Real Yields Are the Market's Big Lie

When you have radiotherapy for prostate cancer, you need to drink a lot of water so that your bladder is “comfortably full.” Sitting in the hospital waiting for my treatment with gritted teeth, I was mulling, not for the first time, that the meaning of the word “comfortably” was being stretched beyond the point of breaking when an elderly man turned to me and asked if I was Richard Cookson. I was hugely touched and impressed that my old philosophy tutor had recognized me. It was, after all, almost 40 years since we had last seen each other.

I was also a bit ashamed that he had recognized me first. He is one of the most admirable people I have ever met. In tutorials he sat listening intently to carefully constructed arguments (or so I hoped) with a sort of twinkly beneficence before demolishing them with the merest question. To his surprise, I said philosophy was the most useful subject I had studied because it had taught me to question and think.