“Basically, if everyone has a vested interest in believing that they understand everything, or even that people are capable in principle of understanding it (either because believing this dampens their insecurities about the unpredictable world, or makes them feel more intelligent than others, or both) then you have an environment in which dopey, reductionist, simple-minded, pat, glib thinking can circulate, like wheelbarrows filled with inflated currency in the marketplaces of Jakarta.”I'm re-reading Cryptonomicon for the third time, and (as usual with Stephenson's writings) discovering things I never noticed before...
Stephenson, Neal. Cryptonomicon (p. 629). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
Quote of the day!
Quote of the day! This explains a lot of politics. It also explains why I like Megan McArdle's writing so much: it's the opposite of this.
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I love that whole furniture sorting scene.
ReplyDeleteYes! And there are so many passages in that book to love! I'm on a mission to read all of his novels for the third time (which for Snow Crash means reading it twice more; all the rest I've already read twice). I read them all at wildly different times, and at the end of each one I mentally place the one I just finished on my "all time top 10" fiction list. I'm wondering if I read them all within (say) a year if I will be able to rank them. I'm not at all sure I'll be able to...
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