Five new states of matter, maybe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_of_matter lists the currently known states of matter. I had an idea for five new ones, well, 2 anyway with 3 variants. They might not be possible but hey, faint heart ne’er won fair maid, and this is only a blog not a paper from CERN. But coincidentally, it is CERN most likely to be able to make them.

A helium atom normally has 2 electrons, in a single shell. In a particle model, they go round and round. However… the five new states:

A: I suspect this one is may already known but isn’t possible and is therefore just another daft idea. It’s just a planar superatom. Suppose, instead of going round and round the same atom, the nuclei were arranged in groups of three in a nice triangle, and 6 electrons go round and round the triplet. They might not be terribly happy doing that unless at high pressure with some helpful EM fields adjusting the energy levels required, but with a little encouragement, who knows, it might last long enough to be classified as matter.

B: An alternative that might be more stable is a quad of nuclei in a tetrahedron, with 8 electrons. This is obviously a variant of A so probably doesn’t really qualify as a separate one. But let’s call it a 3D superatom for now, unless it already has a proper name.

C: Suppose helium nuclei are neatly arranged in a row at a precise distance apart, and two orthogonal electron beams are fired past them at a certain distance on either side, with the electrons spaced and phased very nicely, so that for a short period at least, each of the nuclei has two electrons and the beam energy and nuclei spacing ensures that they don’t remain captive on one nucleus but are handed on to the next. You can do the difficult sums. To save you a few seconds, since the beams need to be orthogonal, you’ll need multiple beams in the direction orthogonal to the row,

D: Another cheat, a variant of C, C1: or you could make a few rows for a planar version with a grid of beams. Might be tricky to make the beams stay together for any distance so you could only make a small flake of such matter, but I can’t see an obvious reason why it would be impossible. Just tricky.

E: A second variant of C really, C2, with a small 3D speck of such nuclei and a grid of beams. Again, it works in my head.

Well, 5 new states of matter for you to play with. But here’s a free bonus idea:

The states don’t have to actually exist to be useful. Even with just the descriptions above, you could do the maths for these. They might not be physically achievable but that doesn’t stop them existing in a virtual world with a hypothetical future civilization making them. And given that they have that specific mathematics, and ergo a whole range of theoretical chemistry, and therefore hyperelectronics, they could therefore be used as simulated constructs in a Turing machine or actual constructs in quantum computers to achieve particular circuitry with particular virtues. You could certainly emulate it on a Yonck processor (see my blog on that). So you get a whole field of future computing and AI thrown in.

Blogging is all the fun with none of the hard work and admin. Perfect. And just in case someone does build it all, for the record, you saw it here first.

Technology 2040: Technotopia denied by human nature

This is a reblog of the Business Weekly piece I wrote for their 25th anniversary.

It’s essentially a very compact overview of the enormous scope for technology progress, followed by a reality check as we start filtering that potential through very imperfect human nature and systems.

25 years is a long time in technology, a little less than a third of a lifetime. For the first third, you’re stuck having to live with primitive technology. Then in the middle third it gets a lot better. Then for the last third, you’re mainly trying to keep up and understand it, still using the stuff you learned in the middle third.

The technology we are using today is pretty much along the lines of what we expected in 1990, 25 years ago. Only a few details are different. We don’t have 2Gb/s per second to the home yet and AI is certainly taking its time to reach human level intelligence, let alone consciousness, but apart from that, we’re still on course. Technology is extremely predictable. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is just how few surprises there have been.

The next 25 years might be just as predictable. We already know some of the highlights for the coming years – virtual reality, augmented reality, 3D printing, advanced AI and conscious computers, graphene based materials, widespread Internet of Things, connections to the nervous system and the brain, more use of biometrics, active contact lenses and digital jewellery, use of the skin as an IT platform, smart materials, and that’s just IT – there will be similarly big developments in every other field too. All of these will develop much further than the primitive hints we see today, and will form much of the technology foundation for everyday life in 2040.

For me the most exciting trend will be the convergence of man and machine, as our nervous system becomes just another IT domain, our brains get enhanced by external IT and better biotech is enabled via nanotechnology, allowing IT to be incorporated into drugs and their delivery systems as well as diagnostic tools. This early stage transhumanism will occur in parallel with enhanced genetic manipulation, development of sophisticated exoskeletons and smart drugs, and highlights another major trend, which is that technology will increasingly feature in ethical debates. That will become a big issue. Sometimes the debates will be about morality, and religious battles will result. Sometimes different parts of the population or different countries will take opposing views and cultural or political battles will result. Trading one group’s interests and rights against another’s will not be easy. Tensions between left and right wing views may well become even higher than they already are today. One man’s security is another man’s oppression.

