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Michael Giberson

Will Wilkinson points to a post by Joshua Knobe discussing a philosophy experiment conducted by U. of Arizona philosophers Chris Freiman and Shaun Nichols. Here is how Knobe describes the experiment:

Subjects were randomly assigned either to receive [an] 'abstract' question or a 'concrete.'

Subjects who had been assigned to receive an abstract question were asked:

Suppose that some people make more money than others solely because they have genetic advantages.

Please tell us whether you agree with the following statement:

- It is fair that those genetically-advantaged people make more money than others.

Meanwhile, subjects who had been assigned to receive a concrete question were asked:

Suppose that Amy and Beth both want to be professional jazz singers. They both practice singing equally hard. Although jazz singing is the greatest natural talent of both Amy and Beth, Beth's vocal range and articulation is naturally better than Amy's because of differences in their genetics. Solely as a result of this genetic advantage, Beth's singing is much more impressive. As a result, Beth attracts bigger audiences and hence gets more money than Amy.

Please tell us whether you agree with the following statement:

- It is fair that Beth makes more money than Amy.

Freiman and Nichols found that, as Knobe put it, "subjects who were given the abstract question said that it was not fair, but subjects who were given the concrete question said that it actually was fair!"

Knobe suggests that it is a surprising result, and I guess it is surprising on some level. Logically, the cases are the same but for the additional details in the concrete example. The fact that we are talking about jazz singers, and not dockworkers or accountants, should not affect the fairness or lack of fairness of the case. Therefore, adding morally neutral information shouldn't change conclusions about fairness, but apparently does.

Knobe also tries to put a left-right political interpretation on the result, but doesn't actually report whether Frieman and Nichols collected any data relevant to a political angle. I can't find the paper online, so can't say what if anything the authors have to say about the politics. Wilkinson also joins in the political speculation, but again without any indication that there is data to support a political discussion.

My sense of the difference between the abstract and concrete cases is that the concept of fairness requires a consideration of the balance between, as it were, the inputs and outputs at issue. In the abstract case, the input is a random, unearned genetic advantage and the output is obtaining more money. Clearly, in my view, the concept of fairness cannot support a balancing between these unequal elements - a random input cannot merit a specific positive reward.

While the concrete case is formally identical in terms of structure, the details offered allow for a different mental processing of the fairness concept. In the concrete case, the subject is able to compare the more impressive performances against the the more money obtained and reach the conclusion that the better performances merit a better reward. It no longer matters, to the mind trying to answer the fairness question, that the better performances were themselves the result of a random genetic endowment. What matters is that a good performance can merit a good reward.

However, I'd wager that fairness conclusions for the concrete case would fall way off if Frieman and Nichols followed their concrete example with the same question posed to the subjects facing the abstract case, namely, asking them, "It is fair that those genetically-advantaged people make more money than others." The question posed this way cues up the random genetic input in the subject's mental processing again, and a random genetic input can not merit a positive reward.

Lynne Kiesling

I found the juxtaposition of two recent articles (found via Arts & Letters Daily) on language quite interesting. Wine writer Colin Bower is frustrated with the use of simile and metaphor in wine writing: why can't we describe the experience of tasting a wine in a direct, factual way, without the use of metaphor?

Wine is always described as being like something else. This is appealingly post modern. If a chardonnay tastes a bit like a peach, what then does the peach taste like? A chardonnay? And if so, what does either taste like? If you must describe the Van Loveren 2001 limited edition Merlot as being “chocolately”, does it mean that chocolate tastes like the Van Loveren Merlot? And if we like the Merlot on account if its tasting like chocolate, why don’t we eat chocolate instead of drinking wine?

Consider this dilemma facing the wine writer, and then apply the evolutionary psychology and cognitive science prowess of Steven Pinker to the problem. Pinker has a new book on language called The Stuff of Thought coming out in the fall. One of his topics will be metaphor:

While swearing may garner public attention, perhaps the more surprising aspect of Pinker's work traces the pervasiveness of metaphor in language. Not flowery poetic allusions or rhetorical similes but concrete-to-abstract transitions so common in everyday speech and writing that we often don't even recognize them as metaphorical.

Consider this sentence:

"He attacked my position and I defended it." It uses the metaphor of argument as war. Or how about "this program isn't going anywhere," which uses the metaphor of progress as motion.

Says Pinker: "Look at almost any passage and you'll find that a paragraph has five or six metaphors in it. It's not that the speaker is trying to be poetic, it's just that that's the way language works.

"Rather than occasionally reaching for a metaphor to communicate, to a very large extent communication is the use of metaphor," he says.

"It could be that 95 per cent of our speech is metaphorical, if you go back far enough in language."

Why? Here, the teacher part of researcher and author Steven Pinker comes to the fore, offering a boring explanation and an interesting explanation, both with an element of truth.

The boring explanation is that using metaphor is a quick-and-dirty way of expressing a new idea without the trouble of coining [notice the metaphor] and propagating a new word.

"But that presupposes that the mind itself works metaphorically, that we see the abstract commonality between argument and war, between progress and motion. And it presupposes that the mind, at some level, must reason very concretely in order that these metaphors be understood and become contagious.

"And that's the more interesting part of the story."

Thus, with respect to wine Bower concludes

I’ve had to give up on so-called facts. They don’t exist. It took wine writers to prove this to me. Nothing is ever knowable for what it is. Admit it, you can no more say what a taste is than you can say what a colour is or what a feeling is.

I think Mr. Bower is a little too postmodern for his own good, and should leaven in some Pinker: it is in the nature of human language to use metaphor as hooks into our shared knowledge when we are describing a personal, potentially unknown experience to someone else. Metaphor provides the flavor and culture referents that we use to communicate our personal wine experiences to each other. Facts don't carry enough information without the metaphor hooks for us to put them in context.

Michael Giberson

Just like some people enjoy comic books with the same formulaic story line issue after issue, I never get tired of stories in which lawyers play the supervillain. Virginia Postrel blogs about her latest Atlantic article -- about superhero glamour -- and includes a kicker about how IP lawyers for DC/Marvel blew a chance for their artwork to grace the story.

Lynne Kiesling

I love $10 words; my favorite is concatenation, as in "an unforeseen concatenation of circumstances". I know I used it in my dissertation, and I think I lifted it from P.G. Wodehouse (out of the mouth of Jeeves, naturally).

Thus I particularly enjoyed Jack Shafer's Slate column from Friday on Martin Peretz's use of $10 words:

Don't get me wrong: I get a kick out of $10 words, too, and even use them now and again to make my pieces showier. But the psychic surcharge deters me from using them often enough to fall into the faux-erudition trap that bedevils undisciplined, rich writers like Martin Peretz, co-owner and editor-in-chief of the New Republic. He burns through $10 words and phrases like they're kindling.

The whole column is quite amusing, and well-researched, with many rich links to Peretz's repeated use of the high-falutin' word kindling. It was so amusing that it moved me to revisit Peretz's op-ed today in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on Senator Lieberman facing a "peace candidate". Sure enough, there in the first paragraph:

We have been here before. Left-wing Democrats are once again fielding single-issue "peace candidates," and the one in Connecticut, like several in the 1970s, is a middle-aged patrician, seeking office de haut en bas, and almost entirely because he can.

Bingo! But he either restrained himself or editor Tunku Varadarajan reigned him in, because that is the sole display of vocabulary ostentation in the piece (which was an interesting read for substance as well as style).

Hat tip to Radley Balko for the Shafer link.

Michael Giberson

Elsewhere in the econ blog world, Tyler Cowen notes a new paper, Poetry in Economics, by Emory University's Hugo Mialon. Mialon examines the effect on citation counts of employing rhetorical figures in the titles of economics articles. He finds, among other things, that adding a rhetorical figure to the title of an empirical paper increases citations to the paper by more than four.

Mialon's effort is interesting, but incomplete in terms of the implied policy advice to economists (to wit: pay more attention to the poetics, at least if you do empirical work).

Any look at the rhetoric of economists naturally brings to mind the work of Deirdre McCloskey on the topic. McCloskey not only studied economists' rhetoric, but often urged economists to write better. Jack High, in a 1987 paper in Economic Inquiry, asked the right question of McCloskey: at the margin, are the benefits of better writing worth the costs? High concluded that the expected private costs of improving one�s writing exceed the expected benefits, for most scholars.

Maybe a poetic title is low-hanging fruit for economists chasing citation counts. But if Mialon believed his own empirical work on the topic, why did he choose a purely informative title for his paper, "Poetry in Economics"? Why not employ a poetic figure in his title?

I suggest: "Low-Hanging Fruit for Economists Chasing Citation Counts?" Two metaphors and a rhetorical question wrapped up into a single title. That should score him an easy extra 10 - 12 citations.

Comments are open, alternative title recommendations welcomed.

Lynne Kiesling

That is how much I like him, that I am willing to break from KP title protocol ...

I'm putting the whimsically allegorical poem that Kurt Elling read on Wednesday after the cut, if you are interested. Here's the first stanza as a teaser:

here is little Effie's head
whose brains are made of gingerbread
when the judgment day comes
God will find six crumbs

Lynne Kiesling

Last week while I was in nose-to-grindstone mode (and traveling too), Russ Roberts had a very nice post on the difficulties of the word "spontaneous" in "spontaneous order", and in general the challenge that we dynamic, forward-looking, spontaneous order folks have in communicating our ideas clearly and persuasively. Like Russ, I have changed my language, using the phrase "emergent order" instead, unless I know I'm talking to an audience that understands how I am using the word "spontaneous". "Emergent" doesn't have the connotation of instantaneous, or on a whim, or unpredictable that "spontaneous" does. I also tend to use the phrase "unplanned order", because then it gives me an opportunity to talk about how individuals can make their own plans for their own actions, but then even without groups of individuals coming together and making a group plan, order can emerge from the interaction of the individual plans. How cool is that?

It's actually a nice metaphor for emergent order to have the language change like this over time. During the Scottish Enlightenment, when the phrase "spontaneous order" arose from those fertile intellectual interactions, "spontaneous" had a different connotation. But language is malleable and adaptable, evolving over time. Yep, it's a nice metaphor.

Russ also mentions how easy it is to slip into implicit control language:

But I've been thinking lately about a different sense of the word spontaneous. It's the ability of the modern economy to deal with our spontaneity as economic actors. (Notice how that sentence suggests the economy is doing something consciously to cope with our spontaneity. Try and reword it to get rid of that implied management. How about this: It's how order re-emerges in the face of our spontaneity as economic actors. Better.) ...

So when I marvel that the extended order of human cooperation delivers (oops, there's that implied intention/control thing) allows me to buy a dozen bagels for a brunch without having to call ahead, it's so much more than that.

I find this a constant challenge, because my audience is usually people who come from a control-and-manage mindset, and who either favor or are just accustomed to either implicit control or explicit control. That fact is reflected in the language. So I am very deliberate in not using implicit control language. That word "delivers" is a particular bugaboo for me; instead of saying "retail electric choice delivers" or "technological creativity delivers" I try to say "technological creativity unleashes". I like the emergent connotations of "unleashes", but it also has some stormy connotations that don't please me. It also makes me sound like an evangelist, which I guess I am.

Lynne Kiesling

Adam over at Arthur's Seat has announced a mini saga contest:

A Mini Saga must be exactly 50 words. A Mini Saga must tell a story. The story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. The title may have no more than 10 words, and is not counted as part of the Saga.

You have until Sunday 10 April to submit your entries. Hmmmm ...

Lynne Kiesling

Today's word from A Word A Day is one of my favorites:

execrable (EK-si-kruh-buhl) adjective

Detestable; wretched.

[From Middle English, from Latin execrabilis (accursed), from execrari (to curse), from ex- + sacrare (to consecrate). Ultimately from Indo-European root sak- (to sanctify) that is also the source of other words such as saint, consecrate, and sacred.]

"They (The Patriots) were execrable, failing to record a first down in the first half." Bob Ryan; They Stand Atop the Division, But Footing Seems Quite Shaky; Boston Globe; Dec 1, 1997.

"She persuades us to admire an execrable ('lovable', she says) woman who was doggedly, arrogantly and treacherously misguided." Mosley's final insult; Sunday Times (London, UK): Aug 24, 2003.

Lynne Kiesling

Today the Wall Street Journal had a story about students writing poetry inspired by WSJ stories (subscription required) for Emily Farrell's English class in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. The story included excerpts from some of the poems. My favorite:

The thing about technology is
A public with mobile cellphones
That is Internet based and
Googles anyone
Doesn't quite get the appeal of
This:
You and I,
Knowing the rules of engagement
Concocting the games
Not one-hit-wonders, us;
You are addictive.
You and I,
Vibrant and excited
Unlimited frontiers
An epic success story of
This PC world
(Personally, googling you,
the hits just keep coming.)
-- Danielle Jubic, from "Tech's Next Big Thing?"

Lynne Kiesling

Sitting here at O'Hare, 6 AM ... today's A Word A Day word is encaustic:

encaustic (en-KO-stik) adjective

A method of painting using pigments with wax fixed onto the surface
by heat.

[From Latin encausticus, from Greek enkaustikos, from enkaiein (to burn in), from en- + (kaiein) to burn. Some distant cousins of this word are caustic, calm, and holocaust.]

