The Bright and Ineffable, Part II: The Scope of Natural Language

At its roots, language is a means by which information is transmitted by humans to each other. Typically, its contours are determined by speech communities and linguists advocate the spoken form as language’s most important form; its most rich, varied, and dynamic form. While important to consider the differences between the spoken and written form, it should help to remember that sign languages are also completely robust, rule-governed, grammatical languages. American Sign Language in fact has a different grammar from English. So the central point to remember about language is that the main demand for it comes from a virtually universal need and desire to communicate.

In the past few decades, linguists have been forced to dig a little deeper into language in order to investigate just what differentiates human language, or natural language, from other forms of information transmission, both by artificial human means and by other organic means. Some bee species possess elaborate dances by instinct that allow them to communicate distance and identity. Parrots have been known to go beyond mere mimicry to some linguistic stimuli. Computers can perform extraordinarily difficult computations and hundreds of engineers work day by day to make them think more like us. Chimpanzees and other primates can learn and transmit arbitrary signals for tangible objects as well as actions. At the highest end of the spectrum of non-human language we have dolphins, Tursiops genus. I trust you already know that they are the dirtiest, filthiest joke tellers anywhere in the universe, but did you know that they are able to grasp simulations much faster than chimps, implying a much higher level of awareness?

Setting aside dolphins for a moment (dolphin linguistics are complex and far beyond the scope of this post), chimpanzees seem to perform some linguistic tasks relatively well. They can learn dozens of words. But we have learned that they possess only the most rudimentary of grammars. Words must be placed next to each other in a meaningless order, but usually repetitively next to each other. For example, “give food eat me eat food give….” (Still, some chimpanzees have been able to perform more impressive tasks as Emily Sue Savage-Rumbaugh showed in 1990.) Natural language is different. We are able to construct sentences that are virtually infinitely long, but that are not redundant. For example, “I learned that Annie bought the gun from Bob who said that Carolina borrowed money from David who…” could go on forever as a sentence. As a practical matter, this never happens. This is an important point as we will come to see later, but natural language has the property of recursion, which means that it can continue to spiral into its embedded phrases and dependent clauses forever. Don’t take recursion so seriously: the central point here is that humans can create infinite expressions from a finite set of discrete units of meaning (morphemes).

There have been a few attempts to demonstrate that the size of natural language is infinite, based on the fact that the grammar itself can spiral with new phrases forever and that the language can add words forever. Both properties, independently, would lead to such a conclusion. Based on the spectrum of translation outlined in my last post, I think we can look at natural language as the set of all human languages. Fundamentally, then, natural language is a flexible system, consisting of (many) sets of sometimes, but not always dynamic, rules for combining a functionally infinite set of words in order to convey information. The reason rules are sometimes dynamic is because, while many rules persist in language, they may occasionally do so out of inertia and therefore be broken when everyone in the speech community understands the expression despite its “illegal” form. One example of this is using the double negative in English. Although absolutely and utterly common in English of Chaucer’s day, the double negative fell from grace some time afterward. Still in use ever since, it is frowned upon by academicians, Strunk & White, and many other purveyors of proper English. This is why linguists frown upon prescriptivism. They do not dislike standardization, there are benefits to that. The problem is when people mistake standardization for right and wrong. Something may be standard, or it may be different, but it is not wrong, and likely is just as rule governed as the standard form. Witness the work of Walt Wolfram.

A language can add words in several ways, as shown partly by the translation spectrum. We can combine words from the language to mean something new, borrow words from another language, create new words out of thin air. This last one could be done simply by assembling sounds currently within language’s standard phonemic inventory for a new word. Typically, languages group various distinctive phonetic sounds into phonemes. For example, the ‘p’ in piranha is very different from the ‘p’ in stop. The first is said to be aspirated, which can be proven by placing your hand in front of your mouth when saying the word naturally. The second is unaspirated. In English, these sounds are grouped into the same phoneme /p/. In Hindi, they will lead to minimal pairs, where switching one for the other in a word creates different meanings. Therefore, they are in different phonemes. Switching them in English does not affect meaning. Let’s say a language has 30 phonemes. It would be a very long time before you run out of combinations of these sounds for making new words. And when you do run out of them for given word sizes, all you have to do is increase the word size. That gives you another virtual infinity of new word possibilities. And then you could add signs, as seen in the many sign languages of the world.

You could be thinking, “Well, aren’t there also infinite speech sounds? That is, phonetic sounds?” Yes. Just like the color spectrum, representing an infinite array of colors, there is an infinite array of sounds that our vocal chords can create — not to mention an infinite array of signs our hands can make. In the case of vocalizations however, like colors, they will be grouped in “best example” phonemes. The range of them may vary from language to language, but they will stick to a certain maximum deviation from the best example and always include the best example.

Remember that my definition of natural language here includes a grouping of all languages, which then implies that all phonemes are represented. Now let us add the phonemes have we have lost which may have existed in dead languages or simply been lost to current languages. We now have the entire array of speech sounds. By this method, all distinctive features should be represented. All these sounds can be brought into natural language, combined in every way morphologically and syntactically possible, and we wind up with an array of expressions that is boundless and infinite.

This is the scope of natural language. But there is more.

The Bright and Ineffable, Part I: The Spectrum of Translation

Some may remember my review of Anne Carson’s book If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho. Like everyone else, I adored her book and really took to her method of translation. Recently, I decided to investigate a little bit more about this talented artist and scholar. I found that If Not, Winter is hardly anomalous as a representative work.

In her essay “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent,” published in a 2008 edition of A Public Space, she confronts the boundary between linguistics and literary theory, hoping to develop a kind of a theory of silence. She doesn’t need more space than what she uses in the essay to do so.

The motivation for the essay has its roots in the art of translation. According to Carson, there are two kinds of silence to be reckoned with by the translator. Physical silence occurs where something the author intended to be there is missing, as with many of Sappho’s poems, largely lost to posterity. Carson deals with this by using brackets where the author’s intended expressions are missing, but she says translators may be as justified in some cases to extrapolate expressions. The other kind of silence is “metaphysical” silence, wherein “a word… does not intend to be translatable. A word… stops itself.” Carson gives an example from the Odyssey:

In the fifth book of the Odyssey when Odysseus is about to confront a witch named Kirke whose practice is to turn men into pigs, he is given by the god Hermes a pharmaceutical plant to use against her magic:

So speaking Hermes gave him the drug
by pulling it out of the ground and he showed the nature of it:
at the root it was black but like milk was the flower.
MOLY is what the gods call it. And it is very hard to dig up
for mortal men. But gods can do such things.