There will certainly be many fantastic benefits from improving technology. We’ll live longer, healthier lives and the steady economic growth from improving technology will make the vast majority of people financially comfortable (2.5% real growth sustained for 25 years would increase the economy by 85%). But it won’t be paradise. All those conflicts over whether we should or shouldn’t use technology in particular ways will guarantee frequent demonstrations. Misuses of tech by criminals, terrorists or ethically challenged companies will severely erode the effects of benefits. There will still be a mix of good and bad. We’ll have fixed some problems and created some new ones.

The technology change is exciting in many ways, but for me, the greatest significance is that towards the end of the next 25 years, we will reach the end of the industrial revolution and enter a new age. The industrial revolution lasted hundreds of years, during which engineers harnessed scientific breakthroughs and their own ingenuity to advance technology. Once we create AI smarter than humans, the dependence on human science and ingenuity ends. Humans begin to lose both understanding and control. Thereafter, we will only be passengers. At first, we’ll be paying passengers in a taxi, deciding the direction of travel or destination, but it won’t be long before the forces of singularity replace that taxi service with AIs deciding for themselves which routes to offer us and running many more for their own culture, on which we may not be invited. That won’t happen overnight, but it will happen quickly. By 2040, that trend may already be unstoppable.

Meanwhile, technology used by humans will demonstrate the diversity and consequences of human nature, for good and bad. We will have some choice of how to use technology, and a certain amount of individual freedom, but the big decisions will be made by sheer population numbers and statistics. Terrorists, nutters and pressure groups will harness asymmetry and vulnerabilities to cause mayhem. Tribal differences and conflicts between demographic, religious, political and other ideological groups will ensure that advancing technology will be used to increase the power of social conflict. Authorities will want to enforce and maintain control and security, so drones, biometrics, advanced sensor miniaturisation and networking will extend and magnify surveillance and greater restrictions will be imposed, while freedom and privacy will evaporate. State oppression is sadly as likely an outcome of advancing technology as any utopian dream. Increasing automation will force a redesign of capitalism. Transhumanism will begin. People will demand more control over their own and their children’s genetics, extra features for their brains and nervous systems. To prevent rebellion, authorities will have little choice but to permit leisure use of smart drugs, virtual escapism, a re-scoping of consciousness. Human nature itself will be put up for redesign.

We may not like this restricted, filtered, politically managed potential offered by future technology. It offers utopia, but only in a theoretical way. Human nature ensures that utopia will not be the actual result. That in turn means that we will need strong and wise leadership, stronger and wiser than we have seen of late to get the best without also getting the worst.

The next 25 years will be arguably the most important in human history. It will be the time when people will have to decide whether we want to live together in prosperity, nurturing and mutual respect, or to use technology to fight, oppress and exploit one another, with the inevitable restrictions and controls that would cause. Sadly, the fine engineering and scientist minds that have got us this far will gradually be taken out of that decision process.

Morality inversion. You will be an outcast before you’re old

I did my religious studies exams in 1970s Ireland. We were asked us to consider euthanasia and abortion and how relevant attitudes and laws might change during our lifetimes. Looking back, I’d say we’ve seen a full inversion in both.

My point in this blog isn’t right or wrong but how quickly the random walk of acceptability in modern Western society can take someone from proper to pariah.

I believe it is dangerous for society if its views on morality swing fully and quickly between extremes, especially since technology ensures that people can access decades-old material and records and views easily. What you do today may be judged today by today’s morality, but will also be judged by the very different morality of 2050. You could well become a pariah for activities or views that are perfectly acceptable and normal today. Today’s photos, videos, selfies, tweets, chat records and blogs will all still be easily searchable and they might damn you. The worst thing is you can’t reliably predict which values will invert, so nobody is safe.

Let’s looks at some examples, starting with the two examples we did for Religious Studies – abortion and euthanasia. Remember, the point is not whether something is right or wrong, it is that the perception of it being right or wrong has changed. i.e what is the ‘correct’ fashionable view to hold?

Abortion was legal in 1970s Great Britain, but was far from socially accepted. A woman who had an abortion back then may well have felt a social outcast. Today, it is ‘a woman’s right to choose’ and anyone wanting to restrain that right would be the social outcast.

Euthanasia was universally accepted as wrong in the 1970s. Today the UK’s NHS already implements it via ‘The Liverpool Care Pathway’, almost 1984’s Doublespeak in its level of inversion. Recently some regions have rolled euthanasia out still further, asking patients over 75 years old whether they want to be resuscitated. Euthanasia is not only accepted but encouraged.

Meanwhile, assisted suicide has also become accepted. Very clearly wrong in the 1970s, perfectly fine and understandable today.

Homosexuality in the 1970s forced people to hide deep in a closet. Today, it’s a job requirement for reality TV, chat show hosting and singing in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Gay marriage would have been utterly unimaginable in 1970s Ireland but it would be very brave indeed to admit being in the No camp in today’s referendum campaign there.

Casual sex had its inversion decades earlier of course, but a single person still a virgin at 20 feels ashamed today, whereas anyone having sex outside of marriage before the 1960s would be the one made to feel ashamed.

