Complexity
It's Complex
The world we live in, it's complex! I did not say that it was complicated.
We cannot know what will the new equilibrium will be, but whatever it will be, it will not be one which was imagined before the virus.
That world has gone.
There is no finding a way back.
Move on!
It’s Complicated
When a politician rails against requests to explain a system or process, our answer to the clear obfuscation will be this.
You said that it was complicated.
You did not say that it was complex.
Therefore your system can be broken down to byte size and understood completely - by almost anyone. If it can't be broken down, then - like most of your governmental projects - you have no idea what you have kicked off; it is bound to collapse, and you are bound to blame someone else.
Inspired by Complexity, an episode of In Our Time from 2013.
6 Dec 2020
Social Intelligence
It is hard to think of Facebook groups as examples of Social Intelligence.
1 December 2020
Outbreaks of Freedom
Seoul nightclubs. Local gatherings. Beach crowds.
Freedom is coming back.
Distancing is being rejected.
The virus is getting a second chance.
Hey, but at least some people feel free!
27 May 2020
The National Debt - a Household Analogy
Here’s a question: should we re-coin the term National Debt to National Dett, so as to separate out what - I have just learned - are two distinct concepts? Or do we just learn to be a bit more sophisticated?
I heard it recently, that to talk of the national debt by way of household analogy is not just obfuscation, it is worse than that, it is a mistake!
I am no economist, but I should have known better. And yet, nationally, we persist with the error. Now in the time of a virus and a coming explosion of national debt, it would be good, I think, if the collective come to that new understanding.
When the government borrows money to ensure that the national economy survives the impact of the lockdown, is it a little more comforting to know that it is in fact largely borrowing from its own people? We are all subsidising each other.
We need some mature conversations.
Inspired by an episode of Keywords For our Time, on BBC Radio4, Michael Rosen.
25 May 2020
The Coming Atomisation
Airlines need the air like whales need the waters - both need to shift through their medium in order to breathe.
When lockdown came along, the airlines were beached. Without government intervention they will die. It feels like the complete atomisation of a great many national airlines is apparently imminent.
But relax, we appear to be witnessing a taxpayer takeover of everything - it’s just that, we are hardly aware of it. Something tremendous has happened. Then again, perhaps the cost of nationalisation will be too high, and a great many will have to pass away on the beaches of Covid-19.
Is there an upside to this impending mass death?
Sure! If fleets were to shrink we might once again experience flying as that rare, expensive and romantic adventure - oh and the planet will breathe again.
Let's face it, this virus is dangerous enough that governments have changed the way we live. Unless we find a vaccine, or acquire an immunity, or accept the inevitability of death, some great structures are going to be either nationalised - or atomised.
18 May 2020 (edited)
The Awful Trade-off
There is a coming public dawning about an awful trade-off - a trade off to be calculated between the quantity of life in the UK (overall), and the quality of life in the UK (overall).
That is the stuff of dystopia!
At this stage in the epidemic it seems the stoic Brits are both compliant with -and supportive of - Government guidelines to stay in lock down. But when we hear - as we did yesterday - that the lock down could go on into 2021, it would seem discussion of the trade off in life is likely to enter the public consciousness by rising to the surface of all the debates.
Will life become a race?
24 April 2020