MOLY is one of several occurences in Homer’s poems of what he calls “the language of gods.” There are a handful of people or things in epics that have this sort of double name. Linguists like to see in these words traces of some older layer of Indo-European preserved in Homer’s Greek. However that may be, when he invokes the language of gods Homer usually tells you the mortal translation too. Here he does not. He wants this word to fall silent. Here are four letters of the alphabet, you can pronounce them but you cannot define, possess, or make use of them. You cannot search for this plant by the roadside or Google it and find out where to buy some. The plant is sacred, the knowledge belongs to gods, the word stops itself.

These silences occur with words that are a subset of unknown size of the words that must be borrowed from other languages as opposed to translated. Translators must make several difficult decisions in their work from artistic and linguistic standpoints, but it is the latter that is the most important here because there is a “spectrum of translation” they must always employ. On one end are single words that translate with virtually 1:1 correspondence to words in the other language. ‘Book’ is ‘libro’ in Spanish without much confusion. Then there’re words like ‘nose’ in English that translate with but the slightest difference into 鼻 (hana). In Words in Context, Takao Suzuki shows that the area American English speakers consider the nose covers a different portion of the face than the Japanese word, although both of course include the most important functional parts. Likewise, as discussed on this blog, Paul Kay (Berkeley) has shown that speakers of almost all languages consider the best example or shade of the word red as the same, despite differing ranges of shades that could be considered red. Nevertheless, for all intents and purposes, a single word translation will do. Next we have compound and composite word translations. The word ‘television’ seems like it translates quite cleanly to 電視 (dian4 shi4) for Mandarin (or Taiwanese if we’re being cute). But there are a few issues here: 電視 is actually a composite word, much like the original, made from two morphemes that indicate ‘electricity’ and ‘being looked at’ respectively.

At this point, we can see that for much translation, there are words that some languages possess which will be difficult to translate with the same economy. From here until the middle of the spectrum, words are translated with progressively more and more morphemes in the destination language. But when a translator is faced with the problem of translating one word into a paragraph, that might defeat so much about the original: pacing, essence, and so on. And then, of course, there’s the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in Language, which suggests that the more words we use to describe the word to be translated in order to most closely approximate the original meaning, the more its essential meaning, in addition to other connotations, is missed. Locking down the expression so rigidly pushes out meaning. Therefore, there comes a point on the spectrum where translators must seek different methods of translation besides seeking the complete and rigid expression for it.

Carson is a master of this, as I have pointed out before. In her book of Sappho poetry, If Not, Winter, she uses words such as ’songdelighting’ and ‘radiant-shaking.’ Instead of writing out the complete expressions, she chooses innovation. She creates novel words using standard word formation rules in the destination language that may contain more of the original meaning than an attempt at complete expression might.

The second to last point on the spectrum of translation is when a word is just borrowed without further elaboration. Carson highlights the borrowing (outright theft, I’d think) of ‘cliché’ from French. She writes:

It has been assumed into English unchanged, partly because using French words makes English-speakers feel more intelligent and partly because the word has imitative origins (it is supposed to mimic the sound of the printer’s die striking the metal) that make it untranslatable.

The latter is a good reason for borrowing a word from another language. Another reason is that a speech community possesses significant demand for a word that it does not yet have. For example, French speakers started using the word ‘email’ because no word in French concisely described such a concept and its word formation rules would likely not have led to such an economical word either. (The Academie Francaise has tried to stifle the use of this word in favor of ‘courriel’ and I do not know the extent of its success.) A better example is the English borrowing of ’schadenfreude’ from German which means “taking delight in others’ misfortune.” Although I have only really heard Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer of the Wall Street Journal, use the word, I have read it on several occasions from other writers. Just beyond these words are similar words for whom some meaning can never be discovered or reclaimed without being a native speaker of the language. Multilinguals know of many such words. Some brag about them. Some keep their knowledge locked away. Some of these words also depend crucially on shared temporal experience, as ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity’ mean so much more to many Czechs than most American English speakers can understand — though they can try if they read Havel, Seifert, Kundera, and maybe some Poles as well. This is a story worth telling in another post someday.

Finally, we arrive at the end of the spectrum, yet there is no guard rail or barrier, and we stand at a precipice beyond which we cannot see anything precisely: only the bright and ineffable, like MOLY. These words land in our language with a form bearing no relationship that we can trace back to any meaning. Morphological analysis stops because it can never start. Syntax? Phonology? Save yourself because the tracks have all been covered. Carson shows several examples of the bright, ineffable silences: they are all places that we cannot go. These silences may be uttered by our inner angels, the angels above, or from even more inexplicable origins. Our choice to explore them creates possibilities that we never before considered.

Transformations in Art

In the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, I chanced upon “His Transatlantic Progeny” by Judith H. Dobrzynski. She’s writing about an exhibition called about an exhibition highlighting Cezanne’s relationship to American Modernism taking place at the Montclair Art Museum through January. It seems like a nice enough event.

What struck me was this passage, however:

Jozef Bakos and Willard Nash… demonstrate that they too are descended from Cezanne, even though they never traveled to Europe or to American art centers where the master’s works could be seen. They heard how Cezanne, instead of producing a naturalistic representation of his subject, analyzed and rebuilt it on canvas in a flattened perspective, using fractured, sculptural forms composed of patches of color instead of conventional light-and-shade modeling. They learned about his thinking– sometimes described as a fusion of intuition and intellect– from reproductions and from teachers such as Andrew Dasburg…. Dasburg had traveled to Paris… and, upon discovering Cezanne’s work, divided his art into “before” and “after.”

In those days, painters adapted a style to their own by learning the thinking and methods of others before them. In essence, they sought to learn how to encode information the way that the other painters did. They would achieve this by learning such things. However, these days, in order to accomplish this simply on a visual basis, one need only turn to Adobe Photoshop and its many filters. The talented engineers and mathematicians at Adobe understood the essence of the story themselves, encoding many different filters and transformations by which you could turn one representation into another. It’s all very mathematical. For example, I am not sure it has been resolved yet whether or not Shepard Fairey composed his Obama Hope paper from scratch in some medium or whether he just transformed the original AP photo in Photoshop, but it would not surprise me if he pulled it off with the latter.

