On Determinism

After my last blog on free will, I said I’d write one on Determinism – which may be quite prudent, as I think Determinism is a word that people mostly misuse.  Determinism, in the sense implied by some kind of universal destiny, means information regarding the laws of physics suffices to determine the entirety of the universe from start to finish. Given the laws the universe has - it seems its entire story from start to finish followed (and will continue to follow) a path that would be entirely predictable and mappable to a series of deterministic computations if we had complete knowledge of it.  This is Steven Wolfram's conjecture. What Stephen Wolfram is basically saying, is that if given enough execution time the majority of relatively small algorithms can compute everything that can be computed.

If Wolfram is correct in his assumption (and I believe he is) then this means that any given (finite) physical pattern or structure can be described by a physical theory - and by 'theory' we mean it is defined as an algorithm or function.  Admittedly Wolfram’s ideas are conjectural at present, but if they are right it means that there aren't any finite objects out there that cannot be described using a theory. With enough computation time a theory has the scope to reach a point at which it will describe any stated physical system.

In theory, determinism is an even trickier subject than free will, because to most people ‘determinism’ means something like ‘The way things will be is a result of how things are and the work of natural laws’. In other words, if we know exactly how things are at the present moment and the laws that govern how the universe works, then we can derive how things will be at some future time.  This kind of definition is something you would do well to forget about when you’re considering free will and determinism, because you’re left with a determinism contingent on human knowledge.  That is, you can know X+1 only if X contrives to fit a mental pattern.  I’m going to show you how I think this topic is best dealt with, but before I do, it is worth bringing up an important distinction regarding how our minds work. 

The way we describe the universe is through the construction of terms and ideas based on our physical perceptions of the world (the macroscopic world).  What we don't have is an adequate way to describe the universe in terms that would give a proper definition to determinism.  We don't even have a proper method of describing the quantum world - even then we resort to using terms implicitly related to the macroscopic world (particles, waves, position, locality, state, spin, collision, energy, etc). 

Imagine the problem in trying to define a universe in terms other than our spatio-temporal terms used.  We find all we have is a reality that’s apprehended from the first person perspective of the physical world.  That's why I think determinism is opaque – words limit us to terms related to the physical.  The best way I've found to circumvent this is to describe the universe in a completely different way.  Every physical system can in principle be described in terms of computation - so what we have to do is imagine the entire universe in terms of pattern, not physical structure.  This is no problem, because it requires a hypothetical description of the universe in terms of pattern storage* (a very large pattern - but small compared with the whole system of mathematics).  So what we can do is define the pattern of the entire universe in binary 1s and 0s.  No doubt this is a far too complex task for any human – it would require execution times that beggar belief - so the easiest thing to do is imagine you are a being who can traverse the entire pattern from outside of the universe (let's call the entire pattern P).  Now determinism becomes clearer, because with the required execution time (it's not literally time, of course) to search the pattern we can observe its determinism. 

Absolute and Relative Determinism

I’ve said that determinism is hard to define.  One of the reasons is that we only get to grips with what absolute determinism is (as per my above definition of an overall determinism) if we can conceive of relative determinism too.  This, as you’ll see, is the key to understanding the universe in terms of an overall determinism – and it is an understanding that is desperately needed, because many believe that modern knowledge of quantum randomness, the Aspect experiments or any of Bell's theorems has led to the conclusion that determinism has been given its redundancy notice, because of the random agitations.  But as we’ll see, this is a misunderstanding.  I will also show why both freedom and determinism are not single qualities that can be put up against each other – they are, in fact, both scaled in a spectrum. 

On first showing, whatever the mind is, it seems to bring about a mechanism that belies its real deterministic nature.   The first way to correct the mistakes is to frame the word ‘determinism’ in its proper context – as a spectrum, not as a fixed quality.  To do this we have to identity the fact that determinism can be thought of in terms of the relative and the absolute.  At the human level indeterminism-determinism is a spectrum related to knowledge.  Here’s a simple way to look at it; if I drop an apple the algorithm that calculates the motion is deterministic because we know what will happen - the apple will head towards the centre of the earth.  If I attempt to track a particle in fluid subjected to Brownian motion then the algorithm that calculates the motion is indeterministic because it cannot predict the pattern it will take.  That is what I mean by relative determinism.  If you know a pattern it can be said to be relatively deterministic, if you do not it can be said to be relatively indeterministic.  This, of course, changes over time (or it can do).  If one day we work out the random patterns in Brownian motion (I doubt we will) then we could call it relatively deterministic because its patterns could then be mapped to a deterministic algorithm.

That was relative determinism.  Absolute determinism is different.  For quick shorthand, the truth about absolute determinism can be summarised thus: “The universe will do what the universe will do” – meaning, there is an inevitability about nature’s laws that shows it will run its course.  Everything within the universe, every thought, every dream, every stone rolling down the hill, every burst of wind, every formation of a planet, every nucleosythesis, every galaxy, every cosmic expansion is all nature running its course, and that course is entirely deterministic.  There is no way to affect change on nature’s plan - she is our sister, and everything we do to believe we have changed the course of nature was really only part of the deterministic inevitability.  In other words, nature has a script already written – and your conceptions of randomness, unpredictability, surprise, and cause and effect alterations are not in any way an alteration of that script – they are simply pages of that script being revealed to us.  That is what I mean by absolute determinism.  Nature’s story is being turned page by page – and this story is underpinned by forces beyond our control.  To say we could affect nature’s overall determinism is about as silly as saying that a drop of water in a waterfall could stop the power of gravity. 

The difference between our normal conceptions of nature and this conception of determinism is that now, instead of viewing those things in terms of the spatio-temporal, we are now considering the script in terms of a pattern of 1s and 0s.  We think we are uncertain about determinism because we deal with nature in terms of its smaller constituent parts, not as a whole.  With mathematics and computation nature tells us something very relevant here; providing that the search space is linked together in a nexus, with indefinite amounts of execution time, we can map anything into a descriptive algorithm or function, giving us a pattern.  We could do this with nature if we had access to it from outside, and could observe the entire pattern.  

But here’s what the objectors are missing; it is because we have incomplete knowledge from inside that we have radically unpredictable events, and it is because we have radically unpredictable events that the indeterminism and determinism spectrum comes in from the inside.  If we had complete knowledge of the universe then its absolute deterministic path would be deterministic to us in the second (the relative) sense too, as well as in the absolute sense described above.  If we define indeterminism as a physical system that cannot be described with an algorithm or function, then there are no (finite) systems that are indeterminate – because all systems can potentially be calculated from a basic equation if we have access to the search space and allow the necessary execution time.  This is where the practical and the theoretical cross swords.  In terms of being a large mathematical object, the universe is a closed system, and as such there is no theoretical reason why anything in the universe cannot be mapped into a descriptive algorithm or function. 

