Monday, December 08, 2008

Simple words, please

I call it the policy of "convincing a kid". I do that when I rehearse my presentations. I imagine an audience of 8-9 year olds and imagine the possible questions that they might have and how I would explain it to them. Then I would imagine experts ask questions and suddenly turn into kids forcing me to explain in their language.
When trying to understand literature, I tried the same policy and I was called old-fashioned. I have explained here what I mean by good writing and in other places too. Post-modernists use fantastic and intangible terms to explain literature with quaint phrases like "stream-of-subversiveness" or "disaffiliation". I felt the same way about the complicated world of diets (and the French are delightful in their gastronomic ways).
When I read Liar's Poker, I kept wondering why do these people use such complicated ideas for doing something basic and concluded that I was basically incompetent to comprehend the world of finance and economics (I still think so). Then I would read Buffet and feel a little reassured. He never spoke in terms of "credit-default swaps" or C.O.Ds. That made him very approachable and very rich too.
Now I finally read someone who voices my thoughts in a place which lends it credibility. Please read this. You might also want to read Lewis' piece out here. He seems to have come one full, long, stretched circle. I have been wanting to share these links for a long time but terrorism has occupied my mind.
You might want to watch this (2 hours in length) to watch how complicated thoughts, the world of terrorism and finance are so tied together. Don't believe all of it. Just enjoy it and decide to dig deeper into things. And most importantly, trust simple words, please. Anything that requires a lot of hand-waving usually has something fishy in it.

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