The interesting thing about the passage is it reflects how information used to travel. Styles could be transmitted without knowing the master, but by figuring out and learning technique. In those days techniques cost much more to develop in time and opportunity cost of style. In other words, the time spent adapting to a new style would have to be worth it from a personal and market benefit standpoint because it was a huge investment. Once you have missed a movement, you’ve missed it for good. In the old days, such profound changes could lead a transformative artist to label his prior work “before” and then “after.” I wonder if the same could be said of artists like that today. I’m tempted to put Yayoi Kusama in this category. She’s done all kinds of things, mostly thanks to the economics that make her productions and antics viable.

For a time, new content startled us in art. As time went by, the shock faded, and artists shifted to new forms with content, then new forms with none, and then old forms with none. The transformations gradually became more and more devoid of meaning. And the fate of a truly authentic and meaningful expression? Rage? Love? Passion? Jealousy? Hatred? Awe?

Just cliche.

The Tragedy of Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey is the artist who created the famous Obama “HOPE” poster, ubiquitously seen in its original form or some derivative form on cars, lockers, windows, backpacks, and so on. Recently, the Associated Press sued Fairey for a violation of copyright: he based the Obama image below off a photo whose copyright is owned by the AP, also seen below.

The claim is fairly clear. The owner of copyright, according to 17 U.S.C. § 106, possesses the right to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies and to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work. The copyright code also lists various remedies that the owner of the copyright has for infringement, usually involving some measure of monetary damages depending on the extent and intent of the dastardly deed.

On the merits of this alone, given copyright law, the AP would seem to have a competitive claim, meaning that it isn’t something that would just be dismissed. There’s no doubt given the comparison that Fairey used the photo in question. The real question is: was Fairey’s infringement a fair use? It does seem difficult for Fairey to prevail here given current copyright law, but if I was a Judge, I would definitely want to try and limit the scope of copyright protection such that this would be declared a fair use because it is transformative. The colors are completely different and perhaps more important, Fairey’s Obama poster was sold in a completely different market than the photo. If anything, sales of the photo would probably pick up as a result of the association, royalties or no. This policy would foster creativity, perhaps slightly at the expense of production.

It seems as though Fairey was cognizant of copyright law and panicked upon being sued. Last week, news such as the LA Times started reporting that he had submitted evidence claiming that he used a different photo for the poster’s creation, though it was one from the same event and photographer. Despite how glaringly obvious a lie this was, he stuck to it for a while and finally relented.

The tragedy here is that this could have been a landmark copyright case, and though the fair use aspect of Fairey’s case remains in play, his effort has been tainted. In copyright cases, good faith can be a significant factor in both awarding damages and declaring judgment.

A New Look

I decided that I had enough of the template that came with the blog and have therefore uploaded a new picture (Turner, you’ll pardon the fact that the boat is apparently a slaveship). I’ll probably rotate headers to keep things interesting. The new title of the blog is more important. “somewhere i have never traveled” is what I named this blog when I thought it would likely remain a private scratching board. “The Angels Within” reflects a shift to posts that relate to my book project, which was kicked off with a post of the same name on this blog. For lack of a better description, the book will dissolve and reconstruct the line between economics and art.

How will I get the title of the blog changed in RSS feeds… hopefully it happens on its own.

The Siren Paradox of Beyonce

Introduction to the Siren Paradox

Beyonce Knowles has already become a star for the ages. She’s the most popular solo female artist of this decade, a member of the most successful female group of all-time, the wife of rap mogul Jay-Z, and is probably considered one of the most beautiful women alive. Like any such star, she is not without her critics. In this post, I will discuss what I call “the siren paradox,” which is the simultaneous societal appreciation of an ideal and the revulsion at its consequences and costs.

The term “siren paradox” alludes first to those mythical creatures encountered by Ulysses who had top halves of women and bottom halves of birds. Although it doesn’t sound entirely appetizing today, the term “siren” retains its essence: a beautiful and unavoidable, yet dangerous woman. Beyonce Knowles can be considered thus in light of her relationship with society. We perceive her radiant beauty and value it as an ideal deserving of female aspiration. But the consequences of the aspirations engendered from these perceptions may be minimized, though they are many. Generally speaking, in order for any random woman to become more like Beyonce on a superficial level (that which is mostly perceived), she must buy certain hair care products, make-up, possibly hair extensions, fake eye lashes, and fake boobs, to say nothing of short sexy dresses and four inch platform heels. No, the image of Beyonce is not a cheap one to produce, even though she is naturally endowed with extraordinary beauty.

Klein vs. Postrel

Indeed, some, like Naomi Klein, believe that the consumer culture of the West uses Beyonce for its ruthless ends: profits. That is, they hire a respected, beautiful person like Beyonce and imply that if you buy their products you can be more like her. And isn’t that what you want? The underlying thesis is that without advertisements constantly telling you that you need this hair product and that eyeliner to really be beautiful, you would be healthier, wealthier, and happier. Unfortunately for the persons who believe this, they are only looking at a very narrow part of the picture, with almost no basis in real cause and effect. As Virginia Postrel shows in her excellent book The Substance of Style, absent advertisements, the freed women and men of Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 quickly learned to appreciate beard shaving, haircuts, less strict clothing, and beauty products. In Iran, Tehran was and remains a haven for skirts and lipstick. The best argument Postrel wields is her discussion of the marginal. In absolute terms, yes, certain people might be better off pursuing needs according to Maslow’s hierarchy. But consumers face decisions on the margin, and if someone in Afghanistan has the equivalent of $3 USD to spend, they’re well fed for the time being, the possibility of being able to get security with the $3 USD is very low, the possibility of getting insurance for this season’s crop is even lower, then that $3 USD might be better spent according to the consumer on a deeply personally satisfying beauty product.

True, at this point, we have not entirely refuted Klein. The beauty products still likely have some prestige qualities attached to them that stems from their use in the West. Even the uneducated of modern Kabul or especially Tehran are not strangers to the idea of our customs. The evidence goes deeper, though: every society has some standards of beauty as well as accoutrements that facilitate transmission of certain qualities of beauty. Whether it is some primitive type of piercing through the ear, some tattoo, a particular garment, or even a dance, there is always some thing whose purpose is to signify or augment beauty. Furthermore, beauty goes beyond even social constructions, for it is biologically rooted in us as we search for mates. It has been often claimed that we prize symmetrical faces, certain hip sizes, and other physical qualities. It should come as no surprise that many of the instruments used to improve beauty as seen in the eye of most beholders cater to those biological tastes in some way.

