basing decisions on input from users in other countries.

On balance, “spend a lot of time with the people whose problems you’re trying to solve” seems like super obvious advice, but I think it is still underrated in the worlds of “development”, philanthropy, consulting, and Effective Altruism.

Which presidents were born closer to Lincoln's presidency than to their own?

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When Joe Biden was born, America was closer to Lincoln’s presidency than to Biden’s presidency.

The man is very very old.

Upon learning this fact, I (and I assume all of you) wondered: For which other presidents is this true?

In fact, there have only been 6 presidents since Lincoln who were born closer to their own presidencies than to Lincoln’s (1).

It is unlikely that get another president born closer to Lincoln than their own presidency. The only remote possibilities (based on 2 minutes of googling) would be if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren became president. We are truly moving into a post-Lincoln era.

—

1. Of course, everyone who was president before Lincoln was born closer to their own presidency than to Lincoln’s. And for Lincoln himself, the question is undefined.

Source for data

Update on high-skill immigration work

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In September I wrote that I was trying to work on high-skill immigration into the US as my political cause of choice.

I’ve decided to stop focusing on this, after spending a few weekends digging into the topic and concluding that realistically there’s not much a person can do to make progress on this by spending a few hours a weekend - especially if that person lives in Kenya as I do.

I had hypothesized 3 ways to have an impact on high-skill immigration, and have concluded that none of them are too effective right now.

1. Convincing / bothering my representatives or people in the state department to change things

  • I’ve written a few emails to my senators and representatives (congress is the most likely place to make big progress on this issue). I got stock responses. Always hard to say with things like this, but likely these emails had no impact.

  • One of my senators, Chuck Grassley, has been one of the biggest opponents to actual immigration reform in the Senate. I tried to get a meeting with him (he makes it relatively easy for Iowans to meet him) but wasn’t able to. If I moved back to Iowa, I would spend some time at political events to see if I could get a meeting with him, but it’s not a feasible option while I live in Kenya.

2. Growing my blog to hundreds of thousands of readers and then using it as a soap box

  • Getting tons and tons of readers was a joke, but the general idea of trying to mobilize activism myself was something I thought a little bit about. But 1) it’s hard to do, and 2) if I mobilized a bunch of people to act on high-skill immigration there is a chance this would actually backfire. Raising the profile in public discourse of “high-skill immigration” specifically (which has less public attention on it than low-skill immigration) could attract anti-immigration people to the issue

3. Getting involved with activist organizations that know how to be effective much more than I do:

  • There aren’t any good volunteer activities I could find on high-skill immigration. If I was German I could volunteer with Malengo. If I was looking for a full-time job, I could try Formally or the Institute for Progress. But other than those, options are limited.

If I move back to the US in the next few years, I may try to get involved in political activism on this issue with my senators and representatives. But for now, I’m going to put this time and mental energy elsewhere.

Improving my traveling skills

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These are the kinds of sites I used to prioritize when traveling. I had a lot of room to improve

I foolishly used to think that traveling was kind of boring. “Places are all the same” I thought. “They all have people, and trees, McDonalds.”

But actually I just sucked at traveling.

In my defense, I was a child and had no money and no power to make the decisions myself when I traveled. But also there is a skill in traveling well. Now I am a man and developed this skill a bit. So I have put childish things like disliking travel and having no money behind me.

These are reminders for myself of what I have learned, so I can refer back to it next time I go to a new country.

Let me know if you have any additions from what has worked well for you!

Preparation:

  • Learn some history and culture: Start with general history to get a foundation, and then focus on whatever is interesting about that country (famous people, industry, trade, religion, art)

    • Follow up by watching YouTube videos on the most interesting bits

  • Listen to music of the country beforehand: especially traditional, pop, indie

  • Find books / movies from the country

  • Browse the country’s subreddit: Interesting to see how people talk about themselves!

  • Prepare lists of:

    • At least 3 places of historical / economic / cultural interest to visit

    • At least 3 foods to try

    • 1 interesting church to go to

    • Topics I want to learn more about by talking to people in the country (1)

While there:

Now I see things that are very interesting to me, like 500-year-old ruins and trees

  • Accept invitations (2)

  • Ask people what they think of history, world events. Cross-interrogating a topic like “Do the police help people?” across different countries can be super interesting

  • Ask people how they get along with other peoples. E.g., asking Somali-Kenyan driver if he feels discriminated by other Kenyans

    • Remember not to take answers at face-value

—

1. As an example, here’s how I’ve prepared for a trip to Istanbul in late April:

  • Learn some history and culture: Read a general history of the Ottoman empire, a book on the Ottoman’s maritime power (related to another book I had read about the Portuguese empire), and a book on current events. Of particular interest to me are the whirling dervishes, Ottoman architecture, trade throughout the empire, and the interaction between Islam and Christianity (especially the Armenian Catholic church)

  • Listen to music: Their “traditional” music (not sure how authentic it is) weirdly reminds me a lot of progressive rock. Also found a few cool indie bands

  • Find books / movies: Read half of The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk

  • Browse the country’s subreddit: Lots of it was in Turk so I coulnd’t understand, but a few jokes about Turks and Greeks not getting along

  • Prepare lists: I’m unusually prepared and have a whole notion document of things to do and foods to eat. Especially excited to go to an Armenian Catholic church.

    • I’m particularly interested to ask any Turks who will talk to me about if they have a sense of connection to the Ottoman empire, how they feel about joining the EU, what they think of Erdogan, if the police help people, and their views on religion

2. One fun example of this: In Lamu town in Kenya, some guys invited us to eat barbeque on the street. We joined them, and got to participate in the chill night neighbourhood streetlife of Lamu - a lot of old men just sitting aorund, talking, heckling each other.

One of the old men told us about the history and mythology of Chinese sailors who got stranded on Pate island nearby, 500 years ago. He gave us a book recommendation on the topic, and said 20 years ago he had given a tour to a New York Times writer working on a story (presumably when working on this article)

I’ve been working at Kapu for the past 10 months!