A committed Christian in the 1970s was the gold standard of morality. Today, being a Christian labels someone as a bigoted dinosaur who should be denied a career. By contrast, being Muslim generates many competing moral inversions that currently results in a net social approval.

The West in the 1970s was the accepted definition of civilization. Now, the West is responsible for all the World’s troubles. Even history is not immune, and the morality of old wars is often up for renewed debate.

Even humor isn’t immune. Some TV comedies of the 1970s are seen as totally unacceptable today. Comedians have to be very careful about topics in their jokes, with today’s restrictions very different from and often even opposite to 1970s restrictions.

These areas have all seen total inversions of social acceptability. Many others, such as drugs, smoking, drinking, gambling, hunting and vegetarianism, see more frequent swings, though not usually full inversion. Still more practices are simultaneously acceptable for some social groups but not for others, such as oppression of women, mutilation, violence, sexualization of children, and even pedophilia.

In every case, attitude change has been gradual. In most, there have been some successful pressure groups that have successfully managed to change the direction of shame, one case at a time. Orwell’s 1984 has proven superbly insightful, realizing how social interaction, the need to feel accepted and the desire for status, and even language can be manipulated to achieve a goal. So successful has that been that shame and doublespeak have become the weapons of choice in left-wing politics, though the right haven’t quite worked out how to use them yet.

With these forces of inversion proven to be highly effective, we must question where they might be used in the future. What do you do or say today that will make future generations despise you? What things are wrong that will become right? What things that are right will become wrong? And what will be the arguments?

In case, you haven’t read the preceding text, I am not condoning any of the following, merely listing them as campaigns we may well see in the next few decades that might completely invert morality and social acceptance by the 2050s.

Drugs in sport – not taking them once adverse health effects have been conquered could be seen as lack of commitment. It is your duty to achieve the best performance you can.

Genetic modification and selection for babies – If you don’t approve, you are forcing people to live a life less than they could, to be less than they should. If you don’t give your kids the best possible genetic start in life, you are an irresponsible parent.

Owning a larger house or car than you need – You are not successful and high status, you are a greedy, utterly selfish, environment destroyer denying poorer people a decent life and home.

Resisting theft – the thief obviously was deprived, almost certainly by an oppressive society. It is you who are stealing from them by preventing social disadvantage from being addressed. Your property should be confiscated and given to them.

Pedophilia – Based on the failed 1970s PIE campaign which may find the field is soon ready for a rematch, if you don’t support reducing the age of consent to 9 or even less, you may soon be portrayed as a bigot trying to prevent young people from experiencing love.

Eating meat – you are utterly without compassion for other lives that are just as valuable as yours. What makes you think nature gives you the right to torture another creature?

Making jokes – all humor comes from taking pleasure at someone else’s misfortune. Laughing is violence. Take that smile off your face. You are a contemptible Neanderthal!

Managing a company – employment is exploitation. All decent people work with others as equals. What makes you think you have the right to exploit other people? Shame on you!

Having a full-time job – don’t you know some people don’t have any work? Why can’t you share your job with someone else? Why should you get paid loads when some people hardly get anything? Why are you so special? You disgust me!

Polygamy – who made you God? If these people want to be together, who the hell are you to say they shouldn’t be? Geez! Go take your Dodo for a walk!

Getting old – you seem to think you are entitled to respect just because you haven’t died yet. Don’t you realize millions of babies are having to be aborted just because people like you so selfishly cling on to another few years of your worthless life? The sooner we get this new limit enforced at 50 the sooner we can get rid of nasty people like you.

Patriotism – all people are equal. You want to favor your country over others, protect your borders, defend your people, uphold your way of life? That is no more than thinly veiled excuse for oppression and racism. Your views have no place in a civilized society.

Well, by now I think you get the point. A free run of values with no anchor other than current fashion can take us anywhere, and in time such a free-wandering society may eventually encounter a cliff.

In modern atheistic Western society, right and wrong is decided, it is no longer absolute. Moral relativism is a highly effective lubricant for moral change. The debate will start from whatever is the existing state and then steered by anyone in an influential position highlighting or putting a new spin on any arbitrary cherry-picked case or situation to further any agenda they wish. Future culture is governed by the mathematics of chaos and though there are attractors, there are also regions of very high instability. As chaos dictates that a butterfly wing-beat can lead to a hurricane, so feeble attention seeking by any celebrity could set a chain of events in motion that inverts yet another pillar of acceptability.

A related question – for which I don’t have any useful insight – is how long moral stability can exist before another inversion becomes possible. If and when the pendulum does start to swing back, will it go as far, as fast, or further and faster?

 

 

 

 

 

Powering electric vehicles in the city

Simple stuff today just to stop my brain seizing up, nothing terribly new.

Grid lock is usually a term often used to describe interlocking traffic jams. But think about a canal lock, used to separate different levels of canal. A grid lock could be used to manage the different levels of stored and kinetic energy within a transport grid, keeping it local as far as possible to avoid transmission losses, and transferring it between different parts of the grid when necessary.

