One mayoral candidate recently asked me for my advice. I wonât name who it is, since I want those who contact me to know Iâll keep their communications in confidence.
Now, the first thing to do is to get a time machine and ask me the same question 18 months earlier.
But I can only provide tips for coming third in Wellington:
âą have forward-thinking policies;
âą appeal to thinking voters of all ages;
âą resonate with younger voters who are most affected by them;
âą frighten the establishment with common sense.
I canât advise how to win since I didnât. Presumably it is to do the opposite of my approach?
âą Use rose-coloured glasses;
âą appeal to non-thinking voters of all ages;
âą resonate with older voters more likely to vote;
âą suck up to the establishment.
This is with the greatest respect to many previous winners, who actually didnât do all these things. But they make for a couple of fun Tweets.
I repeat the call to administer the Voigt-Kampff test to all candidates.
Boris Johnson: usually a talented delivery, but with conflicting substance.
I spotted The Death of Expertise at Unity Books, but I wonder if the subject is as simple as the review of the book suggests.
Thereâs a lot out there about anti-intellectualism, and we know itâs not an exclusively American phenomenon. Tom Nichols, the bookâs author, writes, as quoted in The New York Times, âAmericans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue. To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told theyâre wrong about anything. It is a new Declaration of Independence: No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that arenât true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.â
I venture to say that the “death of expertise” is an Anglophone phenomenon. Head into Wikipedia, for instance, and youâll find proof that the masses are not a good way to ensure accuracy, at least not in the English version. Head into the German or Japanese editions and you find fewer errors, and begin to trust the pages more.
Given that many of âthe peopleâ cannot discern what is âfake newsâ and what is not, or who is a bot and who is not, then itâs absolutely foolhardy to propose that they also be the ones who determine the trustworthiness of a news source, as Facebook is wont to do.
I canât comment as much on countries I have spent less time in, but certainly in the Anglosphere, Iâve seen people advance, with confidence and self-authority, completely wrong positions, ones not backed up by real knowledge. You only need to visit some software support forums to see online examples of this phenomenon.
When I visit Sweden, for instance, thereâs a real care from individuals not to advance wrongful positions, although I admit I am limited by my own circles and the brief time I have spent there.
Itâs not so much that we donât value expertise, itâs that the bar for what constitutes an expert is set exceptionally low. Weâre often too trusting of sources or authorities who donât deserve our reverence. And I wonder if it comes with our language.
Iâll go so far as to say that the standing of certain individuals I had in my own mind was shattered when we were all going for the mayoralty in my two campaigns in 2010 and 2013. There certainly was, among some of my opponents, no correlation between knowledge and the position they already held in society. It didnât mean I disliked them. It just meant I wondered how they got as far as they did without getting found out.
Fortunately, the victor, whether you agreed with her policies or not, possessed real intelligence. The fact she may have political views at odds with yours is nothing to do with intelligence, but her own observations and beliefs. I can respect that (which is why I follow people on social media whose political views I disagree with).
In turn Iâm sure many of them disliked what I stood for, even if they liked me personally. Certainly it is tempting to conclude that some quarters in the media, appealing to the same anti-intellectualism that some of my rivals represented, didnât like a candidate asserting that we should increase our intellectual capital and pursue a knowledge economy. No hard feelings, mind. As an exercise, it served to confirm that, in my opinion, certain powers donât have peopleâs best interests at heart, and there is a distinct lack of professionalism (and, for that matter, diversity) in some industries. In other words, a mismatch between what one says one does, and what one actually does. Language as doublespeak.
So is it speaking English that makes us more careless? Maybe it is: as a lingua franca in some areas, merely speaking it might put a person up a few notches in othersâ estimation. Sandeep Deva Misra, in his blog post in 2013, believes thatâs the case, and that we shouldnât prejudge Anglophones so favourably if the quality of their thought isnât up to snuff.