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For the past 10 months I've been working at Kapu. It was in “stealth mode” until December last year, so I couldn’t tell people much about it.

I’m excited to tell everyone about it now! Here are the basics of how Kapu works:

An example Kapu order - lots of greens! Foot for scale

Example of the neighbourhood shops our customers usually buy from

  • How do we make money? Kapu is a group-buying e-commerce company. We sell things people use every day at home, mostly food but also things like soap and diapers.

  • Who do we sell to? Our customers are poor Kenyans who usually spend 50% of their money on the types of products we sell - so they are extremely price sensitive. These customers place orders with agents, and we deliver to the agents the next day (saving last mile delivery costs because one agent might order for 10 customers, and we only have to make one delivery to that agent for all 10 customers).

  • How are we competitive? Our customers are extremely price-sensitive. For some products, they will buy from us if we are only 2 cents (2 Kenyan shillings) cheaper than their neighbourhood shops. We can be cheaper than these shops because we cut out a bunch of middle-men.

  • Kapu is 1 year old, and right now we are only active in Nairobi, Kenya. Hopefully we will grow to new cities soon

To chart my thinking a little bit as to why I decided to work at Kapu:

  • I want extreme poverty to end within my lifetime (from a post I wrote 2 years ago)

  • I think I have the strongest chance to have impact in on people living in extreme poverty by working for a company that is sustainably creating jobs, decreasing prices, and driving economic growth (from a post I wrote a year ago)

So when I decided to leave BCG, I started looking for great startups. I decided on Kapu because:

  • Kapu makes people’s lives better in a very straightforward way: It saves them money day-to-day. A lot of companies I looked had a lot more complicated theories of change, which made me less confident they would be as impactful as they claimed

  • The team at Kapu is super strong and experienced - meaning I’ve had lots more coaching and mentorship than is typical at a first-year startup

  • Kapu has strong funding - $8M seed round

  • The day-to-day work sounded like fun - and it has been. My role has shifted every few months, but the most consistently fun thing has been going to neighbourhoods in Nairobi I normally wouldn’t and understanding how I can help solve people’s problems.

I’m planning to be with Kapu in Nairobi for the foreseeable future. When we grow out of this city, and maybe eventually this country, I may move out of Nairobi to help grow Kapu elsewhere. But for now I’m focused on making Kapu in Nairobi as successful as possible.

—

If you want to learn more about Kapu, startups in Nairobi, or anything, shoot me a message or an email at ljeure@gmail.com. If you’re reading this and are curious, then I’d love to talk!

Pascal's roulette wheel, or how I won $20

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I was at a casino last week. I was down on my luck, having lost $20 at the 7-card poker table.

Then I remembered when my friend Jesse had told me about the Martingale system which guarantees you to win at roulette! It goes like this:

  • First bet $20 on red. If red comes up, you’ve won. Quit

  • If you lose, double your bet to $40 and put it on red. If red comes up, you lost $20 the first round, but then won $40 the second round, so in total you won $20. Quit

  • If you lose again, double your bet to $80…

  • …and so on. Just keep betting red, doubling your bet each time, and eventually you are bound to win, taking home $20

This was clearly the only way to climb my way out of this $20 hole I was in. Given the table limit, the only way I could lose was if I lost roulette 5 games in a row (1). The odds of this were 4% - practically zero!! (2)

So I cashed in with $100 worth of chips and put $20 on red. I lost the first bet, but then bet again at $40 and won. I had won back at roulette the $20 I had lost at poker!

Jesse was a genius! I was half considering simply quitting my job and moving into a mattress in the corner of this casino to make my way as a roulette player.

Before making any final decision on my career and housing, I decided to crunch some numbers and calculate the expected value of carrying out the Martingale strategy into infinity.

As I should have expected given that casinos remain in business, the house still wins in the long run even if you use a Martingale strategy. This wasn’t a viable career option for me

The thing I hadn’t really considered was that if I lost 5 games in a row, I would have been losing around $600. Even with only a 4% chance of losing that much, this potential loss outweighs the 96% chance that I win $20 (3).

In my mind, 4% rounded down to “basically zero”. But in real life, things with 4% probability happen about 1 in every 25 times. In finance / probability, these are known as “tail risks”. And this tail risk had a disproportionally large consequence - losing more than $600.

—

DALL-E’s interpretation of Blaise Pascal playing roulette with God in a Chinatown casino

Even if there was no table limit and I could play the game infinite times, I still would be expected to lose. This was super hard for me to intuitively understand. The odds that red loses 20 times in a row are 0.0002%. If I had enough money to double my bets 20 times, that feels like that’s basically a guaranteed win, right?

No. What feels like a “guaranteed” win is actually only a 99.9998% chance. This is a small tail risk but with a huge consequence - if I did lose 20 games in a row, I would be losing $20M (4). Which, despite my lucrative recent side hustles in forex and casinos, is more money than I have.

I was falling victim to failures in thinking about tail risks that Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes in The Black Swan: “just as we tend to underestimate the role of luck in life in general, we tend to overestimate it in games of chance.”

Also created with DALL-E

This is the first time I’ve been confronted with tail risks in a way that feels salient. I think having played roulette will help me when thinking about things like existential risks, risky but high-impact ventures, and the existence of aliens.

So now I have a good excuse to keep going to the casino. I’m not throwing my money away. I’m on an epistemic quest to sharpen my intuitions about low-probability events.

It also makes me think of Blaise Pascal, who I think would have happily taken my money as I played roulette over and over again, delighting in the small chance of winning huge amounts from me.

—

Thanks to Binx for co-writing this post!