At this point, we can proudly proclaim that Klein’s main points have been vanquished. Beauty is an inextricable part of the human equation, and a big part of our relationship to it, for most of us, is appreciating it in the physical qualities of other human beings. Now just because something is an instinct doesn’t mean that it cannot be fought if necessary. It has been said, though it has also been recently challenged, that we humans are savages with the blood of a million years on our hands, but that we have a choice to kill and all we have to do is choose not to kill today. The same could be said about using beauty products. There’s just one little problem. Killing imposes costs on others without their choice. When someone chooses to use beauty products, that person imposes no cost on others without their choice. And the women and men who do choose to do so are not all brainwashed. They value improving their appearance by society’s standards. Absent any form of advertising, humans still have perception and will always distinguish differing degrees of beauty. We can no sooner stop doing so than we can tear a limb off our body.

Markets in Beauty

When you see someone look at a stranger from head to toe, or for a very long time, there is a significant chance that person is determining that stranger’s “price.” Assessing the stranger’s physical qualities is an excellent, though not perfect, method for determining the price. Other factors include personality, compatibility, and to some degree an independent evaluation of wealth, but the physical qualities are an easy threshold measure and proxy for overall price. What do I mean by this? A woman analyzing a man’s body, size, weight, height, hair, eyes, shirt, shoes, muscles, and posture will be able to determine the mating market demand for that man to a fairly close degree. When that woman then proceeds to analyze the girlfriend of that man, she can determine all kinds of useful information. For example, does the girlfriend represent an “underbid?” If so, the woman’s qualities might enable her to bid higher for his services. Looking at a lot of other price signals helps determine the demand for yourself, too.

When used in taste generally accepted by large portions of the market, beauty products raise one’s price signals. One’s use of these products, whether it’s more expensive dress shirts (signaling precisely nothing to Klein, but everything to many others), cologne/perfume, nice shoes, or earrings, may be revealing about both underlying asset value and internal motivations. But there’s nothing sinister in the process, for we would not possibly begrudge someone wanting to trade up in a market that has been biologically determined to be important for us. ( On a side note: websites like eharmony and match.com reduce our search costs, making it easier for us to match based on interests as well as threshold physical qualities. It may even reduce relationship costs! )

There’s actually some rather significant evidence that we have these markets. The first important thing to understand is that markets can exist absent a formal currency issued by a bank or government. All you need to be able to do is trade one thing for another. Currencies are only useful for quantifying to a more precise level the demand for something. The subject of markets in beauty has been a popular topic lately in some corners of the economics blogosphere, notably Marginal Revolution and one of my must-reads, The Perfect Substitute. In “Theories of Beautiful Women,” Indiana University professor Justin Ross argues that there is an inverse relationship between economic freedom and success at the Miss Universe pageant, meaning that the less free a country is, all things being equal, the better it generally performs in the pageant. A quick and dirty econometric model by Ross and Auburn’s Bob Lawson shows that this inverse relationship likely exists, though it lacks significance at the ten percent confidence level, indicating a weak finding.

Much more interesting, with much more direct impact on the thesis here, is the relationship between male-to-female sex ratio and “sociosexuality.” According to GMU economist Alex Tabarrok:

Sociosexuality is a concept in social psychology that refers to how favorable people are to sex outside of commitment. It can be measured by answers to questions such as “I can imagine myself being comfortable and enjoying “casual” sex with different partners” (agree strongly to disagree strongly) or “Sex without love is ok,” as well as with objective measures such as the number of sexual partners a person has had. A low score indicates subjects who favor monogamous, long-term, high-investment relationships. [...] Why might female sociosexuality scores vary? One hypothesis is that in cultures with low operational sex ratios (the number of marriageable men/number of marriageable women) female sociosexuality will be higher. The argument is that when the relative supply of males is low, competition for mates encourages females to shift towards the male ideal, i.e. when supply is scarce the demanders must pay more. (Note that this theory can also explain trends over time, e.g. Pedersen 1991).

Enter Brian Schmitt, whose “Sociosexuality from Argentina to Zimbabwe: A 48-nation study of sex, culture, and strategies of human mating” in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2005) tests this hypothesis. You can see that the relationship between a country’s sex ratio and “sociosexuality” is fairly robust:

As you can see in the chart, countries with many more females to males, such as the eastern European countries, have a much higher sociosexuality. Physical beauty matters primarily as a biological imperative, secondarily as a social imperative, and finally as a personal one. Competition and attempts to improve one’s signaling have always been present, suggesting that those who use beauty products are just as natural and authentic as those who choose not to use them. Society merely abhors excess: when one uses too much, it is indicative of an attempt to mask very weak intrinsic value. This is not the worry with Beyonce Knowles.

The Market for Beyonce

Although she can hardly be criticized for the power of her voice, or her talent, virtually anything used to excess will challenge good taste. Accordingly, she is occasionally accused of “oversinging.” She is also accused of being fake. One friend of mine laments that we have never even see her real hair. I have already addressed the “authenticity” argument. As to the content of her singing, and the authenticity there, that is for another post.

It seems to me possible that Beyonce, and some other women with a similar skin tone, be they black, white, Indian, mixes, or what have you, were simply blessed as a matter of phenotype to have physical attributes so close to her society’s ideal. There are large markets for a firm that is able to design a product catering to the so-called “least common denominator.” One can make more money from that market than by catering to small, niche markets in the absence of many substitutes. Beyonce has a skin color that may represent a composite of all U.S. skin colors averaged. As such, it is a color desired by most communities in the United States. Whites typically prefer to be darker. Blacks typically prefer to be lighter. Her body has a definite American sensibility to it: not too slight, not too large, but in many other countries she might be considered a little big in the hips. Not in the United States. The rest of the enhancements simply cater to cross-cultural biological tastes: redder lips, longer hair, higher heels, shorter skirts, suggestive dances (see: “Sweet Dreams” video at 1:30, 3:18) longer eyelashes all serve to distinguish from others while alluding to various instinctive preferences in mates thereby increasing their price. The intrinsic Beyonce is what pushes her to the top, even though she remains assiduous in maintaining all facets of her image.