Maybe thatâs what we need to do more of: look at the quality of thought, not the expression or make a judgement based on which language itâs come in. As English speakers, we enjoy a privilege. We can demand that others meet us on our terms and think poorly when someone speaks with an accent or confuses your and youâre. It gives us an immediate advantage because we have a command of the lingua franca of business and science. It gives us the impunity to write fictions in Wikipedia or make an argument sound appealing through sound bites, hoping to have made a quick getaway before weâre found out. Political debate has descended into style over substance for many, although this is nothing new. I was saying, although not blogging, things like this 20 years ago, and my students from 1999â2000 might remember my thoughts on Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign as being high on rhetoric and light on substance. Our willingness to accept things on face value without deeper analysis, lands us into trouble. We’re fooled by delivery and the authority that is attached with the English language.
Youâll next see this in action in a high-profile way when Facebook comes forth with more comment about Cambridge Analytica. I can almost promise you now that it wonât hold water.
As he has done so many other times since we encountered each other in 2001, Simon Anholt has articulated my thoughts on governance and politics much better than I can through his ventures. I think this puts a very good context on why I ran my mayoral campaigns the way I did, and for that matter, a good deal of my own businesses. The ideas here are in line with what we believe at Medinge Group, tooâmore on that in an upcoming post. We live in a connected, globalized planetâand the sooner our leaders wake up to this fact, and the positive potential it brings, the better.
How can we better organize ourselves as seven thousand million people? My belief has been: if we can start at a city level, we can bring about change.
Head to Simon’s website at good.country to find out more.
The latest Victoria University study, expressing that there is a shortage of creative people, sounds very familiar. Dr Richard Norman highlights in a Fairfax Press editorial that knowledge economy companies are âstruggling to capitalise on opportunities for growth because of limited local talent âŠ
âMany of these companies are well-seasoned and high-earningâa third of those interviewed had total sales of over $50 million for the most recent financial year and about half had been here for more than two decades.â
The study also revealed, ‘Views varied widely about the effectiveness of current promotion of Wellington. The strongest recurring idea for promotion of Wellingtonâs attributes was to focus on its potential as a digital city.’
In other words, had people been listening to this sectorâas I had for many yearsâthis comes as no surprise.
In both my mayoral campaigns, I expressed that Wellington needed to be open for business for tech and the knowledge economy, and last year I made it very clear that I would find ways to bridge the training at the tertiary level with these very companies seeking talented graduates. Not only would there be a city-supported internship programme modelled on that of Dunedin, but specifically geared to this sector, but there would be another that would connect graduates directly to these firms, which told me that they knew these young people were there, but their sits vac werenât known to them.
Wellington is a haven for companies operating in the knowledge economy, whether itâs down to our creativity thanks to the highest-profile firms being based here (Xero, Trade Me) or our workâlife balance, and it has been heading that way for all of my career, since I began developing digital fonts in the 1980s and digital publications as the 1990s unfolded.
Frictionless exports form part of a productive, profitable future for our city and yet they have often been ignored by some of the same-again politicians and business âleadersâ who have a Life on Mars mindset to our economy.
To this end I approached the Chancellor at Victoria University last week, and formally in writing earlier this week, to see if I could still create something that would help todayâs students find the jobs that they want.
Already I had signed up to the Alumni as Mentors programme (on to my second âmenteeâ now), and was part of the pilot programme for Vic internships late last year, to help enhance the employment prospects of final-year students. But that’s just in one company. I can do more.
After a discussion with a senior Victoria University professor last year, I was very keen, had I been elected as mayor, to get Wellington to a level of critical mass when it came to R&D and technology. I have similarly been talking to representatives at other tertiary institutions such as Weltec, and of course, I still serve on one advisory board at Whitireia.
My hands are more tied as a private citizen, and things will take longer, but they are still worth doing.
As Dr Normanâs study was developed in partnership with the Greater Wellington Regional Council, with support from Grow Wellington and the Wellington City Council, there will be others who are thinking along the same lines. Iâm sure that all these efforts will intersect, but we have to act.
I only wish such a study was released a year earlier, as I don’t recall anything of the sort in The Dominion Post during the election cycle.
I was consistent about the Basin Reserve flyover in my campaign. Yes, I agreed we needed improvements to the area. But no, spending millions on itâit did not matter whether it was from taxes or rates at the end of the day, because that still meant you and me, as citizensâseemed foolish if there were better-value options out there. What I said in 2013 was: itâs not one flyover, itâs actually two, if you studied the wording in the plans. And by the time you add up the totals, it was looking like $500 millionâand for what benefit? The more roads you create, the more congestion there would be.