—

1. the table had a maximum bet of $500, so if I lost at $20, $40, $80, $160, and $320, I would not be able to double my bet again to $640

2. it was a single-zero roulette table, so the odds of winning on red were 18/37. Odds of losing 5 in a row were (19/37)^5 = 3.6%

3. Expected value: $20 * 0.96 - $630 * .04 = expected loss of -$6

4. $20 * 2^19 = $10M lost on the last bet, then another $10M for all I lost cumulatively on the previous bets

What I learned from two mosques in Mombasa

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Indian ocean trade routes, with Mombasa marked with a red star

The Kenyan city of Mombasa has been an important port city for over 2000 years, connecting Africa to the Middle East, India, and China.

I visited for a couple days in February, and on a whim bought a book on Swahili architecture. I was struck by how much I could learn about the city just from learning about two mosques (1).


Mnara Mosque (also called Basheikh/Tangana). In a back alley, not clearly labeled, and you would miss it if you weren’t specifically looking for it

Mandhry Mosque - still powerlines but on a main thoroughfare. Has a gift shop attached, not visible here.

More modern Konzi Mosque in Mombasa, It’s not as much in the Swahili style and does not have the rounded Swahili-style tower

1. Swahili architecture is distinctly African - not just imported Arab culture. British colonialists claimed that Swahili architecture was simply Arab (the implication being that Africans did not have such advanced culture). It is certainly Arab-influenced, but it has core features that come from building history on the African continent. This is illustrated by the minarets (towers) on these two mosques - they are simple, rounded, white, and very solid. There are four mosques with minarets like this in the world - all of them on the Swahili coast: 2 in Mombasa, 1 in Lamu (Kenya), and one in Stone Town (Zanzibar, part of Tanzania) (1).


For example, see the picture of a non-Swahili mosque in Mombasa for reference. The tower looks quite different.

2. British colonizers wanted to give prominence to the “Arab” factions rather than the “African” factions in Mombasa. The mosques were given attention and prominence accordingly: The Mnara mosque was more associated with Swahili people, while the Mandhry was more associated with Arabs. I’m sure there are other factors as well, but this seems like it has trickled down to today where the Mandhry mosque is labeled as a great tourist site, with a gift shop, while the Mnara mosque is not well-labeled and is hard to find (1).

3. Islam was super culturally important in Indian ocean trade. Indian Ocean trade was dominated by Muslim merchants, and mosques in a port city would serve as a beacon to arriving travelers. The Mandhry mosque was one of the most prominent buildings on the Mombasa coast, and was available to Muslim visitors as a place to rest, and even sleep.

I had never really appreciated architecture as a lens for learning about history and culture, but I’m sold now (2). I think that this lens might be especially valuable in African cultures. I’ve found fewer analytical, interesting, well-researched writing on Kenyan culture/history/art compared to other foreign countries I’ve tried to learn about (China, Japan, India, Persia). My guess is that this is partly because there hasn't been written culture in east Africa as long, so there aren’t written records to dive into. But buildings have existed for a long time, which gives architectural study a comparative advantage.

That’s my hypothesis anyways. I’m now paying much more attention to the architecture of the places I visit to try to understand the place and people in a different way (3).

—

1. Unfortunately I couldn’t see the thing I most wanted to see in Mombasa, which is the alley that Cob gets stuck in in Inception. As I learned 2 days before departing, that chase sequence was actually shot in Tangier Morocco

2. Anecdotally, it seems factionalism is still a significant factor in Mombasa - as my guide was taking me around he specifically pointed out how “this mosque is Shi’ite”, “this mosque is Sunni”, and when prompted that another mosque was for Indian muslims.

3. I was convinced by this one experience to buy a couple volumes of the Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide (h/t Tyler Cowen).

People in Kenya can now travel to the US in a more reasonable time frame

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Visa wait time in the US embassy in Nairobi is down to 63 days from 365+ in July. 63 days is still too long but it’s a great improvement!

The embassy, under the new Ambassador Meg Whitman, has made some significant changes such as getting more people to perform interviews and waiving the interview requirement for people who already had visas in the past 4 years.

I doubt that my annoying emails to the embassy and state department contributed at all to this change.

I wrote an EA forum post sharing what I’ve learned from this, and giving an update on an an earlier post arguing (a bit naively) that it would be relatively easy to badger embassies into doing things.

As I say in the post, I’ve since learned that in this case at least, "not enough advocacy from Americans" was less of a limiting factor on visa interview wait times than "political capital within the embassy".

How do people enter the US to live there?

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I was in New York City last month and wanted to learn about US immigration policy I went to Barnes and Noble to see if I could find any books describing how the system works.

In the sociology / politics section, I found at least 10 books on immigrant experiences. To varying degrees, these books were all trying to convince you that immigrants were good and we should have more of them. But I found 0 books that actually explained how the immigration system works (1).

Lots of people are focused on making you feel nice about immigrants - not so much focus on the nuts and bolts of how it actually works now and what has to change (2).

I assume most Americans (reasonably) don’t know what the main mechanisms are by which immigrants enter the country. And I couldn’t find a super clear, concise explanation of what I wanted, so decided to write one for myself (3).

—

Around 1M people immigrate to the US each year. There are three main reasons you are allowed to immigrate - because of family, work, or being a refugee. The yearly breakdown is below.

A couple observations

  • The system is not optimized to bring in people who will most contribute to the economy, it is optimized to bring in families of people here already (5)

  • We don’t invite people in to live and work in the US long-term. Instead we invite them to work temporarily, then later they ask to change their status to be a full immigrant (represented by the blue section of thee “work” bar) (6)

Most common work visa types (potentially leading to changing status to get a green card):

(Note that this is total entries into the country - not total number of people granted these visas. A person can enter and leave more than once).

Immigration caps: Family immigration is capped based on a complicated formula that seems like it is about 500k people per year (immediate family of US citizens are excluded). Work immigration is capped at 140k per year. And no more than 7% of immigration between these two categories can come from more than one country (7).

H1B visas - the kind wanted by most of my non-American peers from MIT/consulting who want to move to the US - was capped at 85,000 each year. Since more than 85k people apply each year (last year 300k+ people applied), acceptance is determined via lottery.

