Re: [tlug] Pedant's corner

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <steve@??>]

Curt J. Sampson writes:
 > On 2026-01-25 15:24 +0900 (Sun), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

 > > This drives me nuts.  I have no idea what people who say "steep
 > > learning curve" (derogatory) have pictured in their heads....

 > Yes, this would be the problem with economists. They have no idea
 > what's going on inside the heads of normal people. (Hint: when you
 > and a particular friend have been arrested for the first time, it's
 > not, "how many times shall we be arrested again together so I can
 > judge whether I should play the iterated prisoner's dilemma?" Come
 > to think of it, maybe we could help the discipline by arresting
 > economists more often....)

Obviously the peasantry has no idea what goes on in economists' heads,
either.  We would follow the lead of our illustrious ex-Harvard
University president, and call a fixer (I would hope not a pedophile
human trafficker, though).

 > > The learning curve is a graph, a picture of a function.
 > 
 > Yes, exactly. Though there are many ways (and co-ways!) to picture
 > such a thing....

"These are not the droids you are looking for!"

 > > The original learning curve (Ken Arrow, one of my advisors) was
 > > unit cost versus time. It was quantified in World War II airframe
 > > manufacture...
 > 
 > Interesting, since I'd heard that in production contexts it was
 > unit cost _x_ versus total production _y._ 

That is correct.  I applied an isomorphism into the current context.

 > That description gets even more interesting in that, after I've had
 > a beer or three, I feel as if production is the _inverse_ of
 > time. (Though admittedly I guess I am thinking of production
 > _rate,_ rather than cumulative production.)

I don't see evidence that you are thinking, yet.

 > But then, when I look at that curve, it slopes _downwards,_ does it
 > not?[1]

Indeed, it does.  OK, you can do "fast thinking" a la Kahneman.

 > At any rate, my thesis here, which I propose to bat up, Punch

Is that what you've been consuming?  I thought you liked beer, a la
Kavanaugh.

 > and Judy style, against your antithesis,[2] is that people are
 > generally quite one-dimensional and think as such: they look at
 > their forward motion only as progress.

You can walk *down* as well as *up* a hill.  In both cases you make
forward progress.  It's true that down is harder on the joints, and
the steeper, the harder.  But if you take your time, it takes far less
effort without pain.

 > (This makes sense: we can easily look back at how far we've walked
 > from that tree way back there; it's much more difficult?nay,
 > impossible?for us to instinctively calculate our potential energy
 > gain from walking up a hill, and anyway we don't get it all back in
 > usable form when we trip and fall back down the hill,

Interesting that your impression of "downhill" would be tripping and
falling.  I think of moguls (well, 40 years ago I did, now it's just a
memory) and "falling with style".

 > anyway. In fact, much of the energy returned we really would rather
 > have not returned, given the choice.)
 > 
 > So our intuitive Cartesian graph is forward progress on the X axis
 > and effort expended on the Y axis.

True enough.  Interesting that the forward progress in learning
continues as effort goes to zero.  What intuition is this?  Junior
high school manga thinking?

 > Yet you economists are insisting that the steeper the hill we face,
 > the easier it is!  I think Thomas Carlyle would have something to
 > say about this.[5]

After reading your treatise, very likely it would be "wow, the 'moral
philosophers' are smarter and more optimistic than I thought!"

Be thankful I'm not smacking the back of your head like a proper
manzaishi, booooh-ke!

 > [1]: 

Ah, the smell of footnotes in the morning!  Like to the bouquet of a
fine whisky.

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