Yesterday, DA posted an article on the Economist’s debate over language (here) with the following [emphasis added]:

Irregardless, she goes forward to talk about more interesting research, including ethnic bias, gender specific nouns, and even points to a study which attempts to show Hebrew-Arabic bilinguals speakers seem to show more favorable attitudes towards Jews when tested in Hebrew than Arabic.  (I find that claim dubious, but without more access to the research, I’ll leave that point for now.)

My initial concerns with this research were how it was conducted and what assumptions were made.  After some searching, I’m unable to retrieve the actual study, but did find some underlying issues worth nothing.

The study Ms. Boroditsky cites above, used a test known as Implicit Association Test (IAT) (here via Association for Psychological Science – APS):

The study used a computer test known as the Implicit Association Test, which is often used to study bias….

The question at hand then, is whether IAT can actually show true bias.  The way it works (APS continued):

…Words flash on the computer screen, and subjects have to categorize them by pressing two keys on the keyboard as quickly as possible. It’s a nearly automatic task, with no time to think about the answers. The trick is, the subjects are classifying two different kinds of words: words describing positive and negative traits and, in this case, names – Arab names like Ahmed and Samir and Jewish names like Avi and Ronen. For example, they might be told to press “M” when they saw an Arab name or a word with a good meaning, or “X” when they saw a Jewish name and a word with a bad meaning. In this example, if people automatically associate “good” words with Arabs and “bad” with Jews, they’ll be able to do the classifications faster than if their automatic association between the words is the other way around. In different sections of the test, different sets of words are paired….

 The idea being that a quick test might help to show hidden biases, even for those who are actively attempting to prevent such displays.

Intuitively however, this test seems unlikely to prove bias for a few reasons. 

The first of which is our knowledge that human’s subconscious isn’t conscious.  By its very definition, we don’t know what it is and we still have little idea of how, or even whether, these hidden thoughts interact with our conscious mind or thinking.

The second is our knowledge of overall human development.   Take a child raised and consistently indoctrinated with racist ideals.  While not simple, some of these children do grow up and by themselves learn the truth:  hating others based upon their race, religion, or other superficial factors, is not just stupid, but also marks one of the lowest or immoral thoughts.

But take this person… Any guesses on how this person might do on this test, even if they now live a life of a non-biased person?  Speculation  for sure; but I think ultimately logical.

Which dovetails to the third basic critique, brought to us by basic ideas in critical thinking. 

Nominally, one of the things a critical thinker must do in order to minimize bad decisions, is to understand their own biases.

& in this case, I don’t mean to limit this to racial biases brought about through family or societal pressures, but consider the word bias as more encompassing to include any consistent mode of thinking which negatively affects decisions.

From that point of view, the biases one should look for in critical thinking outside personal life, (more…)

This week @ the Economist’s debate series, they are discussing another interesting topic.  Starring Lera Boroditsky, Assistant Professor of Psychology @ Stanford University arguing pro and Mark Liberman, Distinguished Professor in Linguistics @ University of Pennsylvania, arguing against  (whole thing here):

This house believes that the language we speak shapes how we think.

Still in the first round of of the debate, the pros have a large majority with a full 75% of people agreeing.  This seems self evident and may lead some to question why debate this particular topic with so much agreement.

The answer:  the nuances of the argument itself.   Indeed, while Mr. Lieberman’s job is to argue against the proposition, he starts his opening arguments by agreeing with the basic premise:

Properly interpreted, the proposition is true: the language we speak shapes how we think….

& of course goes directly into his disagreement:

…But the way we think also shapes the language we speak, and the way we live shapes both language and thought. When we encounter or create new ideas, we can usually describe them with new combinations of old words. And if not, we easily adapt or borrow or create the new words or phrases we need. As Edward Sapir once put it, “We may say that a language is so constructed that no matter what any speaker of it may desire to communicate … the language is prepared to do his work.”….

He goes on to define this key difference in interpretation.  While he nominally agrees with the idea, society has been inundated with ideas which simply aren’t true.  With discussions, articles, and not very well done research telling us all about the number of words Eskimos have for snow, whether the Apache had a word for “lie”, and even popular culture through the likes of Ayn Rand.

