Skip to content

Sign up for a small monthly payment and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD


3 Quarks Daily

Make a one-time donation and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD


  • Home
  • About Us
  • Monday Magazine
  • Archives
  • Support 3QD
  • Log In

Varun Gauri

Varun Gauri

Varun Gauri is Lecturer of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution. Previously, he was an economist in the World Bank’s research department, where he founded and headed the World Bank’s behavioral science unit. He serves on the editorial boards of the journals Behavioral Public Policy, BMJ Global Health, and Health and Human Rights. Varun has served on the World Economic Forum Council on Behavior, the Board of the Behavioral Economics Action Research Centre at the University of Toronto, and the American Political Science Association Task Force on Democratic Imperatives. His research addresses human rights, behavioral economics, and social policy, and has been covered in The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Forbes, The Hindu, The Guardian, and Frontline. Email vgauri1 [at] gmail.com

Public Narratives are Bad Stories About Fears

Posted on Monday, Feb 22, 2021 1:05AMMonday, February 22, 2021 by Varun Gauri

by Varun Gauri In his recent book A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, George Saunders offers insights into writing good short stories. I may consider his craft advice in another context; here, I want to explore the book’s implications for bad stories and, specifically, the bad stories we call public narratives. Saunders contends…

Leave a comment

Prosecuting an Authoritarian ex-President

Posted on Monday, Jan 25, 2021 1:45AMMonday, January 25, 2021 by Varun Gauri

by Varun Gauri An autocratic president, whom the opposition blames for thousands of deaths, faces a referendum on his rule. The majority rejects him in the election, but around 45% vote for him to remain in office. The would-be permanent dictator begrudgingly departs, yet he retains a fanatically loyal following, especially among the religious right,…

Leave a comment

The Grinches, Scrooges, and Dursleys of Democratic Gift Exchange

Posted on Monday, Dec 28, 2020 1:20AMTuesday, December 29, 2020 by Varun Gauri

by Varun Gauri The spirit of gift exchange animates democracy. In exchange for letting you control government, giving you power over the security forces, the common treasure, and the agencies and civil service — which is power over me — you agree to grant me those same powers —  and power over you —  in…

Leave a comment

The Idealist Case for Supreme Court Expansion

Posted on Monday, Nov 2, 2020 1:25AMMonday, November 2, 2020 by Varun Gauri

by Varun Gauri The realist case for the Democrats to expand the Supreme Court, and more generally to reform and modernize the federal judiciary, should they have the opportunity, can be stated simply: What is the point of unilateral disarmament? For several decades, Republicans have weaponized the judicial branch by appointing a large number of…

Leave a comment

Ordinary Illiberalism

Posted on Monday, Oct 5, 2020 1:55AMMonday, October 5, 2020 by Varun Gauri

by Varun Gauri The challenge for liberal societies is to understand the allure of illiberalism in the first place, with far more honesty and subtlety than we muster.  —Pratap Bhanu Mehta Why does illiberalism appear attractive to so many people in liberal societies these days? Part of the answer, certainly, is that liberal regimes, and…

Leave a comment

Trumpism and the Exhilaration of Incoherence

Posted on Monday, Sep 7, 2020 1:55AMMonday, September 7, 2020 by Varun Gauri

by Varun Gauri Covfefe. Alternative facts. Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. “The line of ‘Make America great again,’ the phrase, that was mine, I came up with it about a year ago, and I kept using it, and everybody’s using it, they are all loving it. I don’t know, I guess I should copyright it,…

Leave a comment

Mindfulness and Social Identity

Posted on Monday, Aug 10, 2020 2:15AMMonday, August 10, 2020 by Varun Gauri

by Varun Gauri These days, fights about social identity are coming to the boil. Could mindfulness practice lower the temperature of those disputes? I want to suggest that it could. To understand why, it’s useful to start by describing the psychological components of social identity. There are a variety of ways of thinking about the topic;…

Leave a comment

Receive 3QD Posts by Email

Please fill out the form below to get our email with all the posts from the previous 24 hours, which is sent out a bit after midnight (NY City time) each day. This is completely free of charge for everyone.
Name: 
Your email address:*
Please wait...
Please enter all required fields Click to hide
Correct invalid entries Click to hide

Coronavirus COVID-19 Info

PLEASE CLICK HERE.

