PurpleCar

Chicago Style Q&A: New Questions and Answers – Shop Talk interviews linguist Ben Zimmer today, and I love what he has to say about how historical evidence of colloquialisms and metaphors rarely convinces a Grammar Bully to back down on their insistence of “proper” usage of language:

 

The first thing to recognize is that what we think of as “new” usage is very often not that new at all, thanks to what Stanford linguist Arnold Zwicky has called The Recency Illusion. We tend to think of stigmatized language patterns as artifacts of our current age, when in fact they can reflect long-standing usage among established, respected writers. But just because you can find Alexander Pope writing “Every day with me is literally another yesterday for it is exactly the same” in 1708, that’s not going to assuage those who insist that literally should only be used, well, literally, rather than emphatically or hyperbolically. I often point to such historical evidence in usage disputes, but I doubt that I’m convincing anyone who has already decided that a particular point of usage is simply wrong.

 

(Side note: Academic linguists are “descriptivists” as opposed to “prescriptivists” – which means that most linguists see language as a living, changing thing. Prescribing to the notion that there’s one right way of expressing language is to show one’s ignorance of the subject and one’s own prejudices.)

Mr. Zimmer goes on to talk about how Big Data is influencing language, which of course it would. It may actually normalize language a bit, as we might tend to adopt the same terms as a whole, the more we interact with each other online. It’s an interesting read.

On a fun note, my friend Eric Rice linked to a “Dialect Quiz” that showed I basically can’t decide where the heck in Pennsylvania I’m from. I scored only at 53.8% similarity to speakers in Philly. That was the highest correlation, so I guess I’ll take it. It means I still have 46.2% of my Poconos-speak left in me. No wonder people look at me funny sometimes.

 

 

On Thursday, September 26, 2013 at 2 PM EST (GMT-5), Behavioral Economics icon Dr. Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality, The Honest Truth about Dishonesty) will be hosting a live Hangouts On Air session over at Google+. I’ll be Dr. Ariely’s guest along with 4 others. We’ll be discussing why spending cash feels different than spending with a credit card. This directly relates to how you and your customers are affected by varied form of currency.

As my wise friend and business expert Lynette Young stated, this conversation is relevant for any online retailer and anyone who can see the advent of Bitcoin, Google Wallet, and PayPal as common forms of payment.

Dr. Ariely, whom I interviewed back in 2010, is a great guy with a fun sense of humor. Severely burned in a devastating chemical accident when he was 18, Dr. Ariely developed a unique perspective on behavioral research and daily life. He injects intriguing factoids from studies and crazy personal anecdotes into every talk. I’m sure this “dry” material will actually be quite fascinating. Tune in at 2pm EST. (If I can, I’ll share the live link here and on the regular social networks).

Hashtags: #ArielyConvo

 

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much
by Sendhil Mullianathan and Eldar Shafir
Times Books 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9264-6

Men of Principle

On a dirty, noisy corner in a sun-seared Indian city, the authors Sendhil and Eldar were sweating away waiting for a bike cab to come along. After about 10 minutes a driver pulled up but immediately added a 50% markup to the regular rate. The driver expected the obvious –and hopefully oblivious– American passenger, Eldar, would gladly pay the inflated price. Sendhil wasn’t so keen. He insisted on waiting yet another 10 minutes on the hot, grimy street to catch a more reasonable driver. What did Sendhil and Eldar save by doing this? Less than 40 cents.

Looking at that negligible amount, Eldar wondered if the added uncomfortable time waiting and sweating was worth it. Sendhil didn’t budge. Despite the driver’s protest that 40 cents is “nothing” for Americans, a 50% markup based on race or nationality just simply wasn’t acceptable to Sendhil. It wasn’t the money; it was the principle of the thing.

We all make these kinds of “principled” moves, especially when it comes to dumping our hard-earned cash into a seemingly unfair venture. As Duke University researcher Dan Ariely points out, ours aren’t the most rational of decisions when it comes to principles or costs of things.

A Little Voice of “Reason”

Historically, economists theorized that we made money choices rationally. A “Homo Economicus” voice in our heads would tell us which is the better economic deal. Unfortunately for economists, humans aren’t all dollars and cents. Behavioral economics research studies show we make decisions based more heavily on context than Homo Economicus would like. In fact, it seems that we humans can only base our decisions on context (including moral belief systems). Refusing the bike cab driver’s blatant exploitation was worth more to Sendhil than getting off that hot street corner.

These findings have upended traditional economics. Ariely contends we may be irrational beings in light of Homo Economicus, but actually we are quite predictable in our irrational ways. We all tend to make the same kinds of decisions in similar situations (especially within cultures). Most Americans tend to make the same type of decision Sendhil made, albeit in different contexts.

