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Ross Douthat
@DouthatNYT
, 4 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
Worth reading @tylercowen on Steven Pinker, slavery and the Enlightenment:
marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
Someday I'm going to actually deliver a long Enlightenment #hottake, hopefully. One boring placeholder thought is that the immanentize-the-eschaton aspect of Enlightenment thought gets you bigger moral successes *and* bigger moral disasters.
A certain style of Enlightenment thought took older Christian moral analysis and said "why can't we implement this more fully here and now, instead of tolerating so many for-the-time-being evils?" Abolitionism was a case where this worked. Communism was a case where it didn't.
There's an argument that America is the paradigmatic Enlightenment society because relative to less-Enlightened Catholic New Spain some of our moral achievements were greater, and so were some of our crimes.
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Ross Douthat
@DouthatNYT
Generally agree with this description of the Oscar dilemma, but this year it could have been resolved by giving the Best Picture to "A Star is Born":
It made twice as much money as "Green Book," had better reviews, and its leads generated the show's most memorable moment. It wasn't the best movie of the year but it was the movie you reward if you want to be a mass market show without annoying cinephiles.
My sense is that the other factor here was the Trump effect, where Best Picture voters want to make a political statement For These Troubled Times -- and though the woke didn't like Green Book, for the merely liberal it felt like just the middlebrow statement they wanted.
Read 3 tweets
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Ross Douthat
@DouthatNYT
What kind of party will we be throwing to celebrate this amazingness? A GRAND NEW party:
nypost.com/2019/02/19/rei…
Yeah, pretty much like this.
With, possibly, a dose of this.
Read 3 tweets
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Ross Douthat
@DouthatNYT
In the latest episode of The Argument we argue about abortion:
nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opi…
I was thinking about it afterward, and in ten years at this job, doing lots of speaking and radio shows etc., I don't think I have *ever* been invited to have a straightforward argument about abortion.
Maybe I'm forgetting an instance. But the point being, I'm grateful to Michelle for having the argument and our producers for editing us into some semblance of coherence - and you should consider subscribing to the show, because I do think we're trying to do something unique.
Read 4 tweets

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Paul Krugman
@paulkrugman
One little-noticed point about today's employment report: the unemployment rate for less-educated workers is also at historic lows, just 3.7 percent for non-college HS grads 1/ bls.gov/news.release/p…
So, does anyone remember the "skills gap" -- how high unemployment was permanent because workers just didn't have the skills they needed? E.g., here's @tylercowen saying that low-ed workers had zero marginal product 2/ marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
Those of us who said it was all lack of sufficient demand were considered naive; invoking deep structural stories just sounded much more serious -- the same way it did in the 1930s. But here we are 3/
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Chris Neill
@chris_m_neill
Huh, I'm an economist & by some definitions a humanist. But this def'n of humanist seems odd. I think: let's have a read; may learn stuff!
First line asks what are you doing right now? Hey I know the answer: reading to learn stuff! [Econ translation: investing in human capital.]
To be honest, I also enjoy reading (econs: consumption) and am probs procrastinating (econs: irrational - maybe hyperbolic discounting?)
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Pseudoerasmus
@pseudoerasmus
Recent rhetoric about “The Enlightenment” is bizarre. A major strand of the Enlightment was about the Perfectibility of Man through Reason. The revolutionary reconstruction of society. The French Revolution is a child of the E & the Bolshevik Revolution one of its grandchildren.
It’s as if the fans of the Counter-Enlightenment forgot themselves and have appropriated the Enlightenment.
“The Enlightenment” cannot be selectively and whiggishly reduced to liberalism and natural science. The Enlightenment is also synonymous with scientism and rationalist social engineering.
Read 44 tweets
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Dan Schulz
@danschlz
0 • A thread on the best reading lists I've come across so far.
1 • @patrickc: with over 700, this might be the only list you need.

patrickcollison.com/bookshelf
2 • @jsomers: useful excerpts and short blurbs to sift through.

jsomers.net/#books
Read 17 tweets
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David Perell ✌️
@david_perell
1/ You can improve your ideas — exponentially.

Here's how 👇
2/ Become a network.

Share your thinking, content, and research. You'll supersize your mind.

By getting feedback from every corner of the globe, you'll accelerate your progress.
3/ Become a scientist. Watch what people engage with.

Engagement signals insight, clarity, and demand for an idea.

If you write on Medium, you can see what people highlight the most.
If you write on Twitter, you can see what gets the most likes and retweets.
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shawn swyx wang 🐙
@swyx
One of my resolutions this 12 week year is to keep a @blinkist twlog, as close to daily as travel allows. This is born out of subscribing to @blinkist through 2017 and having only read all of 1 book. I will reply to this with my cliff notes.
1/ Getting Things Done:

🧠Your brain is not a storage device
🗑Put info into a trusted bucket
📆Empty it weekly

Lists to Keep
📒Projects: multiple steps w/ outcome
⏩Next Actions: Floating todos
⏳Waiting For: Other people
🤞Tickler file: 31 days, 12 months
🤷‍♀️Someday/Maybe
2/ Hooked by @nireyal: smile.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Bui…

Hook Model:
🔫Trigger (external CTA => internal connection)
🏃‍♂️Action (must be simple, easy to use)
💰Reward (unpredictable & varied)
💸Investment (consistency, IKEA effect, load the next 🔫)

Spot & Form Habits. Be responsible.
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