Stephen J. Dubner Quotes
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If we treated politics like more of a profession, like it should be, we would all be a lot better off.
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The world is complicated. But does every problem require a complicated solution?
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Religion is a way to make order from chaos, and I think economics is not dissimilar. In religion and in economics, you're trying to figure out the way we perceive the world and move through it, and that's what I like to learn.
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The data are what matter in economics, and the more ruthlessness that an economist can summon to make sense of the data, the more useful his findings will be.
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That's what's good about the digital revolution is it makes information asymmetry much harder to maintain.
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Statistics on religious affiliation are notoriously slippery: the government isn't allowed to gather such data, and the membership claims of religious organizations aren't entirely reliable.
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When certain people have certain beliefs, they can be unyielding, and that's really what faith is. There's a large place in the world for faith, but when it comes to a scientific, political, and economic issue, dogma is not a very good place to start.
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The things you think that really change your life a lot, don't.
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If we want politics to be the kind of arena where you're attracting and encouraging really competent people who do a job well because that's what they're supposed to do, then you have to pay them a salary that's commensurate with that.
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We're all biased, right, in many different ways - politically, religiously, ideologically, the way our family raised us - and that's fine. Nobody wants to live in a world where everybody thinks exactly the same. The key, though, is to try to figure out where your biases are holding you back from solving problems.
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The movement toward choosing religion, rampant as it is, shouldn't be surprising. Ours is an era marked by the desire to define - or redefine - ourselves.