Biggest opportunities to increase high-skill immigration from my understanding:

  • Congress could simply lift green-card caps - particularly for high-skill workers under H1B visas which wouldn’t be super politically charged (relative to low-skill immigration at least)

  • The US could make a direct-to-green-card path for people who study in the US (students - not included in charts above). This would be a significant policy change, may require a change in the US immigration framework

  • The executive branch can grant more O1 visas to people. Not very many people apply for these visas right now, and it has not been super clear just how extraordinary you need to be to get one of these. Do you need to be a Nobel prize winner? Or just a well-known scientist or entrepreneur within your field? The executive branch has a lot of discretion with who gets let in under this visa, and could clarify and expand their policy to let more smart talented people in

  • The Biden admin has started a IEP entrepreneurship program - currently it does not have a path towards permanent residency but the program could be developed

Things I still don’t understand that well:

  • Where does OPT fit? I think it is just an extension of student visas

    • update: yes, a 1-3 year extension on the F-1 student visa

  • Does the 140k cap apply to those changing status as well as those entering directly?

    • update: confirmed yes

  • What % of people on different work visa types end up wanting to and being able to get permanent residency status?

  • Since there is a skilled labor shortage, why aren’t big powerful companies advocating for immigration reform?

    • update: see footnote 6



Summary: It’s very complicated, and I have a lot to learn. But this at least gives me a starting knowledge of how it works, and the context to know where to look next.

—

1. It turns out that the place in NYC to buy fact-filled books on immigration is the Tenement Museum gift shop. Let me know if you know of other places.

2. The notion that pro immigration have nice feelings but don’t do much about it feels like it is in line with the finding that people who are anti-immigration care much more than people who are pro-immigration. (as a matter of epistemic hygiene I must admit that I have not read the linked paper, but am relying on the Institute for Progress’s reading of it)

3. This is not at all authoritative - it’s just my current best understanding of how things work. I may update it later as I learn more.

Data comes from the Department of Homeland Security and is based on 2011-2020

4. Surprising fact #1: The same number of people got permanent lawful status under Trump as in Obama’s second term. It’s actually even slightly higher under Trump if you exclude 2020, during which there was a pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus

5. Historically the reason for this was that in the ~1920-1960s, WASP Americans didn’t want inferior types like Southern Europeans (Catholic) or Eastern European (Jewish) entering (not to mention Asians/Africans/Hispanics). By accepting mostly people who already had family in the US, they hoped that it would mean more people who were - like the majority of Americans at the time, WASPs

6. There are 5 preferences for employment-based immigration: 1) extraordinary ability 2) advanced degrees or exception ability 3) skilled workers with 2 years experience + unskilled shortage workers 4) religious / US government workers 5) investors investing $900k-1.8M in the US

Obtaining these employment based immigration usually requires that an employer petition on your behalf (similar with family visas). So there are very few ways for you to initiate immigration yourself. This gives a lot of power to companies hiring people. Workers are dependent on them for their visa and if they quit/are let go, they lose their visas.

This is why big companies don’t particularly advocate for immigration reform (according to an expert I talked to). They like the status quo insofar as it gives them a lot of power. They may argue for increased immigration caps so they can get more workers, but don’t really want to see an systematic immigration overhaul that might reduce their power.

7. There is a 55k limit on “diversity” visas awarded via lottery every year (included in “other” bar of the first chart)

If your immigration petition has been approved by USCIS (part of DHS who oversees the process), but the immigration cap for your country or overall has been exceeded, you get added to a visa queue. Currently the queue is 3.8M people for family immigration, and 1M for employment immigration

Updated 8 October 2022: footnotes 6-7


Further reading:

I'm working on high-skill immigration; or, being a doer, not an opinion-haver (at least trying)

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I recently switched from working in consulting to working at a startup (1).

This has forced a general mindset shift from “I want to sound smart about the stuff I’m talking about” to “do things”, that affects how I think about political issues.

It’s easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking I should have smart political opinions so I can have intelligent conversations about nuclear energy, police reform, or zoning laws. But a lot of this is just posturing. I look smart, my friends look smart, we pat ourselves on the back, nothing changes.

I want to focus on being a good citizen by actually achieving things.

In politics though? There are so many problems though! And they are so big and complicated and difficult! It seems hopeless.

So I’m trying out a new rule for civic engagement: Everyone should have one political cause of choice.

There are lots of important political problems. You can’t work on all of them. Pick one that is important, that you care about, and that you think you can reasonably make progress on (2).

I have decided that my political cause is: The US should allow many more highly-skilled people to immigrate.

—

Why high-skill immigration?

I have a strong belief in the importance of immigrants to the US, both as a matter of fact (economically/ culturally/ scientifically) and as a matter of what the US should aspire to be.

Living in Kenya makes this especially salient - it was so easy for me to move here and I think I am doing good. There are so many people here who can’t move to the US, and I think that they would do good.

I think allowing immigration of skilled workers is pretty indisputably good for the US, those individuals, and (more disputably) for the world. This article captures arguments for high-skill immigration quite well.

There are lots of arguments I could make, but I find this Tweet to be the most concise and emotionally effective argument:

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Smart hardworking people from all over the world (3) want to come to the US to build things, and we should let them (4).

What do I actually want to do?

Turns out it’s hard to find actual productive things to do on big political issues. It makes sense that it’s easier to just have opinions.

At root what needs to happen is that congress or the executive branch needs to change the law or the enforcement of the law to make high-skill immigration easier. This means that the avenues to affect change are:

  • Convincing / bothering my representatives or people in the state department to change things

  • Growing my blog to hundreds of thousands of readers and then using it as a soap box (5)

  • Getting involved with activist organizations that know how to be effective much more than I do

A pre-requisite to this is knowing exactly what things I want changed. So the first step is learning a ton about how immigration to the US actually works, and where potential avenues for change are. Get ready for a blog post on that soon!

