from the pale king

The next suitable person you're in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, "What's wrong?" You say it in a concerned way. He'll say, "What do you mean?" You say, "Something's wrong. I can tell. What is it?" And he'll look stunned and say, "How did you know?" He doesn't realize something's always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn't know everybody's always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they're exerting great will power and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing's ever wrong, from seeing it. This is the way of people. Suddenly ask what's wrong, and whether they open up and spill their guts or deny it and pretend you're off, they'll think you're perceptive and understanding. They'll either be grateful, or they'll be frightened and avoid you from then on. Both reactions have their uses, as we'll get to. You can play it either way. This works over 90 percent of the time.

~ David Foster Wallace in The Pale King:

Tru Dat.

logic for waiters

You are in a restaurant with your parents, and you have ordered three dishes: Fish, Meat, and Vegetarian. Now a new waiter comes back from the kitchen with three dishes. What will happen?

. . . Indeed, two questions plus one inference are all that is needed

J. F. A. K. van Benthem, "Logic and Reasoning: Do the Facts Matter," 2008.

Of course, the answer is indeed "two questions plus one inference," but the example is misleading. Stating the problem with only three diners underspecifies the type of reasoning employed. The waiter could use a simple elimination of alternatives, for example. But two questions plus one inference is also the solution to the n-person case.

The reason, of course, is that waiters can rely on regularities in the structure of the situation. In particular, the vast majority of eating arrangements are topologically equivalent to a circle. If the waiter who takes the orders writes them in sequence, the waiter delivering the food can arrange the plates in order on his tray. Then, one question to orient himself on the circle, and a second to establish the direction in which the order was taken, is enough for the waiter to complete distribution of dishes. I have seen this practice employed frequently for tables of four to five people, but in principle it could be applied to any size table (so long as the waiter can fit the dishes (or drinks!) in sequence on his tray).

Strictly speaking, a further convention could establish an even more efficient distribution system. If the two waiters agree previously on a directionality (say, clockwise), a single question will be sufficient to establish the order. Most likely this further convention is not employed due to the restriction it places on the order-taking waiter. He must be free to submit to customers' whim, and removing a degree of freedom from his order-taking practice would greatly reduce that ability.

In fact, this method for delivering dishes is noticed more often in the breach, when the delivering waiter attempts to deliver a dish without asking and discovers it is wrong. Frequently, the cause is a violation of convention in the order on the ticket caused initially by the unwillingness of the customers themselves to follow the order of order-taking preferred by the initial waiter.

the rules of art

To create, one must first set boundaries, impose rules within which one may let imagination reign unconfined. Art without boundaries is chaos; imagination without borders is self-indulgence. Effective art communicates, but successful communication requires a language, and languages follow rules. Whether the rules are set by oneself or by convention, without them, communication fails, and art becomes merely for the creator. We do not call this art, but therapy. Sometimes, the rules which confine a work of art are understood by only a few, and such art is only art for those few. To the rest, the art is opaque, therapy from which they cannot benefit. St. Quentin and St. Robert have committed this sin: they have presumed the competence of the many in a language of the few. But the many are mere amateur linguists; they comprehend only languages without subtlety. The punishment for these sins is eternal torture. And we multi-linguists have gained a poem, but lost the poets, and even the opportunity for poetry.

the amateur linguist

When I was a child, we used the word "gay" as a mild playground remonstrative. Now, this innocent use is verboten as it "impugns the homosexual." Yet "gay" once stood for the light of heart, the merry, and the licentious. Must we permit the amateur linguist to calcify its meaning in severity and forever forbid the ever-shifting currents of convention from carrying "gay" back to its roots in levity? Can we permit it? ~ convention admits no master.