Marilyn vos Savant

I read this very interesting article on Marilyn vos Savant who, at least at one point, held the world's highest recorded IQ. The article says:

When vos Savant politely responded to a reader’s inquiry on the Monty Hall Problem, a then-relatively-unknown probability puzzle, she never could’ve imagined what would unfold: though her answer was correct, she received over 10,000 letters, many from noted scholars and Ph.Ds, informing her that she was a hare-brained idiot.

What ensued for vos Savant was a nightmarish journey, rife with name-calling, gender-based assumptions, and academic persecution.

One of the more polite responses said:

You made a mistake, but look at the positive side. If all those Ph.D.’s were wrong, the country would be in some very serious trouble.

Everett Harman, Ph.D.

U.S. Army Research Institute

I do admit, though, that when I first read the problem I thought, how the hell can the answer be 2/3rds?? Until I realised the host wasn't picking one of the 2 remaining doors arbitrarily but specifically choosing the door with the goat behind it (assuming the initial choice by the contestant was incorrect).

 

Reaching out instead of contacting

Companies nowadays never seem to say, "thank you for contacting us" or similar. Instead, they say, "thank you for reaching out to us" with the phrase "reaching out to us" replacing the word "contact".

I do not approve of this. If one is contacting a company, quite often this will be to make a complaint about the company concerned.  Addressing the complaint by initially saying, "thank you for reaching out to us" seems to be a tactic to try to establish a touchy-feely rapport between themselves and their customers.

"Reaching out" rather than "contact" connotes that the person is asking for help, maybe even after a great deal of hesitancy on their parts e.g. someone feeling suicidal and wanting help. Hence, it's not appropriate phrase to use for when someone is complaining about how unethical or incompetent that company is!

If "reaching out" is used for all forms of contact, then "reaching out" eventually replaces "contact" and presumably if someone feels distressed for whatever reason, then getting this response "thanks for reaching out" will be that much less consoling.

But this "reaching out" replacing "contact" is part of the growing devaluation of the English language.