But once we get into the realms of practicability, things change, for we know that systems within nature are too intractable for us human beings to map.  As well as Brownian motion, a good example is the randomness of quantum mechanics – it is almost certain that the randomness of quantum mechanics will always be indeterministic to us.  In wave mechanics, quantum physics suggests that because the wave packet of a particular particle has non-zero amplitude the position of that particle is uncertain to us.  Increasing the number of sine waves gives a ‘compression’ effect which enables us to detect the position of a particle, because the momentum of the particle requires wave number probability.  But increasing waves inhibits the ability to measure momentum.  A wave with a precise position has an indefinite momentum, and a wave with a definite wavelength has no precise position, so for humans uncertainty looms large because we cannot know both the precise position and precise momentum of a particle.

Couple that with the fact that wave packets (like clouds) don’t have single velocities and positions and we soon know that we are observers of limited cognitive and experimental resource, where a kernel of uncertainty must loom large.  Quantum mechanics doesn’t undermine determinism, it merely offers formal tokens that explain why in a universe of overall determinism we are stuck somewhere in the spectrum of relative indeterminism and relative determinism.  That is why quantum randomness, the Aspect experiments or any of Bell's theorems do not impinge on whether the universe is deterministic. 

Some objectors ask; How can we be sure the universe is deterministic?  Here’s what the objectors are not understanding. We know the universe is absolutely deterministic because what we theorise about determinism at an absolute level is based on our practical perceptions of determinism and indeterminism at a relative level.  We generate and map deterministic paths all the time, just at a much smaller scale, and with observations of uniformity at the classical level.  Once we think of nature in terms of mathematical patterns, all we need to do is inductively stretch out the conceptual logic trail to the furthest contingency barrier and we would eventually arrive at a final point of determinism - just as in smaller terms we can generate more simplistic forms in a relatively short computation time.  You see, to reiterate, in the determinism/indeterminism spectrum, the description is subjective because it is a model that recognises that some systems are less humanly manageable than others.  That is why we are always on the pursuit of more knowledge – it is this indicator that tells us we haven’t yet arrived at a full understanding of nature*. 

In summary, unfortunately the problem with this debate has been that many people are quick to change the definition of determinism to apply overly simplistic theories of cause and effect or as a rival theory to the perennially fuzzily defined ‘free will’.  The indeterminism-determinism spectrum comes into play because with our limited capacity some systems are “more deterministic” than others - and that is why ‘fully indeterministic’ and ‘fully deterministic’ are expressions of extreme ends of a vast cosmological and mathematical spectrum, and why, with complete knowledge of the universe it would be, by definition, mappable to a complete deterministic algorithm.

* Footnote: Make sure you're clear of one thing though - this concept of pattern storage is only one way (of many) to describe nature - but it's the best way to describe it to show it is deterministic.  We needed to find this way because nature cannot be described deterministically in those macroscopic terms.  With the above terms, it can. 

On Free Will

Free will debates seem to come up every five minutes somewhere on the Internet, and seemingly always with no resolution or agreement.  If the issue had been resolved unambiguously then we wouldn’t still be debating it quite so rigorously centuries later.  Ask yourself why a subject never reaches agreement and you'll usually find one of two reasons; either the question is unanswerable, due to some kind of limited human capacity or an inability to frame the question in the right sense; or else category mistakes are being made in the terms and definitions being applied in discourse.  Free will may be one of those philosophical issues about which both reasons apply.  Even if we accept a limitation on how far we can get with the question, it seems to me that the ambiguity of definition kills the debate every time - particularly as virtually nobody seems to insist on rectifying this before the debate ensues properly.  Clearly free will means different things for different people, so the extent to which we can be said to have free will may be similar to the extent to which we say animals have self-awareness – it’s a spectrum, not a definitive ‘Yes we do have it’ or ‘No we don’t’. 

Regarding debates about free will, my first piece of advice is, don’t believe anyone who says we have ‘free will’ until they have first told you what they mean by free will, and what being ‘free’ means in a universe that drives organisms thermodynamically without the slightest reliance on any human thought to do so.  I find the people who declare confidently that we do have free will are usually the ones who’ve given the least consideration to what they mean by free will.  In order to understand why the free will issue is so contentious, we need to see why so many people misunderstand free will, and why their definitions are so fuzzy.  When those who believe we have free will make claims about free will, they usually mean that what we have is something like ‘The capacity to direct one's actions’.  The trouble is, that leads to a further meta question about what it means to direct one’s actions – and then one could take that explanation and ask a further meta question about the explanation behind the explanation, and so on.  This is one of the theoretical problems with this kind of debate; it always engenders layer upon layer of accretive questioning – it’s like peeling the skins of an onion, where each layer of skin represents a fresh way of interfacing with reality.  That’s why free will is a spectrum, not a binary ‘black or white’ problem, and why one can’t logically just say ‘We do have free will’.  . 

Ironically, the grounds on which people claim we don’t have free will are often based on the same kind of faulty reasoning.  Like most issues under debate, free will, irreducible complexity, the existence of a soul, Intelligent Design, or topics of a similar nature, people arbitrarily pick a lens through which to describe a conceptual object, without subjecting their description to proper examination.  Let’s take free will and give it a less ambiguous definition than ‘The capacity to direct one's actions’.  Let’s just call it free choice, by which we mean simply the ability for the human mind to make choices.  Some philosophers say we don’t really have free choice, and the reason they give is that the brain isn’t really making choices, it is only biochemistry at work behind the scenes (i.e. neurons and trillions of connections). 

That’s the big mistake I referred to above; one cannot just choose a particular conceptual layer like the level of biochemistry at which to deny the integrity of a process like free choice.  When told "it's all just biochemistry", why not just deny the integrity of biochemistry by asserting there is no such thing as biochemistry because it's all just quantum physics?  Similarly, why not just deny the integrity of quantum physics by asserting there is no such thing as quantum physics because it's all just mathematics and probability?  No, it just won’t do us any good to think this way; despite the many layers of reality, there clearly is such a thing as choice; I mean, I assume no one forced you to read this blog.  Your choosing to click on the link is a perfect indication that choice exists in nature.  My mind conceives it as a choice in the same way that your mind conceives it as a choice, just as it conceives a riot as ‘violence’ or a cruel remark as ‘upsetting’ or an innocent man going to jail as ‘unjust’ or the weather as ‘inclement’.  At some level these things clearly do exist.

So, we humans do seem to make choices - just as we do seem to observe the weather.  If you want to say we don’t make choices because the brain is reducible to constituent parts, you could equally say that there is no such thing as violence or upset or the weather because everything is reducible to quantum physics.  Clearly, then, through this lens, choice, violence, upset and the weather are all ‘existent’ within nature.  To show this, let’s just consider further two of those things – the weather and choice.  If the weather and our choices are both happening in nature then on what grounds can we say the weather exists and free choice doesn't?  Take a hurricane as an example. The causal factors in a hurricane are connected to everything else in the universe's seamless whole.  A hurricane lies in cycle of evaporation, which lies in complex interactions amongst trillions of molecules, which lies in complex interactions in the quantum world, which lies in complex interactions that extend right the way back to the governing laws in nature's blueprint (however that came about).  So we have no trouble agreeing that a hurricane is part of nature, just like all other physical events and laws are part of nature. 