Fighting against the beauty of Beyonce is akin to banning certain financial assets or derivatives. If someone wants to hedge against credit risk by purchasing credit default swaps, they should be able to, and such swaps have proved indispensable for many responsible institutions. If someone wants to dress or look more like Beyonce thereby increasing their price in social markets, not only including mating markets, they should be able to do that as well. Although it costs those persons income to do so, it is a decision that they find personally satisfying and brings them happiness. To do otherwise would cost them more in terms of anxiety, possibly lost opportunities, and certainly happiness. This is not to say that those who don’t use them suffer from those negative aspects — it is all a matter of personal preference and choice. Indeed, natural self-confidence, charisma, or legendary deeds often may account for much more, overwhelming benefits even brought by make-up.

Perhaps there is more to the siren paradox here than meets the eye. Like the mythical sirens of The Odyssey, Beyonce has a certain mystery about her. Her image was as carefully crafted as it has been maintained. Her privacy has been inviolable, even after marriage to fellow superstar Jay-Z. Sirens were not friendly to sailors, for the sailors were lured into their death by the sirens’ song. Of course, we never found out just what Ulysses heard as he was tied to the mast, that is, until Margaret Atwood revealed it in “Siren song“:

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

Possibly some women because of Beyonce, and some men because of male models, fall into this trap like the sailors did for the sirens. Led on by promises of better lives and better mates, they fatefully discover that all was for naught. The antidote to the siren paradox, unlike the siren song, is not restricting one’s free will. It’s prudent execution and healthy moderation.

The Puppet Maker by Chiyo Uno (trans. by R. Copeland)

When I lived in Indonesia, I purchased and devoured every Japanese classic that I could get my hands on. From Kawabata and Oe to Mishima and Tanizaki, these novels invariably featured some very odd and different themes from the books I typically read. Spring Snow by Mishima remains my favorite of that lot, which I left in trust at Universitas Gadjah Mada for a wing of the library to be called “The Douglas MacArthur Memorial Library for Peace, Tolerance, and Justice.” Eventually, I encountered a work that I had much less trouble instantly understanding and appreciating: Chiyo Uno’s The Puppet Maker.

Chiyo, herself, was a celebrity. She lived fully up until the end of her very colorful 98 year life. She penned several interesting works, most notably Ohan, according to scholars. I learned of her works through Rebecca L. Copeland’s excellent The Sound of the Wind: The Life and Works of Uno Chiyo. Copeland compiled and translated (I think) three of Chiyo’s short works and added an original biography of her. And so, it is in this book that one may find The Puppet Maker. A final note about the publication: it comes from the University of Hawai’i Press. This university press is one of my favorites, as I visited the school bookstore in February and no amount of time was enough for me to enjoy A Dictionary of Cantonese Slang, Fundamentals of Japanese Grammar, Manchu: A Textbook for Reading Documents, Modern Tagalog, and The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy amongst many, many others. They specialize in works with niche Asian subject matter that really appeal to specialists and really dorky amateurs like myself. Browse the UH Press titles some time.

The Puppet Maker itself is essentially journalistic, told from the first person perspective of Chiyo as she travels to meet Tengu Kyukichi, perhaps the last great puppetmaker. She, a young woman, and he, an 85 year old, witness and discuss the puppetmaking art form at the precipice. As the puppetmaker sees it, “If this story were a play, then I suppose you could say we’ve come to the third act. If we do the third act today, the rest of the play won’t last another week.”

Later, he continues:

“You know what I think?” he said. “I think the puppet theater has seen its last days.” Indeed, the old man believes that it is now only a matter of time before the puppet theater perishes completely. And yet he continues to devote himself all the more to this dying art. If those in my line of work ever heard that the alphabet we use—that is, the alphabet I am using now—was shortly to go out of existence, I doubt they would continue to write, hoping against hope that by doing so they could perpetuate their art. No, we would give up immediately, and that is why I sense in the old man an extraordinary depth of passion.

And so, the work is communicating on several levels. The author has something to say about the man, the art, and tradition. We are inclined to sympathize with the puppetmaker, but not pedantically so. Unlike in a movie, there is no musical score to make us dance to whatever feelings the director wishes to evoke. Chiyo lets Kyukichi’s words speak for themselves. For a modern Westerner, they are difficult to assess, but I suspect they represent a time and a way of life very different from today. Indeed, Kyukichi spares few words for the wife who has accompanied him for six decades, and fewer still for children, some of whom he can barely remember anymore. Of his wife, he says this:

“What was it she’d do for me that I appreciated most of all? Sometimes I’d work late into the night, you see, and when I did she’d always wait up so she could lay my bed out for me. Well now I suppose just about anyone would have done the same. Laying out bedding is no great task. But once I’d crawled into bed and started off to sleep, I’d sometimes feel my old wife go around behind me and pat the quilt down soft around my shoulders. That’s all. But no one else would have done it.”

From the few words he uses, it seems he has a core tenderness, just one that is hardly practiced and little noticed. It didn’t matter as much then, when there was so much less opportunity. Still, the truly compelling parts of the narrative concern art and our relationship with it. For this, puppet-making is truly a wonderful foil and Kyukichi’s words come alive. Kyukichi describes the state of puppet-making thus:

“You see, art is tradition. It’s the same for carving puppets, too. If you’re going to carve Lord Hangan, you carve him the way tradition tells you he’s got to look. And, if you’re going to carve the hero Yuranosuke, you carve him in keeping with the Yuranosuke tradition, the way he’s been carved for centuries. But what happens to art when it’s done the same way over and over for hundreds of years? Back in the old days folks did things a certain way because it seemed natural to them. But now we’ve reached the point where we’re just copying the way things were done long ago without really understanding why, and so long as we’re just copying, it doesn’t have much meaning for us. Years ago folks lived with one goal in mind, and once they reached that goal, well, they were ready to die. But now, if you don’t set your sights higher and higher and aim to get beyond whatever goal’s been set, you might as well go ahead and die, and you sure don’t have any business talking about art. But, you see, I didn’t come to figure this out till four or five years ago—and it dawned on me when I finally noticed folks weren’t coming to the puppet plays much anymore. They were turning up their noses at it. How I wish I’d realized this sooner!”

