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Thomas Sowell has had a huge impact on me and my views on economics. I'm from a poor working-class background and am often irritated by the needless language ba

by kypro 6y ago

Thomas Sowell has had a huge impact on me and my views on economics. I'm from a poor working-class background and am often irritated by the needless language barriers of academics. > “Too many academics write as if plain English is beneath their dignity,” Sowell once said, “and some seem to regard logic as an unconstitutional infringement of their freedom of speech.” Sowell is unique in this respect. He's book, "Basic Economics" is full of extremely relatable examples of economics in practice. It's one of the few books on economics that's a great read regardless of your background or level of academic achievement.

mc32 6y ago
I wish other writers would take this to heart. Reading The New Yorker it’s as if their language is a shibboleth and if they didn’t use it, it would alienate their audience for using average language, yet they are the same people who pontificate and pretend they advocate for the lower classes.
- Emma_Goldman 6y ago
  The New Yorker is an upper-middle class publication. That is its target audience. Other magazines owned by the same media conglomerate, Conde Nast, are broadly similar in orientation: Vogue, Bon Appetit, Vanity Fair, GQ, Architectural Digest. I don't think they 'advocate for the lower classes', subjectively or objectively. I read very few socialists and communists in the New Yorker!
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    As OP said,"pretend they advocate for the lower classes"
    - Emma_Goldman 6y ago
      Hence why I wrote 'subjectively or objectively'. They have no pretence to being a working-class magazine, or to advocating a working-class politics.
      - BurningFrog 6y ago
        OK. Maybe we're not so different after all!
  - pas 6y ago
    Do socialists/communists really advocate for the lower classes?
    - tharne 6y ago
      Nope, they advocate for "control", with them in charge, of course.
      - tdhz77 6y ago
        Who better to control the money and know how best to use money than the people?
        mc32 6y ago
        I think you’re talking past each other. In communism, in principle, things belong “to the people”, but in reality they belong to the state which can decide what you get, and taken away (as form of punishment). On the other hand, in democracies governments rarely leave things to “the people” they take the money to the feds, the state, county and then the local gov... Do I want my money going to podunk or a mismanaged (corrupt city), or locally where we have more of a voice?
        tharne 6y ago
        People should be in control of the money they earn, because that's the only time there's any skin in the game. If you think The Government == The People, you're out of your mind. It's a nice ideal, but it's never been achieved in a modern nation state. Some nation states are less abusive than others, but that's as good as it gets. The government is careless with spending and can't be trusted with people's money because they didn't earn the money they have. They took it out of people's paychecks, and if they run out, they can levy more taxes or just print more, there's no incentive to be thoughtful, careful, or diligent. At any rate, when the government is reckless with people's money, it's never the government that has to feel any pain.
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      Depends on the socialists or communists, but historically - often, yes. Certainly more so than capitalists, who are either indifferent or actively hostile, but may pretend to be otherwise as a matter of political expediency.
- hedberg10 6y ago
  Let them. If you have the psychological need to constantly show how smart you are, your life will be very stressful indeed. You will want to manipulate others to get confirmation of your acrobatics and always be on the lookout for disproof. This will lead to you limiting your life severely for fear of actually finding it. -former smartness showoff who now acts betterer
  - SaltyBackendGuy 6y ago
    > Let them. Very sound advice. Somewhat a tangent. I used to play a lot of poker. One angle that would work frequently to get information from people is exactly this. Say something like "Ah you had AJ", even though you don't believe that. Then you might get a response "No I had __" or they might even show you their hand. It's all tide to the need to prove how smart we are as humans.
  - minikites 6y ago
    > Years ago my mother used to say to me, "In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.
    - anonymousiam 6y ago
      Great line. For those who do not recognize the source, it's from "Harvey".
  - sergiogjr 6y ago
    They are the anointed ones of which Thomas talks about in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3044.The_Vision_of_the_Anointed https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3044.The_Vision_of_the_A...
    - hedberg10 6y ago
      Amazing book.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
- starkd 6y ago
  His books are great for the mass of people who are functionally illiterate, who want to learn to read.
- minikites 6y ago
  I can understand this point of view but the point of elevated language and academic jargon is to allow for a more accurate and nuanced discussion without having to re-state assumptions and underlying principles. It's often not done well or used to obfuscate ideas, but the core principle has merit.
  - pas 6y ago
    Yes, but. Somewhere along the way science, research, the topics science "concerns itself with" and everything suddenly exploded over the last hundred or so years, and especially since we have this thing called the Internet the number of published papers, science journalism and journals grown exponentially. One one hand, it's great. More science/research is being done, but on the other hand it becomes less and less accessible due to the extreme specificity, very narrow scopes and due to simply being on the very edge of human knowledge accumulation. And of course, theoretically whatever paper one is reading one can "simply" follow the references and look up the introduced technical terms. Occasionally there are great survey papers that take a look at a (sub-sub-sub-)field, and again from time to time there are amazing science communicators that allow laypeople to have some kind of real grasp on these questions and topics. Yet, I think, it's clear that publishing terse PDFs is not the best way to communicate research and results. And we know, we - as in DARPA, but anyway, as in civilization - did a trial, and it's very enlightening: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00672-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00672-7 And one of the big finding is that being stubbornly terse is bad. And it's just a step, that this trial did not check, but maybe requiring researchers to spend a few days of their precious time to write a few pages about what they are actually doing, introduce the terms, techniques, methods, wouldn't be that bad, maybe even it would be helpful ... and this is basically pre-registration, and this is basically the grant proposal. And it'd be double-plus-good to link all of these in an open and really accessible manner in those fancy PDFs. (Or better yet, just use a HTML site. LaTeX is nice, but.)
