Tyler Cowen writes at Marginal Revolution:
“Context is that which is scarce”
by Tyler Cowen February 10, 2022 at 12:39 am in Education Philosophy The Arts… Addendum: MR, by the way, or at least my contributions to it, is deliberately written to give you less than full context. It is assumed that you are up to speed on the relevant discourse, and are hungering for the latest tidbit on top of where you are currently standing. Conversations with Tyler also are conducted on a “I’m just going to assume you have the relevant context and jump right in” — that is not ideal for many people, or they may like the performance art of it without it furthering their understanding optimally. But it keeps me motivated because for me the process is rarely boring. I figure that is more important than keeping you all happy. It also attracts smarter and better informed readers and listeners, which in turn helps me keep smart and alert. I view my context decisions, in particular the choice to go “minimal upfront context” in so many settings, as essential to my ongoing program of self-education.
“Minimal upfront context” is an interesting strategy.
In contrast, at my blog I try to provide “reasonable upfront context” to ease the reader into understanding what I’m going to talk about, such as by my offering a definition or an example of an abstract idea. For instance, Tyler often quotes an academic journal’s article’s abstract to an abstract idea, while I generally try to offer the puzzled reader a clue as to what is being talked about.
An interesting contrast between us is our characteristic use of extracts. Tyler simply begins with a lengthy quote, while I always precede a quote with its source, such as “From the New York Times opinion section” or “From the Washington Post news section.” I’m particularly careful to distinguish between items offered by the prestige press as news vs. opinion.
My impression is that Scott Alexander tries to navigate between the styles of the two of us influential old-time bloggers, with Scott providing much more context than Tyler, but preferring more made-up toy examples, while I find myself motivated to do my best thinking, often to Scott’s distress, about real examples from the most controversial and/or important issues of our time. Scott is a psychiatrist and is thus sensitive to the emotional issues that many readers deal with that makes them averse to hearing the plain truth, while my view is that I’m not as smart as Tyler or Scott, so I have to be more straightforward in explaining how the world really works.
