Does Bender Speak Binary?

On occasion, in the classroom, I often direct students to specific articles in a given issue of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the International Herald Tribune. I ask them to find among the chosen pieces, evidence of the particular theoretical concept under discussion in class. I run this exercise usually after a particular heavy dose of economic theory and it has many reasons to recommend it. It is intended to show that there is life beyond theory, that the theoretical concept has legs, that the theory conveys a deeper understanding of a particular topic presented, that microeconomic theory has continuity and generality, that theory steels the analytical mind and is not just a device concocted by instructors to torture undergrads. The results of the exercise are often sobering – revealing considerable detail about my instructing inabilities; but it is generally fun.
Take for example the following three pieces that appeared on this past Sunday July 26, 2010 in the hardcopy edition of the NY Times. There was an article on the ideological character of the recent Supreme Court by Adam Lipvak (this article appeared online on July 24th), an article on Snooki (also available online) and a book review written by David Gilbert. Task: point out and discuss the concept in decision-making (collapsing of attributes; aka tree pruning) present in these three articles.
Adam Litvak front page article, (Court Under Roberts Most Conservative in Decades) was explaining the ideological tilt to the right – towards a more conservative position - of the Supreme Court. The article turns heavily on its reliance on extant Political Science empirical work on the binary categorization of Supreme Court rulings.
Snooki was also featured; Cathy Horyn’s Snooki’s Time is an appropriately weird article or a weird character. And for those of you who have been away time traveling – Snooki is now officially hot (well, certainly the show is, Jersey Shore). The article accurately described the frustration, apprehension and disgust voiced by Italian-American associations at the reductionist and limited portrayal of comical (but more often sad and sorry) characters in the show– like Snooki - who happen to identify themselves as Italian-American. Last, Dan Gilbert was reviewing yet one more book on errors in decision-making. (Daniel Gilbert, The Error of Our Ways, a book review of Kathryn’s Schulz’s, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. (Ecco/HarperColins)). It’s been awhile now that these books bridging the real world and academic results and debates in Empirical Decision-Making have been entering the popular press. Starting with (at least for me) Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini’s Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule our Minds (John Wiley & Sons, 1994) in the early 90s - till now - is a tad short of two decades. Generally, these books illustrate in a very entertaining manner how particular human behavioral traits, hard-wired over evolutionary time, are still present with us - and largely very useful when we make decisions in the face of uncertainty. But often they lead us astray. The key to eliciting good decision-making is either to recognize such pitfalls and avoid them altogether or to change the institutional structure to elicit the correct decision – rather than the more-common-but-potentially-erroneous hard-wired one. The latter is an example of what Sunstein-Thaler call ‘nudging;’ an important plank in the Obama administration’s conceptual elements underscoring recent legislative proposals.
It is generally well known that humans opt for stark simplicity in entertaining concepts. Simply put: it makes decision making easy. If you know that the pointy-headed guys are all mean and bad then it’s not that hard to decide to cross the street when a pointy headed fellow is coming straight at you. Survival is at stake. Thus, it makes sense to take and interpret cues (attributes) around and surrounding a particular ‘uncategorized’ fellow – especially those who don’t have the tell-tale pointy head – and categorize them into pointy heads or not. And you tell your friend what you have decided– ‘cause then the group benefits from the individual’s experience.
And this is exactly the point with Litvak on the Supreme Court and with Horyn, Snooki and Italian-Americans, an issue highlighted in the literature in which Dan Gilbert writes – as per the book review. The dots are connected. At all times the necessary binary categorization is useful to some – but much less – and even offensive - to others. That’s because by its very nature categorization necessarily leaves stuff out.
Categorization for purposes of decision-making is not conceptually complicated – although it does get operationally trickier. First, we set forth the attributes that constitute the category we want to abridge: thus, one is Liberal or Italian American. But agreeing on the relevant attributes that constitute that category is not that simple – what if I believe that people who wear glasses should constitute a criteria for being liberal – and you don’t? Or left-handedness? Or how ‘bout skin color? Can we settle this statistically, or mathematically? The answer is yes –but again, it requires agreeing on the selection algorithm – an algorithm that is going to decide which attribute goes in or not. In other words, we’ve just pushed the problem into the next round - unsolved.
What is certain is that we end up categorizing with error. ‘Tis inevitable. And some are willing to trade error (and any blowback it may generate) for discourse, or political analysis or cultural commentary. But others who are aware of the constraints imposed by this reductionism should refuse. Isn’t this self evident? Sonia and Clarence are hugely complex intellectuals capable of outlining and explaining their positions in great detail; and the do. Italian Americans are a hugely varied lot. Why reduce their sophistication and variation onto a mere category? Your analytical capacity is greatly diminished by doing this and you do your audience a disservice.
I should mention that there are other ways of dealing with the possibly offensive and certainly silly nature of binary reductionism. Amartya Sen, for example, and at the risk of oversimplifying his thinking in Identity and Violence: the Illusion of Destiny (Norton, 2006) embraces the idea of multiple affiliations: as my wife says, she is not only a ‘woman.’ She is also a mother, a republican, a neighbor of Hamden, CT., a teacher, a mentor, a daughter – well, you get the picture. Try messing with that!
What is the takeaway from this? Let’s strive for consistency and understand the context and the exercise. If you find yourself with a bunch of your buds having some brewskys and chatting away about how Sonia is ‘way too liberal’ or Clarence is ‘so far right he ran out of the page’ then, let it be. If on the other hand, you are asked by an instructor or a boss or in a serious conversation to analyze or address a point, then refuse the behavioral trap and say no to frivolous and uninformative reductionism – embrace the complexity.
And about bender - I know he can read binary (see The Honking Bender) - but does he speak binary? Post away.

A.E. Rodriguez
(arodriguez@newhaven.edu)
Monday, July 26, 2010