It must be observed that we feel the same about choices as we do hurricanes – you won’t find many people who think that hurricanes don’t exist, and you won’t find many people who think that choices don’t exist.  Here’s why.  A choice is made by a brain, which is made up of neurons and trillions of connections, which, just like the hurricane, is reducible to complex interactions in the quantum world, which lies in complex interactions that extend right the way back to the governing laws in nature's blueprint.  So, similar to the hurricane, we have no trouble agreeing that choice is part of nature, just like all other physical events and laws are part of nature.  There is no logical reason to accept that a hurricane exists yet deny choices exist.

Under those conditions, I don’t think anyone seriously doubts that the mind has the faculty to make choices.  What muddies the water is that the free will proponents seem to be arguing for more – they seem to be saying not just that we have the ability to make choices, but that we are free in a deeper sense, by which they mean we have some kind of overall freedom that permits us to create our own destiny within nature.  Because of this, the perception I have of people’s interpretations of free will is of two kinds – a soft version (as per my definition of choices) and a hard version (as per our overall freedom that permits us to create our own destiny within nature).

The soft version of free will; We have a mind that has the ability to make choices

The hard version of free will: We have a mind with overall freedom that permits us to create our own destiny within nature, irrespective of nature’s overall trajectory.  

I think the soft version of free will does exist, and I think the hard version doesn’t.  Later I’ll explain how I think the ability to make choices is relevant to our psychology, but first I’ll just say this; you might be wondering how we can make choices yet not create our own destiny within nature.  I think the answer is the same as the hurricane; both our choices and the hurricane exist in nature, but both do not alter the overall destiny of nature, because they are part of that very same destiny. 

The hard version of free will doesn’t exist, and it is for the same reason that the soft version does exist; an overall freedom that permits us to create our own destiny within nature is directly contradictory to nature having its own destiny.  In other words, nature can have a destiny that includes hurricanes and human choices, but it cannot have a destiny that includes an alternative human destiny, because then it would be a nature that doesn’t exist.  We cannot depart from nature’s cosmic plan in the way that a boy can disobey his mother – our destiny is the same as nature’s destiny – we cannot opt out of it or change it or cease from being a part of it anymore than the wetness of the ocean can cease from being part of that ocean.

It is because a hurricane is part of nature that I think the hard version of free will is an illusion.  The universe is a complex nexus of physical interactions that will run an inevitable course irrespective of human will – and this includes the physical agitations that make up the human mind, including our choices.  With the soft version of free will we can observe that choices do seem to be a genuinely true aspect of human cognition in that we make them, and our making those choices turns out to be part of nature’s overall destiny.  Perhaps for clarity's sake we could say that choices appear to exist in conjunction with perception and experience, and that they are an evolutionary utility that places nature's cosmological inevitability in the background of experience. To use an analogy, it is rather like actors on a stage playing out improvisations while all the time being aware that the overall performance and plot pertains to a script that they are not free to change ultimately.

The hard version of free will is a different animal altogether – but to see this I am going to have to explain what it means for the universe to create its own destiny and how it does it.  The thing that undermines the idea of humans creating their own destiny is that the universe has a destiny that engulfs any sense of individual or collective human destiny.  It wasn’t too hard to accept that both soft free will and a hurricane exist in as useful a sense as anything at all in the physical universe can be said to exist.  But the cul-de-sac remains in front of us, because the grounds on which I would say hard free will is not a fact and soft free will or a hurricane is a fact is that the latter is not inconsistent with nature's inevitable trajectory and the former is.  In other words, a cycle of evaporation, choices, a hurricane, violence, upset, justice, and inclemency can be part of the inevitable destiny nature is playing out, whereas hard free will cannot, because one is never 'free' from that cosmic trajectory to create a destiny other than the one nature has already been deterministically blueprinted to create.

Here’s the contradiction with hard free will; it either is part of the trajectory of nature’s destiny - in which case, it is not really acting in any kind of freedom separate from the trajectory, making it not hard free will but soft free will.  Or it is not part of the cosmic trajectory - in which case it is claimed to be no longer part of nature, where, at that point it falls down by not being definable (as per my initial request for a definition).  Either way, the idea of hard free will gets us in philosophical trouble. If nature has an inevitable destiny then choices and a hurricane can logically be part of that universal story without any contradiction. However, if hard free will is part of the universal story then we have a contradiction because it is not really acting in any kind of freedom separate from the trajectory of nature – so it is wrong to call it ‘free’, because by ‘free’ the free will proponent means that nature permits us an implicit ability to act outside any inevitable destiny that nature may hold over us.  

Just to be clear, by “nature has an inevitable story”, I mean that if hypothetically we could step outside of her and watch the story unfold we would see her take an absolutely deterministic path.  Everything within the universe, every thought, every dream, every stone rolling down the hill, every burst of wind, every formation of a planet, every nucleosynthesis, every galaxy, and moreover, the entire cosmic expansion is all nature running its course, and that course is entirely deterministic (deterministic in the absolute sense). If you knew every fact about the universe it would be a story from start to finish that couldn't have been any other way because its laws facilitate this particular path and destiny it has taken.  I don't mean this with regard to any fundamental laws of logic, I mean only that it is nonsense to state the universe we happen to be in could (given all its laws) take another path other than the one it is on. Hence we have the ability to make choices, but not create our own destiny, because nature’s destiny subsumes our own. 

As an overall summary, nature is deterministic, and that determinism brings about human brains that make choices. The universe has an overall cosmic destiny that pays no regard to the human feelings that are part of that destiny. We simply are required to assent to a definition of free will that does define the mind's mental precipitations - something like "Alignment between the self, the desires, and the actions through the ability of the human mind to make choices” would do, I think. That's how the universe can be ultimately deterministic yet bring about creatures that make choices and have emotional will.

In my next Blog I will cover the topic of Determinism

Obama's Higher Education Misjudgement

I like Barak Obama - I really do.  He mostly seems bright and sincere.  But yesterday I was a bit bemused to hear him say that he wants universities to lower their tuition fees so that “everybody in America can go to college”.  It's the kind of statement that indicates a lack of insight and a lack of sincerity on Obama's part – and I don’t believe those accusations are easily directed at Barak Obama, which makes me think he is engaging in disingenuousness  by vote-mongering to catch the attention of those aspirational Americans who probably feel they are just below the university threshold. 

