The rise and fall of rationality in language
pnas.orgGoogle Books is not a reliable sample of language over time due to shifts in genre representation that are correlated with all kinds of things like university library policies, interactions of OCR with typesetting practices, etc.
Also note this is a “contributed by” paper which means it didn’t go through the usual PNAS review process. (Presumably the authors didn’t think it would make it through.)
Instead of arguing why the data sources they have analyzed is limited or not fully representative, I suggest we get interested in their findings and look further into the matter. The authors are open about the limitations and possible biases in the data sources, and how modern use of language could affect the interpretations. I think they've provided good descriptions on how they have taken this into account in their study.
Even if the data source is biased, it would be interesting to know _how_ it’s biased.
After all, it’s the data that is widely available to people on the internet.
In this particular case, it's biased because Google Books includes much more fiction and many fewer scholarly works after about the year 2000. Link to a response of a previous article by this same group: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/45/e2115010118.short
It's good to see principle component analysis used to select only two components. Configure the algorithm to give you all statistically significant components and it can come back with 30 or 40 components, which fit the data exquisitely but which are as interpretable as a tarot deck and almost as meaningless.
> Perhaps more importantly, there could be a connection to tensions arising from neoliberal policies which were defended on rational arguments, while the economic fruits were reaped by an increasingly small fraction of societies
The decline of collectivism and the rise of individualism following the near total destruction of unions and the labour movement? Sound like a pretty significant contributor to me.
Unions in the private sector destroyed themselves. They bankrupted nearly every private domestic industry where they predominated.
That is what caused their membership rates to decline. They are now poised to take over the new bright spots of the US economy: Amazon and Tesla, and destroy these golden geese, for the short term benefit of their members, just as they did to the ones before them.
In the one sector where expenses are socialized, and thus which doesn't go bankrupt easily, they have gotten increasingly powerful.
Government social welfare spending has rapidly grown, at the behest of public sector unions who increasingly control the political system:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...
A couple anecdotes illuminates the kind of power these unions wield:
New York has nearly 300,000 unionized public sector employees receiving over $100,000 a year:
In California, emergency workers can retire at 55 with 90% of their pension, that averages $108,000 per year.
California now has $1 trillion in pension obligations for its unionized public sector workers.
> What ends up in the university libraries used for the Google n-gram data varies with trends in Google’s book-inclusion policy, editorial practices, library policies, and popularity of genres. As none of those effects can be excluded it is important that we find the same trends for word use in the New York Times.
The interesting line of thought here is that NYT articles have fairly clear authorship (and to a lesser degree editorship). Do individual authors follow a similar trend (implying that people are changing) or do authors stay the same (implying that the NYT composition is changing)? In short, how much is personal change, and how much is churn?
PNAS: Read It, or Not?
The reason people are down on PNAS is the way that members of the National Academy can, if they choose, sort of jam things into the journal through a side entrance. Here are all the details. The unusual thing about the journal is the existence of "Track I". Basically, a member of the NAS can publish up to four of their own papers per year. Each of these have to be submitted with the comments of two qualified referees, but the author gets to pick them. So a reasonable member should be able to get any sort of interesting or at least non-insane paper in there, by judicious choice of colleagues for review.
This is, in principle, the standard approach for a periodical of a scientific society, be it Proceedings of the Royal Society, Comptes-rendus de l’Académie des Sciences, Doklady Akademii Nauk, or Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They come less from a time of ubiquitous formal peer review and more from a time of communicating results in personal letters. In fact, as such societies were originally conceived as a sort of long-running conference crossed over with a social club, the journals were intended as little more than a streamlined way of publishing meeting minutes; that their names still suggest that everything within is supposed to accompany an oral presentation is not a coincidence. Over time, they more or less turned into standard peer-reviewed journals, but these traces of their original form still persist.
We called the Track I papers “fake PNAS” in grad school.
>So a reasonable member should be able to get any sort of interesting or at least non-insane paper in there, by judicious choice of colleagues for review.
An easy way to go get interesting papers in does not seem like a reason to be 'down' on it.
These observations are also consistent with the collapse of scientism (I.e. appeal to scientific credibility by making irrational arguments with scientific-sounding words) as a rhetorical technique. The reduction of pseudo-rational terminology might actually indicate an increase in net rational thought.
I had the same thought while reading the abstract but I don't think it can explain Fig 1 / Table 1.
How well do the charts match the point at which bottom 50% of population rationality-wise started mass posting on the internet?
This is irrelevant to the paper. The paper analyzes n-grams from books and the NYTimes. These aren't random internet posts.
Great HN post. Thank you for OP for supplying the link.
