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> One insight was that "the countries now at the bottom are distinctive not just in being the poorest but also in having failed to grow." That's true, but it yi

> One insight was that "the countries now at the bottom are distinctive not just in being the poorest but also in having failed to grow." That's true, but it yields no more information than the initial misleading aggregation: It's like saying, "Those at the bottom are distinctive not just in being at the bottom but also in being at the bottom." "Poorest" relates to wealth, while "failing to grow" relates to wealth's derivative, and there's no logical relation between a quantity and its derivative.

anigbrowl 10y ago
Put things in italics to quote them on HN. Almost nobody uses a > delimiter here and you're being downvoted because people are mistaking the pull quote for your own argument.
- pmarreck 10y ago
  I see > delimiters to quote the article all the time, here, actually, and I don't see a problem with it
- douche 10y ago
  Why would you ever italicize something to quote it? Italics are for emphasis. Either use real quote marks or the > block quoting convention, which, as pmarreck notes, lots of people do use here. My two cents, which is a vast over-estimate of their value, in a discussion of internet pedantry.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    When you only have one typographic differentiator as we do on HN, you use it for contrast. This is the most effective presentation for blocks of text on HN. Quote marks are frequently overlooked, or I would still be using them.
    - pmarreck 10y ago
      Frequently overlooked? How can you miss those? Perhaps I read slowly...
  - caf 10y ago
    Italics used for quotations isn't just a HN thing: http://www.gsbe.co.uk/grammar-italics.html#italics:%20lengthy%20quotations%201 http://www.gsbe.co.uk/grammar-italics.html#italics:%20length...
sebastos 10y ago
The author is probably implying that being somewhat developed makes it easier to continue developing even faster, like an exponential. I agree though - that point is rather clumsily made, and my reading of it requires some good will. The article goes downhill from there, and my good will ran out once I got to the "insight" that 99.99% of Muslims aren't terrorists, as if socio-political norms of tens of millions of Islamists aren't deeply problematic as long as they're not literally blowing themselves up. If you think I'm being hyperbolic, allow me to ruin your day by pointing to some unsettling polls: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/ http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi... Amongst the reassuring results from those surveys: 60% of all Egyptian Muslims think the punishment for leaving the faith ought to be death. 35% of all Indonesian Muslims think adulterers should be stoned. Of course there is a good point here that the article was trying to allude to: barbarism of this type is in some ways a self-fulfilling cultural prophecy. But one has to wonder how coy we really ought to be about the differences that exist in the here and now, especially considering these attitudes matter to the men and women living in those societies today.

anigbrowl 10y ago

Put things in italics to quote them on HN. Almost nobody uses a > delimiter here and you're being downvoted because people are mistaking the pull quote for your own argument.

pmarreck 10y ago
I see > delimiters to quote the article all the time, here, actually, and I don't see a problem with it
douche 10y ago
Why would you ever italicize something to quote it? Italics are for emphasis. Either use real quote marks or the > block quoting convention, which, as pmarreck notes, lots of people do use here. My two cents, which is a vast over-estimate of their value, in a discussion of internet pedantry.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  When you only have one typographic differentiator as we do on HN, you use it for contrast. This is the most effective presentation for blocks of text on HN. Quote marks are frequently overlooked, or I would still be using them.
  - pmarreck 10y ago
    Frequently overlooked? How can you miss those? Perhaps I read slowly...
- caf 10y ago
  Italics used for quotations isn't just a HN thing: http://www.gsbe.co.uk/grammar-italics.html#italics:%20lengthy%20quotations%201 http://www.gsbe.co.uk/grammar-italics.html#italics:%20length...

sebastos 10y ago

The author is probably implying that being somewhat developed makes it easier to continue developing even faster, like an exponential. I agree though - that point is rather clumsily made, and my reading of it requires some good will. The article goes downhill from there, and my good will ran out once I got to the "insight" that 99.99% of Muslims aren't terrorists, as if socio-political norms of tens of millions of Islamists aren't deeply problematic as long as they're not literally blowing themselves up. If you think I'm being hyperbolic, allow me to ruin your day by pointing to some unsettling polls: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/ http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi... Amongst the reassuring results from those surveys: 60% of all Egyptian Muslims think the punishment for leaving the faith ought to be death. 35% of all Indonesian Muslims think adulterers should be stoned. Of course there is a good point here that the article was trying to allude to: barbarism of this type is in some ways a self-fulfilling cultural prophecy. But one has to wonder how coy we really ought to be about the differences that exist in the here and now, especially considering these attitudes matter to the men and women living in those societies today.