Let's take the reductio ad absurdum approach and scrap tuition fees altogether, does Obama honestly think that universities could cope with a mass enrolment, 30 or 40 times in excess of the usual number?  I'm guessing not, so why does he imagine lowering the tuition fees will suddenly change the ethos of universities?  It won't. 

But what is the ethos?  Well firstly, the reason student numbers are not higher is not because of the number that cannot afford university - it is because the university capacity extends to a limit.  It does so firstly because university places ought to be sought after, secondly because it is good to have a selection system in which many do not get enrolled, and thirdly because a surfeit of university degrees invokes devaluation on each individual degree in the employment market. 

Here’s another issue; A business that wants a monopoly will keep their prices high, and take a hit on the unsold seats or places.  Theatres are good examples of this - they don't lower their prices nearer the event, and as a consequence they accept empty seats as part of the protocol related to selling high priced seats.  Universities price discriminate according to academic records, cultural background, class and parents' earnings.  John and Jack might both be studying physics - but John could pay 15% more than Jack pays. So while the theatre sells the majority of its seats at full price (save for concessions) and has a few empty ones on the night of the performance, the university fills empty class spaces at lower prices while still charging full prices for those students’ parents that have the means to pay.

Lowering the tuition fees can help some get into college who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to afford it – but the idea that “everybody in America can go to college” is meaningless on two levels; firstly, as I said, a country in which everyone is a university or college student would bring about devaluation in higher education while at the same time reducing the employment market for the young.  And secondly, universities and colleges are not built with a limitless capacity – they are built with, give or take a few, the capacity for just about the sort of numbers that do currently wish to enrol in higher education. 

I said that the statement “everybody in America can go to college” is meaningless on the two main levels. It is meaningful on one level, though; it’s exactly the kind of thing politicians love to say, because it is exactly the kind of thing that the electorate likes to hear.

Mitt Romney: Crypto-Jingoist?

Having heard Mitt Romney's latest Republican nomination speech, I don’t want to sound overblown by making allusions to the fact that Mormons used to be an officially racist cult, nor that at any time before 1978 black people were not permitted to receive the priesthood.  Neither do I want to be crass and say you can take the Mormon out of Utah but you can't always take the racism out of the Mormon, because I do try to see the best in people.

But when I hear words like “When the world needs someone to do really big stuff, you need an American” I cringe at the thought of such a man obtaining any power on the global scale. 

No, when the world needs someone to do really big stuff, it needs someone with intelligence, ingenuity and knowledge of the 'stuff' that needs doing.  The arbitrarily demarcated geographical border isn't relevant to whether the person can do big stuff.  The statement “When the world needs someone to do really big stuff, you need an American,” underlies a feeling that sounds a lot like racism to me.  Substitute the word 'American' with 'White man' and do you think his political career would progress any further?  No, you'd see 'Romney is a Racist' on the front page of every American Newspaper.  There isn't much of a distinction between what Romney said and any of the following:

1) “When the world needs someone to do really big stuff, you need a male"

2) “When the world needs someone to do really big stuff, you need a white person"

3) “When the world needs someone to do really big stuff, you need a young person”

4) “When the world needs someone to do really big stuff, you need a straight person"

There's not really that much difference in the implications related to each of these statements and what Mitt Romney said.  They all have an underlying hint of discrimination. 1 discriminates on the grounds of gender, 2 discriminates on the grounds of skin colour, 3 discriminates on the grounds of age, 4 discriminates on the grounds of sexual orientation - and Mitt Romney's quote discriminates on the grounds of the arbitrarily demarcated geographical border discrimination known as jingoistic nationalism.

Romney would sure like you to believe that what he actually means is that he’s committed to the ‘American ideal’ as adumbrated by the sometimes impressive Condoleezza Rice.  Somehow, though, I think the discriminatory tendencies run beneath the surface - and when they rear their head with claims like ‘To do really big stuff, you need an American’ I suspect that what lies beneath that surface is a jingoist at heart.  

Nick Clegg's 'Tax The Rich' Fallacy

Nothing makes my job easier than when a political party leader I find to be a pompous, incompetent twit brings up a contentious issue and gets it completely wrong.  That’s what Nick Clegg has done today with his ‘Wealth Tax’ nonsense.  Clegg wants to indulge in a bit of quick-fix tax accumulation by going after the rich to ease the current fiscal crisis.  Big mistake!

Assuming the way to boost the economy is exactly as he suggests (it isn’t, but that’s another day’s blogging for yours truly), it is still quite literally impossible to raise revenue by the method of taxation Clegg suggests.  Nick Clegg imagines a very wealthy Mr Pomsonby-Smythe type of chap whom he can help offload some of his millions to stimulate the economy.  It’s quite disconcerting that minds like that have any power in our nation.  Here’s what Nick Clegg misses.  When the Government relieves Mr Pomsonby-Smythe of a chunk of his fortune, a bunch of 1s and 0s get transferred across a few bank computers.  So far nothing about the economy has significantly changed.  The only really significant consequence of taking money from Mr Pomsonby-Smythe and giving it to the Government is that the Government will use it to consume more goods and services.  But if the Government is going to consume more goods and services, then somebody else must consume fewer.

Who might that be? Well it depends on what the Government spends the money on. The first thing that probably will happen is that when Mr Pomsonby-Smythe withdraws his chunk of money from the bank to make his tax payment to the Treasury, the bank makes fewer loans, interest rates rise, and then someone cancels a holiday, or postpones the purchase of a car or caravan, or abandons a business that was getting off the ground.  They are the people who bear the burden of the tax – those who rely on the banks for capital investment.  The tax on Mr Pomsonby-Smythe (who, by the way, most likely consumes no more or fewer resources because of this action) is really a tax in disguise at the borrowers or spenders’ end of the market.

What Nick Clegg is doing is confusing green pieces of paper with real resources. He thinks the Government can somehow acquire real resources just by taking Mr Pomsonby-Smythe’s money.  That doesn’t mean that taxing the rich cannot work – it just means you cannot do it the Clegg-way. What you have to do is do it in a way that encourages (or induces) the rich to consume less or produce more. Taxing Mr Pomsonby-Smythe doesn’t generate any more money for the economy, it merely reduces somebody else’s consumption stream.  I’m sure Mr Clegg has no idea whose consumption stream it will reduce, so he cannot say whether the policy is a net gain on resources or a net loss (if it benefits people richer than Mr Pomsonby-Smythe it will even increase wealth inequality by a bit, although that’s somewhat trivial)

If you transfer n amount from Mr Pomsonby-Smythe to the Treasury Mr Clegg would call it Government revenue.  But it’s important to understand that only one of two things can happen as a consequence. Either a) the Government spends no more than before, in which case nothing of any significance has changed; Or b) the Government decides that because it has more “revenue” it can increase its spending, in which case someone else’s consumption stream will shrink.  That someone else is not Mr Pomsonby-Smythe, because while Mr Pomsonby-Smythe has accumulated his wealth without any intention of ever spending any of this money he has effectively reduced the money supply (what he does spend only hikes up prices).  As a consequence of Mr Pomsonby-Smythe acquiring wealth and hoarding it, everybody else’s pounds have become slightly more valuable, as everybody else can now consume the goods and services that Mr Pomsonby-Smythe has decided not to consume.  If the Government takes the chunk of money from Mr Pomsonby-Smythe and spends it, then the effect is the same as if the Government had printed an additional n equivalent of that chunk and not taxed Mr Pomsonby-Smythe.  Everybody else’s money supply is worth a bit less and everybody else can consume a bit less, as the Government consumes more.

