Why sum ppl rite lyk this

Are more people engaged in writing today than they did a decade ago? Definitely more than they did two decades ago, right? Let's see now.

Earlier (i.e. when I was a teenager), the most common or important reasons to write were:

• Academic: Exams, notes, reports
• Official: applications, memos, forms, files etc.
• Personal letters, letters to newspapers
• Creative and professional writing (fiction and non-fiction)

But in recent times, with digital devices and sites, we add:

• SMS texts
• Social media posts and comments (blogs, tweets, comments etc.)
• Online forums

I can't think of anything significant in the original list that has died out; some have just been replaced by a digital alternative, and the likes of "letters to editors" were always a fringe activity. Also, note that the new additions are mostly of the casual writing variety.

If my thesis is right, then it may explain why so many people publicly use "modern" spellings (i.e. sms-ese) even on channels that don't call for it. So you have people going "u hv ppl gng" even on Facebook when you might expect only a tweet or an sms to undergo that treatment. Two factors seem to be at play here:

1. A common observation in computational linguistics is Zipf's Law which says that if you order words by their frequency (in any reasonably sized collection of documents), and plot a graph of its rank against its frequencey, you'll see a graph like the one on the right (taken from here). The first few words (the top seeds) have the most frequencies, and this rapidly dies out to give a long tailed distribution.

It is empirically observed that the rank of a word in this ordering will be inversely proportional to its frequency and this proportion is constant (allowing some leeway here).

Many words in language (let's exclude "function words" like "the", "of" etc.) are "homonyms" i.e. they are used to represent more than one concept (e.g. "fan", which could be an instrument providing artificial breeze, or a supporter). There are words like "set" and "run" whose different meanings are estimated to run into the hundreds.

The explanation for Zipf's law is (I don't know if this has been scientifically proven) that since speakers want to conserve energy, they want to use smaller words and want to reuse words (listeners would prefer the opposite: they'd want to hear unambiguous words).

The point of discussing this is that people are inherently energy conscious (read lazy) and would want to reduce the amount of work that they have to put in to create something. So writers would prefer smaller codes (i.e. shorter spellings) and let the reader figure out what they meant to say ¹. You may have encountered the meme about how you could leave out (usually vowels) or jumble a lot of characters in a word or sentence and people would still figure out what you meant (works for "rspnsblty"; also see this post). So in many cases, a energy-conservant writer would be able to use this to his advntg (notice that I can't leave out "a" in that word).

With time, trial and error, and some form of community editing would leave us with a new set of acceptable lexemes (i.e. word forms) which seem to also have the desirable property of annoying older sections of literate society.

I believe spellings are arbitrary conventions, and there's nothing particularly sacrosanct about one specific code set. But that doesn't mean that "as u lyk it" wouldn't irritate the hell out of me, just as I'm sure Geoffrey Chaucer would find it hard to navigate the English spellings I take to be correct.

2. So far, I've conjectured that casual, off-hand writing has increased and that writers inherently prefer to expend as little energy in accomplishing their task as possible. There is one more factor at play: the permissiveness of the readers.

We are taught (correct) writing at school and we were expected to keep that up when we wrote for official or public purposes. We would get a clip in the ear for writing "Delhi wz da capital of India" (indeed, it would not even occur to us to write that way), and people would snigger if office memos or personal letters went that way. They probably still would. However, the modern increase in casual writing, where correspondents want to primarily exchange information without regards to form, it is incredibly easy to write shorthand and get away with it. Older fogeys may insist that anything you write to them be less insulting, but most people who cared about their spellings would just gnash their teeth in private and think of you as a whippersnapper of no merit.

This lack of censorship freely allows these forms of spelling to spread in the community unhindered. Soon, this spills over to other, more formal mediums as well.

In fact, I'm convinced that lexicographically, we are in the middle of a great and visible shift (I don't know if it qualifies to be a "Great Shift"). Usually, such changes happen over a large period of time, and aren't readily apparent. In this case, it is exploding under our noses.

