Status Updates From Creeaza-ţi propria economie...

But what's the book actually about? After beating around the bush a bit, Cowen says that "my message is more straightforward. The web allows us to borrow cognitive strengths from autism--". The subtext here is that this is a good thing. & what are some of those cognitive strengths? The tendency & ability to consume, synthesise, & order information. But mostly he refers to mental ordering, to making big data useful.

An example of an infovore & probably an example of why Cowen believes being an infovore is a good thing is Patrick Collinson whom Cowen has worked with & interviewed & holds in high esteem. Collinson is a very successful software entrepreneur who's also a voracious reader whose aspirations extend far beyond the confines of money-making into a deep & animating desire to improve the world, the desired end of infovorism

I decided to read this book when I heard him say in an interview with the co-author of his blog that the central mission of his career was to encourage more people to be infovores. This was a typically Cowenesque remark: his coauthor gave the noble but less intriguing answer of wanting to spread good economic ideas, whereas Cowen's was more obtuse subtext-heavy. Infovores obsessively consume & synthesise information.

Reading Cowen's book Stubborn Attachments changed my life: it remains one of the most impactful books I've ever read. Since then, I've haunted his famous blog Marginal Revolutions daily, and the more I learn about the man, the more I feel like he's a version of myself, in many ways a smarter and more compelling version, who for various trauma-related reasons I left behind in my teens and early 20s.

'our contemporary culture has become more like marriage in the sense that we are trending in some experiences for a better daily state of mind.'