What should be interesting to the Government is not where the money comes from; it’s where the goods and services come from. The Government uses the money either to claim more goods, or to reduce other people’s else’s taxes, allowing someone else to claim more goods. So the question is all about where the goods came from, not the 1s and 0s that make up green pieces of paper.  To focus on the money transfer as Nick Clegg is doing is to miss all the important economics.  Clegg thinks that taxing the money that Mr Pomsonby-Smythe spends on cars and luxury living (or maybe just sitting in the bank drawing interest) then goes to pay for defense spending or hospitals or machinery or something of perceived worth by the Lib Dems. But defense equipment and hospitals and machinery are not made of money, they are made of bricks and steel and glass and plastic and concrete, etc.

If there are idle resources that can be employed at no extra social cost (which seems to be the Lib Dem thing), then you don’t have to tax Mr Pomsonby-Smythe to employ them. The act of taxing Mr Pomsonby-Smythe creates no additional resources above and beyond what is already available.

That was the economics – but only the economics – I haven’t even talked about fairness.  Is it fair to tax the rich more than the poor?  Most people think yes.  I don’t disagree, because it seems necessary that wealthier people bear an extra part of the burden.  But I don’t think it’s an assumption that can just be established as a sine qua non.  Think about this; Jack and Jill are brother and sister – both have the same opportunities and almost identical backgrounds – but Jack plays it safe, leaves school after mucking around, gets himself a factory job and shows no aspiration for climbing the greasy pole.  Jill on the other hand studies hard, goes to university, and ends up as a successful career woman.  20 years later Jill is paying a much higher rate of tax than Jack – she has fallen foul of a system that fosters inequality.  Jill chose to make the most of her talents – Jack chose to muck around and not make the most of his.  Yet with those same opportunities people think they can cry foul on Jack’s behalf at the expense of Jill.  They are probably right in their methodology – but the assumption of entitlement ought not to be made purely on difference of outcome.

There is one other thing to consider; most people don’t realise this but while Mr Pomsonby-Smythe’s money is being kept out of the part of the economy that Clegg wants it in (the goods and services part) the average Jack in this country should be pleased.  This is because the common argument, that extracting some of the rich people’s wealth and putting it back into the economy will make us all better off is almost entirely wrong.  Just the opposite is true – you see, in actual fact,  the mega rich people who hoard their wealth in stocks, bonds and international currency actually make us all financially better off by doing this, not worse off.  I think it is because most people don’t grasp this that they are forever having lustful paroxysms about economic stimulus systems that state they will put more money in our banks and lighten the load of the mega rich. It’s nonsense!

Hang on, I hear you object, if the mega rich man gave some of his wealth to feed the homeless, then that’s good for the economy, because the more the rich man spends the more the hungry have to eat.  You would only now believe that if you hadn’t ingested my point about where value is to be found (i.e. not in green pieces of paper).  Here’s what you are overlooking – the food that feeds the homeless people doesn’t just come out of thin air – it has to affect the economy somewhere.  If he feeds the homeless then the cost of that food is impacted in the rest of the economy – either others eat less or others pay more for other food (the same would be true of all goods and services).  So I’m not saying it is not moral to feed the homeless, or even for the rich to bear a heavier burden – I am simply saying that the argument about spreading the wealth in the economy is mathematically wrong.

When the Government spends well, the world gains – if it is foreign aid then mostly poorer people benefit from water and food (and the British people’s money supply is worth more, not less – a point that those who are opposed to foreign aid always miss), if it is on health the sick benefit, if it is on road maintenance the drivers benefit, and so forth.  But if it is spent poorly, on wars (some wars are injudicious), on profligate enterprises like consultants fees and think-tanks (which are often a waste of money), on injudicious ecological strategies, or on shoddy investments, then everyone suffers, because they usually think they could have spent the money more wisely (and mostly they probably could).

However, they need not necessarily suffer financially.  Poor Government spending can still lead to an overall job growth, because when people’s resources hit a significant loss, borrowing increases, which hikes up interest rates, which dissuades people from holding onto money (remember one other golden rule – money is not an interest-bearing asset), which has the corollary effect of increasing spending, which drives up prices, which either leads to business expansion (creating more jobs), or a concomitant rise in employees’ wages commensurate with the employers’ profit increase, which means workers have more to spend, and so on.

Either way, the Government quite naturally spends its money wisely and poorly – but its control of the overall market is so minimal it is virtually negligible – so there’s no real reason to hope they get more of it at the expense of Mr Pomsonby-Smythe. 

Legalisation of Drugs: Yes or No?

It's been a busy few days - but one recent spat that caught my eye was the discussion about drugs between Russell Brand and Peter Hitchens on Newsnight.  Russell Brand said he believed drugs should be legalised, and that we should soften up and treat addiction as an illness. His argument is that we shouldn't be a nation that 'criminalises' drug addicts. Peter Hitchens wants a much tougher approach; punishing offenders and filtrating more intense national disincentive in the hope that nascent drug users won't even start to use them for fear of punitive consequences.  I think both of them are making fundamental mistakes in their reasoning.

Let’s start with Russell Brand; he, and many other pro-legalisers like him, usually base their views on two simple errors.  1) That legalising drugs means we can then begin to tax drug users and improve the economy.  And 2) That legalising drugs will not 'criminalise' people who are beset by addiction.  I might point out first off that laws don't criminalise people - breaking those laws is what criminalises people.  Now I don't know if the Government has its laws on drugs spot on, but I suspect (with ambiguous strength) that it has, because drugs do an awful lot of harm and addiction to them induces a lot of crime, so it seems right that they should be illegal. 

It may be pointed out that alcohol also does a lot of harm and induces a lot of crime (in both cases more than some of the soft drugs) but that's not an argument in favour of legalising drugs, because if minimising harm and crime in society is your main aim then it's more an argument in favour of making alcohol illegal (which virtually no one supports, for good reason).  It is true that some people drink in moderation, and enjoy alcohol recreationally without very much harm to society, so it wouldn't be fair on them to make it illegal.  But that's largely irrelevant; it’s equally true that some people take drugs in moderation and enjoy them recreationally without very much harm to society.  Those people could make the same argument in favour of legalising drugs. 

