This Is the Best Substack Ever
By A Large Margin
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You will not believe how good this Substack is. I cannot believe it myself. It is probably the best one ever written. Not just by me - by anyone.
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With that out of the way: My topic is overstatement and understatement. It is also, and for that reason, about calibration.
You can sort people into three groups: overstaters, understaters, and calibrators (shorthand for those who are well-calibrated).
That’s an understated way to put it. You can sort people into three groups: brutes, gracious people, and straight shooters.
But that is imprecise, because people can overstate or understate on the positive side and not on the negative side; on the negative side and not on the positive side; on both sides; and on neither side.
(Understatement on the positive side: “Keats was a pretty good poet.” Overstatement on the positive side: “The Dave Clark Five was the greatest band ever.” Understatement on the negative side: “Hoover did not handle the depression especially well.” Overstatement on the negative side: “The Patriots, losing the Super Bowl? The greatest chokers in the history of sports.”)
So we need a three-by-two matrix (overstaters, understaters, and calibrators at the top; positive and negative on the left-hand side). If you overstate on the positive side but not the negative side, you are not a brute. You are probably very nice.
Actually that is imprecise. Actually it is more complicated. What are you overstating? What are you understating?
It is one thing if you overstate your own achievements (that is bragging, and it is not very nice) and those of people who are close to you (that might be bragging too). It is another thing if you overstate the achievements of people you do not know, or of people who are not allied with you. The same things can be said about understatement. We need to know the details to know exactly what to say.
Still, and roughly speaking: I am going to argue in favor of overstatement on the positive side and understatement on the negative side. To heck with calibration. But there are going to be plenty of qualifications, and it will take me a while to get there. Please don’t abandon ship.
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Some prominent people are prone to overstatement, while others are prone to understatement. Vice President Vance might occasionally be prone to overstatement, and the same might be true, on occasion, of President Trump. (See what I did there?)
President Obama was, and is, prone to understatement, and so was President Eisenhower. You can easily sort politicians, public figures, and others into one of the three categories: overstaters, understaters, and calibrators. (You might need that three-by-two matrix.)
Tyler Cowen is an understater, I think, though you might fairly say that he is calibrated. Jason Furman is, I think, highly calibrated. Tucker Carlson might not be an understater.
Judges may be overstaters or understaters, or calibrated. Justice Scalia was an overstater (in my view). Justice O’Connor was well-calibrated; she may have been an understater.
To know in what category to place statements and people, we need a baseline. If Like A Rolling Stone was, in fact, the greatest song ever written, it is no overstatement to say so. You might consider some people to be overstaters simply because you disagree with them on the merits. They might claim that what they say is no overstatement at all.
Still, some people are overstaters, and know they are, and try to be that, and some people are understaters, and know they are, and try to be that. You might decide to be an overstater or an understater.
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On social media, some people, including some prominent academics and some prominent people in the business world, seem to have decided to be overstaters. That is how they want to be in the world.
It seems to make them feel good, or triumphant, to act that way. They attack the motives or the competence of those who disagree with them, in a way that is strongly suggestive or probative of overstatement.
They describe their adversaries as hypocrites, or as idiots, or as evil in some sense. Maybe they do not think that they are overstaters. Maybe they think they have good reason to be overstaters. Maybe they think that they are calibrators, on a mission, or on a high horse.
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Evaluative statements are often calibrated: Kristin Stewart is a superb actor; the third Star Wars movie was very good; Donald Young (remember him?) was a strong tennis player; Edward Glaeser is a terrific economics professor; A.S. Byatt was a very good novelist, who wrote one of the best novels in the English language (Possession); Love Story, about JFK, Jr., and Carolyn Bessette, is lively, well-acted, and fun.
These are examples of positive evaluations, and they reflect what I actually think. We could easily produce overstated versions, e.g., Kristin Stewart is the best actor in the history of the world; the third Star Wars movie was the greatest movie ever made; or Love Story is riveting and sensational. Or we could dial things down a notch or two.
We could use litotes or something like it: Possession was not bad at all; Edward Glaeser knows a little economics; or Kristin Stewart seems to understand a thing or two about human emotions
We could offer examples of negative evaluations from overstaters, understaters, or calibrators. Marty Supreme was a real disappointment (calibrated, I think); Marty Supreme was the most horrible movie of the last ten years. A proposed law is a bad idea (calibrated, let us stipulate); a proposed law is the worst idea of the century (overstated, let us stipulate). Professor B is overrated, because his work is not that good (calibrated, let us stipulate); Professor B is a complete fraud (overstated, let us stipulate).