Self Help for the Irrational

The book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullianathan and Eldar Shafir examines decisions made whilst suffering from diminishing resources. The authors outline 3 elements that are at the base of logic for our choices in this resource-strapped context: Scarcity; Bandwidth; and Tunneling.

Scarcity, Bandwidth and Tunneling are three states of capacity that influence choices. Opposite of scarcity is abundance, opposite of tunneling is wide and long-term focusing, and the opposite of bandwidth is no capacity to make decisions (e.g. states of extreme stress).

To put it simply, one must have a lot of bandwidth and little-to-no financial scarcity to think about saving for college or retirement. The peace-of-mind expendable income brings allows a person to think about and build up rainy-day savings. The poor are too busy putting out budgetary fires to think about retirement. They have too little bandwidth, or “slack,” in their minds and their budgets to entertain such a long-term idea. They are worrying about rent and car repairs. Their tunnel-focus on those immediate costs render the poor unable to look far ahead or plan for the future. Anything that lies “outside the tunnel,” as the authors say, gets ignored.

Scarcity, despite its overarching depressing theme of what separates the poor from the privileged, is a fun read. There are the classic behavioral economics studies cited as well as the authors’ own research. By the end of the book we’re armed with new information about how humans make decisions in times of both feast and famine. What the book doesn’t supply, though, is a self-help manual. There are no self-assessments, Likert rating scales, or pop psych quizzes to assist you in determining whether or not you are stuck in what the authors call a “Scarcity Trap” (a bandwidth-absent treadmill of debt-to-loan-to-more-debt that’s all but impossible to escape).

If I’m being honest, I must admit I was hoping for something along the typical self-help lines. I’m working on a fiction novel. Days go by where I don’t write a single word. I have no deadlines, no agent, no publisher. Scarcity showed me the lack of externally-imposed deadlines the dearth of allotted time I give to the novel rings the death knell for my novel. (Self-imposed deadlines, as the authors note, don’t work well because we negotiate ourselves out of them!) Would it have been so hard for the authors to add a “How to get yourself out of a Scarcity Trap” section?

Life in a [Deflating] Bubble

Alas, Sendhil and Eldar are economists after all; we know what helpful and empathetic joys they are to be around. To help us understand the concepts in the book and help me understand where my lack of novel-writing sits in this equation, I’ve made a Venn Diagram of the three decision-making states of scarcity, bandwidth and tunneling:

 

In the first circle on the left is Scarcity. It overlaps with the Bandwidth circle on the right and the Tunneling circle on the bottom. Scarcity overlaps with Tunneling, Scarcity overlaps with Bandwidth, Bandwidth overlaps with Tunneling. In the exact middle, the 3 areas overlap with each other. That makes 7 separate sections. Let’s look at each one.

 

Scarcity + Tunneling = Scarcity Trap

Illustrating this classic scarcity trap is the main point of the book. The authors outline this state of being between scarcity and tunneling. An example in the book is “payday loans” (the poor get a small, extremely short-term loan at ridiculously high interest. The interest plus fees on that small loan puts them into further debt, causing them to loan more to repay the original debt). The cash-strapped can’t think of anything else but paying the immediate bills in any way necessary. They can’t absorb the reality of debilitating interest rates when they have no bandwidth to think of such things.

When I began to think about it, though, I realized that Tunneling, Bandwidth and Scarcity interact in our lives and in our organizations in different ways. Here is where I begin to ad-lib off the concepts covered in the book. These concepts can be applied to both individuals and industry.

Bandwidth + Tunneling = Obsession

If a person has “too much time on one’s hands” –as the phrase goes– , she is focused intently on one activity, like a pro golfer would concentrate on golf. The pro golfer would exist in the convergence of Bandwidth and Tunneling. Pro golfers don’t spend their time thinking on things like bills or dinner or medical care. A single mother holding three part-time jobs has a lot more trade-off decisions to make than a pro golfer. What pro golfers do have is time to spend on golf. For lack of a better word, I’ve called this “obsession.” It could be called “passion” or “focus” but I’m thinking of how this state would look for us regular people. A teen in her parents’ basement playing WoW 50 hours a week would also fall into this area: a young adult with no bills, no obligations, and all-encompassing preoccupation with MMORPGs would be a more familiar example of someone existing in the obsession state.

A company can exist in this Obsession area if they have a lot resources allocated to a singular product or goal. The goal may never be attained because the lack of time or money isn’t felt (Scarcity). No motivation exists to complete the project and no other demands are being met. I’m thinking about my novel all the time. I read writing manuals. I meet with other writers. I don’t write enough words. A little scarcity might move me along.

