Dan Stowell

"People learn more from summaries than from reading entire chapters" I'm either screwed or in luck. As always. - Dan Stowell

"This book would be a great gift from a parent to a child who is interested in becoming a writer. When Junior discovers that winning the Nobel Prize in Literature at age 69 entails spending most of one’s decades depressed, impoverished, ignored, and bitter, he will likely knuckle under and agree to pursue radiology." - Dan Stowell

"Could we soon see de facto if not de jure polygamy?" No. We've already got enough mechanisms (divorce, staying single) for not being married to a blue-collar man. - Dan Stowell

"Conspicuous non-consumption." I don't know how beer sales are doing now. Guilt doesn't seem a likely culprit. You can save money in two ways: don't drink as much beer or buy more three buck Chuck. Natty Ice is not the most efficient way to drown your Great Recession sorrows. - Dan Stowell

"Our memories are distorted by two things: first, the tendency of all cultures to focus on their own outliers (many fewer people work for silicon valley startups in real life than in either our entertainment, or the popular imagination), and second, the fact that the people who have written about the period are abnormally likely to have come from successful families who pushed them through an education." We write about outliers on both ends of the spectrum: tales of success and abject poverty are much more interesting than slightly-different versions of your own life. - Dan Stowell

"Alex Tabarrok tells me many voice such concerns when he talks on school vouchers: too many crazies would have their own schools and teach kids to be crazies." - Dan Stowell

"I don't want to die, but I also don't want to fear death, because via backward induction, it would imply I feel fear all the time." - Dan Stowell

"[T]he strongest support for reducing certain inequalities come from member groups who are either on the losing end of an inequality, or get signaling benefits by showing sympathy to such groups." - Dan Stowell

'In pandering to parents and teacher's union, saying "we have a rather rigid process to maximize your kid's learning" is not as popular as saying "tests don't measure anything. We should treat each child as if they were their own special kind of genius."' - Dan Stowell

'In pandering to parents and teacher's union, saying "we have a rather rigid process to maximize your kid's learning" is not as popular as saying "tests don't measure anything. We should treat each child as if they were their own special kind of genius."' - Dan Stowell

"I’m somewhat (but only somewhat) glad I went to a college that was too easy for me, and that the girls showed me little interest, making me invent and pursue my own projects." - Dan Stowell

"I’m somewhat (but only somewhat) glad I went to a college that was too easy for me, and that the girls showed me little interest, making me invent and pursue my own projects." - Dan Stowell

America! - Dan Stowell

"As Eric Hoffer noted in The True Believer, 'all mass movements are interchangeable', meaning nationalistic, religious, social, political movements have the same true believers. Western civilization has tossed off nationalism and religion, but we are just as ideological as ever, only now we pride ourselves that our beliefs in social or ecological justice as the result of truth, divined through science. If only." - Dan Stowell