- pas 6y ago
  It's not just the vocabulary, but the structure, the whole style. It's long, it's very meandering, it's very illustrative, but rarely direct and informative. Not many people have the time and desire to read something that presents so little value to them.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    Not many people read, full stop.
  - gen220 6y ago
    I might be a minority, but I'm willing to stick out my neck for meandering, illustrative, and indirect writing. Don't get me wrong, if it was the only thing available, I'd probably go crazy, too. But I believe there is a time and place in my "reading diet" for this kind of long-form journalism. As your adjectives suggest, New Yorker articles are less bullets of breathlessly-repeated facts, and more illustrations of nuanced scenes and interactions. I think it's natural, because life is messy and meandering, too. That being said, most of their articles have very well-defined and well-informed points. They don't make them by stating it up front, but by drawing a picture, observing some of its details, and asking you to form your own opinion. We can disagree, but to me it feels more intellectually-honest than other forms of journalism. Yes, it takes longer to get there. Yes, some of the details (what clothes people are wearing, what the rooms smell like, whatever) could probably be removed without compromising the structural integrity. But the New Yorker is about structural integrity and style. It's like the "literary fiction" of news. I don't read each article in each magazine, but it's still pretty rare that I've regretted finishing one; maybe once every other month.
    - MisterBastahrd 6y ago
      What about the bleatings of a person like Kevin D. Williamson, whose prose I identify as horrifically boring, not only because he isn't a deep thinker on any of the subject matter he writes about, but also because he spends about 80% of any essay trying to beat his audience over the head with how familiar he is with obscure and / or inconsequential tangential topics to the matter at hand. I don't have an issue with writers being descriptive. I very much have a problem with writers trying to prove they're the Dennis Miller of serious thought.
- 1980phipsi 6y ago
  I can't stand most articles in The New Yorker.
- setgree 6y ago
  I personally find much of the prose in the New Yorker clear, even inspiring. Especially w.r.t. its travel writing, I don't think any publication better captures the magic and the essence of the experience. [0] [1] I also think Emily Nussbaum is a wonderful TV critic and more or less deserves credit for elevating TV criticism to equal status with art & movie reviews. Having said that, I quite take your point and I am always pleased when a researcher takes the time to write clearly. It's a skill that needs to be practiced and developed, but unfortunately, for most academics, investing in that skill isn't obviously a good career choice. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/how-prosperity-transformed-the-falklands https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/how-prosperity... [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/the-enduring-romance-of-the-night-train https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/the-enduring-r...
sb057 6y ago
You (and other repliers to you) may be interested in George Orwell's excellent essay "Politics and the English Language". >Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
chmod600 6y ago
Overall, I like his writing, but his style can also come across as dismissive; as though he is obviously right, before he has really addressed all lines of criticism. When used to explain something, this style is great, because he gets his point across efficiently and provides enough backing so that you can remember it. And if you read enough of his writing, he brings out the nuance in other books and the intellectual detail is clearly there. But I can see how his straightforward style would be unpersuasive. Any one statement or paragraph or essay can be picked at by someone looking to do so. As a teacher and thought leader, he's been very successful. As a political commentator, he's preaching to the choir.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  That's a standard rhetorical technique you'll see in much right-wing writing. Statements are made as if they're simply correct by definition, and there is no space for argument or dissent. Is he genuinely objective and data-driven? How many of his studies have been replicated? How many competing studies - which he fails to mention - disagree with his conclusions? It's easy to be right when you simply assert your idea of truth. But that's rhetoric, not science. Science is peer review and open debate, and I don't see him engaging in that.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Not just right-wing. I've seen the same approach from marxists. (Not an exaggeration or a projection - from literal marxists.) The unstated, unproven assumption is that Marx was right, and the analysis proceeds from there to make dogmatic statements about the economy and/or society. That's fine, if the readers are also convinced marxists. But if someone else reads it, they very quickly think "Wait a minute, I don't agree with your premise, and you did nothing to convince me. Why should I believe your conclusions?"
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      If you're familiar with Lakoff you'll know there's a difference in tone which is based on a difference on associated family positioning. Conservatives tend to paternalism. Marxists are more likely to be oppositional, because Marxism and socialism are underdog discourses, and they don't have the advantage of assuming that general readers will agree - especially in the US, where the default position for most of the population is aggressive hostility towards Socialism and incandescent fury towards Marxism, without really knowing much about either.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
datavirtue 6y ago
I found Sowell via YouTube while studying economics in college. They were beating us up with witchcraft macro economic formulas that I could easily tell were useless 99% of the time and impossible to determine when the were not useless. I realized they were not teaching us economics so I went looking for other sources. Found Friedman and Sowell and basically threw the college text books in the trash.
jxramos 6y ago
I picked up on that too, such a shock of recognition when the author hit us with that one. It's so true, there's something effectively plainspoken about his prose that has such economy to his words. It's incredible stuff how crystal his writing can be.
treeman79 6y ago
I spent months working 20 hour days on a major project. Got a huge bonus. More than half removed for taxes. I suddenly had opinion on tax policy. Basic Economics was such a huge eye opener on how things really work. Not just aristocratic theory talk. So much better then college economics class I took.
AlexCoventry 6y ago
I recently started to read his book Intellectuals and Race, but stopped because his putative citations did not support his claim that whites in America are at a disadvantage relative to Asian Americans w.r.t. mortgage applications and keeping their jobs during downturns. I think he has interesting things to say, and is certainly a great interview subject, but I would approach his claims with caution.

