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09 November 2017

The simile of the doomed flight

Figure: Front landing gear of a crashed DC-10. Source: https://www.baaa-acro.com/crash/crash-douglas-dc-10-10-chicago-273-killed (Accessed: 15 Dec 2020)

[This is the easy part of a longer critical essay I am currently working on. It will take some time to get it properly published.]

Imagine you are on a flight from Toronto to London when suddenly the whole aircrew disappears. There are 100 passengers on board -- women, men, and children --, none of whom knows how to fly an airplane. What do you do?

"Well," you say. "Obviously, the goal is to land the plane safely. So you want to find someone who can do just that. And certainly, some of the passengers would know a little more than others about flying an airplane or at least about communicating with air traffic control. So you have to pick one of those."

But there is no evidence to suggest that the person who makes the most confident claims, or speaks the most eloquent, or shouts the loudest, or the longest, or the most pitiful, does actually have the greatest competence or the best ideas(1,2).

"Well," you say. "You would have to trust your judgement."

All right then, imagine there are two passengers who claim to "know a little more than others". A 61-year old female banker who wants to continue on to London and a 45-year old male school teacher who insists on turning the plane around towards Toronto. Whose course of action should be taken?

"Well," you say. "There would have to be a vote."

All right then, collective decision making it is. But who should be allowed to vote? Everybody? Everybody but the children? Everybody with children? Those between thirty-one and sixty-five years of age? Those who claim to "know a little more than others"? Should it be one person, one vote? Should the vote be weighted? But weighted by what?

What characteristics should make you eligible to vote? And how do we measure them? And who should decide on these characteristics and their measurement? And who should decide on who should decide on these characteristics and their measurement? And so on.

These are the questions of the democratic condition -- from citizens electing a prime minister, to a group choosing amongst policy options, to a committee selecting a new boss, colleague, or subordinate. Collectively we wouldn't elect an idiot leader, opt for a disastrous plan, or pick a jerk for a co-worker. Or would we?

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."(3) Churchill's conclusion implies that on the whole we cannot do better than democracy.

Is it true? Or have we just become intellectually lazy, bureaucratically paralyzed passengers on a doomed flight?

NOTES AND REFERENCES
(1) "We propose that those with limited knowledge in a domain suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach mistaken conclusions and make regrettable errors, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it." Kruger and Dunning (1999)
(2) Plato (ca. 375 B.C.E.), The Republic: The Simile of the Cave: 521b: "But what we need is that the only men to get power should be men who do not love it[.]"
(3) Winston Churchhill (1947): http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament-bill#column_206 (Accessed: 9 Nov 2017)

27 April 2017

Why I write

Figure: A sheep with questions. Source: Michael Baumann (2016)

Someone recently asked me why I write. It is a good question(1).

In 1946 George Orwell wrote a short essay to answer it(2). He proposed "four great motives for writing" that exist in every writer -- sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.

Where do I stand?

I am an only child and an introvert by nature and by nurture(3). Given a choice between being with people and being alone (with my lovely wife), I can think of no situation where I would choose people. Consequently, I have little need for external recognition, and that is what Orwell's "sheer egoism" really is(4). I also have no desire to tell other people what to think, to push a "political purpose".

Aesthetics, on the other hand, is important to me. Not necessarily phonetic aesthetics, but the aesthetics of a good story or a good argument(5). There is beauty in having formulated a thought in clear and concise language. An expression with no uncertain meaning, a sentence with no unnecessary words, a paragraph with no unnecessary sentences(6).

I believe my strongest Orwellian motive by far is "historical impulse": I write to make sense of reality. I write to clarify my own thoughts to myself. I write to examine my own personality(7). But to be sure: Although writing brings me great joy, good writing is hard work, and even the most disciplined amongst us often fail(8).

But if I am writing for myself, why do I publish?

Publishing, especially publishing with no editor and no peer review, enforces the discipline to be concise and to finish a thought. It also enforces intellectual rigour with no shortcuts in the argument. Moreover, because I mostly write on weekends and always post on Thursdays, publishing enforces a certain patience, which I have come to enjoy.

My readers tell me that they like what they read. They say it makes them think. As an intellectual this pleases me, for I do want to make people think -- think before they speak, think before they act, think before they vote.

Maybe, after all, I am not writing solely for myself. Maybe the absence of political purpose is a political purpose in itself.

NOTES AND REFERENCES
(1) I was a terrible writer until I was twenty, and a bad writer until I was forty. My school-day writings shall only be remembered by this abomination: "And they couldn't find his damned legs." I stole it from First Blood. The movie, not the book. My late apologies to Dr. Brunhilde Ulamec, my Grade 12 German teacher.
(2) George Orwell (1946), Why I write: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part47 (Accessed: 27 Apr 2017)
(3) In a society that lacks civility as ours does, introversion is a form of retreat.
(4) Compare the pitiful number of clicks even my most popular writings receive to the number thumbs-ups of even the tritest piece from LinkedIn-fluencers. If ostentation is my goal, I have failed miserably.
(5) The boldest first sentence I ever read in a novel comes from Anthony Burgess (1980), Earthly Powers: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." The finest logical argument I ever read comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein (1922), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (http://www.kfs.org/jonathan/witt/ten.html (Accessed: 27 Apr 2017)): Proposition "5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
(6) William Shrunk Jr. and E.B. White (1979), The Elements of Style (Fourth Edition): Rule 17. Omit needless words.
(7) Socrates's words in Plato (ca. 399 B.C.E.), Apology: "[T]he unexamined life is not worth living."
(8) To paraphrase Blaise Pascal (1656): "I wrote you a long letter, because I didn't have time to write a short one." If I am writing a 500-word piece, and it doesn't take me at least two whole days, I am not working hard.