What if we could get the traffic improved there without the blight of a flyoverâthe sort of thing some cities were removing anyway, making them as liveable as Wellingtonâand save the country hundreds of millions?
In San Francisco, when the highway around Embarcadero Drive (now just ‘The Embarcadero’) was removed (you can see it outside the dodgy hotel room in Bullitt), that area became far more lively and pleasant, where there are now parks, where property values rose, and where there are new transit routes. The 1989 Loma Preita âquake hurried the demolition along, but there’s no denying that it’s been a massive improvement for the City. Younger readers won’t believe how unpleasant that area used to be.
Admittedly, I get ideas from San Francisco, Stockholm, and other centres, but why not? If they are good ones, then we need to believe we deserve the best. And we can generate still more from Wellington and show them off. Making one city great helps not just our own citizens, but potentially introduces new best practices for many other cities.
The Richard Reid proposal for the Basin was my favoured one given the traffic benefits could be delivered at considerably less cost and would not be a blight on our city, yet it was getting frustrated at every turnâthe media (other than Scoop) had precious little coverage of it.
A Board of Inquiry was set up and I am glad to receive this word from Richard yesterday.
âOur practice is very pleased with the Board of Inquiryâs decision to decline NZTAâs Basin Bridge Project. We are equally pleased that the Board has accepted the evidence we submitted against NZTAâs project on behalf of the Mt Victoria Residents Association and ourselves. Of particular note is the Boardâs recognition of our alternative at-grade enhancement of the roundabout (BRREO) which we prepared as part of an integrated and holistic solution for the city.
âThe Board notes: âWe are satisfied the BRREO Option, particularly having regard to the adverse effects we have identified with regard to the Project, is not so suppositional that it is not worthy of consideration as an option to be evaluatedâ [para 1483]. The Board also stated that âWe found that it [BRREO] may nonetheless deliver measurable transport benefits at considerably less cost and considerably less adverse effects on the environment. We bear in mind that BRREO is still at a provisional or indicative stage and could be subject to further adjustment by further analysis.â
âGiven the Boardâs comprehensive dismissal of NZTAâs application, it makes sense that we are given the opportunity to continue to develop BRREO. We look forward to working with NZTA, the Regional and City Councils.â
Regardless of which option you favoured, I think you will agree with me that all proposals deserved a fair hearing. The Reid one did not prior to 2014, and that was mightily disappointing. I said to Mr Reid that if elected, every proposal would be judged fairly. Let every one be heard and be judged on its meritsâand I am glad the Board of Inquiry has done just that.
My forced Facebook sabbatical came to an end in the late morning. So what did I think of it all? One of my Tweets last night was: âI hope [it is temporary], though I have found people out for 7â12 days now. Now itâs Monday I hope they have got over their hangovers!â At the time I thought: this Facebook is probably not a 24-hour operation. These guys are probably off for the weekend, and they work part-time. We might see them on Monday morning, US time, or whenever they come back from Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Bill Cosby Day, or whatever it is they celebrate over there. Oh, itâs California, so they are probably stoned.
Sixty-nine hours werenât quite enough to break my habits, though they were beginning to change. No more was I looking up Facebook in bed before I go to the office, or having a quick gander at night. But on the desktop, I left one tab open, which would always draw me there to have a glance at what friends were up to.
The timing was a bit exceptional: we had the top 23 pages for the Miss Universe New Zealand 2014 finalists to launch. Had it not been for that, I wonder if I would have bothered with Facebook at all. I had queries to field, direct messages to respond to.
The direct messaging is obviously separate from the rest of Facebook, as it was the one thing that hadnât failed. But everything else was worsening: initially losing liking, commenting and posting, then losing the fan pages I administered. Friends could not see my wall, while a few who could see it tried to like things and were given errors. Aside from a few exceptions, no one seemed to think this was out of the ordinary and worth chatting to me about. Not that I mind this: they could all get in touch with me via other media. But this signals that it is OK to get an error when liking something, and shrug it off as temporary, because we believed Facebook when it told us to try again in a few minutes. Never mind that in Facebookland, âa fewâ means 4,000. We have low expectations of these dot coms.
