One big danger of political humor is that some folks just don’t get the joke. You say something outrageous and they don’t get that you were exaggerating, but think you were lying, or ignorant, or worse yet they take you at your word, and think you were telling the truth.
Daniel Boone liked to claim things that were not true; he claimed he jumped the Mississippi and that he lassoed a tornado and that he killed a bear (with his bear hands) when he was three. The joke was on anyone who took him seriously, and I’m sure there were those who did: “Why that’s not true!” “You’re a liar!” or worse yet “Wow, how did you do that!” It’s a sort of brag-joke that, today is called “trolling.”
H.L. Menken on the fake news of the early – mid 20th century.
But there is a bigger danger with political jokes, and that happens when you’re not quite making a joke and folks realize you are telling the truth, or at least that there is a dagger of threat thats being passed off within a joke, or as part of an exaggeration. Basically, they realize that this joke was no joke at all.
A recent case in point, two weeks ago Trump was speaking to Jewish businessmen, and told them about his troubles building the US embassy in Jerusalem (read the whole speech here), but within the funny story is a hook:
Bob Hope told the truth but hid it in a funny delivery.
“And I called David Friedman. I said, “David, I need some help. I just approved an embassy, and they want to spend $2 billion to build the embassy. And I know what that means: You’re never going to get it built. It’ll take years and years.” I said, “You know what’s going on here? …. So we’re going to spend 2 billion, and one of them was going to buy a lousy location. A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers. (Laughter.) Not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me; you have no choice. You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. (Laughter and applause.) You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax. “Yeah, let’s take 100 percent of your wealth away.” No, no. Even if you don’t like me; some of you don’t. Some of you I don’t like at all, actually. (Laughter.) And you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes, if they get it. So I don’t have to spend a lot of time on that. But David calls me back and he goes, “Sir” — he always used to call me “Donald.”
The press claimed the above was vile and anti-semitic. It almost sounds otherwise when quoted in context, but they are not totally off. There is truth inside that jest. Such truths lose the humor, but they do get the message across. A lot has to do with the delivery. Ideally the folks that you want to get the point will, and the rest will think you mean nothing by it. It’s a hard act.
A lot of folks want to marry their special soulmate, and there are many books to help get you there, but I thought I might discuss a mathematical approach that optimizes your chance of marrying the very best under some quite-odd assumptions. The set of assumptions is sometimes called “the fussy suitor problem” or the secretary problem. It’s sometimes presented as a practical dating guide, e.g. in a recent Washington Post article. My take, is that it’s not a great strategy for dealing with the real world, but neither is it total nonsense.
The basic problem was presented by Martin Gardner in Scientific American in 1960 or so. Assume you’re certain you can get whoever you like (who’s single); assume further that you have a good idea of the number of potential mates you will meet, and that you can quickly identify who is better than whom; you have a desire to marry none but the very best, but you don’t know who’s out there until you date, and you’ve an the inability to go back to someone you’ve rejected. This might be he case if you are a female engineering student studying in a program with 50 male engineers, all of whom have easily bruised egos. Assuming the above, it is possible to show, using Riemann Integrals (see solution here), that you maximize your chance of finding Mr/Ms Right by dating without intent to marry 36.8 % of the fellows (1/e), and then marrying the first fellow who’s better than any of the previous you’ve dated. I have a simpler, more flexible approach to getting the right answer, that involves infinite serieses; I’ll hope to show off some version of this at a later date.
Bluto, Popeye, or wait for someone better? In the cartoon as I recall, she rejects the first few people she meets, then meets Bluto and Popeye. What to do?
With this strategy, one can show that there is a 63.2% chance you will marry someone, and a 36.8% you’ll wed the best of the bunch. There is a decent chance you’ll end up with number 2. You end up with no-one if the best guy appears among the early rejects. That’s a 36.8% chance. If you are fussy enough, this is an OK outcome: it’s either the best or no-one. I don’t consider this a totally likely assumption, but it’s not that bad, and I find you can recalculate fairly easily for someone OK with number 2 or 3. The optimal strategy then, I think, is to date without intent at the start, as before, but to take a 2nd or 3rd choice if you find you’re unmarried after some secondary cut off. It’s solvable by series methods, or dynamic computing.
It’s unlikely that you have a fixed passel of passive suitors, of course, or that you know nothing of guys at the start. It also seems unlikely that you’re able to get anyone to say yes or that you are so fast evaluating fellows that there is no errors involved and no time-cost to the dating process. The Washington Post does not seem bothered by any of this, perhaps because the result is “mathematical” and reasonable looking. I’m bothered, though, in part because I don’t like the idea of dating under false pretense, it’s cruel. I also think it’s not a winning strategy in the real world, as I’ll explain below.