The crux of the issue however, is that most of these stories are either exaggerations of the truth or just completely false.  Like the Hopi Eskimos, having apparently somewhere between 5 & hundreds of words for snow depending upon the source, might have specific words to identify different types of snow that other cultures don’t have.

But whether they have specific words for such things as hard iced snow, or falling snow, or wet snow, it’s not as if other languages can’t use two word phrases with adjectives and nouns to get to the same point.

Taken this way, it seems as though having more words for snow than other societies doesn’t say those other societies are somehow less equipped to speak about snow, but instead gives us some insight into what is important to the Hopi.

& then there’s the other side as well, presented by Ms. Boroditsky, which starts:

Exciting empirical advances over the past decade have at last provided us with scientific answers about how languages shape thinking. Importantly, while some of the influences of language on thought are remarkable, there is nothing strange about them, they are just a normal function of how human brains work. Let’s start with the basics of perception, mathematics and navigation, and end with the sex of toasters, social judgments and prejudice….

She moves from there to highlight interesting research in terms of various societies, such as those with more words for colors of those who do not have words for left & right.  In the later example, they use more cardinal-type language to define position (such as north-east).   This seems to have given them a better sense of direction than cultures where left & right are used.

Going forward, she also talks about math and number language:

For example, some languages do not have exact number words (there may be words for “few” or “many” but none for “seven” or “sixteen”). Speakers of such languages generally are not able to keep track of exact quantities—they cannot count. Without being able to count, you are unlikely to be doing algebra, solving differential equations…

Which is true in a large sense, but isn’t true in the technical one.  We actually know quite a bit with respects to the evolution in math language and its use and necessity in understanding math functions above simple counting. 

So humans had a need to start counting things.  This need brought us new language to describe various amounts.  Over time, with the advent of more and more commerce, this math language became written, and for the west, this was in Roman Numerals.

Of course anyone with experience with Roman Numerals can attest pretty easily to how difficult it would be to multiply or divide, but even that is just the starting point.

The true power of math and math thinking didn’t really happen until we stumbled upon two mythical number concepts, zero and infinity.

Take that beginning and look forward a few thousand years, and we routinely run math calculations on numbers which have no real language associated with them and numbers which can’t even be understood by humans (IE it’s hard to understand what a billion, billion stars really means, when you have no concept of what a billion of anything looks like, regardless of having a “word” for it ).

Irregardless, she goes forward to talk about more interesting research, including ethnic bias, gender specific nouns, and even points to a study which attempts to show Hebrew-Arabic bilinguals speakers seem to show more favorable attitudes towards Jews when tested in Hebrew than Arabic.  (I find that claim dubious, but without more access to the research, I’ll leave that point for now.)

& while the 75% vote tally on the pro side is unlikely to change drastically, with rebuttals, expert comments, & closing statements still to come; it should be very informative in the end.

Leonardo Da Vinci : The Mona Lisa – c.1503 – 1506

The Mona Lisa, arguably one of the world’s most famous paintings, has been studied time and again in an attempt to see insights into the brilliance which was Leonardo Da Vinci.

Began in 1509 and finished in 1519, 6 years prior to Da Vinci’s death in 1525, the Mona Lisa is considered a painting of an ideal woman,  posed and framed in such a way as to demonstrate her attractiveness, show her as a normal person, though reserved with almost a kind of quiet divinity.

 Due to the almost perfection of this piece, and the attention it has garnerd through the years, speculation has surrounded nearly every detail of the work.

• Who is the model (answered in 2005 here - though thought to be Leonardo himself at one time)?  From where does the landscape originate? 

Scientists have even used modern technology to see what secrets the painting might hold (here):

 …In recent years, X-Ray scans have revealed three different version of the painting in the same frame as it was revised over time, both in revision by the artist and in restorations by museum curators and artists after Da Vinci’s time…

Though like Stradivarius violins, some of Mona Lisa’s secrets might simply be lost forever (here):

….They found that some layers were as thin as one or two micrometers and that these layers increased in thickness to 30 to 40 micrometers in darker parts of the painting. A micrometer is one thousandth of one millimeter….  

Walter [Philippe Walter, a senior scientist at the Paris-based Laboratoire du Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musees de France] said it is almost impossible to see any brushstrokes on the Mona Lisa….  

