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cwenham  ·  4050 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: On Criticizing what You Haven't Read

Reading the book is for sissies, all you have to do is draw your own conclusion from the title and whatever soundbites are being passed around by critics and other pundits who have, fortunately, read it for you.

For example, Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is obviously about how dull a popular online magazine is, F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom appears to be a travel guide for medieval village enthusiasts, Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel is clearly about firearm sanitation, Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow is a self-help manual, and I'm sure you can guess what Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is about.

And seriously, who ever read Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science all the way through? You've gotta be kidding me. I don't even believe in Homeopathy.