This post is a collection of quotes from an interview I had with Nour Negm in 2020. The interview can be found at this link. I recommend listening to the interview. There are 21 quotes listed below chronologically.
2. "I noticed that... in 2013 when I was in university, that a lot of the economic data websites, I mean they have lots of statistics but they weren't really organized in a clear format that I like, and its still like that... To me, I like to look at something like a dashboard, something that's really clear and simple and that's what I tried to do." (4:42)
3. "For each country, there's about 30 or so statistics that give the overall condition of that economy. So there's a section for GDP, industries, employment, corporations, households, the government, tax rates, the central bank, the banking system and international trade. So with just a few statistics you can kind of describe the condition of each of those. And I think its a useful tool that should be applied to cities and countries in the world as well in real time." (5:08)
4. "My website is not in real time. Its still static and stuck in 2015 or 2013 data unfortunately because I'm not a programmer, but the aim is that its all going to be current data." (5:53)
5. "I think its important to know the GDP by industry of an economy. To know how much of the economy is based on manufacturing or mining. I think that knowing that shows a big part of the character of the economy. Its also important to know where the employees are in the economy as well. Its important to know the big institutions and the big corporations that are in the economy." (7:11)
6. "I view an economy as kind of like a chess game where, you know, basically we have pieces in the world. Economics is to me is just you know where all the pieces are and what's going on all the time. And that's what's important to me." (7:38)
7. "If the data's wrong then that's misleading but if the data's correct then... I don't think it hurts to give someone an outline structure to how the economy looks. Of course you wouldn't be able to analyze an intricate issue with this website. Its more meant to be like what a globe is for geography... You wouldn't use a globe for any practical use particularly but its nice to have as a representation of what the world looks like. And that's what [Econ Factbook] tries to do." (9:34)
8. "It's more, just to be as an outline structure, like the bones of the economy. Not necessarily describing the organs and all the intricate parts of the human body." (11:01)
9. "If you disagree with [someone], its really important that you understand... their line of reasoning. And sometimes a lot of people will use pieces of evidence in arguments, but they don't bring them up. They just have them in the back of their head and they assume that everyone else knows them. What's important is that we take a step back and we understand exactly why people believe a certain thing." (13:40)
10. "A lot of my blog and a lot of things I do is a focus on simplicity... I look at Wikipedia and websites I see on the internet and I think of ways they can be done more simple... And I try to get rid of the disorder." (15:00)
11. "Reality is, can be really kind of a mess of phenomena and things going on. So like the first step is... identify concepts and attach words to those concepts and kind of build off of that to the point where we have language and we can say these things." (15:40)
12. "Basically, if I'm in a situation and I'm confused or whatever, a lot of times I try to... understand it in terms of words and that just makes it more concrete in my opinion. I just feel like that is kind of the frontier on a lot of scientific concepts or whatever. If you see these long explanations and its not explained very clearly but I do believe that behind it is a simple true thing that exists for people to understand." (16:37)
13. "Belief is a method that I created, I came up with it in 2018. Its a formal method meant to represent the structure of a belief. And its meant for analyzing subjective reasons... The goal of it is to help opposing sides understand each other better. And so its just a formal set of rules that opposing sides can use to understand the other argument better." (17:36)
14. "1. The belief should be stated using a single sentence. 2. List the reasons why you think the belief is true. No more than 4 to 5 reasons. 3. Each reason should be stated with a short sentence. 4. After each reason, list sub-reasons to support that reason. 5. Each sub-reason should be no longer than 2 to 3 sentences." (12:28)
15. "So basically, you're supposed to list out the reasons and then list the sub-reasons related to that. And you're limited on the amount of words you can use." (19:05)
16. "I don't like when I see, I mean of course I like reading articles and stuff like that but when I see a long article and to counter that is another long article, I don't think that progress is made because its just kind of back and forth. People need to be more to the point."(19:21)
17. "Principles of Epistemology is an essay I wrote, or compiled in 2018 and... I haven't published it yet but I hope to do that soon... There's 78 sections. There's 7 chapters. The 7 chapters are truth, knowledge, language, representation, reason, understanding and phenomena. There's 74 definitions and for each definition there's a short explanation, one or two paragraphs that explain how that concept is related to the overall structure of epistemology. Epistemology being the study of knowledge." (22:15)
18. "The central method of [the essay] is belief analysis... And belief analysis is very focused on language. There's also an emphasis on organizing principles and quotes into clear structures to facilitate understanding." (23:54)
19. "I would say that the 3 main types of knowledge or the 3 ways to acquire knowledge is, intuition which is the use of unclear reasons to form a conclusion, there's logic which is using objective reasons to make a conclusion, and reason itself which is using explicit reasons to come up with a conclusion. So belief analysis is focused on reason." (24:58)
20. "What is science? I have two definitions for the word science. The first definition of science is a method of establishing knowledge through controlled experiments and the second definition of science is the study of any subject related to physics, chemistry or biology." (25:40)
21. "My main message... is to make true representations of reality and determine the truthfulness of each of those representations. And also its important to build systems of related principles because systems are a useful tool. So I would say, focus on organizing principles into clear structures." (27:13)
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