Systems and Society #005 - Hot Dog Sandwich-class problems
Notes on definitions, language, and disagreement
For those who pay attention to internet culture, you may have come across the hotly-debated question “Is a hot dog a sandwich?” People argue vociferously on both sides about details such as, for example, whether or not the bread needs to be separated. Perhaps a hot dog doesn’t start off as a sandwich, but if the bun rips down the middle then does it become a sandwich? In some extreme cases, even a pizza can be considered an open-face sandwich. YouTube channel Food Theory has a good episode on this question.
As silly as this argument seems on its face, it has deeper implications. First, it impacts how laws are written. If sandwiches are to be taxed or regulated, there needs to be a definition. This is what leads to rulings like in Ireland, in which Subway sandwich bread was judged to not be bread at all.
Second, there is a whole class of very serious issues which, at its heart, boil down to the exact same definitional problem as “is a hot dog a sandwich?” I’ll discuss two of them here.
Are we in a recession?
Economics journalists have been arguing back and forth about whether or not the US is in a recession for months now. Fed chairman Jerome Powell says that he doesn’t “think the US is currently in a recession.”1 There is a common myth that “two quarters of negative GDP growth” is what defines a recession, but this definition is never used professionally.
So what is the official definition of a recession? Well, there isn’t one.
A non-profit research organization known as the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has a panel (the Business Cycle Dating Committee, or BCDC) that determines whether or not the US economy is in a recession, and their view carries a lot of weight in both academia and government. So surely they must have a clear definition, right?
Wrong.
According to the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, “There is no fixed rule about what measures contribute information to the process or how they are weighted in our decisions.”
We need to get comfortable with the idea that “recession” is a term like “sandwich.” We kinda know one when we see one, but there are edge cases our language doesn’t account for. And every single person will make their own judgment call about what is and is not a recession. We don’t all have to agree with the NBER.
Every economy is unique. It is the aggregate of a complex system of interacting parts. Sometimes, two recessions seem similar but may end up with very different causes and require very different policy interventions.
Our current economic situation is a bit strange, with negative GDP growth, high inflation, but also low unemployment. Is that a recession? Is a hot dog a sandwich?
What is a man (or woman)?
I need to be a little careful here, since this is a sensitive topic, and my goal is not to hurt anybody. I feel that much of the debate about trans rights and the general conversation about sex and gender falls into this class of problem as well.
A lot of the debate ends up being about what it means to be a man or woman. Conservatives tend to point to biology as the only factor that matters, but this is met with all kinds of edge cases.
Any attempt to define sex or gender through genetics will be met with edge cases such as Klinefelter Syndrome2 and de la Chapelle syndrome3.
Attempting to define sex or gender through physical characteristics runs into similar edge cases. Is a castrato a man? Additionally, gender affirmation surgery (which used to be called Sex Reassignment Surgery) gives transphobes using tares definition some trouble. If man and woman are defined by physical characteristics, any transphobe relying on this definition of sex would have to unambiguously argue that Caitlyn Jenner is indeed a woman. However, I suspect this would not be a common argument among transphobes.
On the other hand, defining sex or gender by actions and societal expectations is problematic too. I personally have been told that I am not “a real man” over many of my preferences. I don’t like sports and don’t drink beer, for example. But if I were to identify myself as a woman, those same people would disagree, despite previously telling me that I wasn’t a man.
Surprisingly, there seems to be some agreement among trans people with these prescriptive behavioral gender roles. It’s rare to see a trans man with long hair, painted fingernails, and makeup, just as it’s rare to see a trans woman in a baseball cap, cargo shorts, and a shaved head. Traditional conservatives and trans people both seem to lean hard into gender roles as defining characteristics of what it means to be a man or woman.
The last definition of man and woman that I hear from trans people is that it is either “who they are” or “how they feel inside.” These definitions are somewhat circular. “I’m a man because I’m a man.” There’s nothing wrong with feeling this; it’s just not really a definition. Which is fine, by the way. A random trans person on the street doesn’t have to answer questions about their identity. This exercise is to be taken in the abstract.
Just like with recessions and sandwiches, we need to get comfortable with the idea that there is no good definition for what it means to be a man or woman. So if someone tells me they’re a man, woman, nonbinary, or intersex, I have no standing to disagree. The worst-case scenario is that I’m not 100% sure what they mean because the word is so ill-defined.
As with economies, individual people are unique. Categorizing them into groups can sometimes be useful, but sometimes it’s either not useful or actively harmful. And there are always edge cases.
Do you have any examples of “is a hot dog a sandwich”-style questions in the public discourse? Leave a comment below.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/are-we-in-a-recession-right-now.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11268892/