Andreas Varotsis

So in case you'd missed it, we're all having less kids. As someone who prefers to play with cats and robots (which are less fragile and easier to lock downstairs when you're done), I'm personally quite keen on this idea, but I also have to admit it's real weird: something has happened globally in the last fifty or so years that has made fertility drop just as much in London as China, Mexico and Sri Lanka, and not many effects apply universally like that.

More importantly though, it might just break society: we've always relied on the new generation to care for the ones before in old age, and economically speaking, we've relied on the dynamism of future generations to subsidise the pensions of the current ones. So the future is probably a lot more older people, and fewer nuclear families (and potentially less money for everyone).

What does that look like? I'm not sure. Plenty of science fiction has contemplated it (I've recently enjoyed Too Like the LightningThis is not really my area of expertise, but it's something I've been thinking about. If others have been thinking about it too, might be nice to chat it over!) but it doesn't feel like liberal, pluralist voices really have a direction yet, and in the meantime, nationalist, nativist voices are shouting ever louder.

We're all part of an excitement experiment thinking about how governance and society could work. So what does an optimistic vision of the future look like for us, and how do we make the case for it?

This is not really my area of expertise, but it's something I've been thinking about. If others have been thinking about it too, might be nice to chat it over!

So it turns out, in government, civic society, and life more generally, finding out of if something actually works (eg, achieves the change you wanted it to) is actually rather hard. People have done excellent talks about this. The UK Government has got a book about this. And yet it's still all pretty hard, and people tend to be very confidently wrong.

I've spent a lot of my time trying to run evaluations in government, but it's not exactly a fun thing to teach... so instead, I'm proposing a bit of a lab experiment: let's run an experiment on ration club (or something else lab related you control!)

If people are interested, we'll spend a few hours talking through what sort of changes we might want to make to RC, then hopefully actually test them, robustly, record what changes, and run a full experiment from cradle to grave. We'll start from first principles, so a vague understanding of causal inference and statistics is very welcome, but absolutely not necessary.

PS: it will defo go wrong.

Relevant reading:

• all the evaluations linked above
• Some of the other topics of data + evidence
• Freakonomics!
• If you're feeling hardcore, Causal Inference for the Brave and True, my bible.

Government is facing a problem: AI is making it easier and easier for citizens to get stuff done...and it turns out government was never really designed for it.

It was only a decade ago(ISH) that we all hoped government could be made transparent and responsive through civic technology, hence freedom of information act and sites like What Do They Know.

But today, when anybody can ask ChatGpt to draft and comprehensive request, government departments find themselves sinking under demand, in an AI arms war.

It turns out friction is kind of important! Richard Thaler describes this as "sludge": friction on the system that's seemingly tiny, but enough to affect behaviour.

A world where we all have an AI agent might be the death of friction, and the trend of the last few decades which sees democratic governments being ever more transparent and accessible... But somehow less trusted than ever.

Let's have a bit of a discussion around efforts to make government more transparent, how that didn't seem to be working, and how just maybe we can design some intentional sludge to fix it?

I’ve been involved in building and launching a few interesting pieces of govtech, like GOV.UK Chat, Caddy. If you want to dive into the messy reality of shipping code inside the state apparatus, and what it actually takes to get modern tools into the hands of citizens, let's talk.

Everyone thinks their idea works, and then they test it. But how do you test something? How do you make something repeatable and robust, especially if you haven’t got bucketloads of cash? I can walk you through how to run lean, rigorous evaluations that actually prove whether you're shifting the needle or just inhaling your own exhaust.

I’ve spent a lot of time working in the UK government! If you’d like to chat through how it practically works - what do civil servants do, how do ministers and political advisors fit in, and why does it seem so janky sometimes - then let me know.

Remember in the glory days before AI, when we just did data science? If you want to run actual analysis, build predictive models, or figure out causal relationships without just throwing a prompt at a frontier model, come ask me about it.

So it turns out selling to government is hard. Procurement frameworks are a labyrinth, incentives are completely warped, and the sales cycles can outlast your runway. If you're trying to figure out how to navigate the bureaucracy without losing your mind, I've got some scars to share.