—

It’s been a fun journey so far, trying to transform from an opinion-haver to a doer (6).

Let me know what political cause you are working on, and if you disagree with me or if you have any suggestions on how to make an impact through activism.

—

  1. Stealth mode, can’t talk about it, going to change the world

  2. For those of the Effective Altruism persuasion, I think it should pass a gut check on Importance, Neglectedness, and Tractability. Don’t need to be too rigorous because a) it’s pretty hard to really quantify on-the-margin effects of activism, and b) intrinsic excitement is more important for hobbies than for jobs - the fact that you are doing this activism in your spare time (as opposed to a career) means you really need to be motivated on a weekly basis to work on it

  3. You know, people like Albert Einstein

  4. The issue is important and I’m excited about it. It may be the case that I find it is impossible for me to take any useful action, outside of becoming a senator, but I’m optimistic.
    I personally would be much more in favor of lots more immigration of all kinds - low-skill and refugee as well. But I’m focusing on high-skill immigration since those are politically much tougher issues, high-skill immigration is more important from a scientific / economic progress perspective, and the fact that it seems likely that increased high-skill immigration makes countries more receptive to immigration of all kinds.
    A further clarification that I’m saying “immigration” here for simplicity, but I am including temporary residence status that enables people to work (e.g., H1B visas) in the scope of what I am working on.

  5. I could pretty well believe that long-term my best shot at having impact is being a top-level executive at a super successful company and then lobbying from a position of power

  6. Though I haven’t actually accomplished anything yet

Anti-eugenics research in 1930s Iowa

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I came across the book The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War Over Children's this week, and thought it would be interesting especially to the Iowans who read my blog. It tells the history of psychological research in Iowa in the 1930s that unsuccessfully (at the time) tried to to overturn beliefs about eugenics.

In the 1930s psychologists thought that IQ was fixed by genetics, that environment didn't matter that much, and that maybe people with low IQs should be sterilized. Biologists had largely dropped these views, but they persisted in psychology.

Then some researchers at University of Iowa realized:

  • hmm, when we put kids from intelligent parents in orphanages where they are neglected, they get less intelligent

  • hey, when kids who don't seem smart are taken from neglectful orphanages and put with loving families, they get smarter

  • wow, the longer a kid is exposed to neglect, the less intelligent they seem to be

Turns out that the environment a kid is raised in has a much larger effect on their intelligence than their genetics.

These were wild and surprising findings at the time and caused an uproar in the US psychology community. They were essentially buried, the researchers reputations' tarnished, and everyone went back to thinking that genetics were all that mattered. Then the Nazis made that super unfashionable, and psychology finally moved away from eugenics post WW2.

A very interesting book if you're interesting in the history of psychology, Iowa, or attitudes towards intelligence/eugenics. I skim-read the book in ~2 hours. It's nice that someone cataloged all this detail about the personalities involved, but it wasn't what I was interested in.

This book is probably more pro-Iowa than any other book I have read is pro any state. I'm from Davenport and have a brother with Down Syndrome, so there's definitely wishful thinking on my part to believe that historically Iowa has been at the front of anti-eugenics and nurturing children who would otherwise be left behind. But from what I can tell based on what is presented in this book, there is some truth to this view.

Other interesting bits to me:

  • Basically none of rural Iowa had no electricity in the 30s (tracks with what my grandma has told me)

  • Babies in the Davenport Home (now Annie Wittenmeyer for any Davenportians) were just put in cribs and left to sit there for months. They were fed and changed, but the only stimulation they had was the sunlight on the ceiling: "Light to shadows to darkness and then light again would have been everything she learned about the world."

  • The culture of the Iowa Station (research station at University of Iowa) was critical to allowing the truth-seeking - rather an accepting given psychological dogma. Great management and institutions really matter!

The US has effectively stopped giving visas to travelers from Kenya

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Summary: Currently you have to wait for over 1 year if you want to travel to the US from Kenya. The US has effectively blocked travel (for a large fraction of people) not through any law or policy decision, but seemingly just through lack of staffing in the US embassy in Nairobi.

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I am generally pro more and easier cross-border movement - into the US and to everywhere in the world more generally. Part of making movement easier is a matter of policy, which is complicated, political, socially contentious, and won’t change quickly.

But there are non-policy barriers to free movement as well, and these seem much easier to fix. One such example is lack of consular interviews at US embassies.

When you try to schedule a consular interview at the US Embassy in Nairobi, you will see that there are no interview slots available for over 1.5 years (674 days at time of writing). No interview means no visa (1), which means the US has blocked people from entering the US from Kenya.

I think this is an important issue, and also one that is potentially pretty tractable.

Why does this matter? Less people visiting the US hurts the US:

  • Economically: Tourism is good for the US, and US business benefits from international deals that are facilitated by the ability of foreign businesspeople to visit for meetings

  • Intellectually: I have had several friends who wanted to attend a philanthropic conference (EA Global hosted in Boston) but were unable. They may go to a similar conference in Singapore instead, where no visa is required. If the US wants at the forefront of international discussion of world problems, it has to let people in to its conferences. Otherwise people will just start going other places.

  • Culturally: We like to think of the US as a melting pot, welcoming to people all over the world. Rejecting people from visiting hurts this important part of US culture.

  • International relations-wise: When people visit the US, they form connections to it and think positively of it

The above are all benefits that accrue to the US by letting people visit. There are also of course benefits to the people visiting, and to the people in the US they are visiting.

Is this a tractable issue?

I think yes. The solve seems simple. The embassy just needs to hire more people. It is not a political issue, does not require change in law. I imagine the main reason this is a problem is that the embassy has basically zero accountability to people applying for visas, and not that many US citizens care about this (2). It seems like an area where a few people’s voices could have an outsized impact.

So let me know if you want to add your voice. Or if you have insight into how decisions about consular interviews get made that can help us use our voices more effectively. Comment here, email me at ljeure@gmail.com, or tweet at me at @lukeeure. Americans could also email the US embassy in Nairobi at VisitorVisaNairobi@state.gov to show them that there are Americans who care about this issue (3).