There’s always a sense that the old days were different than today. For example, people often say that politics was kinder and gentler in the United States. In some respects, yes. In some respects, no. Yes, in that there was less overall competition and fewer interests bound up with the results. A good ‘ol boys network might ably control local politics for decades with most living their lives well. But no, in that you were much more likely to end up dead, run out of town, or ruined as a result of them. Slander? Try 1800. Things were no better in the 1940s or 60s. And so, in this respect, Kyukichi may be overreaching about his conclusion that in the old days artists merely replicated the old ways. It is possible, but I am skeptical. Even by seamlessly duplicating another’s style, there may be slight, but important differences of technique. Perhaps one carves faster. Perhaps one artist develops a change seemingly as slight as the puppetmaker equivalent of the damp fold in sculpture, but it has not been consciously appreciated yet.

But it is true that without something more, an art form might become static and uninteresting to the consumer. I really like Kyukichi’s sensibility regarding the intrinsic need for growth in the arts. Certain forms may have held special meaning in the past, but if they fail to in the present, then artists ought to consider change. In this case, we see a titanic struggle between modernity and tradition, because what Kyukichi is alluding to is not the necessity for mere changes of style. Given the improvements in technology and the changes in attention span, the art form itself is obsolete as pure entertainment for anyone born after 1930. Rather, Kyukichi may be unconsciously be pushing at the reality that puppetmaking needs some kind of fusion with other art forms, lest it be relegated to museums and ceremonial performances. His lament, “How I wish I had realized this sooner!” gives us a window straight into Kyukichi’s heart. This is his fondest wish.

The narrator herself struggled with the character of the puppetmaker:

I had never thought anyone could actually sit in the same place for sixty or seventy years doing the same thing day in and day out. If the person were performing a religious austerity, like those who practice zazen, perhaps I could understand it. And yet here was this old man, doing just what I had thought impossible. “I don’t know how it looks to others,” he told me, “but I’ve a reason for sitting right here all day long, never going out. You see, if someone came on business while I was away—well, wouldn’t be anybody else here who’d know what to do. No, I decided it was for the best if I stayed in as much as possible. Look, I’ve got my tools and things all laid out around me so I can sit right where I am with everything at hand’s reach. The sort of life the old man has led may not seem all that strange in a country town like this. No, he has lived just as a tree or flower might live, completely natural.

The power of a metaphor isn’t only that it helps us to see data in a new but analogous fashion. It’s also that it amplifies selected fundamental qualities or characteristics of a thing or situation in our perception. Chiyo’s description reflects a common perception in the modern day that a man who found his way early and did that the rest of his life grew like a tree or flower — sitting in the same spot, but still full of life, untarnished by the blemishes of modernity, unconcerned. And yet, it would be just as true to take the metaphor in a negative sense. We can lament his lack of opportunity, to be stuck no matter his true desires or talent, to in effect be condemned to the same lot generation after generation as the vast majority of the world were for thousands of years. Only in the mid-20th century did social mobility take off. Kyukichi, after a certain age, and maybe even before it, would still probably have it no other way, though. By the time of the interview, he has a solid sense of what his role is in the art, and more importantly, art’s role in him:

“…but let me tell you a thing or two about art. There’re folks who set their sights on one level in art—and once they’ve reached that level, they figure they’re finished for life. Then we’ve got craftsmen like Hidari Jingoro who keep right on perfecting their skills until the day they die. You see, there are those who always push for better, who are always struggling and trying so long as they’ve got breath in their bodies. And, I wonder if this isn’t where art is said to live. Once you’ve decided that you’ve gone far enough—you can’t do better—well, then that’ll be the end for you. I don’t know how much longer I’ll live. Maybe two more years, maybe three, but this that I’m telling you is what is closest to my heart.”

Some artists are not possessed by achievement in their field. In these days, I suspect a higher portion were, though. I’m fascinated by his comment that he wonders “if this isn’t where art is said to live.” Is he saying that it’s in the focused struggle to create ever better art? We do know that by then, Tengu Kyukichi had ceased being someone much associated with the past, and as we know, this partly includes even insuperable ties to family. They remain, incidental, to his story, but they are far from the chunk of the iceberg. What lies below is the passion binding him to his passion: the art of puppet-making, its limits, its transcending moments. It is indeed of art that he wishes to speak:

“…as I’m making my puppets, I feel as if I’m praying to the gods. Don’t you see, where my skill stops—when it doesn’t go any further—that’s where you’ll find the gods. Yes, they’re there just beyond human understanding. [...] But let me just say that if you don’t reach out to the gods first—make some kind of effort—then they sure aren’t going to go out of their way to help you. [...] Before I start to carve a puppet I have it all clear in my mind how that puppet ought to look. But there’s always one part I just can’t get no matter how I try—yes, there’s always something missing, and it’s in that part, that missing part, where the gods reside.”

Humans do not possess perfect information. They act in a world replete with risk and full of uncertainty– yes, these are two different things. And despite Kyukichi’s mastery, he is humbled by the reality that there is something beyond his precise calculation that goes into the art. It’s not just chance, but perhaps the occasion when he initiates some carving only to see something he missed in his mental conception that he now wishes to execute — or something that might be a flaw. Kyukichi recognizes in the flaw of his imperfect conception the idea of gods. Gods are unfathomable, but generally considered to be, if not all-knowing, certainly more knowing than we and arguably non-linear in temporal perspective. This reminds me of the literary theorist Kermode who argued “the concords of past, present, and future towards which the soul extends itself are out of time… To close that great gap, we use fictions of complementarity. They may now be novels or philosophical poems, as they once were tragedies, and before that, angels.”

These angels very much resemble Kyukichi’s gods. And so there is something in the human make-up that acknowledges its own imperfection, yet stubbornly refuses to attribute individualistic, virtuoso creations (art) to pure chance. Instead, we seek out any semblance of knowing will. Perhaps there’s some beauty in Kyukichi’s gods, who do not exist independent of humanity’s imperfection, though they ably light the way for humanity’s endless drive to overcome it.

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I go must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

~John Masefield

Intellectual Property vs. Liberty to Contract

Former UF University Economics Society President Vivek Rajasekhar, currently on assignment promoting liberty at the Cato Institute, shared a post with some other UES luminaries recently called “What kind of innovation do patents encourage?” Apparently, people are learning a little bit more about the economics of intellectual property, probably due to several new books being published on the subject, and the promulgation of illuminating blogs.

Many persons are loathe to consider reforming intellectual property, unless it is to strengthen IP rights. Through college, we never really challenge this assumption. But long before Professor Lessig’s outstanding works on the subject, several notable economists tackled government’s efforts to promote IP. For example, Milton Friedman writes:

…intellectual property is different from physical property: in both cases, you have a monopoly but the monopoly on intellectual property is wholly different because duplicating the property comes generally at a very low or zero marginal cost. You are enforcing a monopoly pricing, as it were, that limits output to lower than the optimum social level.

