Contigent conventions and the Tragedy of “Happy Birthday lock-in”
Will and Rob were talking about how the idea that there’s an inevitable convergence in moral values is wrong, and they mention some examples of contingencies. The first is the “Tragedy of ‘Happy Birthday’ lock-in”:
The melody for “Happy Birthday” is really atrocious. It’s like a dirge. It has this really large interval; no one can sing it. I can’t sing it. And so really, if you were going to pick a tune to be the most widely sung song in the world, it wouldn’t be that tune. Yet, it’s the one that took off, and it’s now in almost all major languages.
[Nuka zaria: change human trajectory by singing a different song for birthdays. My current suggestion is Weird Al Yankovic’s Happy Birthday, but maybe something for optimistic and simple would be nice, too.
(on the other hand, my new s-risk is that we shift to this other attractor that haunts Brazilian birthday parties)]
Their second example is neckties:
It’s such a bizarre item of clothing. There’s obviously no reason why wearing a bit of cloth around your neck would indicate status or prestige. We could have had different indicators of that. Yet that is, as a matter of fact, the thing that took off.
(Nuka zaria: let’s all shift to wearing bandanas or gaucho scarves, which are more convenient and useful.)
But then, Will says something that bothers me: “There’s just this fundamental arbitrariness.” One interpretation of this sentence is true: you can’t predict in advance what sort of fancy item of clothing an elite will adopt, or what melody will be the most executed in the world; i.e., it’s hard to predict what precise convention will emerge. But it’s certainly not true that you can’t explain them in hindsight (ok, hindsight is 20⁄20). Moreover, and here I take some risk, I think it’s not true that one can’t, in advance, identify features of what convention will be adopted – i.e., what counts as a salient point of attraction is not random.
The Hill sisters (a kindergarten principal and a composer) developed the song “Good morning to all” (a predecessor to “Happy Birthday to you”) as something that children would find easy to sing – i.e., they optimized for simplicity and used good old trial and error. Thus, it probably became so popular precisely because kids loved it, and because nowadays birthday parties are made for kids to feel special. That’s not what I would call “arbitrary”—it’s certainly not random.
I think the explanation for neckties is a bit different. The French liked the knotted neckerchiefs of Croatian mercenaries, and as Louis XIII and Louis XIV started wearing lace cravats, the nobility followed through. So what began as a useful piece of cloth to close your jacket ended up being copied by a foreign elite because it was seen as a fancy ornament; and then it evolved to more and more complex designs precisely to signal its decorative function, so distinguishing the upper class from the commoner. Again, I wouldn’t call it random.
This, I guess, is good news: arbitrariness is not so pervasive that we cannot consciously influence the future.
Contigent conventions and the Tragedy of “Happy Birthday lock-in”
Will and Rob were talking about how the idea that there’s an inevitable convergence in moral values is wrong, and they mention some examples of contingencies. The first is the “Tragedy of ‘Happy Birthday’ lock-in”:
[Nuka zaria: change human trajectory by singing a different song for birthdays. My current suggestion is Weird Al Yankovic’s Happy Birthday, but maybe something for optimistic and simple would be nice, too.
(on the other hand, my new s-risk is that we shift to this other attractor that haunts Brazilian birthday parties)]
Their second example is neckties:
(Nuka zaria: let’s all shift to wearing bandanas or gaucho scarves, which are more convenient and useful.)
But then, Will says something that bothers me: “There’s just this fundamental arbitrariness.” One interpretation of this sentence is true: you can’t predict in advance what sort of fancy item of clothing an elite will adopt, or what melody will be the most executed in the world; i.e., it’s hard to predict what precise convention will emerge. But it’s certainly not true that you can’t explain them in hindsight (ok, hindsight is 20⁄20). Moreover, and here I take some risk, I think it’s not true that one can’t, in advance, identify features of what convention will be adopted – i.e., what counts as a salient point of attraction is not random.
The Hill sisters (a kindergarten principal and a composer) developed the song “Good morning to all” (a predecessor to “Happy Birthday to you”) as something that children would find easy to sing – i.e., they optimized for simplicity and used good old trial and error. Thus, it probably became so popular precisely because kids loved it, and because nowadays birthday parties are made for kids to feel special. That’s not what I would call “arbitrary”—it’s certainly not random.
I think the explanation for neckties is a bit different. The French liked the knotted neckerchiefs of Croatian mercenaries, and as Louis XIII and Louis XIV started wearing lace cravats, the nobility followed through. So what began as a useful piece of cloth to close your jacket ended up being copied by a foreign elite because it was seen as a fancy ornament; and then it evolved to more and more complex designs precisely to signal its decorative function, so distinguishing the upper class from the commoner. Again, I wouldn’t call it random.
This, I guess, is good news: arbitrariness is not so pervasive that we cannot consciously influence the future.