So when people joke about how these things always tend to happen to me, I wonder. Iâve always maintained they happen to us all. Maybe the difference is I donât believe these buggers when they tell me that things will be back in a few minutes, because invariably they donât. So I put an entry in to Get Satisfaction, or on this blog, so others donât feel they are alone.
And if I had found the limits of the siteâbecause I believe on Vox I did in 2009, when exactly the same thing happened, and the techs had no way outâthen Facebook should know about this.
Facebook was, through all of this, useless. It had closed down its Known Issues on Facebook page, which seemed foolhardy, because this certainly was a known issue with the increasing number of Tweets about it. There were no acknowledgements, and most of the time, feeding anything into its report forms resulted in errors. Sometimes I got a blank screen. Its own help pages told you to do things that were impossible. If it were any other firm, people would be crying bloody murder or wanting their money back. (And I am technically a customer, through my mayoral campaign last year.)
A few other accounts came back, for the people I interacted with on Twitter and Get Satisfaction in the same predicament.
So what now? I might Facebook less. The 69 hours were a good reminder. One of the things I had watched during the sabbatical was the following video via Johnnie Moore, where Douglas Rushkoff speaks about how these big innovators arenât really adding value, only capital. He gives the example of Twitter:
The company that was going to be the maker of things now has to be the site where he aggregates the other makers of things ⊠so that you can show multi-billion-dollar returns instead of the hundred millions that you were doing ⊠You know, for Twitter, I just saw yesterday, they’re failing! Only $43 million last quarter! Isn’t that awful? Oh my God! Only $43 million, which is, I mean, how many employees do they have? I think that would be enough but their market cap is so outlandishly huge, so much money has gotten stuck in there, that they’re gonna be stuck looking for a new way to somehow milk more money out of an otherwise great tool and they’re gonna kill it. They have toâthey have to, âcause they need that home run.
Can we expect there to be greater innovation in such an environment, for any of these platforms? If we arenât feeling the same buzz we once did with these sites, thereâs a good reason, and the above is part of the problem. They arenât creating value any more, only market cap and stock, or, as Rushkoff says, âstatic capital.â
This is what [Thomas] Piketty was really writing about ⊠Capital has the ability to actually create profit, so all these companies, all this development, are really just different versions gaming the system rather than rewiring the system, rebooting it, which is the opportunity here.
I spent part of the last few days looking at the PDF proofs for Lucire Arabia, where at least I know I am part of making something that is creating value and, through its content, helping people. While my original motive for being on Facebook et al was promotional, for my businesses, I have to question if that was the best use of my time, and for creating value. Facebook organized my friends, as Google organized the webânow that those are done, there is the next step.
I left Voxâor rather, Vox left me when the site died and I was no longer able to postâand put more time elsewhere, namely into my first mayoral election campaign. I knew I was creating an opportunity to help people, and the upshot of that is the free wifi system we have in Wellington today (ironically probably very heavily used to update Facebook). It meant more than a means to Facebook and Instagram: the bigger picture was to signal to the tech sector that Wellington is open for business, and that we arenât being left behind in an industry that can create frictionless exports and intellectual capital.
We arenât quite there again in 2014, as Facebook is back, but it may be worth contemplating just where Iâm creating value for business and society when itâs not election year. This year, I don’t have a book plannedâbut it may have to be something where a good bunch of people are going to get some benefit.
In two elections, I told people some blarney on why I decided to run.
In 2010: âI was working at Lewâs Diner and this guy had been picked on. I told him, âStand tall, boy, show some respect for yourself. Do you think Iâm going to spend the rest of my life in this slop house? No, sir, Iâm going to night school. Iâm going to make something of myself.â Some weird guy sitting next to him in a life preserver chimes up, points and me, and says, âThatâs right, heâs going to be Mayor!â And thatâs when I got the idea. Mr Carruthers did say, âA coloured mayor, thatâll be the day,â but it didnât deter me.â
In 2013: âI was wondering whether to stand again and decided to chill out and watch Doctor Who. In that episode, Jenna Coleman turns to the screen and says directly to me, âRun, you clever boy, and remember.â So I did.â
You have to admit these are better answers than the stock politiciansâ ones.