Through my various social engagements, I've spent time in many political discussions. Trump, politics, race, and anti-vaccination are recurring themes. Some observations:
* Those on the left tend to insert race into situations in which it does not naturally arise as I see it. Here focus is nominally on inclusion/significance of minorities. It periodically comes with a tone of judgement something like getting a visit from an evangelical at your door. Listen to NPR: at least around north east cities it's replete and centered on identity politics.
* Those on the right tend to insert race into situations in which it does not naturally arise as I see it. Sometime emphasis here comes as self-righteous anger, feeling excluded, and kind of self-imposed victimization of thought or culture putatively at the hand know-it-all-liberals.
* Older guys on the right side who are pro-Trump, anti-vax tend be the angry individuals spending time recollecting the good-ol-days when guys were hardcore men. I sometimes probe these older guys with questions. What I tend to get is a lot o whining, frustration but little in the way of answers. That's a shame: us older guys are supposed to have some answers standing on the shoulders of our own experience.
My view then is the emotionalism, complaining, putative self-righteous anger, and whining is a layer on top of a more basic problem which is victimization. And that sits on an even deeper layer of lack of competence broadly speaking on what to do about it.
Whether it's "stop the steal", deep state, MSM (mainstream media) there's a running sense of we're victums. Look at headlines. You'll see plenty of "The real truth behind..." (i.e. you've been lied to elsewhere), "The dirty little secret at..." (i.e. people have omitted information we're strong enough to tell you).
I yet remain convinced that the majority of Americans (of which I am one) know full-well the solutions are at the center. I also feel like almost all Americans are sick-and-tired of the 24-7 soap opera from the talking heads on TV, and headless voices on AM/FM.
> a more basic problem which is victimization. And that sits on an even deeper layer of lack of competence broadly speaking on what to do about it.
Maybe the issue is that our culture, economy, and technology has become so complex and exotic that very few people understand anything about how anything really works. We are surrounded by layers and layers of "magic." This might feel tremendously disempowering to people, especially older people who recall a simpler era when things were more understandable.
Feeling like a victim seems to be a really common sentiment across the board.
I must note "things were more understandable" is an illusion. Ever since the iron age, very few people understood the art of ironmaking. People have been living in magic for a very long time.
You are totally missing the point - A medieval peasant did well when they had good harvest, and did poorly when they had famine, this was pretty straight forward.
Now you suffer from subprime mortgage based securities and cryptocurrency miners and microchip shortage you can't get a car or some shit. Same house increases in price 10x over lifetime because of - well, explanation takes a book. Go look at water bottle, it's made of materials average person can't even pronounce, popupropeline, polycarbonate. You put it in recycling but it killed a poor turtle in Indonesia because global supply chains and corruption.
Is this really comparable to, 'I need a new plought, and i dont know exactly all detail of how cousin jimmy does his hammering?'
Just the amount of rules we have to be cognizant of for a seemingly mundane everyday life is pretty overwhelming. 10 kinds of insurance, 20 types of taxes, what thoughts and ideas you can express and to whom, what's good and bad for you to eat, investment guidelines, HOAs, correct pronouns, and so so much more especially now with covid.
I think we feel like victims because modern life is basically walking along a tight thread of avoiding becoming a victim. The reality of that is if we live in a space surrounded on all sides by prisons heuristically it's not that much different than actually being in one.
This victimization is hardly exclusive to the right. You can make a good case it began on the left and is merely being mirrored in some quarters on the right. Probably because of the success it has brougth to trial lawyers as we've become an increasingly litigious society.
I don't think you're saying anything that can't adequately be explained by "more people on social media," and mainstream media more or less using that to stay relevant.
As opposed to some sort of "new" brand of victimization or something. People are telling their own stories in an effort to be seen and to change how we do things.
Compare and contrast with the much narrower mix of "public speaking" which was more driven by classic (yes, mostly white) American Boomer-esque capitalism of before.
Seems pretty natural and expected so far, actually.
Indeed; there is way too much identity politics now. It's all identity politics.
Dems had a chance with Trump to rise and be above the identity politics, and to focus on more universal goods, such as the rule of law, having a non-conspiracy based response to covid (Trump lowered the bar so much lol), etc. I don't think they properly seized it.
> there is way too much identity politics now
It's a strategy to divide the working class. With raising inequality you need to do something with the people that are unhappy. Or you give them money, and reduce inequality so they are happier; or you give them an enemy to fight so they forget about the money.
A similar thing happened after the great depression of the 30s and culminated with communism and fascism rising to power. Communism was driven by angry workers that wanted a fair share of the money. Fascism was driven by identity politics and workers more worried about identity than money, they wanted everybody to be like the ideal themselves.
So, or we end inequality, or communism comes back, or identity politics takes over. For me the first option is the best, but it's very difficult to achieve.