09 March 2017

Budget Day or The Tale of the Villagers and the Pie

Every year on her birthday, the queen would send a royal pie to every village in the country. It wasn't a big pie. It wasn't a fancy pie. And it didn't even look royal.

Every year the villagers would gather on the village green, and every year the mayor cut the royal pie so that everyone could enjoy their fair piece.

And so she proceeded to hand a piece to the baker.

"Hold on," said the baker. "That's a rather small piece. I am the baker. I bake bread for the village. And without bread the villagers would all starve. I deserve a bigger piece of pie."

"You're right," said the mayor. And she proceeded to hand the piece to the cobbler.

"Hold on," said the cobbler. "That's a rather small piece. I am the cobbler. I make the shoes for the village. And without shoes the villagers could not go about their business. I deserve a bigger piece of pie."

"You're right," said the mayor again. And she proceeded to hand the piece to the doctor.

"Hold on," said the doctor. "That's a rather small piece. I am the doctor. I take care of the sick in the village. And without my care the sick would die. I deserve a bigger piece of pie."

And on and on it went. The butcher, the grocer, the blacksmith, the farmer, the teacher, the barber, the soldier, the tailor, the lawyer, the sailor, the banker, the builder, nobody wanted to take the piece.

"That's enough!" cried the mayor. "Everybody wants a bigger piece of the pie. But if any one of you gets a bigger piece that means that somebody else must get a smaller one."

"Mayor!!" the villagers cried in unison. "You should have gotten us a bigger pie. And since you didn't do your job, you should get the smaller piece."

"Hold on," interrupted the bookkeeper. "We had the same situation last year."

"Aha!!" the villagers cried again in unison. "And then what did we do?"

The bookkeeper studied his notes and said: "The philosopher told us that we are all selfish, and that the mayor's job is to distribute the pie fairly amongst the villagers, just as it is the queen's job is to distribute the pies fairly amongst the mayors."

"It all doesn't look fair to me!!" cried the villagers a third time in unison. "Let's ask the philosopher again."

"The philosopher?" said the mayor. "We cut his piece of pie last year. He doesn't live here anymore."

02 March 2017

When sabotage and standard operating procedure become indistinguishable

In 1944, the United States Office of Strategic Services produced a 32-page document titled "Simple Sabotage Field Manual"(1). The purpose of the classified booklet was "to characterize simple sabotage, to outline its possible effects, and to present suggestions for inciting and executing it" in enemy-held territory.

The manual goes on to give specific suggestions. There are sections on how to set fire to a building, how to flood a warehouse, how to dilute gasoline fuel to the point where no combustion will occur -- water, wine, urine. There are instructions on how to ruin a water turbine, how to inconvenience enemy personnel travelling by train, and how to make the message in an enemy telegram ambiguous -- bring troop levels to a "miximum". There are even instructions on how to disrupt the showing of propaganda films by using "two or three dozen large moths in a paper bag".

Then section "(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production" recommends the following acts of sabotage:

(1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

(2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate "patriotic" comments.

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible -- never less than five.

(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

(5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

(7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision -- raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

When I first read these proposed acts of sabotage from the Second World War(1), I was amused at how much they resemble the bureaucratic standard operating procedure of the modern university. My amusement faded quickly when I remembered that the evolution of any organization -- a business, an economy, an education system, democracy, the nation state, a culture -- may create the conditions for its own decline and extinction(2).

The purpose of bureaucracy is, of course, to provide safeguards against two hazards, stupidity (taking excessive risks, missing obvious opportunities) and corruption (abusing the office for personal gain, indulging in subjective preferences). Consequently, it could be argued that standard operating procedure itself provides safeguards against bureaucratic sabotage. From personal experience I must say that I have never seen a bureaucratic saboteur exposed. Does that mean that they don't exist or that they are deterred by the safeguards?

Or is it that a bureaucratic saboteur simply cannot be differentiated from an overzealous administrator?

NOTES AND REFERENCES
(1) Office of Strategic Services (1944), Simple Sabotage Field Manual: https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/CleanedUOSSSimpleSabotage_sm.pdf (Accessed: 5 Mar 2020)
(2) E.g. Oswald Spengler (1918), Der Untergang des Abendlandes; Marten Scheffer et al. (2009), Early-warning signals for critical transitions http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7260/pdf/nature08227.pdf (Accessed: 5 Mar 2020)