Formula 1 racing cars have energy recovery systems that convert kinetic energy to stored electrical energy during braking – Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS). In principle, energy could be shared between members of a race team by transmitting it from one car to another instead of simply storing it on board. For a city-wide system, that makes even more sense. There will always be some vehicles coasting, some braking, some accelerating and some stopped. Storing the energy on board is fine, but requires large capacitor banks or batteries, and that adds very significant cost. If an electrical grid allowed the energy to be moved around between vehicles, each vehicle would only need much smaller storage so costs would fall.

I am very much in favor of powering electric vehicles by using inductive pads on the road surface to transmit energy via coils on the car underside as the vehicles pass over them.  Again, this means that vehicles can manage with small batteries or capacitor banks. Since these are otherwise a large part of the cost, it makes electric transport much more cost-effective. The coils on the road surface could be quite thin, making them unattractive to metal thieves, and perhaps ultimately could be made of graphene once that is cheap to produce.

Moving energy among the many coils only needs conventional electrical grid technology. Peer to peer electrical generation business models are developing too to sell energy between households without the energy companies taking the lion’s share. Electricity can even be packetised by writing an address and header with details of the sender account and the quantity of energy in the following packet. Since overall energy use will fluctuate somewhat, the infrastructure also needs some storage to hold local energy surpluses and feed them back into accelerating vehicles as required, and if demand is too low, to store energy in local batteries. If even that isn’t sufficient capacity, then the grid might open grid locks to overflow larger surpluses onto other regions of the city or onto the main grid. Usually however, there would be an inflow of energy from the main grid to power all the vehicles, so transmission in the reverse direction would be only occasional.

Such a system keeps most energy local, reducing transmission losses and simplifying signalling, whilst allowing local energy producers to be included and enabling storage for renewable energy. As one traffic stream slows, another can recycle that same energy to accelerate. It reduces the environmental demands of running a transport system, so has both cost and environmental benefits.

 

 

Prejudice is an essential predictive tool

Prejudice has a bad name but it is an essential tool evolution has given us to help our survival. It is not a bad thing in itself, but it can cause errors of judgement and misuse so it needs to be treated with care. It’s worth thinking it through from first principles, so that you aren’t too prejudiced about prejudice.

I like a few people, dislike a few others, but don’t have any first hand opinion on almost everyone. With over 7 billion people, no-one can ever meet more than a tiny proportion. We see a few more on TV or other media and may form a narrow-channel opinion on some aspects of their character from what is shown in their appearances. Otherwise, any opinion we may have on anyone we have not actually met or spent any time with is prejudice – pre-judgment based on experiences we have had with people who share similarities.

Prejudice isn’t always a bad thing

Humans are good at using patterns and similarities as indicators, because it improves our chances of survival. If you see a flame, even though you have never encountered that particular flame before, you are prejudiced about how it might feel if you stick your hand in it. You don’t go all politically correct and assume that making such a pre-judgment is wrong and put your hand in it anyway, since it may well be a very nice flame that tickles and feels good. If you see a tiger running towards you, you probably won’t assume it just wants to cuddle you or get stroked. Prejudices keep us alive. Used correctly, they are a good thing.

Taking examples from human culture, if a salesman smiles at you, you may reasonably engage some filters rather than just treating the forthcoming conversation like any other. Similarly, if a politician promises you milk and honey, you may reasonable wonder who will pay for it, or what they are not telling you. Some salesmen and politicians don’t conform to the prejudice, but enough do to make it worthwhile engaging the filters.

Prejudices can be positive too. If you see some nice strawberries, you probably don’t worry too much that they have been poisoned. If someone smiles at you, you will probably feel warmer emotions towards them. We usually talk about prejudice when we are talking about race or nationality or religion but all prejudice is is pre-judgement of a person or object or situation based on any clues we can pick up. If we didn’t prejudge things at all we would waste a great deal of time and effort starting from scratch at every encounter.

Error sources

People interpret situations differently, and of course experience different situations, and therefore build up quite different prejudice databases. Some people notice things that others don’t. Then they allocate different weightings to all the different inputs they do notice. Then they file them differently. Some will connect experiences with others to build more complex mindsets and the quality of those connections will vary enormously. As an inevitable result of growing up, people make mental models of the world so that they can make useful predictions that enable them to take advantage of opportunities and avoid threats. The prejudices in those models are essentially equations, variables, weightings and coefficients. Some people will use poor equations that ignore some variables completely, use poor weightings for others and also assign poor quality coefficients to what they have left. (A bit like climate modelling really, it is common to give too high weightings to a few fashionable variables while totally ignoring others of equal importance.)