I don't necessarily think it's a strategy specifically designed to divide the working class, but I do agree that it's largely about inequality. The thing is, when you have a large percentage of the population who is economically struggling and a small percentage of the population thriving, then this impoverished majority has nothing to lose with radical change. The middle class offers a huge check on stability in societies as middle classes tend to be less likely to support highly-disruptive revolutions leading to extreme social change. The impoverished have less to lose. When society is composed of the majority impoverished, they'll back revolution with gusto as they reason their lot can only go up from where they currently are.
You can never "end inequality". The best you can hope for is a level playing field, equal opportunity, as much as possible. There's a lot of things we could be doing to make that happen. It probably starts with more fair, universal access to education and trying to make sure that all children have their basic needs met, regardless of age or gender, but I think you are right that identity politics is a distraction for the working class.
The powers that be are trying to make the mob angry at straw men such as "capitalism", "colonialism" and "the patriarchy", but in the mean time, nobody is discussing real, evidence-based measures we could be taking to make the world a better place, there's only posturing and finger pointing.
IMO, we should be ensuring that the best, more positive aspects of capitalism are used to serve the best interests of humanity (i.e. stimulating investments in innovative technologies like electric cars). We should strive to have measures in place to prevent regulatory capture from fucking over startups in favor of inefficient zombie companies... And we should also have more scientists and engineers in the government, looking at evidence-based solutions to make sure we can comfortably provide housing, food, clothing, education and medical care to every child in the world, with a 5-year, 10-year and 25-year plan... Instead we have governments run by ex-lawyers and "activists" inventing new forms of victimhood.
You can, however, greatly reduce it. That would be good enough.
First what are we making equal? I don't think equal opportunity is a real thing, life is all about very precise starting conditions, some of which will have extraordinary outcomes, others which will fail precipitously, I digress. With Americans, probably material wealth, right? But that's an artifact of conditioning, isn't it? Like that drive to acquisitive behavior is a conditioned thing I reckon.
But if we aren't talking material wealth, y'know, how about equal freedom? Equal leisure time? Equal representation? Autonomy? Respect? Everybody seems to be fixated on material wealth - which I'd infer is the whole basis for equal opportunity, and I don't think that's the question to ask. If you treat janitors with the same deference as you do a CEO, their life would be less shitty, it might even be pretty good; you're minimizing their work and treating them like a human being. Maybe this is a thing and you can get some real Princess and the Pauper (or vice versa) shit going on. And, at that point with their work minimized, maybe they could get some more paid vacation without some eminent disaster looming. And, since people are pretty self-organizing when they're not treated like shit, and they're not high-strung and burning out, they can... Maybe... do without a manager breathing down their neck? And now they don't have to run up a chain of command to fill up their squirt bottle or talk to the person that actually calls the shots, and negotiate with the client directly. Wow.
Like hypothetically, right? Who knows, maybe I'm wrong, but having been on the ground for years in various industries I don't think I am.
I don't think the material shit is what everybody is all about, I think people are fronting with their consumer goods to be able to function in the social hierarchy. I mean, there's a whole class of people who enter into debt obligations just to front like they've got money which is "directly proportional to status and success". If you remove that bar, if you equalize social standing to a singular nominal human value, I don't think most people care to entertain the ratrace. But that's a culture thing, that's an economy thing, that's an identity thing - ethereal and malleable. I think people are lead to believe that they have to run in the ratrace, and buy all the shit, and front like they're a big shot just to get to the home stretch of the human shit, live, love, laugh, family and friends. 'Cause at the end of the day, you can have all the shit, but if you don't have anybody to share it with you just look like a dildo wearing designer bedazzled pants.
I hope to outlive this age of spectacle.
I'm 35 this year and, call me defeatist, I have no such hope :-(
In my opinion, objective truth does not exist. “Fact-free argumentation" is good and desirable.
> Objective truth does not exist.
Besides this statement?
Well, enderm did say "in my opinion"...
> Well, enderm did say "in my opinion"...
Not when I posted, he didn't. That's why I my quotation of him is different than what's now in his post.
Oh I was writing the same comment, you beat me to it, and more elegantly!
I think therefore I am. And so the world outside can't be confirmed, only your own existence? I get it. But what if the more objective party, society, a collective of subjectives, disagrees with you and your existence? It doesn't matter what you think, you will not think or be if they deem your "truth" an untruth or a threat. I think it's at least for this reason that the ego should be somewhat tamed and not undermine the objective or else the subjective becomes more endangered.
>Objective truth does not exist
That's an objective truth claim right there!
Moreover, if this claim is true, then it's false. It therefore refutes itself.
Do subjective truths exist?