Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Keynes on the value of limited revisions 

From Kieran at Crooked Timber:
Keynes complains about having to rework his Treatise on Probability for publication: "After every retouch it seems to me more trifling and platitudinous. All that is startling is gradually cut out as untrue, and what remains is a rather obscure and pompous exposition of what no human being can ever have doubted."
My stuff is trifling from the get-go, and the more I revise the more I recognize it.... so its best not to revise ad infinitum.

There are other interesting biographical bits on Cambridge economists in Keiran's post; check it out .