What I've Been Reading

Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer by Duncan J.Watts. Every time I read a book on social sciences, I feel there is more of tautology than anything significantly new (Gladwell, Freaknomics being few exceptions). That doesn't belittle the social science researchers and writers but it gives a perspective of the Sisyphean task. It's about time, we should stop using the phrase "it's not rocket science" and use  "it's not human nature" instead.

• On delusion of predicting Black Swans: 

"We deceive ourselves into believing that we can make predictions that are impossible, even in principle."

• Cognitive dissonance of Wall Street Bankers:

"The real point is that either they are libertarians, who should bear the full weight of their own failures as well as their successes, or else they are Rawlsians, paying their dues to the system that takes care of them. They should not be able to switch philosophies at their convenience."

• A simple cause for the crawling pace of social science research:

"Perhaps, sociology is not ready for its Einstein because it has not yet found its Kepler - to say nothing of its Newton, Laplace, Gibbs, Maxwell, or Planck."
- Robert Merton, a sociologist who worked on Matthew Effect