Search 3QD



Follow 3QD on Social Media


What People Say About 3QD




"It is a great honor to be mentioned in one of my two ONLY portals to the internet—and the world, since I do not read newspapers. My discipline, to avoid drowning in information, is not to cruise the web outside of these two points. I tried many sites; yours has CHARM."

—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. [The other site NNT is referring to is the excellent Arts & Letters Daily.]




"Thanks for 3 Quarks Daily which has been very high on my reading list for several years now!"

—Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He is also co-founder, with Martin Rees and Jaan Tallinn, of a project to establish a Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.




"3 Quarks Daily is one of the most interesting and thoughtful websites out there."

—Sean Carroll, physicist at Caltech, author.




"I've recommended your site to a number of friends and colleagues who've bemoaned the dearth of sites with any literary/scientific muscularity. Keep up the wonderful work."

—John Allen Paulos, Professor of Mathematics at Temple University, and bestselling author of Innumeracy




"3 Quarks Daily is a warm and often amusing home for intellectuals and other wags."

—Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer.




"For sheer elegance, wit and worldly wisdom when it comes to reading, editing, presenting the real news of the world... for liveliness, cosmopolitanism, range of scientific, philosophical, and literary curiosity in harvesting big and provocative ideas... for consistency of character and manners, ever above the ordinary... 3 Quarks stands alone. If 3 Quarks Daily were a person, wouldn't it be Proust?"

—Christopher Lydon, host of the excellent show "Open Source" on National Public Radio, author, media personality.




"You guys rock!"

—Andrew Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic, author of five books, überblogger.




3 Quarks Daily is an essential stop for any serious reader on the Web."

—Ken Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch since 1993.




"3 Quarks is a daily must-read for intellectuals of all stripes. It is perhaps even smarter and better and more comprehensive than Arts & Letters Daily, the de facto gold standard of the smart set on the internet."

—Laura Claridge, former Professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy, and author of Romantic Potency: The Paradox of Desire, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence, and Norman Rockwell: A Life.




"Just wanted you to know I’m one of many who reads and enjoys 3 Quarks....almost daily."

—David Byrne, musician, former lead-singer of the Talking Heads, artist, intellectual.






Recent Comments on 3QD

  • Massilian Everything in this nauseating diatribe is hateful. It's another stupid example of the sinister cancel culture. "Cancel France! France stinks, it's...

    The French Inquisition ·  Saturday, February 27, 2021

  • Ofinfinitejest . Having taken time to read through Rorty and Putnam, and others on epistemology, I still have never been shaken from the "belief" (here we go again!)...

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Saturday, February 27, 2021

  • Paul Bigioni This is lovely.

    What “weird Catholicism” reveals about the language of the internet ·  Saturday, February 27, 2021

  • Martinlucas Yes, so that is perhaps to bruteness of some facts.

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Friday, February 26, 2021

  • Eric Weiner Although the author, in what I think is an excellent analysis of the "demarcation problem," doesn't discuss the social sciences, I find it hard to...

    Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated ·  Friday, February 26, 2021

  • Chris Horner Perhaps Simon Blackburn says this better than I can (in fact, I'm certain he does!): In everyday transactions a fundamental exercise of reason is...

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Friday, February 26, 2021

  • Chris Horner Interesting points. But no, I wasn't trying to make a Johnsonian post at the end. What I was gesturing towards was the sheer physical 'thereness' of...

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Friday, February 26, 2021

  • Chris Horner Sorry about that.

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Friday, February 26, 2021

  • David Oates Thanks Brooks. I confess I didn't know this system was also European. You can imagine the uphill battle getting it, and keeping it, over here.

    Elegy for a Window Seat: The Death and Life of the Convivial City ·  Friday, February 26, 2021

  • Bill Murray Morgan Meis, thank you for unearthing and posting these Lawrence Ferlinghetti travel journals.

    The Travel Journals Of Lawrence Ferlinghetti ·  Thursday, February 25, 2021

  • Sally Benzon RIP. Ferlinghetti is one of a kind.

    Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 101 ·  Wednesday, February 24, 2021

  • Brooks Riley Thanks for this wonderful comment, Jochen. I hadn't thought of l'etranger, but it makes sense. I'm not sure we become him but rather we invite him or...

    Round Trip ·  Wednesday, February 24, 2021

  • Jochen Szangolies I think I definitely agree, as regards the rejection of the self as some sort of 'nuclear I', some kind of nugget of me-ness, intrinsic and...

    Waiting for the Messiah: Derrida and the Philosophy of Hospitality ·  Wednesday, February 24, 2021

  • Jochen Szangolies I somehow missed/forgot to reply to this. The Invention of Nature is on my ever-growing 'to read' list. As for the question of why Humboldt's name...

    How Things Hang Together: the Lobster and the Octopus Redux ·  Wednesday, February 24, 2021

  • Jochen Szangolies Very intriguing essay! It's an interesting concept, visualizing the strange alienation the pandemic has caused as the emergence of the 'stranger'...

    Round Trip ·  Wednesday, February 24, 2021

  • Larry Franz Hi. I was responding to the part of the article that says: "we would have to grasp reality plain, independent of human concepts and beliefs, and...

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Wednesday, February 24, 2021

  • Ruchira Thanks for posting this, Jim. Although I had heard of the City Lights bookstore in SF and the obscenity charges brought against Allen Ginsburg's Howl,...

    Wednesday Poem ·  Wednesday, February 24, 2021

  • Martinlucas Slightly puzzled by your first paragraph. Surely we do think about the nature of things existing independent of our thought. We use our thought to...

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Martinlucas Think the question we need to ask ourselves is what are we looking for in the bruteness of facts? That they are true independent of humanity, that...

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Ruchira Michael and Brooks, as you may already know, Ken Paxton is probably the worst still-in-office Texas politician and a crook. His attempt to secure a...

    Catspeak ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Brooks Riley Oh those barbecues of the vanities. . .

    Catspeak ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Michael Liss I'm also hearing that the esteemed Ken Paxton, Attorney General, felt it was time to head to Utah with his wife after some grilling of steaks outside...

    Catspeak ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • David Kordahl I've experienced similar confusion when I try to understand how the pragmatic account relates to the scientific description of things. Sure, I can...

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Martinlucas Interesting discussion of a difficult topic, really difficult. I’m not quite clear on what you mean at the end when you talk about the physicality...

    Truth, Lies and Pragmatism ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Brooks Riley An impoochable offense! The cats send their best. By the way, I just heard that AOC raised millions for Texas while Cruz was preoccupied with damage...

    Catspeak ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Ruchira Thanks for paying attention to the meltdown of the Lone Ranger approach to government regulation in the Lone Star State. The cowardly Cruz whose new...

    Catspeak ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Jon Kujawa Brian, Thanks for the comment. I would say the US justice system fails on most measures. It is deeply damaged and damaging. It's a useful tool for...

    The Mathematics of Desistance ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Jon Kujawa David, Thanks for reading!

    The Mathematics of Desistance ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Brooks Riley Wow, Azra, thank you for making my day! And lots of love back to you, too.

    Catspeak ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

  • Azra Raza BRILLIANT!! Thanks Brooks, for providing the BEST schadenfreude moment in the Cruz drama!! You are just too good! Lots of love from a freezing...

    Catspeak ·  Tuesday, February 23, 2021

3QD Design History and Credits

The original site was designed by S. Abbas Raza in 2004 but soon completely redesigned by Mikko Hyppönen and deployed by Henrik Rydberg. It was later upgraded extensively by Dan Balis in 2006. The next major revision was designed by S. Abbas Raza, building upon the earlier look, and coded by Dumky de Wilde in 2013. And this current version 5.0 has been designed and deployed by Dumky de Wilde in collaboration with S. Abbas Raza.

3 Quarks Daily

3 Quarks Daily started in 2004 with the idea of creating a curated retreat for everything intellectual on the web. No clickbait, no fake news, not just entertainment, but depth and breadth —something increasingly hard to find on the internet today. If you like what we do, please consider making a donation.