iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

The primary weakness here is that it was only once a month.

031

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

An intervention by Michal Kalecki to the UN conference on the Application of Science and Technology for the Benefit of Less Developed Regions in 1963. Amazing how much, even as the characters and methods change beyond recognition, the fundamental issues we argue about remain similar.

0104

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

The ball is round. The game lasts ninety minutes. And everything else is theory.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Just watched the replay of the goal: Anderson, not Kane!

000

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

The way he waited that extra second till Kane came too close to him to return to Enzo before passing was just perfect.

100

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Yeah, you could model this as a strategic interaction between 11 players all simultaneously deciding “effing heck, I don’t want to be the guy who was out of position when the Argentine team broke through.” The equilibrium is a bus being parked and Messi finding a way anyway.

120

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Can’t believe you didn’t got for the “… but 11 Frenchmen have been imprisoned on this pitch.”

050

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Apropos of nothing, do people remember how good peak Rakim was? The third verse here might be the greatest in rap history; the whole song is dense with brilliant, unexpected rhymes and rhythm changes. The difference between 'greatest' and 'great' is sometimes huge. www.youtube.com/watch?v=95gP...

youtube.com

Eric B. & Rakim - Follow The Leader (Official Music Video)

YouTube video by EricBAndRakimVEVO

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

AI shortcircuits lots of traditional accountability mechanisms and so cannot replace (or wholly replace) existing systems, even when it would be faster and better, until alternative accountability structures are set up. And this is both slow, but also massively under-invested in.

000

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I like this framework, a lot, but would venture a third: accountability. Lots of production processes (especially decision-making processes, which are essential to most businesses!) are optimised for accountability, or at least represent 'satisficing' behaviour on accountability.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Of all the things to pick. Eating fast food in a car is as close to my definition of hell as anyone will ever get to outside of Room 101. He could have picked Charlie Parker of Hank Williams, and he chose fried chicken in an enclosed space. And online meetings.

070

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

very exciting to see this happening.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

He’ll probably forget or garble much of it soon, but it’s fantastic to inculcate how maths shows up in the real world so you.

000

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

If your kid is lucky enough to not get freaked out by numbers at this age, this is such a fun way of getting them to think about them. I explained that these basic maths underlie everything from nuclear fission to how a lie can spread on the playground.

100

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Showing my five year old the mechanics (and policy implications) of exponential growth and he understood it better than some adults I knew during Covid.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Desal sounds like a really good candidate for a big AMC.

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 01/06/2026

Reposted by Ranil Dissanayake

Remember that recent paper claiming to show that "ideological bias" determined the results obtained by immigration policy research teams? A careful, open-code reanalysis by @kauspurg.bsky.social & Josef Brüderl finds that the result arises from a coding error. —> doi.org/10.31222/osf...

1310107

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Jane Jacob’s in 1969 in The Economy of Cities. I know it hardly needs restating, but she was a genius. This is still basically it.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

LeBron James is the greatest athlete I have ever seen. The only near comparison I can make is Serena. Just so physically superior to everyone else it’s absurd. Add that to their obvious intelligence and it’s not a surprise they were so dominant for so long.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

I often wonder how being an economist affects the way I communicate with my family. Today my five year old, in the middle of eating a bowl of noodles, told me “I’m an outlier because I love the rain so much.” So I might need to rein it in a little.

061

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

I last (seriously) wrote for Aid Thoughts around 15 years ago. It's kind of amazing, reading back, how I've changed (both how little and how much) since then. I often tell people I manage to write as much and as often as they can--you only get good at it through trial and error. I miss blogging.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

What amazing news. Another great public policy school at a time when we most certainly need to shine a light on public policy and the role of governments worldwide.

000

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

John Hopkins are lucky to have you, Michael. Hoping you go from strength to strength there.

100

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Absolutely brilliant book. The narrators off-centre world view is my favourite thing about it.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

A lesson: no matter how talented, working on the basics matters. True across basically all disciplines.

000

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Nothing says Christmas like the Australians traumatising 11 visiting Englishmen over a small wooden urn full of ashes.

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

Really looking forward to reading this update.

040

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I need an explainer of that organogram to start with…

170

Reposted by Ranil Dissanayake

Royal Economic Society @resmedia.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

📢 Join our next Active Bystander Training for economists! 🗓️ 18 Nov 2025 | 09:30–11:00 | Online Learn tools for safe, effective intervention & fostering an inclusive profession. 👉 Register: ProgrammesOfficer@res.org.uk 🔗 bit.ly/466tIur #Economics #EDI #EconSky

0105

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Tolstoy and his confidante (a lizard). From Gorky’s Fragments from My Diary

Oliver Hanney @olihanney.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Reposted by Ranil Dissanayake

What is development economics? I find it more and more difficult to define what development economics actually is. So, for this @voxdev.bsky.social blog, I asked development economists how they define development economics: voxdev.org/topic/what-d...

voxdev.org

What is development economics?

I asked development economists for their definitions of development economics.

193

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Reading Pearl on causality widened my horizons so much. Made it harder, though, but so crucial for thinking this all through from a practical policy perspective.

100

Reposted by Ranil Dissanayake

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 14/08/2025

This is a crucial point. Still relatively few economists are explicitly trained on this point, and too many econ papers show it.

1143

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

I haven't thought about this deeply, but how much do we think using PPPs adjusts for the Baumol effect here? On a scale of 100% to not at all

Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Reposted by Ranil Dissanayake

When thinking about how to get out of this mess we need to keep in mind 'asymmetric causation'. Knowing what caused a problem doesn't tell you how to solve it. The example that brought the point home to me was: If you're run over by a steamroller, the cure is not to have it reverse back over you

1611518

Ranil Dissanayake @scepticalranil.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Maybe he misread the title as 'complex organisms'?