What is worrying though is that in addition to a (somewhat) logical compression of a word ("you" -> "u", "people" -> "ppl"), young writers indiscriminately drop characters. I see "awsome". I see "wats need of raincoat,enjoy d rain". And I see "rememeber u ask me to to bring the...". There isn't enough 'sic'-ness in the world to cover this ailment. Is there an excuse for lack of attention to your writing?²

We as readers now encounter more text than we did before, which means some of us spend a lot more energy in comprehension than we used to. Do we now appreciate good writing more than ever? Should we be grateful that perhaps a Zipfian Law of appreciation has now kicked in?

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1. I realise this argument fails if you ask why do writers ramble on, instead of choosing to write smaller texts? I'd argue that here ((just like in not paying attention to your spellings), the energy saved is in not having to edit. It takes effort to be succinct and so the rambling approach suits a "stream of consciousness" approach. Result: the reader is left to navigate endless verbal meanderings. I'll take the hint and stop here.

2. A related post from the past: What's your excuse for writing badly?

From New York to New Guinea

Seems to me that, there are two ends to the spectrum of generating new ideas. In one, there's the cliched lone scientist messing about in a dingy underground lab under a bulb, trying to uncover the light. In the other, the innovator is in the middle of a teeming bazaar of smells and currents, a place full of distractions and opinions, where sometimes, there's just too much light.

It's like species evolving in New Guinea and New York. The former allows the relative isolation that allows nature to fork off into completely new directions in the presence of unconventional constraints . In the latter, species are constantly intermingling with each other, smashing into each other and producing new forms in response to more common constraints.

So the New Guinea innovation has more time to blossom, fewer people to nip it in the bud by being critical. But it could be less likely to survive when the more inhabited parts of Earth come visiting. New York innovations get brutally crushed down, but this happens early. The good ones sometimes cross-breed with other ideas from other people, and the ones that survive are hardy organisms, because they just have had to escape being crushed under so many feet.

However, New Guinean ideas are likely to be truly radical, while New Yorker ideas might just make a quick buck on the sidewalk to take advantage of the next flavour of the week. Ideas from New Guinea tend to remain unnoticed unless they are discovered by dashing explorers, while New Yorker ideas can be on TV and in your email.

Books on innovation suggest ideas from the melting pot of New York are more likely to succeed (or perhaps, more likely to fail early). That shouldn't mean there is no place for the life-forms of the remote island of New Guinea, but not everyone should be doing that, for the post-Victorian world has a lot less patience.

However, do most people expect innovations to come out of New Guinea, because it's so exotic? Most scientists would find it easier to live in New Guinea (as long as the pay cheque and the internet bandwidth is assured!), but fewer light bulbs have come out of New Guinea than New York. But if you are looking for a bird of paradise, head down to Oceania.

In the end, it could be comparing apples to oranges: scientists need New Guinea while innovators need New York. The first step to the right island would be to know who we really are.

Go on - surprise me

The entire basis of Miss Marple's detective-ity was that she had seen it all before. So one wonders: is the ability to be surprised one of the first casualties of age?

In many cases, higher salaries tied to 'experience' are essentially paid out because your employee has a higher likelihood of having seen 'it' before than the green salad you hired last month. If life was highly random, this might not work. But established industries work on continuously reducing (if not eliminating) surprises, so the whole basis of certain 'career ladders' is based on the promise of तजुर्बा. In comparison, kids constantly meet new things, until someday, where this plateaus out and the 'surprise' value of events diminishes. Which is perhaps why creative thinking methods try to force surprise on people, through constraints or unexpected situations or trying to map analogies - to push you into unseen mental paths rather than the well-trodden path with enough engine oil on it.

So would a service that injected controlled amounts of surprise into your life be useful to you? Not of The Game proportions, but little things that you had never experienced before or never thought you would see, forcing you to do a double take once in a while? Calibrated, not fully random amounts.

Of course, an alternative argument could be that the older you get the more the intensity of the surprise, because 'I thought I had seen it all, but there you go'.

Number games

Let's assume India's voting percentages in its general elections is about 50%. Let there exist a country half of India's population such that its voters register almost 100% voting in its elections, i.e. greater than India's turnout.

Would that still make us the world's largest democracy?

'Interesting' is a stop word?

In language processing, a stop word is one that that has little to no importance in a certain task. Common examples are words like 'the' and 'of' in an Information Retrieval system, which is why a search engine ignores them by default. A routine measure of stop words involves frequency - words that occur too often are deemed to have lost their 'distinguishing power' and so do not provide any value while trying to identify the topic of a document or the opinions of a blog post.