One true/useful lesson from the mathematical solution is that it’s important to learn from each date. Even a bad date, one with an unsuitable fellow, is not a waste of time so long as you leave with a better sense of what’s out there, and of what you like. A corollary of this, not in the mathematical analysis but from life, is that it’s important to choose your circle of daters. If your circle of friends are all geeky engineers, don’t expect to find Prince Charming among them. If you want Prince Charming, you’ll have to go to balls at the palace, and you’ll have to pass on the departmental wine and cheese.
If you want Prince Charming, you may have to associate with a different crowd from the one you grew up with. Whether that’s a good idea for a happy marriage is another matter.
The assumptions here that you know how many fellows there are is not a bad one, to my mind. Thus, if you start dating at 16 and hope to be married by 32, that’s 16 years of dating. You can use this time-frame as a stand in for total numbers. Thus if you decide to date-for-real after 37%, that’s about age 22, not an unreasonable age. It’s younger than most people marry, but you’re not likely to marry the fort person you meet after age 22. Besides, it’s not great dating into your thirties — trust me, I’ve done it.
The biggest problem with the original version of this model, to my mind, comes from the cost of non-marriage just because the mate isn’t the very best, or might not be. This cost gets worse when you realize that, even if you meet prince charming, he might say no; perhaps he’s gay, or would like someone royal, or richer. Then again, perhaps the Kennedy boy is just a cad who will drop you at some time (preferably not while crossing a bridge). I would therefor suggest, though I can’t show it’s optimal that you start out by collecting information on guys (or girls) by observing the people around you who you know: watch your parents, your brothers and sisters, your friends, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Listen to their conversation and you can get a pretty good idea of what’s available even before your first date. If you don’t like any of them, and find you’d like a completely different circle, it’s good to know early. Try to get a service job within ‘the better circle’. Working with people you think you might like to be with, long term, is a good idea even if you don’t decide to marry into the group in the end.
Once you’ve observed and interacted with the folks you think you might like, you can start dating for real from the start. If you’re super-organized, you can create a chart of the characteristics and ‘tells’ of characteristics you really want. Also, what is nice but not a deal-breaker. For these first dates, you can figure out the average and standard deviation, and aim for someone in the top 5%. A 5% target is someone whose two standard deviations above the average. This is simple Analysis of variation math (ANOVA), math that I discussed elsewhere. In general you’ll get to someone in the top 5% by dating ten people chosen with help from friends. Starting this way, you’ll avoid being unreasonably cruel to date #1, nor will you loose out on a great mate early on.
Some effort should be taken to look at the fellow’s family and his/her relationship with them. If their relationship is poor, or their behavior is, your kids may turn out similar.
After a while, you can say, I’ll marry the best I see, or the best that seems like he/she will say yes (a smaller sub-set). You should learn from each date, though, and don’t assume you can instantly size someone up. It’s also a good idea to meet the family since many things you would not expect seem to be inheritable. Meeting some friends too is a good idea. Even professionals can be fooled by a phony, and a phony will try to hide his/her family and friends. In the real world, dating should take time, and even if you discover that he/ she is not for you, you’ll learn something about what is out there: what the true average and standard deviation is. It’s not even clear that people fall on a normal distribution, by the way.
Don’t be too upset if you reject someone, and find you wish you had not. In the real world you can go back to one of the earlier fellows, to one of the rejects, if one does not wait too long. If you date with honesty from the start you can call up and say, ‘when I dated you I didn’t realize what a catch you were’ or words to that effect. That’s a lot better than saying ‘I rejected you based on a mathematical strategy that involved lying to all the first 36.8%.’
Robert Buxbaum, December 9, 2019. This started out as an essay on the mathematics of the fussy suitor problem. I see it morphed into a father’s dating advice to his marriage-age daughters. Here’s the advice I’d given to one of them at 16. I hope to do more with the math in a later post.
A common opinion of Samuel Johnson was that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”. It’s recorded by Boswell on April 5, 1776 well into the revolution, and applied equally to the American revolutionaries and all other unpaid enthusiasts. Johnson wrote for money. He wrote sermons for priests, he wrote political speeches for Troys, he wrote serialized travel logs, and at one point a tearful apology for a priest about to be hanged for forgery. That he was paid was proof that he was good at writing, though not 100% convincing. The priest was forgiven and acquitted in the public eye, but he was hanged for the forgery none-the-less.
