Someone asked Wellington, at a dinner party, what was the most inane remark he had ever heard. His reply — possibly not politically correct — was that before a battle in the Peninsular War he had heard a Portuguese General address his troops saying, ‘Remember, men, you are Portuguese.’
Society
“We and They”
Father, Mother, and Me,
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
And They live over the sea,
While We live over the way,
But — would you believe it? — They look upon We
As only a sort of They!
We eat pork and beef
With cow-horn-handled knives.
They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,
Are horrified out of Their lives;
And They who live up a tree,
And feast on grubs and clay,
(Isn’t it scandalous?) look upon We
As a simply disgusting They!
We shoot birds with a gun.
They stick lions with spears.
Their full-dress is un-.
We dress up to Our ears.
They like Their friends for tea.
We like Our friends to stay;
And, after all that, They look upon We
As an utterly ignorant They!
We eat kitcheny food.
We have doors that latch.
They drink milk or blood,
Under an open thatch.
We have Doctors to fee.
They have Wizards to pay.
And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We
As a quite impossible They!
All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!
— Kipling
The Ringelmann Effect
In studying the relationship between productivity and efficiency in 1913, French agricultural engineer Maximilien Ringelmann found that members of a group perform worse on average as the size of the group increases. In a tug of war, as the size of a team grows, each member begins to “loaf,” relying on his teammates to put forth the necessary effort. Worse, the team’s growing size makes it increasingly difficult to coordinate its actions.
Interestingly, though, ants have been shown to increase in efficiency when working in teams. New World army ants can carry larger loads as a team than if the burden were distributed among them individually, and Weaver ants organize pulling chains that can effectively double the strength of each member. So “the Ringelmann effect” isn’t inescapable.
A Fable
A paper kite, that soared on high,
While looking down was able to descry
A joyous butterfly,
And cried, “We faintly see your foolish efforts zealous;
Confess that you are rather jealous,
When you behold our elevated lot.”
“Jealous? Oh, surely not.
Your grandeur is a phantom, or an empty vision,
Your tethered flight awakes, believe me, but derision;
Can happiness be got from an existence ever fettered?
And how could life for me be bettered?
As I aspire I venture higher,
And never, solely for another’s idle leisure
And pleasure,
Lose freedom I desire.”
— Ivan Krylov
Unquote
“No man is a hero to his valet. But that is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet.” — Hegel
Points of View
“The Englishman likes to imagine himself at sea, the German in a forest. It is impossible to express the difference of their national feeling more concisely.” — Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, 1960
Onlookers
“Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think creation’s.” — E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951
“Sometimes an admirer spends more talent extolling a work than the author did in creating it.” — Jean Rostand, De la vanité, 1925
Decisions
After last week’s post on Morton’s fork, reader Nick Hare sent three items. Rather than levy taxes, Athens used to task each of its wealthiest citizens to perform a liturgy, essentially a duty to finance a public project voluntarily. A citizen who was assigned this duty could avoid it by naming a citizen who was supposedly richer than he and thus better qualified to perform it. If the second man disputed this claim, the two would exchange their entire estates. The first man could hardly object to this, as by his own claim he would gain by it. This had the effect of discouraging spurious claims. The practice was known as antidosis, literally “an exchange.”
Virtue ethics meets consequentialism on Sesame Street:
And a trolley problem:
The trolley is hurtling toward Alice. Bob is on the other track.
Alice says, “Please, I don’t want to die, divert the trolley so Bob dies instead.”
Bob says, “Yes, divert the trolley onto my track — I don’t mind sacrificing myself so someone else can live.”
Should you divert the trolley?
(Thanks, Nick.)
Veritas
If we heard it said of Orientals that they habitually drank a liquor which went to their heads, deprived them of reason and made them vomit, we should say: ‘How very barbarous!’
— La Bruyère, “Of Opinions,” Characters, 1688
Morton’s Fork
John Morton, Lord Chancellor under Henry VII, used a universal argument to demand gifts for the royal treasury:
- If a man lived well, he was obviously rich.
- If a man lived modestly, he obviously had savings.
Either way, he could afford the tax. Francis Bacon wrote, “There is a tradition of a dilemma that Bishop Morton … used to raise up the benevolence to higher rates; and some called it his Fork.”