No, it actually shows something different; it shows that legality and illegality is often part of a historical legacy that either is or is not modified according to the changing climate. This will show what I mean.  Pretend there's never been any such thing as alcohol.  Tomorrow someone combines ethanol with other compounds and proposes to trial on the market this new product call 'alcoholic drinks'.  The Government monitors its effect on society, filming those effects on the first night of public consumption.  Numerous drunken people go out on the town, losing their inhibitions, peeing in doorways, hurling abuse at passes by, having fights, trying to coax staggering drunk girls into bed, and throwing up all over the streets.  Next day a committee looks back at the effects of this new product called 'alcoholic drinks'.  It would never get past the trial stage - they'd stamp it 'illegal' right from the off.  So ‘effects vs. legality’ doesn’t always pertain to prudent practices or sound foresight.

As for the argument that drug legalisation will improve the economy by giving the government tens of millions in tax revenue – well it’s simply not the sort of thing that anyone who understands the costs and benefits of taxation would say.  Given the ubiquity of this ‘Legalisation of drugs = more money for the economy’ argument, I must conclude that this misunderstanding applies to a lot of people.  Tax revenues are not a net gain for the British economy; they are simply money transferred from some people’s pockets to other people’s pockets.  To show how silly this is, imagine if everyone whose surname begins with A to M gave five pounds to everyone whose surname begins with N to Z.  Sure Mr Zimbardo would be better off than Mr Adams in the transaction, but no one sensible would argue that the economy as a whole had grown.  Furthermore, the tax the drug sellers paid through drug purchases when drug dealing became legalised is simply money that the drug sellers would have paid through spending it by some other means when drug dealing was illegal.

Not only is tax revenue neutral with regard to society’s gains or losses, it is equally the case that humans may well spend their own money much more prudently than the Government would spend it.  What the Government spends the tax revenue on may be a net benefit to society, but it may just as likely be a net loss to society.  If the Government spends it on public services, then society has some gain (although not necessarily a net gain).  If it spends it on a disastrous and costly eco project, or a foreign war, or a nuclear missile program then society probably would incur a net loss.

There is one way that legalising drugs yields a societal gain.  Quite simply, there is a cost to society of law enforcement.  This isn’t so much a financial cost, but it costs society in other ways.  It costs police time and court time that could be used making a difference in places and situations that are more deserving of it.  And it costs skills and resources, because everybody who is sent to prison for drug dealing is no longer able to contribute to society.  A prisoner cannot build anything, or clean offices, or fix photocopiers, or be a bus driver, or care for his elderly relatives, or contribute anything that serves society by way of skill and time. 

Now to Peter Hitchens.  Peter Hitchens’ position is overly simplistic, and can thus be dismissed in the same simplistic way. Just ask yourself how we could possibly filter into society a more intense disincentive that would seep throughout Britain. Every solution he offers is not only vastly inadequate to the complexity of the subject, it's a solution that doesn't have the power to influence against the many other predominant factors involved. Terms like 'tougher laws' and 'greater incentives' are examples of meaningless abstractions, serving no real use in the political sphere.  Tougher laws will only do some good for our well-being if we can cope with even more people in prison, and find ways to manage the increased need for rehabilitation.  Simply uttering the phrase 'tougher laws' helps no one.  Having better methods of education and rehabilitation – now that would help.

And ‘greater incentives’ won't do much good unless we can tackle the roots of the problem, which is where the mindfulness of education and rehabilitation comes in; Why are so many people on drugs? How do we alter the conditions that give rise to drug addiction? How do we get people to value their lives in ways that mean they no longer wish to take drugs?  These, and other questions like them, are the other side of the incentives coin.  We’ve made a mistake in eroding away the incentives for good that people used to have, but British culture has evolved so much, with modern generations being too much like chameleons - fading into the colour of post-sixties counter-culturalism. Politicians cannot just reintroduce something into society that has all but eroded away from large parts of the culture.  So while I have sympathy with Peter Hitchens, his arguments are misjudged - not because they are wrong as ideals, but because they are impotent.

I don’t know if we should legalise drugs (I suspect we shouldn’t), but at least (unlike Russell Brand and Peter Hitchens) we ought to show an ambivalence with the correct form of reasoning.  Here is the reason I don’t know if we should.  To get an accurate reflection of society’s perception of the costs and benefits, we would need to ask those against legalisation how much they would be willing to pay to have drugs legalised, and those for legislation how much they’d be prepared to pay to prevent drugs being legalised.  The total of the highest aggregate bid minus the total of the lowest aggregate bid is the total benefit of the winning policy.  And no one can do this, so instead we work with assumptions based on pieces of an incomplete jigsaw – which our patchwork analysis indicates that the majority of people favour the prevention of drugs being legalised.  That is roughly why the drug laws are the way they are.

Haircut Optimisation

Every 3 months I shave off my hair and become a temporary skinhead.  It doesn't last long - but after I've shaved there is usually a reaction (mostly from ladies) along the lines of "Oh we loved your hair as it was - couldn't you have left just a little bit on top?"  Here's what they're missing.  What I am doing in choosing to shave it all off is optimising to achieve maximum efficiency in the transaction.  I don’t do it because I like being a skinhead – I do it because in the intervening time between cuts it grows at an average rate for optimisation.  This kind of transaction applies to many other things too; it could involve money, labour, time or something else that requires a value judgment.  The same basic rule applies, despite our mostly doing this without thinking too hard about why. 

While it is true that for a brief few days the hair is shorter than my optimum length, the gains far outweigh this brief period of shaven-ness.  In the first place, the amount of times I have to shave my head is reduced - and in the second place it is a much simpler and quicker process shaving it all off than trying to obtain consistent lengths over my head surface with, say, a number 1 cut. 

More importantly, my procedure follows a simple rule of having optimum preference for the longest amount of time within two extremes - and this is a model that is easily applicable to other areas of life.  My hair cycle has the period in which it is slightly longer than I'd like and needs cutting, and also a period (as already mentioned) in which it is slightly shorter than I'd like.  But within those two extremities is a large passage of time in which it is within the optimal range for preferred length.

Cleanly shaven all over bzzzzzzzzz!

This is the most sensible approach, and like I said, this kind of transaction is easily applicable to other areas of life.  You follow the same optimising procedure when you fill up your car with fuel or draw money out of the cash point.  You fill the car full (if you can afford to), not because your next immediate trip requires a full tank, but because you want to reduce the frequency of garage trips, and you want to obtain the longest passage of time in which the car has sufficient fuel for almost all of your day to day trips from A to B.  Similarly, when you go to the cash point - when you want to optimise to achieve maximum efficiency in the transaction, you don't just withdraw the cash you want to the next purchase, you draw enough out to keep you replete for several future spending activities. In carrying more than you need at any one time (just like the petrol) you achieve maximum efficiency in the transaction - and this sort of procedure will make your life that little bit better.