Virtues and dangers in sharing prejudices

People communicate and learn prejudices from each other too, good and bad. Your parents teach you about flames and tigers to avoid the need for you to suffer. Your family, friends, teachers, neighbors, celebrities, politicians and social media contacts teach you more. You absorb a varied proportion of what they tell you into your own mindset, and the filters you use are governed by your existing prejudices. Some inputs from others will lead to you editing some of your existing prejudices, for better or worse. So your prejudices set will be a complex mix of things you have learned from your own experiences and those learned from others, all processed and edited continually with the processing and editing processes themselves influenced by existing and inherited prejudices.

A lot of encounters in modern life are mediated by the media, and there is a lot of selective prejudice involved in choosing which media to be exposed to. Media messages are very often biased in favour of some groups and against others, but it is hard to avoid them being assimilated into the total experience used for our prejudice. People may choose to watch news channels that have a particular bias because it frames the news in terms they are more familiar with. Adverts and marketing generally also have huge influence, professionally designed to steer our prejudices in particular direction. This can be very successful. Thanks to media messages, I still think Honda makes good cars in spite of having bought one that has easily had more faults than all my previous cars combined. I have to engage my own rationality filters to prevent me considering them for my next car. Prejudice says they are great, personal experience says they are not.

So, modern life provides many sources of errors for our prejudice databases, and many people, companies, governments and pressure groups try hard to manipulate them in their favour, or against others.

Prejudice and wisdom

Accumulated prejudices are actually a large component of wisdom. Wisdom is using acquired knowledge alongside acquired experience to build a complex mental world model that reliably indicates how a hypothetical situation might play out. The quality of one’s mental world model hopefully improves with age and experience and acquired knowledge, though that is by no means guaranteed. People gain wisdom at different rates, and some seem to manage to avoid doing so completely.

So there is nothing wrong with prejudice per se, it is an essential survival shortcut to avoid the need to treat every experience and encounter with the same checks and precautions or to waste enormous extra time investigating every possible resource from scratch. A well-managed prejudice set and the mental world model built using it are foundation stones of wisdom.

Mental models

Mental models are extremely important to quality of personal analysis and if they are compromised by inaccurate prejudices we will find it harder to do understand the world properly. It is obviously important to protect prejudices from external influences that are not trustworthy. We need the friendly social sharing that helps us towards genuinely better understanding of the world around us, but we need to identify forces with other interests than our well-being so that we can prevent them from corrupting our mindsets and our mental models, otherwise our predictive ability will be damaged. Politicians and pressure groups would be top of the list of dubious influences. We also tend to put different weightings on advice from various friends, family, colleagues or celebrities, sensibly so. Some people are more easily influenced by others. Independent thought is made much more difficult when peer pressure is added. When faced with peer pressure, many people simply adopt what they believe to be the ‘correct’ prejudice set for ‘their’ ‘tribe’. All those inverted commas indicate that each of these is a matter of prejudice too.

Bad prejudices

Where we do find problems from prejudice is in areas like race and religion, mainly because our tribal identity includes identification with a particular race or religion (or indeed atheism). Strong tribal forces in human nature push people to favour those of their own tribe over others, and we see that at every level of tribe, whether it is a work group or an entire nation. So we are more inclined to believe good things about our own tribe than others. The number of experiences we have of other tribes is far higher than it was centuries ago. We meet far more people face to face now, and we see very many more via the media. The media exposure we get tends to be subject to bias, but since the media we choose to consume is self-selected, that tends to reinforce existing prejudices. Furthermore, negative representations are more likely to appear on the news, because people behaving normally is not news, whereas people doing bad things is. Through all those combined exposures, we may build extensive personal experience of many members of a group and it is easy to apply that experience to new encounters of others from that group who may not share the same faults or virtues. One way to reduce the problem is to fragment groups into subgroups so that you don’t apply prejudices from one subgroup incorrectly to another.

Inherited experiences, such as those of columnists, experts brought into news interviews or even the loaded questions of news presenters on particular channels are more dangerous since many of the sources are strongly biased or have an interest in changing our views. As a result of massively increased exposures to potentially biased representations of other groups in modern life, it is harder than ever to maintain an objective viewpoint and maintain a realistic prejudice set. It is very easy to accumulate a set of prejudices essentially determined by others. That is very dangerous, especially bearing in mind the power of peer pressure, since peers are also likely to have such corrupted prejudice sets. We call that group-think, and it is not only the enemy of free thought but also the enemy of accurate prediction, and ultimately of wisdom. A mental model corrupted by group-think and inherited biases is of poor quality.

Debugging Prejudices

Essential maintenance for good mental models includes checking prejudices regularly against reality. Meeting people and doing things is good practice of course, but checking actual statistics is surprisingly effective too. Many of us hold ideas about traits and behaviors of certain groups that are well away from reality. Governments collect high quality statistics on an amazing range of things. Pressure groups also do, but are far more likely to put a particular spin on their figures, or even bury figures that don’t give the message they want you to hear. Media also put spins on statistics, so it is far better to use the original statistics yourself than to trust someone else’s potentially biased analysis. For us Brits, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/index.html is a good source of trustworthy official statistics, relatively free of government or pressure group spin, though finding the data can sometimes involve tricky navigation.

