Interviewed by Leah Hoffmann

Interviewed by Leah Hoffmann

2/14/2006 @ 12:00PM

The Sociologist: Peter Bearman

To me, money is…Because I am a sociologist, I conducted a survey to get the answer to this question. Twenty-three percent of my respondents said that money was a “mixed blessing.” Eleven percent thought that money was “potent.” The rest of the people I talked to–pretty much everyone in New York City–thought that money is always a better choice than cookies for their doorman’s holiday bonus.

My last significant purchase was…a “Neuro-Fuzzy” rice maker. The fuzzy is the logic that this machine uses to cook rice, not the way the rice comes out when it is done. It is the kind of logic that people use in their everyday life to get things done. So this machine simulates a person making rice. It makes better rice than people because even if it is a simulated person, it is a machine. If that seems contradictory, it is not, because fuzzy set theory allows for the machine to be a machine and not a machine at the same time. But that does not matter. What matters is that this fuzzy logic rice maker makes soft rice. I’m not sure what the neuro part of the neuro-fuzzy means, but I think it means that the more you use this machine, the more it thinks about you. I guess that makes sense–since we got this machine, I’ve done little but think about it.

Peter Bearman is the chair of the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. His current research interests include the genetic influence on social behavior, the structure of global trade networks and the structure of Italian politics. He is the author, most recently, of Doormen: Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries.

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