A third story on the most boring book in the world
I found yet another sentence on Page 161 to write about: This one is truly boring but read it anyway but do not try to understand it because it is incomprehensible to us ordinary mortals.
“In practice, both quantative and qualitive criteria are used to include or reject potential comparables”. (Note 1)
This is another example of how boring this book really is. (Note 2) Imaging getting to Page 161, with sentence after sentence like this one. Even for someone who understands what they are writing about it is too difficult to read.
But what is amazing in this simple sentence of 15 words, is that they manage to enumerate SIX alternatives. That is quite an achievement. Here they are:
- Quantative criteria to include
- Quantative criteria to reject
- Qualitive criteria to include
- Qualitive criteria to reject
- Quantative and qualitive criteria to include
- Quantative and qualitive criteria to reject
This sentence is made up of relatively common words but is meaningless to most people.
One can perhaps guess what a comparable is, but who knows what it means in this context, let alone a potential comparative. And then why would anyone want to use criteria to include or reject comparables? To include in what? To reject from what? And then to make it more bewildering the authors explain nothing.
They manage to make a simple sentence difficult to understand. Imagine what it is like reading the complex ones: totally incomprehensible.
If you are really interested in a complex set of sentences, I have put a whole paragraph in my blog. It is only 180 words long, but my goodness how bad can you get. It is a classic: the most boring paragraph in the most boring book in the world. The link is on the comments below. I bet you cannot get to the end without stopping at least three times to wonder about what you are reading.
Note 1: Chapter III, Paragraph A.5. 3.43 Page 161
Note 2: The most boring book in the world is ‘OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations’, January 2022