But we now live in a world where counter-intuitive bullshitting is valorized, where the pose of argument is more important than the actual pursuit of truth, where clever answers take precedence over profound questions. We have no patience for mystery. We want the deciphering of gods. We want oracles. And we want them right now.
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the conditions that created Jonah Lehrer. I’ve certainly been guilty of fetishizing the counter-intuitive over the years.
July 31, 2012 at 1:17 pm
We should call this ‘the Freakonomics effect’ or ‘the Malcolm Gladwell effect’