What Brad DeLong thinks about simplicity
Economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury. Author of Slouching Towards Utopia and writer of the Grasping Reality newsletter.
Everything they publish, on ppll ↗
Brad DeLong did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
2 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Brad DeLong has said — not written or endorsed by them.
The line under a date shows how recently it was said: empty within a month, full after three years.
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Our readingThe abundance of information means that curation is an inevitable bet on judgment over completeness.
Their wordsCuration is thus an inevitable bet on judgment over completeness — you accept that you will miss almost everything, and you invest your scarce attention in a few people whose sense of the common thread you trust.
↗READING: BARRY RITHOLTZ: How I Build My Reading Listsbraddelong.substack.com
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Their wordsBarry Ritholtz’s guide to building a reading list is generous, disciplined, and quietly self-defeating — because the better his curation, the more it adds to the very flood it’s meant to tame.
↗READING: BARRY RITHOLTZ: How I Build My Reading Listsbraddelong.substack.com
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.