Friedman is not alone. The most persuasive and eloquent critic of intellectual property rights is the late Sir Arnold Plant. Amongst many other broadsides, he argued “intellectual property protection might result in too much intellectual property being produced rather than too little (or perhaps both, for different types of intellectual property).” This is a fundamental point. Intellectual property protections simultaneously encourage and discourage certain types of IP. Economist and philosopher Murray Rothbard concurred in the case of patents, arguing that whether or not patent rights increase the amount of research expenditures, they certainly distort the type of research expenditures. He argued this on two grounds. First, that expenditures are “overstimulated” in the early stages during patent races until the race is over, after which point they are “unduly restricted” as all competitors may be excluded from benefit. Second, that because only certain types of inventions are patentable, research is overstimulated in those areas and by corollary relatively understimulated in others due to financial incentives being diverted to the overstimulated areas. Rothbard continues from his magnum opus Man, Economy, and State:

The most popular argument for patents among economists is the utilitarian one that a patent for a certain number of years is necessary to encourage a sufficient amount of research expenditure for inventions and innovations in processes and products. This is a curious argument, because the question immediately arises: By what standard do you judge that research expenditures are “too much,” “too little,” or just about enough? This is a problem faced by every governmental intervention in the market’s production. Resources—the better lands, laborers, capital goods, time—in society are limited, and they may be used for countless alternative ends. By what standard does someone assert that certain uses are “excessive,” that certain uses are “insufficient,” etc.? […] The market does have a rational standard: the highest money incomes and highest profits, for these can be achieved only through maximum service of consumer desires. This principle of maximum service to consumers and producers alike—i.e., to everybody—governs the seemingly mysterious market allocation of resources…. But the observer who criticizes this allocation can have no rational standards for decision; he has only his arbitrary whim.

Just where do the distortions and misallocations occur? A very interesting perspective by “Renegade Division” makes use of a distinction apparently created by noted libertarian Stephen Kinsella:

Vertical Innovation is when a new product is innovated based on merely a small amount of added new technology, for example adding the facility of watching videos on an MP3 player, or adding a new metal on an alloy best suited for making railway tracks which now reduces its ability to expand and contract in heat and in cold, or creating an AIDS vaccination by using the results, effects, and formulas of 10 different immunity vaccines.

Horizontal Innovation is when a new product is developed which provides same functionality as a previously existing product but it tries to achieve that in a different manner. For example a new motorcycle is developed which uses fluids load-balancing(just making it up) for more stability because a motorcycle is already developed and it is patented, or a new type of Fan is developed which is embedded in a box because the regular fan is already developed and patented.

We give up vertical innovation in order to foster horizontal innovation. Absent IP, however, the system would reach an equilibrium that fosters more vertical innovation and still gives us some horizontal innovation, but now protected by contract. In the absence of intellectual property rights, that is to say, government-created rights to intangible assets, the free market would allocate intangible assets as prices and consumers deem fit. Suddenly, the value of these assets will be assigned by contracts between persons who can negotiate the price in order to best allocate risk, as opposed to the government-granted right of artificial scarcity that detaches intellectual property transactions from reality. To put this more simply, contracts would take the place of intellectual property and not a whole heck of a lot would change except for more efficient allocation of scarce resources, including time.

As long as people are educated as to what a circle-c symbol means in a book, and they buy it subject to that, we would a seamless transition in copyright. For trademark, we would not need to rely on the strictures of the Lanham Act, which arguably entrench the rich and powerful at the expense of those who would develop similar goods or services and thereby please consumers. Rather, we would expect the common law concept of “fraud” to rule again. It would no longer be enough to be similar, as the small Victor’s Secret store was in Tennessee. It would have to be really attempting to pass itself off as Victoria’s Secret leading to bona fide customer confusion. Patents are a more difficult case and the strongest one could be made for pharmaceuticals. We like their innovations. Speaking as an economist, I don’t think we would necessarily see much less innovation or drug development. I think we would see fewer competitors and a consolidated industry that still seeks to buy the smaller companies with promising drugs.

How am I so confident? Well, the sad truth, long unheralded by an education system stuck in the 1960s preparing people for 1950s jobs, is that contracts can fill the role of IP very well. You can have all manner of contracts: small ones, long ones, ones in shrinkwrap, ones reduced to a symbol, written in Chinese, English, or Binary. At root, contractual agreements represent a meeting of the minds and the consent of the parties. At root, intellectual property creates incentives for certain types of production at the expense of others. It’s an academic point, since it’s so strongly tied to an almost inconceivable counterfactual, but an important one nonetheless.

Don’t believe me? Fashion has worked for a very long time without strong IP. Fashion changes significantly year to year and countless billions in profits are still made. Additionally, the Open Source movement, which is very much based in the power of contract contra the limitations of IP, has eviscerated profits for operating systems, encyclopedias, and many other products. The gains we all receive are significantly greater than the jobs lost and no protection is necessary. In support of this point, Donald Bordeaux, Chairman of the George Mason Economics Department, writes in today’s “Costs are not benefits; Reducing costs is not harmful“:

How can a nation be hurt in this way if it gains greater access to lower-cost inputs? Suppose, for example, that a genius invents a low-cost machine (much like the one in Star Trek) that can safely and comfortably transport human beings from point A to point B — from our home to the local supermarket, or from our home to Tahiti — instantaneously and for only pennies per transport. This machine is soon sold for $1.99 and becomes, say, an app on a cell-phone or is clipped on to one’s belt.

The great majority of Americans who now work in the transportation and travel industries would lose their jobs. The demand for automobiles would plummet, as would the demand for airplanes and for airline services. Even the demand for hotels and motels would fall dramatically, as many business travelers would just beam themselves back home for the night rather than sleep in a far-away, strange bed. But would America be made poorer by this marvelous invention? Of course not. We’d be made materially much richer.

So, folks, let’s reform the system and go with freedom: it has worked before, it can work again. Put IP lawyers out of work and make them transactional attorneys.

UPDATE: After publication of this post, I noticed another blog post alluding to the possible demise of international IP at the hands of ever-growing contractual agreements here. Contracts govern rights between parties and will always be there. They are not mutually exclusive with IP, though they are more flexible and market disciplined.