For over a century people have wanted to come to the US because it is a great place to be. We are a better country for it. Let’s not let staffing shortages stop this.

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1. Required to visit the US for any generic reason - tourism, an academic conference, business meeting, visiting family. This is required both of Kenyans and citizens of most other non-US countries who live in Kenya.

Note that it also seems this is not just Kenya, and is an issue in US embassies around the world.

2. I’ve been advised that people can simply apply for expedited visas in case of urgent matters. But

  1. These expedited visas seem very hard to get - I’ve had at least 3 friends try to get them and be rejected

  2. More importantly, there is a problem with your system if expedition is required to get a visa within 1 year

2. There could be things that make this more complicated than just a staffing issue, but if there are the embassy has not been willing to explain them to me when I’ve inquired over email.

3. Not that is don’t me much good so far. In addition to being advised that people can get expedited visas, I was told that “To keep both applicants and our staff safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of appointments for all of these categories is much lower than normal.”

I really doubt COVID safety is the issue here, and that they would send this just makes me feel like there is little accountability for having a process that works well.

Top Gun: Maverick is about a weird kind of military pride

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but sometimes the people are just begging you to comment on the latest movie (1). So here goes.

What is Top Gun: Maverick about (2)?

More specifically, what does the rousing “yeah America” chutzpah inducing ending of Top Gun: Maverick leave you pointing towards? I think sports.

In the Jacobin, Eileen Jones calls the movie “a very long, kinetic military recruiting ad”. I see what she means - with high-tech airplanes, cool action scenes, and American flags everywhere, it’s showing off all the slick trappings of military coolness (3).

But if you dig a little deeper, I don’t think TG:M comes across as very pro-military at all. The most striking thing about the movie is how it totally manages to avoid identifying the enemy forces. The whole plot is about a mission to destroy a Uranium enrichment plant, but we don’t know which enemy of the US this plant is located in. The only enemies we see are in head-to-toe protective gear so that we can’t tell what ethnicity they are.

So we have a surface-level pro-US-military movie that avoids identifying any enemies of freedom and democracy. I don’t think the words “defense”, “freedom”, or “democracy” were even mentioned in the movie. 

Also, I’m not in the military, but I get the sense that discipline and following orders is a big thing. This movie celebrates the fact that its protagonists disobey orders all the time - a classic American movie thing (4), but not an actual classic military thing in my impression (though I could be wrong - maybe selective disobedience  is an actual celebrated part of military culture).

No real threats, no military discipline. The main thing you’re left to be excited about is the bonding that comes with is doing difficult things to achieve a goal with a group of teammates. And maybe cool technology.

So if you’re inspired by Top Gun: Maverick, I think you’re better off just going out for a sports team. Or maybe working at NASA.

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1. Editor’s note: Absolutely nobody is begging Luke to comment on this or any movie

2. Besides the fact that it itself is a sequel to a 1986 movie called Top Gun, a fact which the movie goes really out of its way to make sure you know through many flashbacks, photos sitting on desks, and music cues. And which fact it equally expects you to be very impressed with because either a) you have seen the movie Top Gun long ago and are nostalgic for it, or b) you have not seen the movie Top Gun (me) but you are swept up by second-hand nostalgia anyways in the burnt-orange sunsets and aforementioned music cues

3. And probably will increase interest in naval aviation roles - apparently the first drove a 500% increase in applicants

4. And, I mean, fair. You don’t go pay $15 to go watch Tom Cruise do as he is told

How to be cool and impress your girl in Nairobi: Ride a matatu

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Daniel (while reversing up the ~50M driveway of my apartment complex): “I love driving in reverse more than anything.”

Luke: “Really? Why?”

Daniel: “I used to drive matatus in CBD (1), and that driving is so crazy. Driving in reverse is so easy.”

Matatus make up the bus system in Nairobi. Ranging from nondescript white minivans to school-bus-sized machines painted with marijuana leaves and blasting reggae, matatus are the probably most common means of commuting for Nairobians.

Standard-issue Biggie ganya

I’ve always been fascinated by how the matatu system works - people often talk vaguely about them being connected to organized crime - so I had to pick Daniels’ brain for the 20-minute duration of our Uber ride together.

Some ganyas are more saintly, like this hardcore St. Michael the Archangel

The most fun matatus are the “posh” matatus as Daniel called them - the ones with paintings of rappers or movies or saints or Squid Game characters. 

  • These Matatus are called ganya, and Daniel assured me I would instantly be cool if I told my girl we were taking a ganya around town (3)

  • The hottest ganya that Daniel drove was the Vybz Kartel matatu (video example here), which blasts reggae music and required him to continuously hit the airhorn button on his sound effect switchboard 

  • A government regulatory agency has to approve the paintings on ganya, and - as an example Daniel gave me - they likely wouldn’t approve one with naked ladies because “school children might be riding this” 

It was alarming and a little upsetting to see this bus protesting police violence with a picture of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck

The basics of the business work like this: A matatu owner pays for the right to drive on a particular route (4). Every day the owner hires a driver, and the driver’s job is to return the matatu at the end of the day with a full tank of gas and with ~10,000 Kenyan shillings (around $90). 

The driver collects fees all day from passengers (5), and pays for his (6) day-to-day costs himself (fuel, paying a guy who hangs out the door on the side of the matatu and stirs up business, and bribes for cops (7)).