by kypro 6y ago

mc32 6y ago

I wish other writers would take this to heart. Reading The New Yorker it’s as if their language is a shibboleth and if they didn’t use it, it would alienate their audience for using average language, yet they are the same people who pontificate and pretend they advocate for the lower classes.

Emma_Goldman 6y ago
The New Yorker is an upper-middle class publication. That is its target audience. Other magazines owned by the same media conglomerate, Conde Nast, are broadly similar in orientation: Vogue, Bon Appetit, Vanity Fair, GQ, Architectural Digest. I don't think they 'advocate for the lower classes', subjectively or objectively. I read very few socialists and communists in the New Yorker!
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  As OP said,"pretend they advocate for the lower classes"
  - Emma_Goldman 6y ago
    Hence why I wrote 'subjectively or objectively'. They have no pretence to being a working-class magazine, or to advocating a working-class politics.
    - BurningFrog 6y ago
      OK. Maybe we're not so different after all!
- pas 6y ago
  Do socialists/communists really advocate for the lower classes?
  - tharne 6y ago
    Nope, they advocate for "control", with them in charge, of course.
    - tdhz77 6y ago
      Who better to control the money and know how best to use money than the people?
      - mc32 6y ago
        I think you’re talking past each other. In communism, in principle, things belong “to the people”, but in reality they belong to the state which can decide what you get, and taken away (as form of punishment). On the other hand, in democracies governments rarely leave things to “the people” they take the money to the feds, the state, county and then the local gov... Do I want my money going to podunk or a mismanaged (corrupt city), or locally where we have more of a voice?
      - tharne 6y ago
        People should be in control of the money they earn, because that's the only time there's any skin in the game. If you think The Government == The People, you're out of your mind. It's a nice ideal, but it's never been achieved in a modern nation state. Some nation states are less abusive than others, but that's as good as it gets. The government is careless with spending and can't be trusted with people's money because they didn't earn the money they have. They took it out of people's paychecks, and if they run out, they can levy more taxes or just print more, there's no incentive to be thoughtful, careful, or diligent. At any rate, when the government is reckless with people's money, it's never the government that has to feel any pain.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Depends on the socialists or communists, but historically - often, yes. Certainly more so than capitalists, who are either indifferent or actively hostile, but may pretend to be otherwise as a matter of political expediency.
hedberg10 6y ago
Let them. If you have the psychological need to constantly show how smart you are, your life will be very stressful indeed. You will want to manipulate others to get confirmation of your acrobatics and always be on the lookout for disproof. This will lead to you limiting your life severely for fear of actually finding it. -former smartness showoff who now acts betterer
- SaltyBackendGuy 6y ago
  > Let them. Very sound advice. Somewhat a tangent. I used to play a lot of poker. One angle that would work frequently to get information from people is exactly this. Say something like "Ah you had AJ", even though you don't believe that. Then you might get a response "No I had __" or they might even show you their hand. It's all tide to the need to prove how smart we are as humans.
- minikites 6y ago
  > Years ago my mother used to say to me, "In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.
  - anonymousiam 6y ago
    Great line. For those who do not recognize the source, it's from "Harvey".
- sergiogjr 6y ago
  They are the anointed ones of which Thomas talks about in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3044.The_Vision_of_the_Anointed https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3044.The_Vision_of_the_A...
  - hedberg10 6y ago
    Amazing book.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
starkd 6y ago
His books are great for the mass of people who are functionally illiterate, who want to learn to read.
minikites 6y ago
I can understand this point of view but the point of elevated language and academic jargon is to allow for a more accurate and nuanced discussion without having to re-state assumptions and underlying principles. It's often not done well or used to obfuscate ideas, but the core principle has merit.
- pas 6y ago