It is also a good idea to make sure you consume media and especially news from a variety of sources, some explicitly left or right wing or even from pressure groups. This ensures you see many sides of the same story, ensures you stay aware of stories that may not even appear via some channels, and helps train you to spot biases and filter them out when they are there. I read several newspapers every day. So should you. When I have time, I try to go to the original source of any data being discussed so I can get the facts without the spin. Doing this not only helps protect your own mental model, it allows you to predict how other people may see the same stories and how they might feel and react, so it also helps extend your model to include behaviour of other groups of people.

If you regularly debug your prejudices, then they will be far more useful and less of an error source. It will sometimes be obvious that other people hold different ones but as long as you know yours are based on reality, then you should not be influenced to change yours. If you are trying to work out how others might behave, then understanding their prejudices and the reasons they hold them is very useful. It makes up another section of the world model.

Looking at it from a modelling direction, prejudices are the equations, factors and coefficients in a agent-based model, which you run inside your head. Without them, you can’t make a useful model, since you aren’t capable of knowing and modelling over 7 billion individuals. If the equations are wrong, or the factors or coefficients, then the answer will be wrong. Crap in, crap out. If your prejudices are reasonably accurate representations of the behaviours and characteristics of groups as a whole, then you can make good models of the world around you, and you can make sounds predictions. And over time, as they get better, you might even become wise.

A Scottish Nightmare has begun. Someone needs to wake them up.

Fifty percent of Scots voted for the Scottish National Party, which some people consider Stalinist – I confess that I am no authority on Stalin, so I had to look it up but it does seem to tick a few of the boxes so it isn’t an entirely unjustified label. However, in response to recent comments, I feel obliged to clarify that it only ticks a few of the comparison boxes, even those traits at a much lesser degree, and there is certainly no comparison to be made with the nastier side of Stalinism. I actually quite like Nicola Sturgeon and Alec Salmond apart from their politics and I can’t imagine either of them in such a light.

I do feel sorry for the other half. There are very many fine people in Scotland, many are my friends, and they deserve better. But as the old Scottish saying goes, ye cannae overestimate the stupidity of the man in the street, and they turned out in droves to vote in the SNP.

Now that the election is over, the SNP wants another independence referendum, or at least Salmond does. Prior to that they want full fiscal autonomy and the government is already hinting at that, in fact you could well argue that the SNP is playing right into their hands, leaving themselves at the very least open to a detailed re-revaluation of the Barnett formula and its certain demise, along with repeal of Scottish votes for English matters. But the real problem ahead is Scottish finances will not survive independence without very major changes so if they do get their second independence referendum and tribalism hasn’t subsided enough for clear thinking to win for continued union, Scotland will be in deep trouble. I’m no economist but even a toddler soon learns that if Mummy has no cash left, sweeties become less likely.

Already, many of the wealthier Scots are planning to leave because of the threat of high taxes, especially property purchase tax. It already has hints of Greece. When rats start leaving a ship and are taking all the food with them, it’s time to worry.

The SNP wants to take care of poor people and the old, give people lots of nice public services, and generally provide lots of free milk and honey, paid for by the state. Well every party would like to do all those things, but some realize the state can’t necessarily pay for infinite levels of services. Some live in the real world and figure out what is realistic and how to pay for it, and then they spread the load across the whole population, making sure that no-one has to pay so much they can’t live in dignity, and taking the money needed as fairly as possible according to ability to pay.

The SNP understands that richer people can afford to pay more, as does every party, and they understand better still that less well off people want richer people to pay more, or indeed all of it if they can vote for that, but they don’t seem to understand the reality that if you want to keep money coming in, you have to make sure you don’t take so much off the people that make the money that they walk away.

It is very easy for Scots to walk away; indeed many do already. If people have to emigrate to a country that uses another language or has a very different culture then they will stay longer and accept higher taxes. If they can just move next door to another part of the UK with hardly any change, fully accepted and fitting in easily, then there is very little penalty and the extra taxes simply can’t be punitive. Worse still, looking at the apparent anger and hostility of late in Scotland, the SNP seem to have created an aggressive anti-rich culture, where the wealthy are seen as the enemy by many. That can’t make it a pleasant environment in which to enjoy the wealth you’ve earned, knowing that many of the people around you hate you simply because you are wealthier than they are.

Many of the wealth generators will therefore leave Scotland if the SNP continues to increase taxes on richer people to pay for more and more public services and benefits for the less well off. That would all happen if they get total fiscal independence without hefty subsidies from the English.

