linguoboy wrote:The only other book I've read since then that I can really recommend is Han Kang's Human acts.)
How did it compare to her other novels?
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linguoboy wrote:The only other book I've read since then that I can really recommend is Han Kang's Human acts.)
Yasna wrote:linguoboy wrote:The only other book I've read since then that I can really recommend is Han Kang's Human acts.)
How did it compare to her other novels?
vijayjohn wrote:I brought five books with me that I barely even touched after arriving in Taiwan, and now apparently, azhong is going to give me another one I'm interested in. One of these books is in Malayalam, and the rest are in Chinese. I've always found it so hard to read in Malayalam I feel I have to be careful about how I go about doing it the next time I try.
Rí.na.dteangacha wrote:vijayjohn wrote:I brought five books with me that I barely even touched after arriving in Taiwan, and now apparently, azhong is going to give me another one I'm interested in. One of these books is in Malayalam, and the rest are in Chinese. I've always found it so hard to read in Malayalam I feel I have to be careful about how I go about doing it the next time I try.
Wow, reading in Chinese is easier for you than in Malayalam?
Is that because of the register difference between literary and colloquial Malayalam?
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:I'm currently reading:
Thinking Fast and Slow - by Daniel Kahneman
TheStrayCat wrote:I read it a year and a half ago by the recommendation of the company where I was interning and found it quite insightful. I might want to re-read it again someday. What do you think of it so far?
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:But that was only one small thing, I think the book on the whole is very good (so far at least). What did you think of it?
TheStrayCat wrote:I enjoyed reading it. The part I remember the best was all the examples of people making different decisions in what are essentially the same situations depending on how the question was framed. I had read about some similar examples before reading the book, but there were so much more. That made me realize that real-life economics could be more complex than pure theoretical models.
TheStrayCat wrote:Another thing was his argument that it makes sense to accept all reasonable bets with a positive average payoff, like a $100 ticket with a 50% chance of winning $60, because with time they will almost certainly lead to a positive net. I knew it was statistically true but I had never thought of it in this context, and before reading the book I probably would have rejected such a bet.
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:That part still only seems to be reasonable if we are talking about small-ish gambles to me. I mean, if you lose a big gamble, it could not only ruin a large portion of your life, but also prevent you from being in a position to make future gambles at all. Yes, if you have a large amount of funds and are living comfortably anyway, then you shouldn't allow an overcharged negative emotional connection to a "loss" to make you shy away from a bet that is a logically good one, as you can afford to see the policy of accepting these types of bets as a long-term strategy to increase your wealth, but if one of these gambles ruins you finacially, there won't be any more big gambles in the future to balance it out, and even if it doesn't ruin you, if it negatively affects your lifestyle then that's a "price" you're paying for the policy being implemented, so you have to ask yourself if the future theoretically greater wealth is worth potential current greater poverty. We can't all affort to consider our wealth as some detached statistical token than is just for investing.
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:the more I read this guy the more I'm convinced he's fabulously wealthy (by comparison to me, anyway) and doesn't have the financial constraints most "normal" people do.
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:Losing the Race - by John McWhorter
Winning the Race - by John McWhorter
The Creole Debate - by John McWhorter
Yasna wrote:Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:Losing the Race - by John McWhorter
Winning the Race - by John McWhorter
The Creole Debate - by John McWhorter
Nice to see another McWhorter reader here. He's got a new book coming out this year about anti-racism.
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:His new book is the reason I decided to read his previous work on the topic. I've been a fan of his work (both linguistic and political) for a few years*, and when he appeared on Sam Harris' podcast I decided I should read something of his. My reading-kick started last year precisely because of his books - I got so into them that before I knew it, I had read the first two of his books, and I decided to keep going with the reading habit.
*I should probably clarify what I mean by "fan of his work", given I said I hadn't read anything by him: I enjoyed the Great Courses lecture series' he presented on linguistics which I got on Audible, I had seen clips of him talking about politics on YouTube, I listen to the Glenn show whenever he is on, I had listened to some of his books on language (The Language Hoax, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, Words on the Move, Talking Back Talking Black) and I read the odd article he has written in the Atlantic.
Yasna wrote:I also enjoy watching the Glenn Show episodes with McWhorter, especially over the past year. I've only read Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue and What Language Is. Would his political books add much value to someone who has been watching him on the Glenn Show for a couple years and occasionally reads his Atlantic articles?
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:What I actually found most surprising reading his books was that he has been making the same arguments for decades now (Losing the Race was published in 2000), and yet it seems most people weren't listening, or simply preferred the arguments of his opponents, because the woke culture he argues against (he refers to them as "the elect" in his new book, I believe) continued to grow and is now stronger than ever.
Yasna wrote:That probably has something to do with why he now feels that he's confronting a religion that's unmoved by facts about the actual level of racism in 2021 America.
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:Yasna wrote:That probably has something to do with why he now feels that he's confronting a religion that's unmoved by facts about the actual level of racism in 2021 America.
Yeah, you can see it in his earlier writing; even though he never quite gets to the point of labeling it a religion in Losing the Race and Winning the Race, he's already describing it in very religious terms (i.e. describing dissenters as "heretics" and comparing his opponents rhetoric to a pastor's sermon).
Car wrote:Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:Yasna wrote:That probably has something to do with why he now feels that he's confronting a religion that's unmoved by facts about the actual level of racism in 2021 America.
Yeah, you can see it in his earlier writing; even though he never quite gets to the point of labeling it a religion in Losing the Race and Winning the Race, he's already describing it in very religious terms (i.e. describing dissenters as "heretics" and comparing his opponents rhetoric to a pastor's sermon).
I haven't read any of his books other than the Power of Babel, but I felt that Divided: Why We're Living in an Age of Walls by Tim Marshall offered some refreshing views on some topics. It's not Marshall's best book (it's overall a bit too shallow, trying to cover too much at once), but still a good book.
If I wanted to read more by McWorther, what would you recommend?
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