Which brings us to today, where researchers announced they have found another secret Mona Lisa has been hiding for almost 500 years (here):

..new revelations from an Italian team of researchers who said they found letters and numbers in the world famous painting.

Head of the team, Silvano Vinceti, said, “To the naked (eye) the symbols are not visible but with a magnifying glass they can clearly be seen.”

They found it while studying the painting at Louvre museum in Paris. “We know Da Vinci used symbols so we are confident that they are a message from him,” he told Daily Mail.

In the right eye the letter LV were found which could mean Da Vinci’s name and in the left eye some symbols were seen but “it is difficult to make them out but they appear to be the letters C and E or B” he said….

Like so many other mysteries from the ancient world, we may never know what any of this means nor exactly how Da Vinci or Stradivarius perfected their crafts, but their genius will ensure further study for generations to come and ultimately makes us all richer, even if all we learn is a deeper appreciation for their accomplishments.

A DA Post earlier this week (here) wondered if the level of rhetoric during the tax debate, like calling for pitchforked mobs or referring to the GOP as terrorists, seems a little odd now that we have President Obama’s compromise which includes continuing the same tax basis for all.

The President has even argued in that no so distant past (2009) that raising taxes during a recession was bad policy, but apparently he is now against the policy he was sort of for, but then again against….

Speaking on Monday he explains what really, really, might, sort of be true, depending upon whether he’s for it or against it… (whole thing here):

…A few minutes later, Chuck Todd of NBC News asked the president what he had to say to fellow Democrats. That prompted a different analogy – that he was trying to prevent harm to the American people, who were essentially being held hostage in the tax debate.

Quick side bar – I wonder how the voters who just sent this group of legislators to Washington DC feel about being associated with hostage takers?  Meh, probably nothing.  Continuing:

“I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed,” Mr. Obama said. “Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy.”

With all due respect, I think people should be questioning the wisdom of a sitting President who seems to be so insecure about a recent decision, that he feels the need to use inflamatory rhetoric in order to distance himself.

Though seen through this light, the Democrats’ prior inflamatory statements probably fits into the overall strategy for re-election.  When the President can “trumpet” the tax deal, while other top Democrats talk about the inevitable “screwing” without the deal, then you can see a basic strategy to take credit for the deal most Americans agree with, while simultaneously distancing himself from the deal his backers don’t like (poll info here).

But the best part of the President’s discussion on this issue has to be this:

“I don’t think there’s a single Democrat out there, who if they looked at where we started when I came into office and look at where we are now, would say that somehow we have not moved in the direction that I promised,” he said. “Take a tally. Look at what I promised during the campaign. There’s not a single thing that I’ve said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I haven’t gotten it done yet, I’m still trying to do it.”

Which for those playing the home game means, “I know I haven’t done everything I said, but my intentions are in a good place.”

Just like the world’s worst surgeon saying something like, “I know I keep killing patients, but honestly I’m trying desperately not to”, the President is telling us directly, all that matters are his intentions.

If only it were that easy.

MasterCard made a decision to stop taking credit card transactions for donations to Wikileaks and hackers struck back (here):

The website of MasterCard has been hacked and partially paralysed in apparent revenge for the international credit card’s decision to cease taking donations to WikiLeaks….

Though not very inventive nor innovative, they used an old and mostly discarded technique by anyone claiming the title “hacker” known as DOS (Denial of Service) – continued:

…A group of online activists calling themselves Anonymous appear to have orchestrated a DDOS (“distributed denial of service”) attack on the site, bringing its service at www.mastercard.com to a halt for many users….

& if that weren’t enough to prove a bunch of third graders have too much computer time on their hands, they decided to name their playground bullying an “operation”:

…”Operation: Payback” is the latest salvo in the increasingly febrile technological war over WikiLeaks. MasterCard announced on Monday that it would no longer process donations to the whistleblowing site, claiming it was engaged in illegal activity….

Irregardless, the truth is oppression by government or oppression by mob rule, is still oppression and by covertly attacking private business to try and punish specific policies or to try and force a change in policies is little better than taking your money forcefully at gunpoint.

Their moms must be sooooo proud.....