The Blessings of Competition

We often hear pundits, scholars, and friends arguing about the merits of competition in the context of economics. Introducing competition to a moribund industry characterized by monopoly, as occurred when UPS and FedEx were finally able to challenge the US Postal Service (a truly damaging monopoly) for the delivery of packages, induces all competitors to improve their offerings because, in general, they have to battle on quality and price to find patrons. All else equal, this is what we would expect in any activity, leading to more choice, better service, and greater happiness. And this is what we tend to find.

But, arguably, the blessings of competition are even more pronounced in the arts. In 2008, I described the effects of competition on two great bands of the 1960s in “The Fortune of Coldplay“:

The Beatles and Beach Boys engaged in an “arms race” of sorts that propelled both bands to dizzying unforeseen heights of artistic expression. The story is worth recounting, briefly: Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson, two of the virtuosos behind their respective bands, forced each other to get better with each album. They influenced each other, beginning with The Beatles’ Rubber Soul driving the Beach Boys (read: Brian Wilson, the only one of them worth a creative damn) to produce Pet Sounds, which Paul McCartney to this day calls the best album ever and moves him to tears with its melodies. In turn, McCartney went to the drawing board with John Lennon and they came out with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is often called their best album. According to some, this album broke Brian Wilson, whose prodigy was unleashed by the album but also broken by it. Wilson had, like perhaps Fermat grasping his Last Theorem or Nash contemplating Game Theory, become possessed by the art of the possible in his field. [Yet] the fulminations of other Beach Boy members condemned Wilson’s potential magnum opus, SMiLE, to death. When Wilson recovered [from his breakdown], he produced SMiLE as he thought it would have been. The result is unlike anything else that came from the 60s, or perhaps unlike anything that has ever been made.

I had argued in the post that it may not be possible to not have an “arms race” like that again, pitting extraordinary talent against extraordinary talent, producing ever more outstanding works, and satisfying consumers (in this case, of music) better than they could have dreamed. I was strictly mistaken. This could only occur in a market with a set of tastes that are perfectly and permanently satisfied. Rather, the example of The Beatles and the Beach Boys shows the benefits of competition for us. Similarly, in my recent post on Coorte, I showed that he received a fine for selling art work in a market without being a member of the artist guild. Yet consumers all benefited from his doing so, for they received excellent art works. Allowing artists like Coorte into the market without prior approval ensures that other artists must create works that compete with Coorte’s genius. This is why artists (and workers) form guilds (and unions) that insulate themselves from becoming better.

There is no other reason.

But when they become better, and improve themselves through the crucible of competition, we can build on those achievements. There’s another example of this in an “art” of sorts: chess. The 20th century saw many advances in the art of chess, including those made by Tal, Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker, Botvinnik, Fischer, Karpov, and Kasparov. The 1970s through the 1990s was the era of Fischer, Karpov, and Kasparov. Fischer is best known as the American who broke Soviet dominance of world chess. But in the chess world itself, his nationality isn’t very important. His contributions to opening theory and endgames are. Chess masters continuously study and study and study previous games. It gives them a sense of the probabilities of how games will play out, but it also means they are storehouses of information regarding the games and artists who came before them. According to Fischer’s wikipedia:

Some leading players and some of his biographers rank him as the greatest player who ever lived. Many other writers say that he is arguably the greatest player ever, without reaching a definitive conclusion. Leonard Barden wrote, “Most experts place him the second or third best ever, behind Kasparov but probably ahead of Karpov.” [...] According to the Chessmetrics calculation, Fischer’s peak rating was 2895 in October 1971. His one-year peak average was 2881, in 1971, and this is the highest of all time. His three-year peak average was 2867, from January 1971 to December 1973—the second highest ever, just behind Garry Kasparov. [...] Fischer’s great rival Mikhail Tal praised him as “the greatest genius to have descended from the chess heavens.” [...] Kasparov wrote that Fischer “became the detonator of an avalanche of new chess ideas, a revolutionary whose revolution is still in progress.” In January 2009, reigning world champion Viswanathan Anand described Fischer as “the greatest chess player who ever lived…”

Yes, it is possible that his capabilities have been exaggerated by his iconic status in the media, but when so many legends and peers believe he was the best, one must concede the possibility. The media would be less likely to distort their evaluations. It is now worth considering Anatoly Karpov, still ranked the 98th best player in the world, who was a dominating world champion for many years before the era of Kasparov. Unlike most masters, he did not have just one peak of greatness. He was world champion from 1975-85, when Kasparov began his stifling dominance of chess. Yet, Karpov retained much of his ability for the following decade, despite not surpassing Kasparov or Nigel Short. Still, Karpov’s greatest performance was in a 1994 chess tournament:

The field, in eventual finishing order, was Karpov, Kasparov, Shirov, Bareev, Kramnik, Lautier, Anand, Kamsky, Topalov, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Illescas, Judit Polgar, and Beliavsky; with an average Elo rating of 2685, the highest ever at that time, making it the first Category XVIII tournament ever held. Impressed by the strength of the tournament, Kasparov had said several days before the tournament that the winner could rightly be called the world champion of tournaments. Perhaps spurred on by this comment, Karpov played the best tournament of his life. He was undefeated and earned 11 points out of 13 possible (the best world-class tournament winning percentage since Alekhine won San Remo in 1930), finishing 2.5 points ahead of second-place Kasparov and Shirov. Many of his wins were spectacular (in particular, his win over Topalov is considered possibly the finest of his career). This performance against the best players in the world put his Elo rating tournament performance at 2985, the highest performance rating of any player in history.

In this era of Fischer, Kasparov, and Karpov, it is worth considering what a tournament between all of them at their peaks might have been like. It is something Karpov has considered, since he would have played Fischer for the World Championship had Fischer not declined to defend his title. And although considered one of the all-time greats with his positional brilliance, always ready to take advantage of the most minor mistakes, he is not considered greater than Kasparov or Fischer. According to Karpov’s wikipedia:

Karpov is on record saying that had he had the opportunity to fight Fischer for the crown in his twenties, he (Karpov) could have been a much better player as a result (in a similar way as Kasparov’s constant rivalry with him helped Kasparov to achieve his full potential).

This is probably true. On the other hand, Karpov’s place in history may be unchanged, for his own improvement may have spurred even greater improvement in Kasparov as well. Whatever the case, it cannot be said that less competition is better for fostering the brilliance of artists anywhere in any situation.