  Yes, but. Somewhere along the way science, research, the topics science "concerns itself with" and everything suddenly exploded over the last hundred or so years, and especially since we have this thing called the Internet the number of published papers, science journalism and journals grown exponentially. One one hand, it's great. More science/research is being done, but on the other hand it becomes less and less accessible due to the extreme specificity, very narrow scopes and due to simply being on the very edge of human knowledge accumulation. And of course, theoretically whatever paper one is reading one can "simply" follow the references and look up the introduced technical terms. Occasionally there are great survey papers that take a look at a (sub-sub-sub-)field, and again from time to time there are amazing science communicators that allow laypeople to have some kind of real grasp on these questions and topics. Yet, I think, it's clear that publishing terse PDFs is not the best way to communicate research and results. And we know, we - as in DARPA, but anyway, as in civilization - did a trial, and it's very enlightening: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00672-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00672-7 And one of the big finding is that being stubbornly terse is bad. And it's just a step, that this trial did not check, but maybe requiring researchers to spend a few days of their precious time to write a few pages about what they are actually doing, introduce the terms, techniques, methods, wouldn't be that bad, maybe even it would be helpful ... and this is basically pre-registration, and this is basically the grant proposal. And it'd be double-plus-good to link all of these in an open and really accessible manner in those fancy PDFs. (Or better yet, just use a HTML site. LaTeX is nice, but.)
pas 6y ago
It's not just the vocabulary, but the structure, the whole style. It's long, it's very meandering, it's very illustrative, but rarely direct and informative. Not many people have the time and desire to read something that presents so little value to them.
- mcguire 6y ago
  Not many people read, full stop.
- gen220 6y ago
  I might be a minority, but I'm willing to stick out my neck for meandering, illustrative, and indirect writing. Don't get me wrong, if it was the only thing available, I'd probably go crazy, too. But I believe there is a time and place in my "reading diet" for this kind of long-form journalism. As your adjectives suggest, New Yorker articles are less bullets of breathlessly-repeated facts, and more illustrations of nuanced scenes and interactions. I think it's natural, because life is messy and meandering, too. That being said, most of their articles have very well-defined and well-informed points. They don't make them by stating it up front, but by drawing a picture, observing some of its details, and asking you to form your own opinion. We can disagree, but to me it feels more intellectually-honest than other forms of journalism. Yes, it takes longer to get there. Yes, some of the details (what clothes people are wearing, what the rooms smell like, whatever) could probably be removed without compromising the structural integrity. But the New Yorker is about structural integrity and style. It's like the "literary fiction" of news. I don't read each article in each magazine, but it's still pretty rare that I've regretted finishing one; maybe once every other month.
  - MisterBastahrd 6y ago
    What about the bleatings of a person like Kevin D. Williamson, whose prose I identify as horrifically boring, not only because he isn't a deep thinker on any of the subject matter he writes about, but also because he spends about 80% of any essay trying to beat his audience over the head with how familiar he is with obscure and / or inconsequential tangential topics to the matter at hand. I don't have an issue with writers being descriptive. I very much have a problem with writers trying to prove they're the Dennis Miller of serious thought.
1980phipsi 6y ago
I can't stand most articles in The New Yorker.
setgree 6y ago
I personally find much of the prose in the New Yorker clear, even inspiring. Especially w.r.t. its travel writing, I don't think any publication better captures the magic and the essence of the experience. [0] [1] I also think Emily Nussbaum is a wonderful TV critic and more or less deserves credit for elevating TV criticism to equal status with art & movie reviews. Having said that, I quite take your point and I am always pleased when a researcher takes the time to write clearly. It's a skill that needs to be practiced and developed, but unfortunately, for most academics, investing in that skill isn't obviously a good career choice. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/how-prosperity-transformed-the-falklands https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/how-prosperity... [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/the-enduring-romance-of-the-night-train https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/the-enduring-r...