The Earache Dilemma: The Answer

In the last blog I talked about how probability favours not insuring your domestic goods.  Then I presented the following moral dilemma:

500 million people are about to experience a quite discomforting but not too serious earache for the next hour.  However if one innocent person is killed the 500 million won't have to go through with the earache for an hour. Should we kill the innocent person or let the 500 million people go through with the earache?

Unsurprisingly, everybody who emailed with an answer said we should spare the one innocent life for the sake of 500 million earaches.  That’s because, presumably, people want to minimise suffering, but yet at the same time they thought that the death of one innocent person was worse than 500 million earaches.  Fair enough, but this only goes to show that humans are weirdly inconsistent.  Here’s why.

I asked this same question at a housewarming party recently to a group of about 20 people, and the fairly unanimous consensus was, again, that we should spare the innocent life.  But out of about 20 people it turns out that at least half of them insure their domestic goods, and about half of that group gave a peculiar answer to the following question;

Would you choose a certain earache for an hour or a 1 in 500 million chance of being the innocent person of dying?

Roughly 50% of people would choose the certain earache for an hour – which is barmy.  I take it that they are having trouble envisaging just how much 500 million is – I should imagine when they try to picture 500 million they are imagining their numbered ball in a large unlucky dip bag with a few hundred other numbered balls.  No, it’s 500 million – but the mind cannot picture just how large 500 million is!!!!

How do I know that most rational people would rather have a 1 in 500 million chance of being the innocent person of dying than a certain earache?  It’s not just because the probability is so heavily in their favour of surviving; it’s because in everyday life humans have multiple opportunities to buy all kinds of safety devices for their modes of travel, for their DIY, for their mowing the lawn, for climbing ladders, or whatever, each with a much less than 1 in 500 million chance of death or serious injury, and they prefer to take the chance. That’s how I know. 

When considered with proper rationality, the observation of people’s general day to day behaviour shows that most people would not pay one pound coin to avoid a 1 in 500 million chance of death, but most people would pay a pound coin to get rid of an earache that was going to go on for another hour.

This is why the insurance issue is relevant – we choose an optimal deal because probability is hugely in our favour.  We should do the same with the earache conundrum, because as I’ve shown – given that most people would not pay one pound coin to avoid a 1 in 500 million chance of death, but most people would pay a pound coin to get rid of an earache that was going to go on for another hour – this means that most people think an earache for an hour is worse that a 1 in 500 million chance of death. 

Yet when the question is stated in the following way:

500 million people are about to experience a quite discomforting but not too serious earache for the next hour.  However if one innocent person is killed the 500 million won't have to go through with the earache for an hour. Should we kill the innocent person or let the 500 million people go through with the earache?

We find we are agreed that 500 million should suffer the earache, yet if one of us was the 1 in 500 million, we’d choose to be in that unlucky dip bag rather than having the earache.  It’s a funny old world!

Insurance, Probability and a Moral Dilemma

Last year I had a salesperson from Sky+ phone my house, enquiring whether I wanted to insure my SkyBox for the next 3 years for £190. What I am now going to say is roughly what I said to the salesperson.  When people buy Sky+ Boxes, DVD players, Hi-Fi systems, washing machines, fridges, and things of that nature, it seems fairly obvious that they shouldn't pay an additional fee to get the product insured against damage or malfunction.  I assumed this was commonly realised - but apparently not, because out of curiosity I spoke with a cashier at Hughes to enquire what percentage of people opt for supplementary insurance, and found that it was usually over 50% of buyers.  That surprised me, because I doubt that 50 out of every 100 people regularly set fire to 5% of their wages.

The reason you shouldn't opt for non-compulsory insurance is more or less the same reason you shouldn't set fire to 5% of your wages - the odds are that at some point you're going to find better things to do with your money.  Say you buy a DVD player for £100; you probably will be offered a 3 year insurance plan for an extra £29.99.  If you buy a washing machine for £400, you probably will be offered a 5 year insurance plan for an extra £150.  Expressed like that, particularly by an effusive salesperson, it can seem tempting.  But it would be madness to take him up on his offer.  You are being offered a certain expenditure of £150 for an outside chance that yours is one of the very few washing machines that will be damaged or malfunction.  Having to replace your washing machine means a very slim chance of paying for another product outright.  Having a washing machine with no insurance means a very good chance of having £150 to spend on something else. With these probabilities, it is certainly worth the risk, and foolish to be so circumspect in risk-aversion. 

This is where probability will hold you in good stead; the probability of your being one of the unlucky customers whose product goes wrong is astronomically dwarfed by the probability that you'll be one of the huge majority whose product depreciates within the natural timescale.  Therefore, don't be fooled by the conviction of the salesperson - he (or she) is probably well aware that the offer is designed to extract more money for the company from credulous consumers who think they're getting a good deal.

What I've just said was brought to mind by a philosophy paper I just read that contained an interesting moral dilemma, the author of which I won't disclose, for reasons that will now become clear. I'm interested to know what your answer would be to this dilemma, before I disclose the philosopher's answer.  That's why I will re-write it using a slightly different variation, to avoid people looking for the answer on Google.  Here is my version of the dilemma:

500 million people are about to experience a quite discomforting but not too serious earache for the next hour.  However if one innocent person is killed the 500 million won't have to go through with the earache for an hour. Should we kill the innocent person or let the 500 million people go through with the earache?

What would your answer be?  As a hint, the issue of optional insurance might be an indicator.  You can post your answer here, or PM me on Facebook - and I will reveal the philosopher's rather interesting conclusion in my next blog. 

Riots and Probabilities

I saw on the news the other night footage of the London rioters attacking a restaurant, a casino and food store. Finally, after one year the perpetrators were given custodial sentences. That got me thinking – what starts off a riot, and why that date and not some other date? Which series of precursory events caused the riots to occur at that particular time in those particular places? Why not one day earlier, or one week earlier, or one month later? It’s not an easy question to answer, because there are so many antecedent causes and variables. But I think I do know the answer; it’s the same sort of procedural rule that can be applied to large groups with the same general causes. I’ll explain what it is. 

There’s one thing I think you should know about bad behaviour in large groups of people - it is contingent and contagious. History certainly has some ugly stains in the shape of bad human groups who have committed bad deeds. Whether it is Nazi groups, extreme Stalinists, inner city rioters, football hooligans, religious groups that put people to death as witches or heretics, or the Taliban, I think there is a way to define their behaviour - as groups that must be considered in a different way to individual acts.  

Regarding the recent rioters in London (last year) - around the time no one knew what to expect. Was this soon going to abate, or would it escalate into a kind of Hobbesian collapse of society? If you think it was always going to abate, you should be reminded that most of the major events in history were entirely unpredictable - and because of which, not predicted - and that history has a habit of throwing up excessive behaviour far above and beyond what could have been reasonably expected beforehand.  