Economically, the business set up of matatus has a few interesting results:

  • Drivers are incentivized to get as many customers as possible - your pay as a driver is directly proportional to the number of customers

  • The driver has no guaranteed minimum income. If he only makes 10K in a day, he doesn’t make any money. If he doesn’t make enough to pay the owner, he has to convince the owner that there were riots that day, or crazy traffic or some other excuse. “Matatu drivers are very clever” says Daniel

    • Daniel said the reason he drove Uber now was because Uber guaranteed a minimum income - predictability is often more important than high average pay

  • Matatu drivers are “in the same company as the police” so can break traffic laws. Because of standing arrangements with cops, matatu drivers pay way less in bribes than a typical traffic driver who breaks traffic laws, and they drive with relative impunity

    • Cops look out for the matatu drivers. As Daniel kept saying, the cops and the matatu drivers are “all the same company.” Sometimes, to cajole the policemen, matatu drivers even wear blue uniforms, similar colors to the cops, and say “look, we wear the same uniform we’re the same.” 

    • If you can make the cops laugh, they let you off easier (8) 

There’s a lot more to learn about the matatu world - most specifically how exactly organized crime, politicians, and SACCOs fit together, but I’m happy to at least have learned a day in the life of a matatu driver.

As my friend from Maryland said “Kenyans have good taste”

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  1. Central Business District - downtown Nairobi

  2. From my understanding, the matatu cartels (3) keep competition off their routes. I’m not sure if this is through legal or illegal means, but in any case it’s corrupt.

  3. Note that I have not yet actually ridden a matatu, so I am not cool and have not impressed my girl

  4. These cartels are connected somehow to SACCOs. Generally a SACCO is Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisation, a sort of community bank but they seem serve a variety of different purposes in different industries. Matatu SACCOs are openly known to be corrupt and connected to organised crime, though exactly how the crime part of things works it works is still unclear to me.

  5. It seems like matatu fares are set by the owner or the SACCO

  6. I have never seen a female matatu driver

  7. Bribes for cops are an unavoidable cost of doing business, and break down into two main categories:

    1. In the mornings, cops will stand near the roundabouts and stop matatus who each pay them around 100 shillings (~$0.90)

    2. Later in the day if you get stopped for driving around traffic you pay around 100-200 shillings (~$0.90-$1.80)

  8. Daniel claimed that even now that he was an Uber driver, if he got pulled over he would be able to talk his way out of a fine because the cops would tell he used to be a matatu driver

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Source: Daniel The Matatu Guy

Thanks to J for convincing me that readers probably weren’t as interested in the financial side of things as I was

Sometimes companies want to stay blind

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In Seeing Like a State, James C Scott says that for a government administrator there are virtually no other facts than those that are in standardized documents and data sets. The accumulation of data allows a state to “see” better and effect more sweeping changes in society.

This ability to “see” through data can be used for good or for ill. When the Nazis occupied Amsterdam, they were able to identify, round up, and deport 65,000 Jews because the Netherlands kept registries of all their citizens. This kind of record-keeping

“merely amplifies the capacity of the state for discriminating interventions. A capacity that in principle could as easily have been deployed to feed the Jews as to deport them.”

It struck me that the fact that data can enable either good or evil leads to opposite responses in the US vs. Kenya with regards to issues of racial/tribal equity.

In 2020 in the US, something I heard often from businesspeople interested in addressing racial equity was something like “if you aren’t disaggregating your hiring, promotion, and retention statistics by race, you’re never going to know if you have problems.” The assumption being that a lot of companies want to have better representation of e.g., black and Latino employees, so tracking will help them achieve that goal.

In Kenya, as far as I know, most companies do not officially track the tribe of their employees (1). There is a high degree of economic and social inequality between different tribal groups within Kenya, so you might think that Kenyan companies interested in addressing this inequalities would want to track the relevant data, as is done in the US. But by my understanding, officially tracking your employees’ tribe in Kenya is just totally out of the question. Everyone would assume you wanted to show favoritism to one of the most powerful tribes and discriminate against the rest (2).

Standardized data sets allow companies to see better and make more informed decisions, for good or ill. And if you are in an environment where people assume you will use your data for ill, it’s better to stay blind and just not collect that data at all.

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1. Disclaimer that even in writing this sentence I’m entering a world of Kenyan tribal representation and politics where I’m way over my head

2. This type of favoritism is common in politics. Kenyan presidents have blatantly given administrative jobs to those of their own tribes: in the two last terms of President Moi (of the Kalenjin tribe), “two of Kenya’s largest ethnic groups (the Kikuyu and the Luo) were virtually absent from his administration” (page 28). The title of Michela Wrong’s book It’s Our Turn to Eat about corruption in President Kibaki’s administration comes from a phrase used by members of Kibaki’s tribe in anticipation extracting benefits for themselves from the presidential administration

"These Indians are dying like flies"

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Before moving to Kenya part of me, a subconscious part of me that I’m not proud of, thought that sympathy for people in other countries was the luxury of the privileged. “Of course in the US we feel bad for poor people in poor countries who are dying of starvation and disease. We are so much better off than them and sympathize.” I sort of assumed without ever explicitly considering it that a lot of less privileged people are too worried about their own problems to think much of people suffering in other countries.

In February or March of 2021, a month or two after I moved to Nairobi, the delta variant was ravaging India. I was living in an apartment that was just 1km from my office (1), and often on my way home would stop at a fruit/vegetable stall.

The fruit/vegetable stand. 9 cent bananas, 45 cent large avocados. (Google Street View link)

One day I stopped to pick up some produce and had a short conversation with a guy, Josh, who ran a nearby street food kibanda (2). We had a short exchange while I was buying my mangoes and carrots.

Josh: “Have you seen about this delta?”

Me: “Yeah it’s bad.”

Josh: “Have you seen these Indians? They’re dying like flies. It’s terrible.”

It shouldn’t have been, but it was surprising to me that the Indian delta spike and resultant suffering would be top of mind for Josh. It certainly wasn’t taking up enough of my headspace that I would bring it up in a 30-second fruit-stall interaction.

Of course, anyone anywhere in the world feels bad for people dying of starvation and disease. We sympathize because we’re human.