Bandwidth + Scarcity = Simple Living Movement

We’ve all met these types of “bare bones” people. Perhaps they are Thoreau fans that don’t own TVs or live “off-grid.” Perhaps they are an elderly couple who live in a basic apartment with few possessions. Whether the scarcity is self-imposed or is economically created, a person who has a minimalist lifestyle would fall in the Simple Living area. They have the peace-of-mind to deal with the lack of things others deem essential. They accept that scarcity and move on.

Scarcity + Bandwidth + Tunneling = Crisis Management and Prevention

The Red Cross organization not only deals with immediate crises but also plan for and try to sidestep future disasters. Unpredictable events are in fact predictable in their inevitability, and the Red Cross squirrels away money for future use. (In fact, they are rightly criticized for withholding too much money and distributing too little to present-day disaster victims).

I suppose the authors would suggest that individuals and organizations aim for this stasis of Scarcity+Bandwidth+Tunneling. While we are appreciating scarcity of resources (knowing the value of a dollar as well as the worth of our time and moral norms), we have the energy to also look long and hard at savings for the future while concentrating steadily on day-to-day projects. With the right dose of Scarcity, Bandwidth can be loaned to one immediate project in the Tunnel. With the right dose of Bandwidth, Scarcity can be managed calmly in a very temporary Tunnel. With the right dose of Tunnel vision, Bandwidth can laser-focus on the issue of Scarcity.

#YOLO

“You Only Live Once” is a common mantra that’s taken a dangerous hold of young hip-hop culture. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are awash with #YOLO-tagged photos of young people engaging in risky behaviors. Economist and other academic researchers aren’t in the mood to party with them though; the increasing level of risk in young people’s decision-making can mean there is a compounding –and shared– feeling of hopelessness and malaise in that generation. By seemingly doing nothing but partying and posting on Facebook, young Millennials are living a dark minimalist life. With no jobs, no money and no hope, this new lost generation fills their lives with social risk, claiming there is only time now to do crazy things before they need to truly face the reality of a life of struggle or total ruin. This is that bad state of “having too much time on one’s hands”: loads of time, a dearth of hope, and total absence of focus. We need solutions to keep our youth engaged and invested while they wait for their turn on the world stage.

DSL, FiOS or Dial-Up?

The book tunnels in on how the poor get stuck in the Scarcity Trap, but lends no bandwidth to the questions “bandwidth” itself generates. My Venn model may break down a bit here too, because Bandwidth and Scarcity can come in many different forms. The typical ideas would be between time and money: Lots of time? No money; Lots of money? No time. But what kind of bandwidth do people need to deal with which kind of scarcity? What should we focus on, and when? Many more thought experiments are needed to test the strength of the Scarcity Venn, and a whole other book is needed to teach us how to deal with our varying states of living.

For now, I’ll try to bribe some friends into generating some hard deadlines for my novel.

Got Bandwidth to lend to this? Not many of my questions are rhetorical. Please comment.

UPDATE: September 23, 2013. I wrote to the author Sendhil Mullainathan via the app Goodreads, informing him of this review. This was his response (published here with permission from him) is below, in screenshot and typed text.

“Christine,
This is fascinating. I am looking at the venn diagrams now trying to wrap my head around it. Bandwidth + tunneling = obsession is interesting. You mentioned self-help and alas as you say it is in our nature. Recently I did write something very short that may help a tiny bit:

http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/09/the-…

I’m also writing a piece on getting to the gym regularly mainly because that’s the one thing I do well.

Sendhil”

Photo Credit: Book Cover and Venn Diagrams: Christine Cavalier

“Lots” of hype

The big to-do today online is the story of “a lot” of racist tweets after Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss America last night. Ms. Davuluri is the first American of Indian descent to be crowned in the contest.

A few online publications like Buzzfeed posted headlines that gave the impression that the racist backlash against the decision to crown Ms. Davuluri was rampant and overwhelming. Words and phrases like “A Lot” and “Many” and “Several” were written into headlines to describe the amorphous amount of racist tweets coming out last night. Yet Buzzfeed could find a mere 23 to post (and publicly shame their authors out of context. What if one was being sarcastic?).

No numbers? No deal!

Be wary of any headline that uses non-numerical quantifiers or adjectives like many, several, or lots. Usually these words are used when real numbers can’t be pinned down, or the real numbers aren’t impressive.

Compare the information from this example headline:

“Many tweeters upset about Miss America being of Indian descent.”

to the information in this example headline:

“[n]% of US Tweets in the 2 hours following the crowning of Ms. Davuluri were negative and racist in nature.”