I said ‘bad behaviour’ is contingent and contagious, and I will give you an illustration to show how I think it works. Picture two gangs of 100 youths; one gang in North London and one in East London. Both gangs have the intention to riot en masse, but at the close of the day one group, the North Londoners, cause mayhem and are all over the news headlines, and the other group, the East Londoners, are involved in only a few minor disturbances. What was different? Well psychologists tell us that when individuals become part of a larger group (street gangs, religious terrorism outfits, football hooligan groups, etc) they are deindividuated; which means they are prone to worse behaviour because of a sense of losing their individuality within a larger body of people.  

Here’s the reason why in my illustration North Londoners rioted and East Londoners caused only a few minor disturbances. Take the 100 members in each gang – you’ll find that each member of that gang will have a threshold - a tipping point at which he will be prepared to engage in hostile and anti-social behaviour. In a gang of 100 people, each individual's tipping point will vary in intensity. If we rate them 1 to 100 on an intensity scale; out of the 100, number 1 will be the individual most likely to be anti-social, number 2 will be the second most likely, and so on, right up to number 100, who will be the least likely. Now there's no way we could ever accurately rate each of the 100, but that doesn't matter - all that matters is that they could be rated 1 to 100.  

Let’s start with the North London gang – all of which went on to be complicit in a mass 100 man riot. Number 1 starts it off by lobbing a brick, number 2 soon joins in and breaks a shop window, which prompts 3 and 4 to push two shopping trolleys into a moving car. Now we have an all-out disturbance – and number 5 is easily prone to adding fuel to these types of fire. At this early stage of the riot (the soon to be actualised riot) we find that because five men are at it, numbers 6, 7 and 8 are easily persuaded to become deindividuated and join in, which makes it easier for numbers to 9 to 13, and 17 to 20, and so on. If this contagion continues, a minor disturbance is soon a minor riot with 25 or so people. Now numbers 30 to 40 and 50 to 75 aren’t the sort of people who would easily riot – and numbers 76 to 100 are even less likely. But there are already enough people rioting to elicit deindividuation in numbers 30 to 40, so they soon join in, as do numbers 50 to 75. What was a minor riot consisting of 20 people is now a fairly major riot consisting of about 75 people – and now numbers 76 to 100 find it much easier to get involved themselves. 

Bear one thing in mind – all this could happen in a matter of a few minutes; in very quick successions 1 has become anti-social, which has caused 2 to be anti-social, which has caused 3, and so on, right up to 100. Of course number 87 doesn’t have easy proclivities for mass rioting – but he isn’t often in the company of 86 of his peers who are rioting in front of him. That’s how 100 young men from North London can soon find themselves deindividuated and in a 100 strong riot – it’s a bit like a domino effect.  

But what about the gang in East London – why was there’s only a minor disturbance that soon abated? Let’s pretend the same thing happens in East London at first; number 1 starts it off by lobbing a brick, number 2 soon joins in and breaks a shop window, which prompts 3 and 4 to push two shopping trolleys into a moving car. Now we have an all-out disturbance – but this time while number 5 is easily prone to adding fuel to these types of fire, he is not as prone as the number 5 in the North London gang. Instead of carrying out an anti-social act, instead number 5 has a sudden burst of culpability and tries to grab 3 and 4 to stop them doing any more damage, after which it is much less probable that 6, 7 and 8 are going to add fuel to an already abating fire.  Even 1 and 2, who are usually the most belligerent, are part of a group that is being calmed down after a minor disturbance.  What follows is a quick disturbance and then things soon calm down. 

That is principally the difference between the 100 strong riots in North London and the 4 strong minor disturbances in East London – it is down to fractions – those tiny details that, like the butterfly effect, have bigger consequences henceforward. I can’t prove that what I’ve said is right – but I’m pretty sure it is right – and this ought to give us some pause for thought when we consider the many extreme groups we feel so comfortable denigrating. Nazi groups, extreme Stalinists, inner city rioters, religious groups that put people to death as witches or heretics, the Taliban, and other groups of this kind are all sensitive to the same procedural rules as stated above – the occurrence of n increases the probability of n1, which increases the probability of n2, and n3, and n4, and so on. At the very least, this ought to make us think a bit more about how quick we are to reproach large groups, when perhaps we should be considering what it is like for an individual to be caught up somewhere in that spectrum of probability. 

A Radical Shake-up of the Political System

What a surprise - the Conservatives and the Lib Dems have fallen out again - this time over The House of Lords reform and Boundary changes.  Particulars aside, I think the more general problem is that MPs are working within a system that does not provide much of an incentive for moral probity or intelligent policy-making.  It's only when professional people are accountable for their actions or words that we lessen the duplicity and complacency.  I doubt we would have seen the MP expenses scandal if we had upstanding MPs who feared the opprobrium (and voting power) of the electorate, and had to conduct themselves with integrity to secure their next vote. 

The main cause of this lack of incentive is that too many MPs are in safe seats in their constituency, and party associations that choose the candidates for constituencies can ensure that those in Ministerial roles get the safest seats. 

What is needed is a whole new system that instils some kind of accountability to MPs, and ideally brings in a better and more scrupulous calibre of candidate*.  I have a rather radical idea of how this could be achieved.  First we need to decimate the notion of votes attached to constituencies according to geographical borders. Instead candidates will stand to represent surnames demarcated into sections of the alphabet, not regions of the country.  We could reduce the exorbitant number of MPs down to about 500 (that'll save on expenses) - and then have a system in which MP 1 represents everyone whose surname begins with Aa-Ad, MP 2 represents everyone whose surname begins with Ae-Ah, and so on. 

Under such conditions, an MP really would have to work hard to forge a good reputation and the prowess for positive influence, because the people he or she represents would be all over the country, and they would make up a body consisting of a diverse range of classes, cultures and ethnicity.  Moreover, it is much easier to have an impact in a specified area than it is to have an impact on tens of thousands of people scattered across the country.  This might mean that MPs will have to think more innovatively about plans, policies, investments and strategies.

We could still retain the constituencies geographically, meaning an MP still holds surgeries, gets involved with local constituents' issues, and conducts business within a localised region - but instead of being motivated by votes, the MP is instead primarily motivated by doing good, honest, decent work for his constituents.  There may be occasions when conflicts of interests occur between a local person and a person he represents alphabetically, but I don't expect them to be too frequent.  And given that in such a system a higher calibre of person is likely to apply as a candidate, there is reason to hope that malfeasance would be less frequent.

Put this system in place and I'll bet we'd see a higher standard of MPs, in a system in which Westminster attracts more candiadates who want to be MPs for the right reasons. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, you know!

* I shouldn't wish this to be a blanket judgement - some MPs are, of course, very honest, hard-working and decent.