Andrew Gelman on "What should we talk about?" starts discussion on a quote of Robin Hanson:
"If your main reason for talking is to socialize, you’ll want to talk about whatever everyone else is talking about. Like say the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. But if instead your purpose is to gain and spread useful insight, so that we can all understand more about things that matter, you’ll want to look for relatively neglected topics. . . ."
Unfortunately, we are interested in several topics which concern us from climate change to economic matters on which we (I) do not have expertise. How to make sense of these discussions, sometimes by supposed experts with lots of trolls floating around, is not very clear. Recently I read Piketty, thought that it was good but incomplete in terms of processes leading to inequality and suggestions to overcome it. I read a number of reviews in the prominent blogs which did not seem to lead anywhere. But finally I found from a link two interviews with Michael Hudson (one was linked by Yves Smith) who has not read the book interesting. Though that may change with more reading, browsing discussions which one does not quite understand may lead to some momentary insights.
"If your main reason for talking is to socialize, you’ll want to talk about whatever everyone else is talking about. Like say the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. But if instead your purpose is to gain and spread useful insight, so that we can all understand more about things that matter, you’ll want to look for relatively neglected topics. . . ."
Unfortunately, we are interested in several topics which concern us from climate change to economic matters on which we (I) do not have expertise. How to make sense of these discussions, sometimes by supposed experts with lots of trolls floating around, is not very clear. Recently I read Piketty, thought that it was good but incomplete in terms of processes leading to inequality and suggestions to overcome it. I read a number of reviews in the prominent blogs which did not seem to lead anywhere. But finally I found from a link two interviews with Michael Hudson (one was linked by Yves Smith) who has not read the book interesting. Though that may change with more reading, browsing discussions which one does not quite understand may lead to some momentary insights.
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