The Innumeracy of the Rulers

https://www.someweekendreading.blog/math-illiterate-rulers/

by ColinWright • 2 years ago

3 2 2 years ago

someweekendreading.blog

dredmorbius• 2 years ago

Delving through another corpus I ran across this, by chance, which immediately reminded me of Colin's submission:

Language Vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists

N. J. Enfield, Mar 23, 2022, MIT PRESS 2022

Nick Enfield’s book, Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists (MIT Press, 2022), argues that language is primarily for social coordination, not precisely transferring thoughts from one person to another. Drawing on empirical research, Enfield shows that human lexicons the world over are far more coarse-grained than our perceptual faculties. Yet, at the same time, languages vary in the structure and sophistication of their representations. This means that, for instance, how different languages carve up the world influences not only how their speakers talk about the world, but also how they think about it. The book explores a range of linguistic phenomena, from lexical diversity to linguistic framing to the effects of narrative. As a result of understanding how language shapes our understanding of reality, Enfield argues that we can make more informed—and more ethical—decisions about our own language use, as individuals and communities.

On the New Books Network: <https://newbooksnetwork.com/language-vs-reality>

Audio: <https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBN2798566261.mp3> (MP3)

Enfield's key point is that language is useful for social coordination. Numbers ... for quantification.

Also: A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

(In numerous variations, more likely Beilby Porteus circa 1759 than Joseph Stalin. See: <https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/>.)

jonsen• 2 years ago

The vote was 136 for and 70 against.

Amazing that apparently noone just realizes that 136 is less than the double of 70.

The Innumeracy of the Rulers

Related Stories