Write a note

Whilst we can debate whether thought precedes language or language precedes thought, we cannot deny that language and thought are intertwined; the way you think influences what you say and how you say it, which again influences the way you think. Clearly, language is powerful, and we must be mindful of the way we use it.

Often, we unknowingly misuse language. We use words such as "like", "problematic", and "good", which add ambiguity to our statements. We also establish non-links between sentences to make arguments seem more bullet-proof. I have unconsciously included an example of the latter in the first paragraph, when I suggest that my preceding statements make it "clear" that language is powerful. This is unclear communication. This unclarity in language may lead to unclarity of thought. This could in turn be a self-reinforcing loop. This is dangerous.

For an investor, clarity of thought is of utmost importance: it is necessary to have a specific thesis, which you can constantly test and evaluate. This is because if one is unclear about the investment case, one is more likely to make decisions influenced by emotion. For example, one might hold on to an investment even as the company's thesis story fails to play out. Alternatively, one might sell when a risk we were previously aware of - and comfortable with - actually materialises. In both scenarios, the action may actually be right; the long term story may be intact in the former case, or the risk may be bigger than one perceived it to be in the latter. However, if an investor's decision is driven by emotion, it is a bad decision - regardless of the outcome.

In order to have clarity in thought, an investor must have clarity of language. This clarity of language can be achieved by writing. When we are forced to put concrete thoughts down on paper, we are forced to clarify what it is we mean, and be more precise in our thesis. This results in greater clarity of thought.

So, I urge you to "write a note".

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This post was inspired by my attendance of a seminar titled "Am I Helping Tyrants When I Say 'Like'? George Orwell and Alexis de Tocqueville on How Political Language Manipulates and Liberates" at Yale Young Global Scholars, PLE II, 2019. The following was the provided description of the Seminar:

"In an age of information overload, twitter bots, and fake news, the importance of clarity of language has never been higher. Scheming  political actors  for  thousands  of  years  have realized  that  language  can  either  be  the  tools  of  social control or  of  social  liberation. Orwell’s essay argues that tyrants love ambiguous language because a confused people is a malleable people.  In  a  striking  argument, Tocqueville  argues that  democracy  affects the language we use by making it less confident, vaguer, and more abstract. Take, for example, the word ‘like,’ which many people cannot seem to omit from any single sentence. Why do we say this word over and over, and not, say, the word ‘spinach? De Tocqueville worries that it is a sign that we are uncertain of our own opinions, and that we hedge our language so that nobody can contradict us and show us to be wrong. Orwell fears that it is precisely this obfuscation of language that helps tyrants come to power. So, do words have power or not?"  

The following extracts are from an excerpt from "Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book Two, Section 1, Chapter XVI: The Effect of Democracy on Language", which was assigned as prior reading for this seminar.

Extract 1: "The most common expedient employed by democratic nations to make an innovation in language consists in giving some unwonted meaning to an expression already in use. This method is very simple, prompt, and convenient; no learning is required to use it aright, and ignorance itself rather facilitates the practice; but that practice is most  dangerous to the language. When a democratic  people  doubles  the  meaning of  a word in  this way, they sometimes render the signification which it retains as ambiguous as that which it acquires. An author begins by a slight deflection of a known expression from its primitive meaning, and he adapts it, thus modified, as well as he can to his subject. A second writer twists the sense of the expression in another way; a third takes possession of it for another purpose; and  as there  is  no  common  appeal to  the sentence of a permanent tribunal  which may definitely settle the signification of the word, it remains in an ambiguous condition. The consequence is  that writers  hardly ever appear to dwell upon a single thought, but  they always seem to point their aim at a knot of ideas, leaving the reader to judge which of them has been hit. This is a deplorable consequence of democracy. I had rather that the language should be made hideous with words imported from the Chinese, the Tartars, or the Hurons, than that the meaning of  a  word in our own language  should become indeterminate. Harmony and uniformity are only secondary beauties in composition; many of these things are conventional, and, strictly  speaking, it is  possible to forego them; but without clear phraseology there is no good language." 

Extract 2: "These abstract terms which abound in democratic languages, and which are used on every occasion without attaching them to any particular fact, enlarge and obscure the thoughts they are intended to convey; they render the mode of speech more succinct, and the idea contained in it less clear. But with regard to language, democratic nations prefer obscurity to labor. I know not indeed whether this loose style has not some secret charm for those who speak and write amongst these nations. As the men who live there are frequently left to the efforts of their individual powers of mind, they are almost always a prey to doubt; and  as  their  situation  in  life  is  forever  changing,  they  are  never  held fast  to  any  of  their opinions  by  the  certain tenure  of their fortunes.  Men  living  in  democratic  countries  are, then, apt to entertain unsettled ideas, and they require loose expressions to convey them. As they never know whether the idea they express today will be appropriate to the new position they may occupy tomorrow, they naturally acquire a liking for abstract terms. An abstract term is like a box with a false bottom: you may put in it what ideas you please, and take them out again without being observed.   

Amongst  all  nations, generic  and abstract  terms  form  the basis  of  language. I do not, therefore, affect to expel these terms from democratic languages; I simply remark that men have an  especial  tendency, in  the ages  of  democracy, to multiply words of this kind—to take them always by themselves in their most abstract acceptation, and to use them on all occasions, even when the nature of the discourse does not require them."