To me, the word 'interesting' is teetering on the edge of usefulness. Earlier, when someone used the word, you could assume they found something worthy of curiosity. But, in many instances now, the word is used in a politically correct sense, usually as a response to the question: "so what did you think of that?"

If you don't possess the mordant wit of Dorothy Parker or the honesty of a child, you hem and haw and say: "Oh, um, it was interesting. Quite interesting.".

And "interesting" becomes consigned to the scrap heap of pointless patter.

You're making me confess.

1. I have never been economically threatened by any kind of Indian (perhaps not yet).
2. I don't seem to have economically threatened anyone else's livelihood (yet).
3. I do not personally know anyone whose livelihood is threatened by any kind of Indian.
4. I have never lived in a neighbourhood whose demographics have significantly changed during my life.
5. I have never felt the loss of political influence to "outsiders" (Perhaps people like me never had any political influence to lose).
6. I didn't have any trouble with the last (and only) unfamiliar local language I learnt, a long time ago. Would I willingly learn a new language if I went somewhere unless I had to?
7. Would I sufficiently integrate into another culture? Have I sufficiently integrated with the current culture? Have I even integrated into my culture-by-inheritance?
8. I have never had to migrate for elemental reasons such as: "If I don't find a job somewhere outside, I don't survive"

Can I have any reasonable opinions on the fundamentals of these 'alien' issues, with such an invariant life?

But: somehow, the changing faces of Pune make me uneasy. It's hard to put a finger to it. I think it is because life becomes increasingly unfamiliar. It causes a discomfort that is hard to nail down. I catch myself being disapproving of certain ways some people speak, behave, flash. I instinctively seem to blame non-Punekars for being responsible for this. And for some of our own people for changing colours so easily. Was this tendency always there? I don't like these people changing the way it used to be. Luckily, there are still places I feel comfortable with and things that I can go do. If that goes, what do I do?

I thought I am (was) tolerant? But how can this be reconciled with the above paragraph?

I can't balance comfortable stability with drip-drip-drip change?

Flash of brilliance

How to light up houses in places where electricity is infrequent? Parvathi Menon observes an ingenious solution emerging from the darkness.

PhoNervosa

Matthew Yglesias asks why someone who is introverted would be so adverse to talking to others on the phone. As someone who is (at least to himself) a classic introvert (I've had several aha! moments reading the popular Jonathan Rauch article that Yglesias also mentions, so I think I am almost a textbook case), I can only attest to this strange phenomenon without offering any useful theories of my own.

I have trouble calling up people and speaking to them. Without doubt, I prefer emailing them. Even meeting them in person is (sometimes!) preferable. There are several theories in the comments of the above article as to why this would be such a common anxiety for introverts. Some seem feasible, some don't. Under rational scrutiny, it seems extremely silly, but I usually end up trying to get others to make calls for me which I could easily make. I sometimes have to practice what I'm going to say, though I do not necessarily lack spontaneity. It's as if each call is like preparing to ask that pretty girl out but anticipating that the burly and over-protective brute of a brother will have to be negotiated first.

When I get down to it, it's not difficult, but it's a relief when done, out of the dentist's door. Thankfully, I'm not totally neurotic and there seem to be others who face this too. Anyway, perhaps a post on life as a practising introvert some day later with special scorn served up for those extroverts around me who can't tolerate the sweet peals of silence :-).

Till then, this super quote from the comments of the afore-mentioned article:

How do you tell if a blogger is extroverted? When he talks with you, he looks at your shoes.

(though I think the popular bloggers are likely to be extroverted)

The portable gymnasium

The portable gymnasium

In a (very long) article on intelligence testing, James Flynn writes:

The best chance of enjoying enhanced cognitive skills is to fall in love with ideas, or intelligent conversation, or intelligent books, or some intellectual pursuit. If I do that, I create within my own mind a stimulating mental environment that accompanies me wherever I go. Then I am relatively free of needing good luck to enjoy a rich cognitive environment. I have constant and instant access to a portable gymnasium that exercises the mind. Books and ideas and analyzing things are possessions easier to access than even the local gym.

If only we who teach could make more of our "subjects" fall in love with ideas. Then we would have truly effective interventions.

I thought this passage was one to think about and internalise.