But the main goal for the SNP is independence. They’ve come up with all manner of means to get cash, but none of them stand up to even casual inspection. I’ve argued in previous blogs that Salmond’s dream of getting lots of wealth from wind farms isn’t infeasible. If all of Scotland were to be covered in farms at maximum density, the energy generated would only be equivalent to coal use in England, so it can’t finance an entire economy. Here’s some of the detail:

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/scottish-independence-please-dont-go/

and

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/scottish-independence/ discuss some of the financial consequences of separation.

If Scotland separated from the rest of the UK, there would be a strong incentive for Westminster to use the opportunity to greatly reduce the size of the public sector to reduce costs, and to bring many of the remaining jobs away from Scotland to reduce unemployment elsewhere (jobs perhaps for the Scots migrating to England). This would help massively in reorganization and efficiency improvements while reducing unemployment in England and Wales (Northern Ireland is trying to reduce its dependence on public sector jobs).

Separation would also mean losing the subsidy received from England, which the BBC calculated at £3000 per head. Unless morons are appointed to the English side of the separation negotiations, Scots will also take with them a share of the national debt, currently £1.6Tn, or £4.5Tn if you include public sector pension liabilities. Since a disproportionate number of Scots work in the public sector, it would certainly be hard to argue that they should be paid by a foreign power, so Scotland might even take a larger share.

So an independent Scotland run by the SNP would start off with massive debt, immediately lose £3000 per year per person subsidy, see massive rise in unemployment as surplus public sector jobs are withdrawn and others relocated to England, and see many of the entrepreneurs and the wealthy migrate South. Young people will see the clear choice. They could stay with no hope, any attempt to better themselves squashed and scorned by resentful people seeing their benefits being reduced after many promises of milk and honey, and having to pay very high taxes in a rapidly crumbling economy. Or like many young Scots today, they could take the train south to a much more realistic promise of prosperity and freedom, where they can become rich without being forced to feel guilty.

With too few people left in Scotland, on too low incomes, unable to pay the bills, the services they so loved would soon stop too, however resentful people become, however much they complain and however much they demonstrate and shout and scream. There simply won’t be any money left and those have the means to escape will do so. The kids can demand sweeties but Mummy won’t have anything left in her purse.

Independence is a field that looks a lot greener to the Scots from the other side of the fence than is the reality. The problem now is that they’ve bitten the hand that feeds them too many times and most of the English don’t care any more if they go.

There is an even worse potential outcome, though thankfully an unlikely one. If the SNP closes down all the nuclear establishments as they promise to and reduces defense spending across the board to save the cash they want for other things, they will have precious little defense in their own right against the increasingly aggressive Russians. They can’t simply assume that England would still defend them after an unpleasant separation. Nor can they assume that they would be given a place in either the EU or NATO. On the other hand, a Stalinist government updated to the 21st century might not find it too hard to just become the most Western annex of Russia. By then the Scots would be used to poverty and oppression so well that it might not make much difference.

 

 

A poem for the royal baby, Wossername

I read that the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy won’t write a poem for the new royal baby, so that creates a wonderful vacuum for the rest of us to fill. I’ve always enjoyed writing silly rhymes. I don’t like the monarchy, but I’m no Poet Laureate either, so they cancel and make it appropriate for me to write and get back in fun a little of what I have to shell out in taxes to support them.

In fairness, as with any other new baby, I wish them all well. The new princess didn’t choose to be royal any more than you or I. This ‘poem’ reflects on the outdated principle of the monarchy rather than the personal.

 

An ode to Princess Wossername

Two point seven new babies per second,

The world produces, so it’s reckoned

They may be born to rich or poor

Whiter, blacker, browner, bluer

 

Now one has come to Wills and Kate

Her whole life paid for by the state

A posher form of welfare sure

A form of exploitation pure

 

The kings and queens of ages old

Got rich by winning battles bold

They had to risk the chop or Tower

To get their bloodied hands on power

 

Now silver spoon and golden chalice

Fancy gown and finest palace

Are paid for out of hard-won tax

Squeezed from subjects to the max

 

So what sets this new girl apart

From cleaner, doctor, maid or tart?

What justifies her life of ease

Her right to wealth instead of fleas?

 

I do not know the answer there

It seems to me a bit unfair

That she’ll be given so much more

Than babies born through other doors

 

It’s time to stop this royal scam

While she’s confined within her pram

To treat like any other wain

This little Princess Wossername

 

possibly helpful note: wain is scottish slang for ‘child’

 

Will making fun of people soon become illegal?

I don’t think I need to add much more than the title really, but here’s a little encouragement to think about it yourself:

 

I enjoy watching comedy a lot, and I would hate for it to be restrained even further than it already is, but taking an outside view, trends certainly suggest a gradual closing down of any form of aggression or intimidation or discrimination towards any type of person for any reason. Much of comedy could be considered a form of aggression or bullying as anyone who has been made fun of could testify. A lot more could be considered intimidation and a lot more is discriminatory, certainly from a party viewpoint.

