I had all my wisdom teeth removed earlier today and so I am perhaps not quite at the peak of my game. Although, if you ask me, there is quite a good argument to be made that the AMR is best read while high on a cocktail of extra-strength Advil, Vicodin, and Haagen Daz ice cream. Here instead, in honor of Teppo, is a clip from an episode of BBC car show Top Gear featuring one of the presenters, James May (aka “Captain Slow”), getting a lesson in rally car driving from Mikka Häkkinen, and subsequently entering a local Folk Rally.
Now, there are several orgtheory related points here. First and most obvious is the fact that there’s already an interesting literature on the dynamics of competitive racecar driving, as many of you will be aware. But, second, the social organization of this particular sort of Folk Rallying seems fascinating. For one thing, Finnish egalitarianism is evident in the composition of the field in the clip. For another, it seems that there is a terrific rule that keeps resource competition—the temptation to gussy up your car to give yourself an advantage—from getting out of hand. Rules such as this exist in NASCAR and other professional racing sports, of course, but they require a bunch of administrative monitoring systems which presumably would just be way too much hassle for a sport that’s not just amateur but also very informal, and meant to be fun. The solution? Every entrant’s car has a designated nominal value (1,000 Euro or whatever). At the end of the race, if another racer comes up to you and asks to buy your car for that much money, you have to sell it to them.
I’ve only seen the headlines, but I expect all the clowns put on their clown suits this morning and are presently climbing out of their clown car at the studio. I’m thinking liberal, activist, Puerto Rico isn’t even a state and the Bronx isn’t either, law-into-her-own-hands, affirmative action, closeted lesbian, the guy in front of me at Dunkin D’s said she wasn’t too bright. On that last point, it’s well known amongst alums that whereas the Princeton Sam Alito graduated from in 1972 was a bastion of civilized learning, the Princeton Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from four or five years later was a hippie “learning cooperative” where minorities got a coupon book of “A” grades upon admission to use up as needed, were all given the Pyne Prize automatically, and the concept of truth was rigorously suppressed by the leftist faculty.
I think I’m broadly on Fabio’s side when it comes to the question of the vagueness of concepts in the social sciences. I think my main caveat is that, based on the evidence, successful social science requires precisely specified concepts coupled with a willingness—perhaps elevated to a principle—to strategically ignore any amount of empirical evidence accumulated against them.
But enough trolling. Beyond the problem of vague concepts lies the question of vague argument. On the plane home this Sunday I read Jon Elster’s new book on De Tocqueville. It’s typical Elster: incisive, clever, restless, and weirdly dissatisfying. At one point he remarks that too many writers are not clear enough to be wrong. And then, in passing,
Tocqueville here relies on what I called the first law of pseudo-science, “Everything is a little bit like everything else.”
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