Category Archives: Problem Practices

Communication behavior or analysis that is often counter-productive

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0 to 60 in Under 29 Minutes Flat

Problem Practices, , , , , ,

Getting up to speed is easy; it’s the sudden deceleration that poses all the problems.

With what seems like the newspaper version of a straight face, The New York Times recently reported that a whole group of new electric cars available to the general public will be able to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in “under 6 seconds.”

This kind of lightning speed is a standard metric in almost auto reporting. But why should we need to know?  We’d be better advised to consider whether the brakes in these cars might work to control the inevitable fish-tailing of drag-race speeds.

Five or six seconds is about the amount of time I need to even think about moving.  Short of a possible once-in-a-lifetime close call, is there any reason a motorist would want to put that metric to the test?  Perhaps in front of your house? Maybe near a school?  How about the parking lot at the supermarket? It may be different for you, but we have critters  and walkers in our neighborhood who are used to having more time to get out of the way.

The argument that freeway on ramps require G-force acceleration is often bogus. Most are designed to be long enough to allow drivers time to adjust and safely fit into the flow of traffic.  On an interstate near my house some merge lanes are a good half-mile long.

Auto writers seem to exist on another plane, where useful statistics are too routine to bother with. Useless statistics are another matter entirely.  This kind of breathless reporting is so common we hardly notice. Truth is, this kind of acceleration trivia is part of a much bigger pattern of mostly male-centered references to tired tropes of masculinity.  Muscle-car culture is getting to be pretty old-school. We should really know how efficient a car is in city traffic, where average speeds on weekdays barely reach into the thirties.

For the record, I could probably go from 0 to 60 in a few seconds.  But it would require stepping off a cliff. Getting up to speed is easy; it’s the instant deceleration that poses all the problems. That’s true of cars as well, as an any number of drag-race videos demonstrate. Surely everybody loves a responsive vehicle.  But how many have an interest in trying to turn theirs into a rocket?  (OK, how many over 40?)

I noticed that the usual guy reporting on cars for the Times seems to be gone. He did lots of videos of new models cruising sanely around his West coast neighborhood, gently corning at speeds you and I would recognize as sensible. I hope he wasn’t replaced because he was too practical.

To get real about climate change means thinking differently, and moving beyond amazement at the remarkable start-up torque of electric motors. This feature is impressive, and electrics will surely send internal combustion engines and transmissions to museums. But, all things considered, it seems useless to continue to enshrine jackrabbit starts in the rhetoric of auto reporting.

By the way, I think I could get my wheelbarrow up to 60 mph in less than 30 minutes.  But I would need the help of more wheels, and maybe Lombard Street in San Francisco.  But that would be bizarre, and completely meaningless.

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A Linguistic Habit We Should Toss

Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , ,

“Biased?” Of Course. We are not capable of neutral observation. Human perception is an instrument of approximation powered by personal experience. It follows that our rhetoric always has ‘tendency:’ personal, political or social. It cannot be otherwise. 

There are many words in our language that have outlived their usefulness, but none more so than that old standby, “biased.” We hear it all the time. ‘People are “biased;’ ‘The story was biased;’ ‘The research has a built-in bias;’ ‘His attitude shows a bias;’ and so on. Someone recently reminded me that another project I am working on is “biased toward the 12-tone system of music.” (Guilty, obviously, but annoyed and unrepentant.) And, of course, a given news outlet is said to be “biased” toward Republicans and another one is biased toward liberals. In any conversation about media, the use of the term can take off like popcorn in a hot pan. And, given the lack of precision that usually comes with the ways it is tossed out, its only one more step to note that the ocean has a bias to flood low shore towns, or that dry forests have a bias toward burning. In the interests of full disclosure, I also have a bias toward food. Can’t kick it and won’t try.

The point of all of this is that the term is mostly an empty word being used as an observation. Even if the term was nailed to the floor in the middle of a room with a spotlight overhead and encircled by a velvet museum rope, I’d still wrench it out and toss it in the trash.  It has gotten to be that irritating as an ostensible insight.

The obvious point is that we are never neutral observers. Humans are not measurement instruments. Human rhetoric always has tendency: personal, political, linguistic, or cultural. It cannot be otherwise. There is simply no way to excise bias from humans using ordinary language and preferred behaviors. We can design instruments for precision.  But, except for mathematicians, its not a value we usually emulate.

The problem here is that the user of the term presumes a purer version of events. But even this presumption has a problem.

Since even hard “data” rarely speaks for itself, we must narrate its meaning in ways that justifiably skew in various possible directions. My office thermometer tells me that is 50 degrees outside. But I’m a member of the jabbering species, so I might interpret this simple data to a friend as a “warm” early spring day. That’s a judgment made in relation to the fact that I’m in the northeast, not balmy Sarasota.

The term “biased” is also used as a blunt instrument of dismissal. There is little going on behind the remark other than the obvious point that someone’s narrative doesn’t match another’s preferred narrative.

This means there is nearly always one simple answer to another’s charge of bias. It is a straightforward “of course,” with an addendum: “Could it be otherwise?”

All of this suggests it would be more intellectually honest to not hide behind this one word.  Go ahead and explain the specific attitude or behavior that is bothersome or seems wide of the mark.