In my review of Bruce Arians's Quarterback Whisperer, I pointed out an explanation he gave about why incoming head coaches will fire all the remaining assistant coaches instead of retaining some to form part of his future staff. Though I understood what the coach was getting at with his comment, I mentioned that it was more a description rather than an explanation.
I clarified this description-explanation distinction by citing an analogy Gary Taubes made in the book The Case Against Sugar. Taubes’s basic comparison was this: suggesting people gain weight because they take in more calories than they expend is like saying a room becomes increasingly crowded because more people enter than exit. He used this analogy to support his conclusion that the calories-in/calories-out model for weight gain was an insufficient explanation for why people gain weight.
My mind jumped to this analogy because it has been on my mind since I finished Taubes’s book. It highlighted a strange problem I’ve been thinking about recently: the tendency for description to replace explanation.
It happens sometimes, for example, when the train is delayed. Waiting (and cold) passengers are informed that because of the snow, the train will be late. But the train isn’t always late when it snows! Surely, something else is causing the delay (and who knows, reader, we might even get to find out about it someday).
There is a special kind of frustration that emerges from someone who gets a description in place of an explanation. Often, this feeling is exacerbated when it becomes clear that the person delivering the explanation is blissfully unaware that he or she is actually only giving a description. (1)
I’m not sure why this frustration happens (2). One possibility is that the difference in knowledge required for explaining rather than describing is significant. A person able to describe a situation might not be able to explain it. On the other hand, a person able to explain a situation is surely capable of describing it. The difference is in understanding. People who only describe without explaining begin to create the sense that their underlying understanding of a situation is actually very limited.
Perhaps a less likely but more interesting hypothesis is that description without explanation quickly becomes small talk. I suspect what certain people mean when they express frustration with casual chatter about the weather isn’t because these conversations are filled with insights about the science of a low-pressure system; the frustration is in having to spend thirty seconds having someone else read the thermometer aloud to you. The fact that people tell you what you already see and teach you what you already know – this is what we all hate about small talk, right? I suppose in the land of the blind, only the king can describe; to tolerate any other speaker would require an explanation.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Do as I say, not as I do…
I initially felt no need to explain why I thought this happened. But then I realized ending the post here might cause me to do the very thing described in the post!
2. It probably isn't this reason...
One possibility I considered is the role this phenomenon plays in the manifestation of stereotyping (or even discrimination). When one person pigeonholes another based on characteristics unrelated to character, the lack of effort or interest in getting to know and understand the other becomes plainly evident. The instances where a description is provided as an explanation perhaps brings a vestige of these feelings back in the recipient.