With that, ladies and gentlemen, have a blessed Anzac Day.
The original link is long gone, but I sure wish the media here did its job during the 2013 mayoral election and administered the Voigt-Kampff (I know it was spelt differently in the movie) test from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. This was from The Wave, 11 years ago, during San Francisco’s mayoral election. I believe the magazine may now be defunct. The text below is as formatted in the original, with the American spellings, capitalization after a colon, the full stop inside quotation marks even when it does not form part of the original quote, and the misspelling of the author’s name.
The political media can redress the balance this year by administering the Voigt-Kampff test to the party leaders for the General Election. I already suspect that both the PM and the Leader of the Opposition are replicants.
More Human than Human A field guide for testing if the San Francisco mayoral candidates are human or not.
John Holden
replicant (repâ-li-kant) n.
1. A genetically engineered creature composed entirely of organic substance designed to look and act human.
2. An android.
With Willie Brown finally leaving his gold (plated), diamond-encrusted throne, there has been no shortage of hats thrown into the mayoral ring. San Francisco politics are now a microcosm of Californiaâs own, greater gubernatorial âchallenges.â Rather than confuse you with endorsements, position papers and other outmoded means of political influence, weâve decided to get to the bottom of the only question that matters: Is a particular candidate human or an insidious replicant, possessed of physical strength and computational abilities far exceeding our own, but lacking empathy and possibly even bent on our destruction as a species?
The only reliable method that we know of for sniffing out replicants is the Voight-Kampff Test, created by Phillip K. Dick in his book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and later used by Harrison Fordâs character, Deckard, in the film Blade Runner. The test uses a series of questions to evoke an emotional response which androids are incapable of having. By the candidatesâ responses to this line of questioning, we feel we can say with some certainty whether or not theyâre replicants. However, weâre stopping short of recommending that you vote for them or not. After all, though a replicant mayor may be more likely to gouge a supervisorâs eyes out with their thumbs, they have another quality that could be great in an elected official: a four year life span.
Subject 1: Angela Alioto
The Wave: Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now, answer as quickly as you can.
Itâs your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?
Angela Alioto: Iâd accept it.
TW: Youâve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?
AA: Iâd look at it. What do you mean what would I do? As opposed to saying âhow horrible?â I would tell him how beautiful it is.
TW: Youâre watching television. Suddenly you realize thereâs a wasp crawling on your arm.
AA: Iâd knock it off. Itâs something Iâm used to doing in politics [Laughs].
TW: Youâre in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, Angela, itâs crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Angela. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it canât, not without your help. But youâre not helping. Why is that, Angela?
AA: That would never happen. I wouldnât turn it over in the first place, and the thing with it being in pain is out of the question. Let me ask you, John, how does this fit in to the bigger picture when you ask me about the dying tortoise and the dead butterflies?
TW: Theyâre just questions, Angela. In answer to your query, theyâre written down for me. Itâs a test, designed to provoke an emotional response. Shall we continue? Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind. About your mother.
AA: My mother? Sheâs beautiful. Sheâs an artist. Sheâs a renaissance artist.
Conclusion: Her defensiveness over her lack of empathy for the butterfly is telling, as is the comparison of a political rival to a wasp that should be knocked off. I think we can safely say that Angela Alioto is indeed a replicant, albeit one that âlovesâ the implanted memory of her mother. Keep an eye on her.
Subject 2: Susan Leal
The Wave: Itâs your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?
Susan Leal: Disappointed.
TW: Youâve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?
SL: Iâd be fascinated.
TW: Youâre watching television. Suddenly you realize thereâs a wasp crawling on your arm.
SL: Iâd kill it.
TW: Youâre in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, Susan, itâs crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Susan. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it canât, not without your help. But youâre not helping. Why is that, Susan?
SL: I donât know, I mustâve lost my mind.
TW: Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind. About your mother.
SL: Honest. Supportive. Liberal. Interesting.