Gender, sexuality, religion and race comedy have all been closing rapidly except to those from the victim groups, who may use comedy as a form of defense, or to cast light on particular problems, or let’s face it, to make money by exploiting the monopoly created by forbidding others to joke about it.

Comedians are very often extremely left or right wing. They do have influence on people’s voting because nobody wants to be the butt of a joke. It is not impossible that comedy shows could fall into regulatory control to ensure fairness during political campaigns, just as party political broadcasts and air time on debates.

In the election, a huge amount of comedy was simple making fun of the candidates personally, not based on their views, but simply based on how they look (Sturgeon portrayed as Jimmy Crankie), or how they tackle a bacon sandwich. I am very pleased Miliband lost, but I’m not the most photogenic person in the world either and I have to empathise with the personal attacks on his nerdity and awkwardness during the campaign, which have nothing to do with his political views or capability (or in his case otherwise). If you go frame by frame through a video of almost anyone as they talk, you can eventually find an expression to support almost any agenda you want. I think that people should develop a thick skin if they are in the public eye, or should they? Should they be defended against blatant and possibly hurtful personal attacks.

I laugh as much as anyone at jokes at someone else’s expense. I’m no politically correct saint. I am happy to suffer occasional jokes at my expense if I can laugh at others, but maybe that’s just because I don’t get all that many. But as a futurist, it seems to me that this sort of comedy is likely to be in the firing line soon too. It may not happen, and I hope it doesn’t, but PC trends are heading that way.

Achieving fair representation in the new UK Parliament

Now the election is over, we have a parliament with very unequal representation of voters, with some parties getting far more and some far less than their share of the vote would suggest. Rather than just banking the advantage, the new government should recognize the unfairness of the current system and apply a short term fix so that people are represented fairly. Call it handicaps, weightings, scaled votes, block votes, or some other name. But a fairer democracy would smell sweeter.

This chart should be self-explanatory, voting could be scaled according to the number of votes for that party and the number of MPs seated:

Some cut and paste from a recent blog about longer term fixes:

We have a new problem, well new for the UK, which is that we’ve gone from a 2 party system to having numerous significant parties. The number of seats each will get in parliament will bear little correlation to the proportion of the national vote they win. That’s because some parties are thinly spread across the whole country so will get very few seats indeed, whereas others are heavily concentrated in particular areas, so will get far more than their fair share. With each seat decided by whichever gets the largest vote in that area, it’s obvious why having widespread support is a disadvantage compared to representing purely local interests.

Option 1: block or scaled voting

I recently suggested a block vote mechanism to fix it:

https://timeguide.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/better-representational-democracy/

to save you reading it, it allows continuation of the existing system, with greatly unrepresentative number of MPs, but then adjusts the weighting of the vote of each according to their party’s proportion of the national vote. So if a party gets 1% of the seats but won 15% of the vote, each of those MP’s votes would be worth 15 times as much as the vote of a party that received a fair number. If the party gets 5% of the seats with 1% of the vote, each of their’s would be scaled down to 0.2 x normal.

Option 2: split house

In a country with 650 seats, that is far more than is needed to provide both local representation and national. Suppose 250 seats were allocated to larger local constituencies, leaving 400 to be filled according to party support. 250 is easily enough to make sure that local issues can be raised. On the other hand, most people have no idea who their local MP is and don’t care anyway (I have never felt any need or desire to contact my local MP). All most people care about is which party is in control. This split system would fill 250 seats in the normal way and the voting mechanism would be unaffected. That would over-represent some parties and under-represent others. The 400 seats left would be divided up between all the parties to make the total proportions correct. Each party would simply fill their extra seats with the candidates they want. I think that balance would solve the problem nicely while retaining the advantage of the current system.

A variant of this would be to have two separate houses, one to debate regional issues and one for national. A dual vote would allow someone to pick a local candidate to represent their local area and a second vote for a party to represent them on national issues.

Option 3: various PR systems

There are hundreds of proportional representation systems and they all have particular merits and weaknesses. I don’t need to write on these since they are well covered elsewhere and I don’t favor any of the conventional solutions. The best that can be said for PR is that it isn’t quite as bad as the status quo.

Option 4: Administrative and Values houses

Pretty much everyone wants a health service that works, good defence, good infrastructure, sensible business regulation, clean water supply, healthy environment and so on. People disagree profoundly on many other issues, such as how much to spend and how to spend it in areas such as welfare, pensions, even education. So why not have 2 sets of MPs, one selected for competence in particular administrative areas and the other chosen to represent people’s value differences? I often feel that an MP from a party whose values I don’t support does a better job in a specific role than an alternative from the party I voted for.

I am out of ideas for further significant options, but there must be many other workable possibilities that would give us a better system than what we have now. UK democracy is broken, but not beyond repair and we really ought to fix it before serious trouble results from poor maintenance.

The Ten Labours of Miliband

A little late to comment on Ed Miliband’s stone tablet of vague ‘promises’ but this list is my prediction of the more likely reality if he gets into power: