Necessary Mental Revisions of Reality
Sep. 19th, 2010 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorIn my very early twenties -- the first year, in fact -- I was (as they say in the vernacular) shooting the shit with a friend over cheap beers. (Muscles, if you're curious, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bleaknemesis, and near the Sprinker Rock.) My friend had made a tired joke. Though I try to avoid tired jokes myself, it was giddy enough or late enough or I had consumed beers enough to respond with a tired reply to a tired joke. I said, "That's as old as my grandma, and she farts dust." Wracking my brains, it might have been the second or third time in my life I used that line. For reasons that should become clear, it was definitely the last.
My friend responded with some correction. "Parts the dust," he said.
"What?"
"My grandma parts the dust. That's the saying."
This was getting a bit bizarre, even for me. I repeated with greater emphasis, "What?!?"
My friend explained, as if to a child, "That's as old as my grandma, and she parts the dust."
If I recall correctly, I just stared. If grandma is dead, he reasoned, her body would lie in the ground, thus separating, or parting, the dust. The comeback was therefore a poetic reference to age as represented by death and burial.
I sincerely expressed my reservations about the veracity of his correction. The expression refers to a woman so old that she passes not gas but, well, dust. I asked him where he got his version.
Now less sure of himself, he explained that he had heard that rejoinder when he was about six from a slightly older kid, probably nine years of age. As a quirky six-year-old, he completely debunked his later nickname of Muscles by trying to reconstruct a mis-heard juvenile rejoinder with one fraught with poetic and philosophical imagery.
I was by this time more than a bit incredulous. Using again the vernacular, I called bullshit. While possibly true, I explained, how many nine-year-olds reflect on the cycles of life and death with enough mental reflection and depth to poetically remember, let alone create, such a non-childish return? I then imitated said juvenile, intoning with a sniveling whine the first "That's as old as my grandma," then deepening my voice into a Shakespearean basso profundo and raising a Yoric-skull-holding claw for the final "and she . . . parts . . . the dust."
Muscles had to accept the likelihood of my explanation. In fact, I think my explanation caused him to briefly and sharply snort Rainier through his nose.
Just a few days ago, I was reminded of exactly how extensively we humans relate the world around us to narratives that fit our previous conceptions. Probably a year ago, I read somewhere that the original Apple logo was an homage to computer pioneer Alan Turing. From this old entry:
While this was not the site I had originally seen that explanation, the story resonated. The story fit so well that I hardly gave it second thought. It was, after all, a good explanation. A computer pioneer, Apple's home in California's Bay Area, the single bite, the rainbow -- all the elements fit quite well.
Fit well, that is, unless one digs into the story a bit deeper.
I passed on my story (and probable ignorance) tonasu_dengaku in his journal. He did what I should have done initially; he checked the facts of the case. Several give lie to this explanation. First, he points out that "It looks like the rainbow Apple logo is from 1976, but the rainbow flag was not created as a gay symbol until 1978." Another poster points out that "Not to mention the colors aren't even in the right order," not a true rainbow. I look further, now into the Wiki entry, and learn:
Far from being a gay rainbow two years ahead of its time, the colors refer to the fact that the first Macs could display colors on color monitors. The bite? That detail helped distinguish the apple from a cherry, imparted an element of the Original Sin of Knowledge to the logo, and further made a puns of both "bit" and "byte."
Even though I now know all of this, I still prefer the Turing homage story. It just fits better. After all, good stories resonate, while facts often just plod and drone along in such boring ways.
In other words, though I know I was wrong, I still feel I was right. Turing's Apple has the ring of truthiness.
Our Definer of Truthiness,
Praise Be To Stephen
This particular memetic tear started when I sat down this morning to read a recommendation ofbleaknemesis's, Moshe Adler's Economics For the Rest of Us. Adler explains what I suspected, that a great many modern economists have internal narratives that draw them toward some explanations of economic activity and well away from others, even though those other theories explain empirical phenomena better and provide better predictive models for what the future will bring. He notes in his introduction:
He then unfolds the story of economic theories and their proponents, noting which held sway and when . . . and which still stand empirical tests even though they have long been "discredited."
Like a good story, neo-classical economics supports efforts at maintaining the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, but does so against just about every empirical data point Adler can find. Still, because the stakes (continued wealth for the wealthy) are so high and to be treasured so greatly, the theories popular in the for-profit (and the supposedly not-for-profit) presses continue in different flavors the narrative that rejects the horrible truth of the Russian Communist revolution. Be it Friedman's Chicago School or Hayak's Austrian School, be it Pareto's Efficiencies or Laffer's Curve, these theories teach that Taxes are Bad and Markets are Good . . . and, more importantly, ignore all evidence that proves the contrary.
Here's a great example from the names listed above. Adler explains Vilfredo Pareto by simply citing a quote of his. It's really all any of us need to know about this guy:
So rich people get enjoyment out of being rich only because there are poor people. Remove the poor from this scenario and there would be no reason to be rich, just as there can be no escaping the fact that wolves must eat sheep.
Bizarre.
A note in the information page reveals the philosophy behind the press that published Adler's book:
Translation: Adler's notes and proofs on how mistaken the popular economists, whose works and theories are embraced by working economists quoted widely today, will probably not be widely disseminated by the profit-driven presses. Why? Simply because if the profit-driven presses did start to debunk some of the more popular theories -- theories that scorn taxing the rich and ridicule emphasizing the necessities of life like food, shelter and a clean environment -- the profit-driven presses will become less profitable, since more of their corporate profits (and a greater percentage of their owners' incomes) will be taxed. This logic becomes a positive feedback loop that grows increasingly recursive, and as it does so widens the income disparity between those with and those without.
More importantly, though, this logic and the works of the supply-side economic theories fit the established narrative that questions the wisdom or folly of redistributing income. Think for even a moment how many outlets we have even today for establishing these narratives. The press, the more vocal churches, schools and universities (especially those with business and economic schools), and the myriad think tanks and foundations (that, as I've noted again and again, exist solely to promote the interests of the extremely wealthy) -- all keep hammering the mantra of "fiscal responsibility" into our throbbing skulls without allowing actual evidence-based alternative theories to surface, even for a nanosecond.
I'm only half finished with Adler's book, and already a fan. Hopefully, the rest of the read will prove as inspirational and narrative-confirming for me as the first half. It's time we as a society embrace pragmatic approaches to financial and monetary policy no matter how historically discounted they have become. It's time we as a society buried failed economic theories perpetuated only because they prove profitable to individuals and their corporations constantly in search of a continuous stream of economic prophets that offset potential losses.
Or, as Muscles would say, it's time this official body of falsehood parts dust.
bleaknemesis, and near the Sprinker Rock.) My friend had made a tired joke. Though I try to avoid tired jokes myself, it was giddy enough or late enough or I had consumed beers enough to respond with a tired reply to a tired joke. I said, "That's as old as my grandma, and she farts dust." Wracking my brains, it might have been the second or third time in my life I used that line. For reasons that should become clear, it was definitely the last.My friend responded with some correction. "Parts the dust," he said.
"What?"
"My grandma parts the dust. That's the saying."
This was getting a bit bizarre, even for me. I repeated with greater emphasis, "What?!?"
My friend explained, as if to a child, "That's as old as my grandma, and she parts the dust."
If I recall correctly, I just stared. If grandma is dead, he reasoned, her body would lie in the ground, thus separating, or parting, the dust. The comeback was therefore a poetic reference to age as represented by death and burial.
I sincerely expressed my reservations about the veracity of his correction. The expression refers to a woman so old that she passes not gas but, well, dust. I asked him where he got his version.
Now less sure of himself, he explained that he had heard that rejoinder when he was about six from a slightly older kid, probably nine years of age. As a quirky six-year-old, he completely debunked his later nickname of Muscles by trying to reconstruct a mis-heard juvenile rejoinder with one fraught with poetic and philosophical imagery.
I was by this time more than a bit incredulous. Using again the vernacular, I called bullshit. While possibly true, I explained, how many nine-year-olds reflect on the cycles of life and death with enough mental reflection and depth to poetically remember, let alone create, such a non-childish return? I then imitated said juvenile, intoning with a sniveling whine the first "That's as old as my grandma," then deepening my voice into a Shakespearean basso profundo and raising a Yoric-skull-holding claw for the final "and she . . . parts . . . the dust."
Muscles had to accept the likelihood of my explanation. In fact, I think my explanation caused him to briefly and sharply snort Rainier through his nose.
Just a few days ago, I was reminded of exactly how extensively we humans relate the world around us to narratives that fit our previous conceptions. Probably a year ago, I read somewhere that the original Apple logo was an homage to computer pioneer Alan Turing. From this old entry:
While I was attending the 2002 Edinburgh International Festivals in Scotland, a lecturer made the statement that the famous Apple Computer logo (a profile of a rainbow colored apple with a bite out of it) was in homage to Alan Turing, the generally acknowledged father of the computer and the developer of the “Turing Test,” which pioneered the field of artificial intelligence. The lecturer went on to explain that Turing had committed suicide at the age of 42 by taking a bite from an apple laced with cyanide. . . .
As a young teenager at the Sherbourne School, a boarding school in Dorset, he became aware of his homosexuality. While at Sherbourne, he had a tragic homosexual love affair with a fellow student who died of tuberculosis. The death of this young lover led to Turing’s obsession with consciousness and with the idea of whether or not a machine can have a soul.
After the war, Turing continued his research on computer development at Manchester University until 1952 when he was arrested for his homosexuality on the grounds of “gross indecency” with a 19-year old boy. This was a felony offense under British law, and to stay out of prison Turing agreed to be, in effect, castrated by injection with female hormones. His reputation was ruined and the British Government removed his security clearance. On June 7, 1954, his housekeeper found his body. Next to his body was a cyanide-filled apple from which one bite had been taken.
While this was not the site I had originally seen that explanation, the story resonated. The story fit so well that I hardly gave it second thought. It was, after all, a good explanation. A computer pioneer, Apple's home in California's Bay Area, the single bite, the rainbow -- all the elements fit quite well.
Fit well, that is, unless one digs into the story a bit deeper.
I passed on my story (and probable ignorance) to
nasu_dengaku in his journal. He did what I should have done initially; he checked the facts of the case. Several give lie to this explanation. First, he points out that "It looks like the rainbow Apple logo is from 1976, but the rainbow flag was not created as a gay symbol until 1978." Another poster points out that "Not to mention the colors aren't even in the right order," not a true rainbow. I look further, now into the Wiki entry, and learn:The logo is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide.[139] Both the designer of the logo and the company deny that there is any homage to Turing in the design of the logo.[140][141]
Far from being a gay rainbow two years ahead of its time, the colors refer to the fact that the first Macs could display colors on color monitors. The bite? That detail helped distinguish the apple from a cherry, imparted an element of the Original Sin of Knowledge to the logo, and further made a puns of both "bit" and "byte."
Even though I now know all of this, I still prefer the Turing homage story. It just fits better. After all, good stories resonate, while facts often just plod and drone along in such boring ways.
In other words, though I know I was wrong, I still feel I was right. Turing's Apple has the ring of truthiness.
Our Definer of Truthiness,
Praise Be To Stephen
This particular memetic tear started when I sat down this morning to read a recommendation of
bleaknemesis's, Moshe Adler's Economics For the Rest of Us. Adler explains what I suspected, that a great many modern economists have internal narratives that draw them toward some explanations of economic activity and well away from others, even though those other theories explain empirical phenomena better and provide better predictive models for what the future will bring. He notes in his introduction:(W)henever it is necessary to choose sides between the rich and the poor, between the powerful and the powerless, or between workers and corporations, economists are all too often of one mind: according to conventional economic theory, what's good for the rich and the powerful is good for "the economy."
(Moshe Adler, Economics For the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science That Makes Life Dismal, The New Press, 2010, from the introduction.)
He then unfolds the story of economic theories and their proponents, noting which held sway and when . . . and which still stand empirical tests even though they have long been "discredited."
Like a good story, neo-classical economics supports efforts at maintaining the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, but does so against just about every empirical data point Adler can find. Still, because the stakes (continued wealth for the wealthy) are so high and to be treasured so greatly, the theories popular in the for-profit (and the supposedly not-for-profit) presses continue in different flavors the narrative that rejects the horrible truth of the Russian Communist revolution. Be it Friedman's Chicago School or Hayak's Austrian School, be it Pareto's Efficiencies or Laffer's Curve, these theories teach that Taxes are Bad and Markets are Good . . . and, more importantly, ignore all evidence that proves the contrary.
Here's a great example from the names listed above. Adler explains Vilfredo Pareto by simply citing a quote of his. It's really all any of us need to know about this guy:
. . . (According) to Pareto rich people and poor people may be fundamentally different. In this scenario transferring money from the rich to the poor could actually hurt the rich more than it would help the poor. He used an extreme hypothetical example to illustrate this possibility. . . . "Assume a collectivity made up of a wolf and a sheep," Pareto explained. "The happiness of the wolf consists in eating the sheep, that of the sheep in not being eaten. How is this collectivity to be made (universally) happy?"
Economists do not usually cite this passage in explaining Pareto's objection to (Jeremy Bentham's earlier theory of) Utilitarianism.
(Adler, ibid, p. 10.)
So rich people get enjoyment out of being rich only because there are poor people. Remove the poor from this scenario and there would be no reason to be rich, just as there can be no escaping the fact that wolves must eat sheep.
Bizarre.
A note in the information page reveals the philosophy behind the press that published Adler's book:
The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry. The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable.
Translation: Adler's notes and proofs on how mistaken the popular economists, whose works and theories are embraced by working economists quoted widely today, will probably not be widely disseminated by the profit-driven presses. Why? Simply because if the profit-driven presses did start to debunk some of the more popular theories -- theories that scorn taxing the rich and ridicule emphasizing the necessities of life like food, shelter and a clean environment -- the profit-driven presses will become less profitable, since more of their corporate profits (and a greater percentage of their owners' incomes) will be taxed. This logic becomes a positive feedback loop that grows increasingly recursive, and as it does so widens the income disparity between those with and those without.
More importantly, though, this logic and the works of the supply-side economic theories fit the established narrative that questions the wisdom or folly of redistributing income. Think for even a moment how many outlets we have even today for establishing these narratives. The press, the more vocal churches, schools and universities (especially those with business and economic schools), and the myriad think tanks and foundations (that, as I've noted again and again, exist solely to promote the interests of the extremely wealthy) -- all keep hammering the mantra of "fiscal responsibility" into our throbbing skulls without allowing actual evidence-based alternative theories to surface, even for a nanosecond.
I'm only half finished with Adler's book, and already a fan. Hopefully, the rest of the read will prove as inspirational and narrative-confirming for me as the first half. It's time we as a society embrace pragmatic approaches to financial and monetary policy no matter how historically discounted they have become. It's time we as a society buried failed economic theories perpetuated only because they prove profitable to individuals and their corporations constantly in search of a continuous stream of economic prophets that offset potential losses.
Or, as Muscles would say, it's time this official body of falsehood parts dust.