As someone who quit reading The Economist, I wonder that too. Roughly the same things kept happening in rural Africa, and it became less and less interesting every time it happened. The first time I read about the low quality of schools in rural India it was very interesting. The second time it was tolerable. The third time it was annoyi…
As someone who quit reading The Economist, I wonder that too. Roughly the same things kept happening in rural Africa, and it became less and less interesting every time it happened. The first time I read about the low quality of schools in rural India it was very interesting. The second time it was tolerable. The third time it was annoying. The trend was obvious already the first time, so that information was more or less enough.
The problem with magazines is that many aspects of the world change rather slowly. If the same group of people are going to report about the state of the world every week, they will soon start to repeat themselves. There will still be entirely new information, but it will be diluted by new reports about the status quo. I think some people tolerate those elements of repetition better than others. Personally I tolerate them rather badly, so I'm doing my best to read more books and less real-time media.
I'm not at all surprised that's your attitude, Tove! I think you and Anders complement one another very well; there's definitely value in his sober, meticulous focus. (Then again you probably already knew I thought that, since my comments to the two of you over the past month largely boil down to me nagging you to be more careful, and him to take more risks.)
Incidentally, Scott Alexander is mentioning another Astral Codex survey. The last round I was able to acquire an excellent dataset from his readers; if you have an idea of a psychological/sociological/economic hypothesis to test with some questions, I strongly recommend it. If you'd like some help with design or analysis, send me an email.
As someone who quit reading The Economist, I wonder that too. Roughly the same things kept happening in rural Africa, and it became less and less interesting every time it happened. The first time I read about the low quality of schools in rural India it was very interesting. The second time it was tolerable. The third time it was annoying. The trend was obvious already the first time, so that information was more or less enough.
The problem with magazines is that many aspects of the world change rather slowly. If the same group of people are going to report about the state of the world every week, they will soon start to repeat themselves. There will still be entirely new information, but it will be diluted by new reports about the status quo. I think some people tolerate those elements of repetition better than others. Personally I tolerate them rather badly, so I'm doing my best to read more books and less real-time media.
I'm not at all surprised that's your attitude, Tove! I think you and Anders complement one another very well; there's definitely value in his sober, meticulous focus. (Then again you probably already knew I thought that, since my comments to the two of you over the past month largely boil down to me nagging you to be more careful, and him to take more risks.)
Incidentally, Scott Alexander is mentioning another Astral Codex survey. The last round I was able to acquire an excellent dataset from his readers; if you have an idea of a psychological/sociological/economic hypothesis to test with some questions, I strongly recommend it. If you'd like some help with design or analysis, send me an email.
You mean in July 2021? Which one of the surveys were you behind? I took all of them!
If Scott launches that kind of opportunity again I will definitely participate: I will ask people about their sexual inhibitions.