From: Steve Peterson (peterson.steve@verizon.net)
Date: Wed Jan 07 2004 - 15:11:15 GMT
Hi Platt,
I have been at a loss to understand what you meant by quantifying values
until this post on determining and ranking the greatest people. You seem
to want to create hierarchies among societies, ideas, people, etc and would
like a formula for evaluating the same. Was Phaedrus wrong about undefined
Quality? Maybe he could have written a computer program to feed his
student's papers into for grading?
Being a math/statistics teacher, I am very aware of a tendency for non math
types to seek objectivity by assigning numbers to their subjective judgments
and then doing some calculations on them. The output of such calculations
is still subjective, of course. Its a sort of SOM alchemy that is being
attempted.
In this case, as far as I can tell, the researcher is using "objective"
measures. But it is also important to note that the output depends entirely
on what we've chosen to measure. Such choices of what to measure tend to be
made based on what is most easy to measure. In my experience the results
of such formulas tend to have less correspondence with people's ideas of
what's better and worse than before all the math. At that point what do you
trust? The numbers or your own judgment?
Here's how the method goes: First decide who is great, then find
measurements that correspond with our ideas of who we already know is great.
When the numbers that work in most cases don't fit our ideas of what is
great in other cases, we need to add some other measures to our model.
Ideally at the end of this process we get a mathematical formula that
produces rankings that match the judgments that we decided on in advance to
make the model. Have our subjected judgments become objective at this
point? Of course not. If we had made different judgments from the start,
we could have come up with a different set of measures to match our
judgments
To me, an important point of ZAMM was to help us get rid of the distaste for
our own taste-the whole subjective/objective problem. What is good and what
is not good? Do you really need a number to tell you?
I'd also like to suggest that the case of attempting to measure intellectual
value is where the postmodernist claim that truth is context dependent is
important. Some statements are better than others, but statements can only
be compared within particular contexts. Since we compare inorganic values
within narrowly defined contexts we can create hierarchies, but until we
agree on the particular context, we will not be able to decide whether, for
example, polar coordinates are better than rectangular coordinates any more
than we can ask without a context whether the number one is better than the
number three. In the context of the answer to the question "what is one
plus two?" we can say which is a better answer. Without a context, we
can't.
Thanks,
Steve
> Just as I was about to give up on the possibility for a numerical
> accounting of value at the intellectual/aesthetic level, accepting DMB's
> judgment that values at the third and fourth levels are difficult to
> quantify because "they are more dynamic and therefore exhibit a much less
> consistent pattern of preferences," I happened across a review of book by
> Charles Murray titled "Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in
> the Arts and Sciences from 800 B.C. to 1950."
>
> Murray's approach is numerical and mathematical, listing 4,002 significant
> individuals over 2,750 years who comprise humanity's all-star team by
> reviewing 167 respected encyclopedias, biographical dictionaries, and
> other references, tallying up the size, frequency, and content of the
> entries on specific individuals, then crunching the numbers.
>
> Using something called the Lotka Curve, Murray established a pattern of
> excellence based on Lotka's observation that most contributors to
> scientific journals write only one article while a tiny few --the giants--
> write dozens. As example of the validity of the Curve, consider golf.
> More than half of all the professionals have never won a tournament, and
> of those who have won, a majority have won only one. But Jack Nicklaus won
> eighteen majors. As Murray notes, you can come up with as many postmodern
> theories about social construction of reality as you like: It won't change
> the fact that Jack Nicklaus was a much better golfer than most great
> golfers. This pattern tends to hold true for science, art, literature,
> philosophy and every other realm of the human pursuit of excellence.
>
> Murray makes two factual assertions. The first is that his numbers reflect
> the definitive consensus among those who know what they are talking about.
> His second claim is that this consensus of opinion reflects objective
> fact. Behind these assertions is the his basic assumption that excellence
> (value) in art, science and philosophy exists and therefore can be
> measured.
>
> This is what I was seeking--an "objective" measure of value at the upper
> levels based on an application of mathematical methods that have been so
> successful at the lower levels. Whether you agree or not with Murray's
> approach, you have to give him credit for pushing boundary that others had
> pretty much given up on.
>
> What Murray has accomplished IMO is objective proof of Pirsig's basic
> assumption that "some things are better than others" and that betterness
> is NOT just a matter of "whatever I like."
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