The first headline leads us to believe that the majority of Americans were not happy with the Miss America decision to crown an Indian-American. When we see the word “many” we generalize it to mean “majority” or “most.” That mental mashing of “many” to mean “most” is what makes the headline catchy. If the editor wrote “We found 23 tweets that were racist and we think that’s many tweets,” people would stop reading that publication. Here’s the thing: that’s exactly what happened. They used the term “many” to quantify a few tweets. It’s irresponsible and misleading, and it’s meant to get clicks to sell ads. It’s crap.

Let’s do the math

The overwhelming majority of tweets in the last 24 hours were not about Miss America at all. How do I know this, when I have no way to parse out the data? Let’s look at some real numbers and some common sense experience that we all have with Twitter.

I once heard a state representative say that it’s common local-politics lore to assume that 10,000 of their constituents agree with each letter they receive. So 1 letter=10,001 supporting opinions in their district. This apparently is a tried-and-true rule of measure within local politics. Let’s adopt this idea for a second.

Even if each of those 23 tweets Buzzfeed put up represent, say, a million people’s opinions – each – those 23 million tweets can’t responsibly be qualified as “several” “a lot” or “many” of the overall number of tweets about the Miss America pageant or of the total number of tweets in any 24 hour period.

The site averages 5,700 tweets per second.

That’s 342,000 tweets per minute.

20,520,000 tweets per hour.

492,480,000 per day.

Let’s say every tweet in the 2 hours after Miss America 2013 was crowned were racist crap. That would be 41,040,000 tweets. Let’s say that represents all of the racist tweets for that day. That would put racist tweets about Miss America 2013 at around 8% of all tweets for that day.

We can drill down, sum up, move around and get jiggy with these numbers, but the fact is, neither Buzzfeed or PurpleCar has the exact data for the number of racist tweets about Nina Davuluri. We can assume, though, based on our experience, that all tweets for 2 hours after the Miss America 2013 pageant ended were not about or related Nina Davuluri or Miss America. So the racism tweets have to be spread out, because other people are clogging up the stream with pictures of their food or complaints about insomnia.

When I woke up this morning, #MissAmerica was trending. When I checked the tweets, I saw not one racist tweet using that hashtag. Instead, it was post after post after post with a link to the Buzzfeed or similar articles about the racist tweets found the night before. Not one of the articles had any kind of statistics or numbers. They all used non-numerical, amorphous quantifiers. I went searching for the tweets myself. I searched with hashtags, without hashtags. I used all sorts of racist terms. I included references to Miss America and excluded them. Go try it yourself. You may lose your appetite for dinner, but you won’t find millions of racist tweets in general, let alone racist tweets about Miss America.

Real meaning

Now that we’ve concluded that these types of headlines are misleading, let’s discuss the good or the damage or they do.

Benefits:

1. Buzzfeed & other offenders make money on ad clicks/exposure. (Didn’t qualify who receives the benefits, did I? One could say ads power the Internet…)

2. Racism is brought to the forefront, perhaps making some oppressed individuals feel vindicated (Had a conversation about this on Twitter today. I’ve seen this argument about supporting the highlighting of public displays of racism. The logic is that if it is never reported then no-one will believe it exists).

3. Parents can be informed that online social media sites contain dangerous garbage (It’s possible there may be a parent out there who does not know this yet).

Faults:

1. The mental exchange of “many” to “most” makes racism seem more rampant than it is (Say what you want, but societal etiquette has changed drastically in the last 50 years. Perhaps people are more racist now but they certainly display it less).

2. The hopeless feeling the bad “news” engenders can deplete people’s hope and well-being (Several studies show that news like this affects us poorly).

3. The United States and online social networks like Twitter get a needlessly tarnished reputation (We have enough damage control, we don’t need more to do).

We can think up more pros and cons. How you think about this issue will all depend on your own views on racism, social networking and media outlets. Your own experiences inform your opinion. Perhaps you feel this type of racism isn’t brought to the forefront enough, and you are happy to see that someone picked out a small number of these tweets as proof. Perhaps you’ve been online so long that headlines like this seem sensationalistic and unnecessary.

Personally, I think the reports do more harm than good because they do not include actual numbers or real data. By giving the impression that the majority of Americans (and not just American tweeters because people generalize) are racist will only create the unintended consequence of more public racism. If a person is on the edge about expressing a racist opinion and then sees a trending topic that “many” people agree with her, she will be encouraged to share that thought. This is how social rules change. Slowly but surely, our culture has changed to the state where expressing racist views in a public forum is met with disdain. We should continue to reinforce that disdain by not sensationalizing racist tweets, and we should definitely think of the real numbers each time we see “many” headlines like these.