On Userfriendly Specialized Vocabularies; a responsible economist argues for nonuserfriendly terms

Not only is "calculated trust" a contradiction in terms, but userfriendly terms, of which "trust" is one, have an additional cost. The world of commerce is reorganized in favor of the cynics, as against the innocents, when social scientists employ user-friendly language that is not descriptively accurate-since only the innocents are taken in. OE Williamson (1993) "Calculativeness, trust, and economic organization," The Journal of Law & Economics 485

Oliver Williamson is often mentioned as a candidate for the won the Nobel in economics in 2009. The quoted article argues to limit the use of 'trust' in the "specialized vocabulary" of the "science of organization" (484). [Some other time I discuss Wiliamson's analysis of trust.] This is accompanied with a self-conscious nod to and citation to Thomas Kuhn's Structure (see note 127); specialist vocabulary facilitates scientific research -- say to "realistically and significantly describing...administrative organizations" (484) -- and community building (and policing). In Kuhnian terms, Williamsion is legislating the use of terms.

Williamson is not the first nor the last in economics (and social sciences) to try to develop a science along the template provided by Kuhn. What makes Williamson unusual among relatively successful would-be-scientific legislators is that he evaluates the utility of specialist vocabulary not just in terms of the costs and benefits to the scientific community, but also in terms of the uptake of these terms by non scientific agents (in this case folk who are also described by the social scientists). That is, to use a philosophical phrase, he has thought about the inductive risk of adopting a vocabulary.

And here he notes that adopting familiar terms in a highly specialist context may, in fact, have considerable costs. For while the terms are userfriendly to the specialists and also allow the specialist to convey (with a wink) to the folk that they are describing the familiar world (rather than some model-reality), some of the folk may get confused between the specialist use and ordinary use of the terms. (Not to mention that sometimes the experts confuse their model for reality!) This is why he thinks that the right vocabulary has an ethical even economic pay-off: "Commercial contracting will be better served if parties are cognizant of the embeddedness conditions of which they are a part and recognize, mitigate, and price out contractual hazards in a discriminating way." (485) The cognizance is facilitated if they have to think about the science that describes them. This adds a transactional cost to the interface between science and society, but if it prevents harms it may well be worth it.