Conclusion: The dissociation Susan expressed in response to the tortoise question confirms what we already knew: Susan Leal is a replicant. However, by evaluating her response to the wasp question (word for word as Rachel â totally a replicant â answered it in Blade Runner), we can tell that sheâs at least a Nexus 7. If you vote for Susan, you will be electing a replicant, but one of the most highly advanced models available.
Subject 3: Matt Gonzalez
The Wave: Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now, answer as quickly as you can.
Itâs your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?
Matt Gonzalez: Iâm sorry, what kind of wallet?
TW: Calfskin.
MG: Calfskin, I donât even know what that is.
TW: Do you know what a cow is, Matt?
MG: Yeah.
TW: Baby cow.
MG: Um, I have no idea how I would react.
TW: Youâve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?
MG: These are great questions. Iâm not sure if theyâre ideal for 9:00. We were up pretty late at the office. I can only associate to things that Iâve seen or done in my own lifeâŠ.
TW: Youâre watching television. Suddenly you realize thereâs a wasp crawling on your arm.
MG: I guess I would probably just knock it off.
TW: Youâre in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, Matt, itâs crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Matt. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it canât, not without your help. But youâre not helping. Why is that, Matt?
MG: Well I donât think I would have knocked it over in the first place and I donât get any amusement out of making tortoises suffer, so I donât think that would be me. You must have confused me for one of my opponents.
TW: Shall we continue? Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind. About your mother.
MG: Just a positive person, no negative energy at all. Next time could we do this later in the day?
Conclusion: Androids do not dream of electric sheep because they donât sleep, unlike Matt Gonzalez who was up late âworkingâ at the office. His obvious grogginess leads us to the conclusion that he is indeed a human, but one with an ill-formed sleep schedule. Were he a replicant he would have already gouged out six eyeballs, broken in to the genetic design lab and made a trip to the juice bar by this time of the day.
Subject 4: Tom Ammiano
The Wave: Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now, answer as quickly as you can.
Itâs your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?
Tom Ammiano: Iâd look for money.
TW: Youâve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?
TA: Iâd think this was Blade Runner. Thatâs my reaction.
TW: Youâre watching television. Suddenly you realize thereâs a wasp crawling on your arm.
TA: Call 911.
TW: Youâre in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, Tom, itâs crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Tom. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it canât, not without your help. But youâre not helping. Why is that, Tom?
TA: Thatâs interesting. I donât know. Iâm a republican?
TW: Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind. About your mother.
TA: Tenderness. Yelling.
Conclusion: The self-awareness required to recognize that youâre being administered a Voight-Kampff Test automatically eliminates the possibility of you being a replicant. Good work, Tom! Youâre human! Now watch your back.
Subject 5: Tony Ribera
The Wave: Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now, answer as quickly as you can.
Itâs your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?
Tony Ribera: Good. Iâd be happy.
TW: Youâve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?
TR: Iâd ask him to explain it to me.
TW: Youâre watching television. Suddenly you realize thereâs a wasp crawling on your arm.
TR: Slap it.
TW: Youâre in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, Tony, itâs crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Tony. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it canât, not without your help. But youâre not helping. Why is that, Tony?
TR: Well, I think I would help. I like tortoises. As a former athlete Iâve always been very slow, and I feel I can relate to them.
TW: Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind. About your mother.
TR: Happy. Cheerful. Optimistic. Pretty. Fun.
Conclusion: Inconclusive. While generally empathetic, there is a homey quality to Tonyâs answers that are almost too good to be true. As if they were⊠programmed. Fifty-fifty heâs a skin job.
Subject 6: Gavin Newsom
The Wave: Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now, answer as quickly as you can.
Itâs your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?
Gavin Newsom: I donât have anything to put in it. I would thank them and move on.
TW: Youâve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar. What do you do?
GN: I would tell him to⊠You know what? I wouldnât know how to respond. Howâs that for an answer? Is this a psychological test? Iâm worriedâŠ
TW: Theyâre just questions, Gavin. In answer to your query, theyâre written down for me. Itâs a test, designed to provoke an emotional response.
GN: Oh, I got you.
TW: Shall we continue?
GN: Sure.
TW: Youâre watching television. Suddenly you realize thereâs a wasp crawling on your arm. How would you react?