Some people seem to revel in negative overstatements. (You know who you are.) Overstating some negative thought produces a kind of glee. It is like punching someone in the nose. (Or like imagining punching someone in the nose; if you have ever actually punched someone in the nose, you probably know that it is not, or not mostly, a ton of fun.)
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There are fascinating empirical questions about the effects of overstatement, understatement, and calibration. We might hypothesize, for example, that understaters are boring and do not grab attention, but can be highly credible. We might also hypothesize that overstaters can grab attention and admiration, and might lead groups (or cults) — but that they can also lose their audience. (How much of their audience can they lose? A good question. Maybe not much.)
We might hypothesize that calibrators build a lot of trust. To know the effects of overstatement and understatement, we need to know a lot about the audience. Advertising presents distinctive issues, and there is a great deal of advertising out there.
(There is a lot of work on this general subject. Claridge has a fact-filled book, Hyberbole in English. Rotfeld and Rotzoli have a defining essay on advertising puffery. A review-essay would be a public service. Anyone want to write one?)
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Role and relationship matter a lot. Consider romance. Understatement on the positive side might not be the best idea: “This has been one of the top 40 percent of dates I have had in the last year.” Calibration on the positive side might not be so good, either. Overstatement on that side might work (but it’s good to be careful).
In romance, overstatement on the negative side is usually a bad idea, unless it is maybe a way of flirting (but here too, be careful; and come to think of it, you can say something similar about overstatement on the positive side).
Or consider a teacher: Understatement on the positive side might be a bit cruel, and overstatement might be a disservice. For a teacher, overstatement on the negative side is ordinarily terrible, though you could imagine a place for it, if you think a moment. (Something similar might be said about an employer.)
Or consider a friend or a work colleague, where overstatement on the positive side, I think, is often a good idea. Or consider an advertiser: Overstatement might be fraud, but it might be within the bounds of the law, and it might well work. It is certainly the coin of the realm. Understatement might be charming, but it might fall flat.
There are plenty of things to say about overstatement, understatement, and calibration with respect to different roles and relationships.
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A personal conviction: Good calibration is always easy to defend, but there is a lot to be said for understatement on the negative side. (Not always, but usually, though rarely about oneself. You usually don’t want to understate your own mistakes. I know, we have to be careful there. Sometimes you do want to do that.)
A good reason for understatement on the negative side is that it tends to promote more of the same, which can reduce toxicity and help create a gentler world. Another reason is that it tends to ensure that people’s feelings are not hurt, or are hurt less.
Yet another reason for understatement on the negative side is that those who are prone to overstatement, on that side, are often mischaracterizing something, or missing something, which means that their overstatement is just a mistake. Understatement on the negative side can guard against such mistakes (though of course accurate calibration is better, if the only goal is to avoid mistakes).
I have a good friend, a law professor, who is immensely well-calibrated on the negative side. I like him and admire him, but I wish that he were a bit more understated. That would be kinder.
On the positive side: There is a lot to be said for overstatement. Not always, and not a whole lot, and rarely if ever about oneself; but about others? Absolutely. The reason is simple: It brightens the day.
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Isn’t Substack incredible? Maybe the greatest thing in the history of things?
"“Hoover did not handle the depression especially well.”
Hoover followed essentially the same policy as FDR, a rapid increase in federal spending. I think that was a mistake — compare the initially similar episode a decade earlier — but I wouldn't expect you to.
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/two-great-depressions-6b8
Perhaps I'm not quite following, but tending to promote more of the same doesn't seem like a great reason for understating negatives in general. One then promotes negatives. A kinder gentler world may well be worth the cost, but isn't that a case-specific, category-specific, or, perhaps, severity-specific inquiry and, if so, doesn't the rule of thumb collapse into the middle category of "calibration" -- i.e., go easy on minor negatives, not so much on major ones, let the tone fit the crime, as it were? One could say the same about the humility point, whereby a habit of understatement guards against mistaken overstatement. But might not a habit of calibration with respect to confidence level suffice without simultaneously inviting too many pulled punches?
Perhaps the ultimate message should be to calibrate more sensitively and not just as to the truth of the matter, and not only as to severity/importance and confidence level besides, but as to social context and effectiveness. Even quite accurate negativity well aligned with the importance of the issue is unwelcome in many contexts (e.g., discussions of politics with the otherwise lovely strangers seated at your table on the cruise ship), and, even in appropriate contexts, in can become tiresome and thus ineffectual.
Another thought: rather than understate negatives, foreground positives. I recall reading many a Sunstein book review in the past where the long first section of the review was devoted to explaining the author's points in a generous manner. If you just read the first part, you'd think it was a rave. The second part would then bring the hammer down, you know, but nicely.