« Markets in hardly anything any more? | Main | The countercyclical asset, a continuing series »
Washington Examiner profile of me
It is here; they used the highly reliable Alex as one of their main sources. He makes an important point:
Cowen’s secret? “He reads unbelievably quickly,” Tabarrok says.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 14, 2008 at 07:23 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
So, how is it that you read incredibly quickly?
Posted by: Rich at Dec 14, 2008 7:36:26 AM
"Accompany Cowen to the movies and he’s liable to watch parts of one film, portions of another."
Do you pay for all 4 of them?
Posted by: at Dec 14, 2008 9:06:11 AM
You were friends in highschool with Daniel Klein and Randall Kroszner? I smell a sitcom.
Posted by: Blackadder at Dec 14, 2008 10:06:51 AM
And he answers most email with a single sentence, or even a sentence fragment... :-)
Or maybe that's just MY emails.
Posted by: MichaelG at Dec 14, 2008 11:51:18 AM
Yah, that is a great question. How do you read so quickly? Inquiring minds want to know, and the article DID say you like to help people...
Posted by: soupy sales at Dec 14, 2008 3:18:59 PM
Or maybe that's just MY emails.
No, not just yours.
Posted by: at Dec 14, 2008 4:37:32 PM
What, you expect Tyler to answer scores of e-mails with complete sentences? This man thinks on the margin, folks!
Posted by: Jeff H. at Dec 14, 2008 8:10:38 PM
Perhaps it also helps save time to have a gaggle of fans to take care of some of the questions you are asked! For example, he's posted on reading speed before:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/12/how_to_read_fas.html
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/08/what-accounts-f.html
Posted by: Kat at Dec 14, 2008 8:37:34 PM
I have a healthy distrust of people that read too quickly.
You can read very quickly only if you don't expect that what you read is deep and important enough to challenge the conceptual net you use to understand the world, except at a superficial level.
On the bright side, a lot of reading material is superficial enough that reading slowly is not needed. On the dark side, we need to be skeptical of the quick reader's assessment of a challenging book -- except when he tells us that he read it slowly.
Posted by: Alex at Dec 14, 2008 10:20:15 PM
Reading MR for a while, I think Tyler doesn't read quickly, he skims, and he misses quite a bit. I've notced several instances where he completely misses the point of something he is reporting on, or he has to correct an earlier post based on an actual reading of the information. I challenge other MR readers to cite examples.
Posted by: brad at Dec 14, 2008 10:52:53 PM
Come on, don't be like that... Tyler is a very smart guy, you can't really argue with that. (or: where is your +10000 hits a week weblog?)
Posted by: JSK at Dec 15, 2008 3:43:22 AM
I'm a damn slow reader. For example, I've been reading a book on rapid reading for about two years now. I'm not kidding.
Posted by: J at Dec 15, 2008 9:32:50 AM
I didn't want to detract from Tyler's accomplishments -- for instance, he is a very high rated chess player, not an easy task to achieve without even reading anything about contemporary world art, economics and medieval literature. So clearly his conceptual net that I talked about is none too shabby.
I just wanted to point out that fast reading has costs beside the upfront cost of reading a lot.
Posted by: Alex at Dec 15, 2008 12:04:27 PM