Whole thing here, LeBron James returns to his former home stadium as a player on the opposing team to tight security, boos, obsenities, not-so-clever chants.  His response:

There’s an interesting research paper on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by the Journal of Judgement and Decision Making (whole thing here):

The paper extends research on fixed-pie perceptions by suggesting that disputants may prefer proposals that are perceived to be equally attractive to both parties (i.e., balanced) rather than one-sided, because balanced agreements are seen as more likely to be successfully implemented. We test our predictions using data on Israeli support for the Geneva Accords, an agreement for a two state solution negotiated by unofficial delegations of Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2003. The results demonstrate that Israelis are more likely to support agreements that are seen favorably by other Israelis, but — contrary to fixed-pie predictions — Israeli support for the accords does not diminish simply because a majority of Palestinians favors (rather than opposes) the accords. We show that implementation concerns create a demand among Israelis for balance in the degree to which each side favors (or opposes) the agreement. The effect of balance is noteworthy in that it creates considerable support for proposals even when a majority of Israelis and Palestinians OPPOSE the deal.

Or restated, it seems our sense of justice prefers balanced deals over seemingly one-sided deals, even if the balanced deal is opposed by the majorities of both interest groups.  Seems intuitive.

NBER has a great new research paper out discussing the size of social networking cliques versus their ability to aggregate information among of sources and whether size of the group is a correlative factor to asymptotic of learning (abstract here):

We develop a model of information exchange through communication and investigate its implications for information aggregation in large societies. An underlying state determines payoffs from different actions. Agents decide which others to form a costly communication link with incurring the associated cost….

We define asymptotic learning as the fraction of agents taking the correct action converging to one in probability as a society grows large…..

Our result shows that societies with too many and sufficiently large social cliques do not induce asymptotic learning, because each social clique would have sufficient information by itself, making communication with others relatively unattractive. Asymptotic learning results if social cliques are neither too numerous nor too large, in which case communication across cliques is encouraged….

The short version: If your social network is small enough in size, you can gain information aggregation and asymptotic learning by conversing outside your normal circle, by conversing with friends of friends…. which among other things, means if your social network is kept to a certain level, you are more likely to have more interactions with different social groups than if your group is too large.

For instance – if you have 100 friends, you might have time to wade through some stuff, even post on a few statuses here and there.  You also have the option of seeing other people post on that status whom you might not even know.  That simple interaction can open a new individual source of information and dialog you might never have encountered otherwise.  I can personally think of a few people this is definitely true with me, but that’s a side note.

From the other side – the opposite side is also true.  When your social network becomes too large, your time, ability, and even willingness to move past all the communications you have to view to possibly even interact with others you might not know becomes prohibitive.  IE – the cost of adding yourself into additional social networks and though which learn more, becomes too high.

Take a mundane example – let’s say you love hot dogs and they’re on sale for cheaper than ever, say 50 cents a package.  Why not buy them all?  Because of the law of diminishing returns.  The first 5 packages you pick up might be worth $2.50 easily, but each additional package you retrieve results in spending a higher percentage of your income on something you already now have 5 of.  So each additional package above some individual amount, becomes worth less and less.

Of course this social network size has implications in government as well.  This line of reasoning can be taken to contemplate how large societies in general should be.  Not that there’s a perfect size and I wouldn’t advocate force for any perfect number, but how many people is truly efficient to be under one local government and when does having a larger community under the same local government possibly discourage social interactions & even a feeling or sense of community.

It seems obvious that 300 million under one federal banner isn’t a good idea & the same can probably be said to be true of most large urban areas.   This isn’t to say 20 million people can’t live in a relatively densely populated place, but that even in that sense, there would be many micro communities of much smaller size to encourage interactions, involvement, & true compromise.

As they say, all politics are local.  For me – I can only say I’ve met quite a few friends through this method.  People I call friends who, like most, agree with nothing I ever say, but for whom I’m a richer person for having met all of them.

The moral of the story – I guess the same old thing, everything in moderation.  But again we see the real genius of the internet, in decentralized information sharing.  Without this mechanism making this possible at all, we wouldn’t even be discussing the size of our social networks.

Not that most humans seem destined to challenge themselves or their beliefs… the data shows most people still seem to only seek out confirmation sources instead of new information (here & here)….meh.

Hopefully someday lots of people will use all that wonderful information to question to their beliefs instead of constantly reinforcing their perceptions, but for now – I wouldn’t hold your breathe