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1. Even closer as the crow flies, but you know those Nairobi streets can be wily and winding

2. He was just kind of hanging out at the fruit/vegetable stand on break I guess

A Complete Taxonomy of Expats in Kenya

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Abstract: It’s said there are three types of expats in Nairobi (1): Missionaries, Mercenaries, and Misfits. This widely used framework, however, is incomplete. In this post I propose a rigorous and complete taxonomy (2). Every under-35-year-old expat that you will meet in Nairobi can be easily sorted into one of 24 buckets based on four dimensions. There are no edge cases.

Methods: The Taxonomy was created using extremely rigorous methods based on anecdotal data of my  friends in Kenya. Who are of course, totally and completely representative of all under-35 foreigners living in Kenya.

Overview: Each expat can be assigned an letter from each of four categories:

  • Purpose for being in Kenya: Impact (I) / market (M) / good time (G)

  • B-school-adjacence: In-program (P) / no plans (N)

  • Degree of entrapment in expat bubble: Practically local (L) / stuck (S)

  • Weekend behavior: City (C) / travel (T)

For example, an impact-driven person on internship from business school who is not trapped in the expat bubble and generally stays in Nairobi would be an IPLC.

Detail on the Four Categories

Purpose for being in Kenya:

  • I: Impact-driven (~”missionaries”)

  • M: Interested in the market or political environment (~”mercenaries”)

  • G: Just here for a good time man (~”misfits”)

  • Discussion: The most obvious of the 4 dimensions, purpose, is captured in the pop wisdom “missionary/mercenary/misfit” trichotomy. This trichotomy is obviously stylized for humorous effect - not all M’s are motivated solely by money, and many G’s aren’t misfits at all in their home countries. But it captures a general truth about expats that is more precisely articulated in the I/M/G dimension.

B-school-adjacence (3): 

  • P: In a master’s program or planning to apply next cycle (often business school)

  • N: No plans for grad school (includes those who are post-grad school)

  • Discussion: For the most part, someone’s adjacency to graduate school determines whether they plan to stay in Kenya longer than 6 months. No master’s plans = no concrete plans to leave Kenya.

Degree of entrapment in the expat bubble:

  • L: Basically local

  • S: Stuck in the bubble

  • Discussion: L’s tend to go to Kenyan clubs, listen to afrobeats, and not exclusively hang out with fellow expats. S’s tend to plan trips to the coast with each other and avoid taking matatus at all costs. If a S is the clubbing type, Alchemist is their favorite club. As a show of dominance over S’s, L’s will often slip the odd Swahili word into conversation. 

Weekend behavior:

  • C: Prioritize city life in Nairobi 

  • T: View traveling as the primary purpose of weekends

  • Discussion: Typical interests of T’s are kite surfing, climbing, gathering “content” for “the gram”, hiking, applying sunscreen, and safaris. T’s tend to be “doers”, as in “We did Mt. Kenya last weekend”, “I’ve done Lamu 3 or 4 times”, and “Ah, I’ve been meaning to do Samburu again”. C’s, either out of fear of the outdoors, desire to build up a community in Nairobi, or revulsion to planning tend to enjoy taking advantage of all the restaurants, markets, and house parties that Nairobi city life has to offer.

Further work: None required. This topic is now closed (4).

Acknowledgements: Thanks to K and J1 for comments on this manuscript, and to A and J2 for fruitful discussions. Expats par excellence all.


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  1. As we all know, if you move from a poorer to a richer country, you’re an immigrant and if you move from a richer to a poorer country you’re an expat. This is right and just and no further interrogation of this fact is needed

  2. Hence “The Taxonomy”

  3. For brevity I have titled this dimension “B-school-adjacence”, although “Grad-school-adjacence” would be technically more accurate as there are P’s (particularly those from Europe) who are planning to go to grad school that is not business school

  4. Tag urself. I’m an INSC

Reading can hijack your interests

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“What topics do I want to get more excited about?” This is a factor that goes into choosing books to read (1) that I used to not give much thought to.

When I was in college I read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It’s a rip-roaring 1000 page sci-fi book flashing back and forth between near-future entrepreneurs creating an online financial system and WWII codebreakers. 

It’s an awesome book and it got me excited about the technical topics it explored. I decided to write a program that would unbreakably  encrypt audio (2). It didn’t quite work (3), but was a lot of fun. It amplified my interest in how computers work, which was probably a significant subconscious influence on my decision to take a computation class my next year in college. And I bet its depiction of startup founders has contributed to my excitement about joining a startup for my next job.

Reading this book changed me into a person who was more interested in cryptography, electrical engineering, and startups. I was already generally nerdy and interested in those topics - otherwise I wouldn’t have read the book. But it amplified interests I already had, and channeled general interest in “secret codes” to a more specific interest in “One Time Pads”.

This interest-amplification-and-channeling effect of good writing is something I’ve started considering more when deciding what books to read. Should my next book be Half of a Yellow Sun or Mansfield Park? Well, I’d rather be excited about the Biafra war than Victorian England, so that’s a point in favor of Half of a Yellow Sun. I’m interested in this biography of Ramanujan, but I know if I read it I’m going to want to learn a bunch about theoretical math and Indian history, so maybe I should prioritize something that will get me excited about block chains or African history which will likely be more useful to me in my life (4).

Maybe this is part of the reason so many people read business books that don’t seem to teach very much. If spending 4 hours reading keeps you excited about your job, that might be a valuable use of time even if you learn very little else (5) (6).

Motivation and excitement are powerful forces. And reading is a great tool for hijacking your own interests to harness these forces.

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1. Or movies/shows to watch, podcasts to listen to, etc,

2. It was essentially a One Time Pad for audio, which I’m sure is not an original idea

3. I also only spent like 4 hours on it

4. Of course, it can be valuable to learn things outside your direct interests. With all of this you shouldn’t try to optimally engineer your reading habits, but I do think general rules can be helpful

5. Ditto for self-help books

6. I think also of Neil Gaiman’s story about how the Chinese Communist Party started to promote science fiction after realizing how impactful it could be on inventors