Academic Discplines and Labeling

April 8, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

In a post on the teaching of economics in the US, Brad deLong drops this aperçu

Warning labels should inform right-wing students that economics will encourage their bad intellectual habits just as labels should inform left-wing students that sociology will encourage theirs.

(Sociology faculty and students probably thought this was going to be about that other kind of labeling, an assumption that maybe illustrates Brad’s point.)

Undeserving

April 6, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

Jenn Lena blogs something a relative sent her, with a picture of some dogs.

This morning I went to sign my dogs up for welfare. At first the lady said, “Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare.” So I explained to her that my dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddy’s are. They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care. So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify. My dogs get their first checks on Friday.

Damn, this is a great country! [emphasis in original]

The relative’s ignorance extends far beyond not knowing how to form plurals in written English, and Jenn provides, point by point, actual evidence that refutes the assumptions behind this supposed satire.

A day or two earlier, I came across this in the blog of Scott Sumner, who is, inTyler Cowen’s words, a “very smart monetary economist.” He knows the difference between a possessive and a plural, and I’m sure he has sophisticated economic theories and models that justify all his policy preferences. But read his gut reasons for mistrusting the Democrats on Social Security.

Here’s why I don’t trust the Dems—I see them as the party of one marshmallow eaters.* They represent people who have less self-control. I fear they will cut my benefits, but not cut the benefits of people who didn’t save for retirement. . . . .

In my view there is nothing egalitarian about redistributing income from two marshmallow eaters to one marshmallow eaters. They’ve already had their fun when young, loading up their three car garages with all sorts of fun toys. I’ve never even had a garage. (full text here )

Sumner is talking here not about the poor but about middle income (or somewhat higher) people who spent rather than saved. Still, the same moral sentiment underlies much opposition to policies designed to reduce inequality: they take from prudent ants and give to profligate grasshoppers.** The tone is different from the dogs-as-poor-people bit of hilarity. But it’s the same song, just played in a different key.

* This is a reference to the famous Stanford “marshmallow experiment,” where four-year-olds were given a marshmallow but were told that if they didn’t eat the marshmallow now, they could have two marshmallows later.

**I wonder how these people react to Rep. Ryan’s recent proposal, which does the reverse Robin Hood thing of shrinking programs for the poor and giving tax breaks the rich. Two-thirds of his proposed budget cuts hit programs for the poor (details here). At the same time, he would lower the income tax for millionaires from 35% to 25%. The former is for the noble purpose of saving the economy by reducing the deficit. I’m not sure how the latter helps in this regard, but I’m sure Rep. Ryan has some noble purpose in mind.

Obviously

April 4, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

We sociologists don’t get much respect.

Duncan Watts, in a Scientific American Q & A, describes how other people’s perceptions of him changed when he left physics/math and got into sociology – good-bye Einstein, hello Rodney Dangerfield:

I started out life in physics and then mathematics, and at some point I switched over to become a sociologist—and in the process of transitioning, I noticed this interesting phenomenon: When people perceived me as a mathematician, and I would describe my research, they would say, "Wow, that's really fascinating. How do you figure these things out? It's complicated and difficult." But when a few years later I was describing the same work in terms of social phenomena and the behavior of people, fads and historical events, success and failure, and so on, people would say, "That sounds kind of obvious. Don’t we all know that?"

It’s probably because we study people. Everybody has a working theory– probably several theories – about why people do what they do. Those ideas are dime a dozen. Ah, but scientists . . .

When someone tries to explain to us how electrons behave, we think it’s amazing and completely unintuitive, but when we explain how people behave, it always seems trivial.

I’m not familiar with Watts’s work. Sight unseen I’m fairly sure I don’t have the math chops to handle much of it (the library call number prefixes on his earlier books are QA, not HM). It’s about social influence and networks – he takes issue with some of the “tipping point” and “small world” models. I might have better luck with his new book (published, less dauntingly, by Crown Business), Everything Is Obvious:* *Once You Know the Answer

Names -- Traditional or Trendy

April 4, 2011
Posted by Jay Livingston

I suspect the recent upsurge in Old Testament names for boys expresses not so much a religious sentiment as it does a desire to be different but not too different. This trend towards trendiness and away from tradition isn’t just an American thing. It’s also true in France, where parents have had a free choice of names for less than 20 years. Before that, there was a government-approved list parents had to choose from.

The government still offers new arrivals some advice on names. Bapiste Coulmont links to a list of “French” names the government recommends to immigrants who want to become French – a process called “francisation.”* The list has about 400 names that are “French or currently used in France.”

But the French themselves don’t seem to have much use for that list. When I checked the most popular names that actual French parents were giving their newborns (the most recent year I could get was 2006), for both boys and girls, three of the top ten names were not on the list of “French” names.

Enzo (1)	Ines (7)
Nathan (4)	Jade (9)
Tom (8)	Lola (10)

From what I understand, other unlisted names – Margaux, Apolline, and Victoria – have since climbed into France’s top ten.

Japan too. Several decades ago, when I was in Japan, nearly all girls’ names ended in either ko (子), a few in mi (美) or e (江). Now none of the popular girls’ names have these endings.

The trend isn’t universal. In Italy, all the top names are traditionally Italian.** Joseph and Mary (Giuseppe and Maria) top the list.

* The counterpart of Americanization. When the movie “The Americanization of Emily” was released in 1964, that name wasn’t even in the top 250, but the title was prescient. Thirty-two years later, Emily had climbed to #1, and she held that spot for over a decade.

** Italy has no list of approved names. But the law does allow a civil official to “advise and dissuade overly-creative parents” who propose names that are “ridiculous, shameful, or embarrassing.” (A newspaper article on this is here.) In the US, you can name your daughter Brooklyn no questions asked. But in Italy, tying to name your kid Testaccio might not go so smoothly.