Some Samuel Johnson Quotes about America
Johnson was unequivocal in his opinion of American independence. His pamphlet ,”Taxation no Tyranny” 1775 (read it here) makes a semi-convincing Tory argument that taxation without representation is in no way tyranny, and is appropriate for America. America, it’s argued, exists for the good of the many, and that’s mainly for the good of England. He notes that, for the most part, Americans came to the land willingly, and thus gave up their rights: “By his own choice he has left a country, where he had a vote and little property, for another, where he has great property, but no vote.” Others left other lands or were sent as criminals. They “deserved no more rights than The Cornish people,” according to Johnson. Non-landed people, in general had no vote, and he considered that appropriate. Apparently, if they had any mental value, they’d be able to afford an estate. His views of Irish Catholics were somewhat similar , “we conquered them.” By we, Johnson meant Cromwell over a century earlier, followed by William of Orange. Having beat the Irish Catholics at the battle of the Boyne meant that that the Protestants deserved to rule despite the Catholics retaining a substantial right to land. I am grateful that Johnson does not hide his claim to rulership in the will of God, or in some claim to benefit the Irish or Americans, by the way. It is rule of superior over inferior, pure and simple. Basically, ‘I’m better than you, so I get to rule.’
One must assume that Johnson realized that the US founders wrote well, as he admitted that some Whigs (Burke) wrote well. Though he was paid for writing “Taxation no Tyranny”, Johnson justifies the rejection of US founding fathers’ claims by noting they are motivated by private gain. He calls American leaders rascals, robbers, and pirates, but is certain that they can be beat into submission. The British army , he says, is strong enough that they can easily “burn and destroy them,” and advises they should so before America gets any stronger. He tells Boswell, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.” Even after a treaty was signed, he confides, “I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.”
I’ve come to love Johnson’s elitism, his justification for rule and exploitation based purely on his own superiority and that of his fellow British. It allows him to present his prejudices uncommonly clearly, mixing in enough flattery to be convincing to those who accept his elitist perspective. That makes his words eminently quotable. It doesn’t make them right, nor does it mean that his was a useful way to deal with people or problems. Adam Smith was willing to admit that the Americans had a gripe, and suggests the simple remedy of giving Americans a voice in Parliament. His solution might have kept the empire whole. Edward Gibbon, an expert on Rome who opposed rights for Americans, at least admitted that we might win the war. Realistic views like this are more productive, but far less marketable. If you are to sell your words, it helps to be a pig-headed bigot and a flatterer of those who agree with you. This advantage of offending your opponents was not lost on Johnson as the quote below shows.
Johnson writing about notoriety, a very American attitude.
I’m left to wonder about the source of Johnson’s hatred for Americans though — and for the Irish, Cornish, and Scots. In large part, I think it stems from a view of the world as a zero-sum game. Any gain for the English servant is a loss to the English gentleman. The Americans, like the Irish and Cornish, were subject peoples looking for private benefit. Anything like low taxes was a hurt to the income of him and his fellows. The zero sum is also the view of Scrooge in a Christmas Carol; it is a destructive view.
As for those acted in any way without expectation of pay, those who would write for posterity, or would fight the Quixotic fight, such people were blockheads in his view. He was willing to accept that there were things wrong in England, but could not see how an intelligent person would favor change that did not help him. This extended to his beliefs concerning education of children: “I would not have set their future friendship to hazard for the sake of thrusting into their heads knowledge of things for which they might not perhaps have either taste or necessity. You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets, and wonder when you have done that they do not delight in your company. No science can be communicated by mortal creatures without attention from the scholar; no attention can be obtained from children without the affliction of pain, and pain is never remembered without resentment.” This is more of Johnson’s self-interest: don’t teach anything that will bring resentment and no return benefit. Teach the sons of the greats that they are great and that they are to lead. Anything more is a waste or an active harm to the elite.
But what happens when America succeeds? Johnson was still alive and writing in 1783. If the Americans could build an army and maintain prosperous independence, they would have to be respected as an equal or near-equal. Then what of the rest of the empire? How do you admit that this one servant is your equal and not admit that your other servants may be too? This is the main source of his hatred, I think, and also of the hatred the Scrooge has for mankind. It’s the hatred of the small soul for the large, of the sell-out for the enthusiast. If the other fellow’s sacrifice produces a great outcome, that suggests a new order in the stars — it suggests that everything you’ve done was wrong, or soon will be. The phrase “novus ordo seclorum” on our dollars alludes to just that idea, ‘there is a new order in the heavens.’. He must have realized the possibility, and trembled. Could there be something to the rabble, something beyond cash, safety and rule by the elite? I suspect the very thought of it insulted and angered poor Samuel. At his death, he could be comforted that, at least the Irish, Indians, and Canadians remained subservient.
Robert Buxbaum, December 2, 2019. This essay started out as a discussion of paid writing. But I’ve spent many years of my life dealing with elitists who believed that being paid proved they were right. I too hope that my writing will convince people, and maybe I’ll be paid as an expert (Water commissioner?) To hope for personal success, while trying to keep humble is the essential glorious folly of man.