This is a great word, and refers to a tile technique that was used to very great effect by tile artisans working during the Arts & Crafts movement. My favorite encaustic tiles are British and American, but you see them in Art Nouveau style in France, Belgium, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic too.

One of the premiere encaustic tile manufacturers in the US in the late 19th century was the American Encaustic Tiling Company of Zanesville, Ohio. The subtle coloring and the texture on this tile is very nice, although such companies also produced vast amounts of more utilitarian tile.

Lynne Kiesling

Today's word from A Word A Day is reprobate, a great word:

reprobate (REP-ruh-bayt) adjective

Depraved.

noun

A wicked person.

verb tr.

To disapprove or condemn.

[From Middle English, from Late Latin reprobatus, from reprobare (to
disapprove), from re- + probare (to test, approve), from probus
(good).]

AWAD is also good for the quotes that come at the end of every entry. Today's is a good one from everyone's favorite wag (OK, my favorite wag) H.L. Mencken:

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Here's what AWAD said in 1997 about a word I used last week to describe Putin's re-nationalization of Yukos:

retrograde

adj. 1. Moving or tending backward.

2. Inverted or reversed.

3. Reverting to an earlier or inferior condition.

4. Astron. Having a direction of motion opposite to that of the earth on its axis or of the planets around the sun.

5. Archaic. Opposed; contrary.

-intr.v. 1. To move or seem to move backward. 2. To decline; degenerate.

[ME [Lat. retrogradus : retro-, back + gradus, step]

Michael Giberson

A news story about GEICO and Google sent me to Thesaurus.com this morning, trying to find just the right word for the lawsuit the insurer filed against the search engine.

But which is the right word? The great thing about Thesaurus.com is that there are a lot of options. For example, search on "uppity" -- not the word I want, but in the ballpark -- and you get full entries for aloof, arrogant, brash, condescending, confident, distainful, and many more.

Lordly? Overbearing? Pompous?

Again none of those is quite the word I'm looking for. You see, Geico is suing Google, because of the way Google AdWords works. Search on Geico, and in addition to search results, you may get a few blocks of advertising on the right hand side of the page. Geico objects to the way that Google's advertising progam allows a competitor to pay to have sponsor's ads be displayed when a consumer searches on "Geico."

Presumptuous? Pretentious? Self-important?

None of these words are quite right, but they are all in the neighborhood. You know how it is when your researching an idea or trying to recall the name of an author of an article you read once, and can't quite remember the word. Oftentimes you have start with a word that is in the neighborhood, and hope it will trigger your memory.

Sniffy? Snippy? Snooty?

Geico goes to a lot of trouble to try to establish their name as something meaningful, spending more the $1 billion over the last five years according to the Washington Post story. Now Geico's upset that consumers may use that meaningfulness for other than official Geico-approved commercial purposes.

Toplofty?

No that's not the word I want, either. But it's a cool word.

Lynne Kiesling

OK, subtle it's not, but here goes:

Kirchoff and Maxwell have laws
About why electrons don't pause
But not about why to keep on the power
We have to allow markets to flower

Lynne Kiesling

My friend Adam over at Arthur's Seat has announced the first annual Clerihew competition. Please click through for full details, but the bottom line is a 4-line poem with two rhyming couplets. Entries to be accepted through 20 December.

This will be fun! Diane, you know what you need to do ...

I subscribe to the wonderful A Word A Day list operated by Anu Gang. It's a superb little treat for anyone who loves language and etymology. Monday's word was

eudemonia (yoo-di-MO-nee-uh) noun, also eudaemonia

1. A state of happiness and well-being.

2. In Aristotelian philosophy, happiness in a life of activity
governed by reason.

[From Greek eudaimonia (happiness), from eudaimon (having a good genius, happy), from eu- (good) + daimon (spirit, fate, fortune).]

I certainly have an Aristotelian streak in me, as do I think most folks who consider themselves classical liberals, and I can't think of a better description of why I find life so fulfilling.

The poem on Megan's website, "In Flanders Fields", is by John McCrae, one of the group of WWI poets that wrote so poignantly about the waste and destruction of war. Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen are three of the other most renowned WWI poets

While I'm at it, the same website has a good explanation of cheap at half the price, a phrase I use relatively frequently.

Tonight, on the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board show on CNBC, Tunku Varadarajan used the phrase "curate's egg." We could tell in context what he meant, but my husband and I were sufficiently curious to check it out afterward. Here's a translation from British English to ROW English. The essence is "parts of it are excellent", but I leave it to you to discover the rest.