So you had a lot of people talking about Piketty's famous empirical work, and then you had a lot of people talking about r > g, and then a lot of people who hadn't read the book just mixing them up.VOX
The best proof yet that nobody has actually read Piketty's book
Updated by Matthew Yglesias
5 comments:
Someone needs to write a VERY long book, proving that the more data there is, the more disparity there is in how much of it is read .... or relevant to context. :(
After all, how do we get through the day, without reading a whole book every 10 seconds?
By summarizing RELEVANCE! Rapidly.
99.99% of data is superfluous to context.
That's why all sensory systems in all species (photoreceptors, auditory receptors, touch, smell, taste) are all TUNED to the minimal bandwidth that's adequate for navigation & survival (of that species).
Tempo matters. More so than we commonly contemplate.
Which means simplicity matters too.
How simple?
As simple as possible, but no simpler. :)
It's called Natural Selection.
That's why you can sum Piketty's entire book in one graph. (& different ones, for different sub-contexts)
Is someone else keeping a list of all the extant books that everyone "should" read? It's impossible. Quite literally.
One has to surf books, just like we surf life. It's the only way to survive the information deluge & unending FutureShockWave.
Well said, Roger!
Don't get me wrong: I sympathize with Piketty. A lot. I find his work very exciting (I haven't finished the whole thing, yet: God, that's a big book)
The book contains a trainload of data and Piketty himself shows he is honest, hard-working and erudite. The book is actually entertaining and accessible.
But there is something deliciously ironic in Piketty's story: the claim by his fans that Piketty has nothing in common with Marx.
Not even the fact that people have strong opinions about his work, without actually bothering to read it. Only based on hearsay by their more widely-read mates, who trust their more widely-read mates, who...
Thanks for being succinct, Dan.
(Show off! :) )
Now, can you explain that hat in 1 sentence too, Dan? :)
I've always wondered.
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