GN: I would quietly sit and wait for the wasp to move to the next victim.
TW: Youâre in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, Gavin, itâs crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back, Gavin. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it canât, not without your help. But youâre not helping. Why is that, Gavin?
GN: [Immediately] Not a chance. I would never flip the tortoise over in the first place.
TW: Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind. About your mother.
GN: Ethics. Commitment. Sacrifice.
Conclusion: Almost too close to call. Almost. Newsom displays a defensiveness when his empathy is questioned. Heâs aware that heâs being probed for emotional responses, and even expresses concern about this. However, this concern is alleviated a little too easily by our crafty V-K interviewer. Newsom is definitely a replicant. Probably a Nexus 5.
I’ve been reading this Grauniad interview with Rory Stewart, MP, referred by Jordan McCluskey. I’m told that Stewart, and Labour’s Frank Field are the two worth listening to these days in British politics. On Stewart, someone who can speak with a Scots accent and has lived in Hong Kong must be a good bloke.
Two quotations resonated from this interview, which I posted on Tumblr this morning.
Our entire conceptual framework was mad. All these theoriesâcounterinsurgency warfare, state buildingâwere actually complete abstract madness. They were like very weird religious systems, because they always break down into three principles, 10 functions, seven this or that. So theyâre reminiscent of Buddhists who say: âThese are the four paths,â or of Christians who say: âThese are the seven deadly sins.â Theyâre sort of theologies, essentially, made by people like Buddhist monks in the eighth centuryâpeople who have a fundamental faith, which is probably, in the end, itself completely delusional.
And:
We have to create a thousand little city states, and give the power right down to all the bright, energetic people everywhere who just feel superïŹuous.
The second is familiar to anyone who follows this blog: my belief that people are connected to their cities and their communities, probably as a counterpoint to how easily we can reach all corners of the world through the internet. We want that local fix and to make a contribution. Power should be decentralizing in the early 21st centuryâwhich is why I thought it odd that the majority of my opponents in the mayoral election took the line of, ‘We should cosy up and further the cause of statism,’ even if they did not express it quite that way. In every speech. Yes, a city should work with central government, but we do different things and, being closer to the action, we can find ways of doing it more effectively and quickly. With statism being an aim, then the regular entrepreneursâor even as Stewart says, ‘bright, energetic people’âcame further down the list. For me, they were always at the top.
But the first quotation is more interesting. In my work, especially in brand consulting, I’ve harboured a dislike for the manuals that get done but are never referred to. Better that a lot of work goes into a 15 pp. report than scant work going into a 150 pp. one. The former might not look impressive but if every word in there is filled with substance, then it can help get an organization into high gear. And the shorter one is usually harder to write because more preparation goes into it.
In short: take out the wank.
Strip out the wank and you can see the truths for what they are. And if they don’t apply, then try to find ones that do.
Yet to make ourselves look smartâremember, I did law, and that area is filled with a lot of itâwe bury things in jargon so that we keep everything a closed shop. Every profession has such a tendency. However, when things are actually revealed in plain language, does it make the specialist look superfluous? On the contrary, it makes them able to connect with an audience who come to appreciate their expertise. (On a side note, in terms of car repair, this is why I go to That Car Place.)
So when we start dealing in international geopolitics, we want to keep the power among a closed shop. The words that Stewart used served to highlight the gulf of the occident in its dealings in Afghanistanâthat is the context of his remarkâand it connects with a story I remember about a certain US policy institute when I was studying law. Our lecturer said the failure of the institute in the countries it went to was its expectation that a US solution could be imposed, whereby everything would then be all right. Use enough jargon to make it all sound legitimate to the casual observer. The consequence of this (whether this was his conclusion or mine, I do not recall): blame them when it doesn’t work.
Without understanding the cultural context of why things are the way they are in a given systemâand lacking the knowledge to analyse it and quickly localizing your knowledge and gaining the contextâmake for a disadvantage. It must be said that even some within a system don’t realize the context! But you can strip away the mystery by simplifying the language, removing the jargon, and understanding things the way they are. Progress comes from understanding, not from creating mysteriesâand Stewart is wise to have come to the conclusions he has, thanks in no small part from a global, well travelled context.
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