Not That George Washington
There was another George Washington and he was also an inventor.
In this case, he developed a version of instant coffee in 1906. Instant coffee, ironically, is also a lightning rod — but only for coffee connoisseurs. George Washington was a serial inventor of lamps, cameras, and other devices.
When it was first released, instant coffee was considered a novelty. However, with World War I, the need for instant coffee by soldiers in combat took off. It was a boon. G. Washington’s wealth accumulated.
A New Zealander named David Strang had actually patented instant coffee in 1890 and a Japanese inventor, Satorish Kato also came up with a formulation. You could say instant coffee is a Strang-er thing (pardon the dad joke).
Names carry meaning by those assigned them and those observing them. Did being named George Washington help with his success? Was he riding on the brand of the first president? Would he have been as successful had he been named something else?
This is similar to other questions that have come up about Dennis’s being more likely to be dentists or kids with shorter names earning more. While the average of people with certain names might have some trend, it’s impossible to predict individual outcomes. We can only live once.
The promise of AI with respect to naming and packaging has two sides:
- It can help us look past our biases so that we assess things based on attributes aligned with our desires, not because of effective naming.
- It can more effectively name and package offerings that tug on the biases of the people consuming them.
These are opposed but with the second point, the biases AI might take advantage of in the future are those that are acceptable to us (in the moment, such as a nature bias) vs those that are not acceptable (racism, prejudice, etc).