sb057 6y ago

You (and other repliers to you) may be interested in George Orwell's excellent essay "Politics and the English Language". >Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...

chmod600 6y ago

Overall, I like his writing, but his style can also come across as dismissive; as though he is obviously right, before he has really addressed all lines of criticism. When used to explain something, this style is great, because he gets his point across efficiently and provides enough backing so that you can remember it. And if you read enough of his writing, he brings out the nuance in other books and the intellectual detail is clearly there. But I can see how his straightforward style would be unpersuasive. Any one statement or paragraph or essay can be picked at by someone looking to do so. As a teacher and thought leader, he's been very successful. As a political commentator, he's preaching to the choir.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
That's a standard rhetorical technique you'll see in much right-wing writing. Statements are made as if they're simply correct by definition, and there is no space for argument or dissent. Is he genuinely objective and data-driven? How many of his studies have been replicated? How many competing studies - which he fails to mention - disagree with his conclusions? It's easy to be right when you simply assert your idea of truth. But that's rhetoric, not science. Science is peer review and open debate, and I don't see him engaging in that.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Not just right-wing. I've seen the same approach from marxists. (Not an exaggeration or a projection - from literal marxists.) The unstated, unproven assumption is that Marx was right, and the analysis proceeds from there to make dogmatic statements about the economy and/or society. That's fine, if the readers are also convinced marxists. But if someone else reads it, they very quickly think "Wait a minute, I don't agree with your premise, and you did nothing to convince me. Why should I believe your conclusions?"
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    If you're familiar with Lakoff you'll know there's a difference in tone which is based on a difference on associated family positioning. Conservatives tend to paternalism. Marxists are more likely to be oppositional, because Marxism and socialism are underdog discourses, and they don't have the advantage of assuming that general readers will agree - especially in the US, where the default position for most of the population is aggressive hostility towards Socialism and incandescent fury towards Marxism, without really knowing much about either.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

datavirtue 6y ago

I found Sowell via YouTube while studying economics in college. They were beating us up with witchcraft macro economic formulas that I could easily tell were useless 99% of the time and impossible to determine when the were not useless. I realized they were not teaching us economics so I went looking for other sources. Found Friedman and Sowell and basically threw the college text books in the trash.

jxramos 6y ago

I picked up on that too, such a shock of recognition when the author hit us with that one. It's so true, there's something effectively plainspoken about his prose that has such economy to his words. It's incredible stuff how crystal his writing can be.

treeman79 6y ago

I spent months working 20 hour days on a major project. Got a huge bonus. More than half removed for taxes. I suddenly had opinion on tax policy. Basic Economics was such a huge eye opener on how things really work. Not just aristocratic theory talk. So much better then college economics class I took.

AlexCoventry 6y ago

I recently started to read his book Intellectuals and Race, but stopped because his putative citations did not support his claim that whites in America are at a disadvantage relative to Asian Americans w.r.t. mortgage applications and keeping their jobs during downturns. I think he has interesting things to say, and is certainly a great interview subject, but I would approach his claims with caution.