Red Cliffs Of Dawlish

Red Cliffs Of Dawlish
Red Cliffs Of Dawlish

Monday 25 April 2016

Nothing New Under The Sun

What is your observation?

Something a little perturbing:-
  1. There's a lot of information available for people to inform themselves from.
  2. It is actually challenging in being able to assort the quality of information from the quantity.
  3. People seem more disposed to listen and watch a human-being, of some kind, high-status or authorative, tell them about the information and do most of the thinking for them.
I did a very casual and very cursory glance at some internet numbers on Barack Obama "Obama EU" and filtered this week on youtube and google-news:-
  • Google News (pg.1): (333 more articles) ; (10 more articles) ; (1,124 more articles) ; (2,561 more articles) ; (23 more articles)
  • Youtube (pg.1): 123,219 views Washington Free Beacon ; 22,937 views BBC News ; 13,013 views Live Streaming News 2 ; 12,988 views euronews ; 7,698 views ABC news ; 5,724 views CNN
Some quick eye-balling and it already gives a useful impression of the numbers racked up in reach or "exposure" Obama can generate; let alone any serious scraping of data or analytics from television or radio or other forms of mass media numbers. And it seems betting odds have shifted consequentially since Mr. Obama's intervention:-



 Money talks and Polling walks...

If we alternatively take one of the sources of information above: Top 10 Reasons to Leave the EU ~ John Petley, which is recently published:-

 Very well written and high in quality information (and indeed ratio of quality to quantity) but, in word form - only.



I've started dipping into it, and it's well written and informative. Yet even this booklet is a great barrier to accessibility by people; merely because of the difference above between the President of the United States and one of many books and many more words on this subject. Today Owen Paterson gave a speech concerning the EU and the Referendum:-

 A good speech, convincing tone of voice, but little visual+ information

Again many good points were made. However, merely listening to the speech, I feel that it also is inaccessible, more words instead of the eye, the ear. And the youtube viewer count was only 100 views when I last checked. Strictly speaking for myself, I'd say Obama and Paterson are both adept at conveying a deep sense of conviction in the tone of their voices. More or less I can actually (or could) switch off my thinking brain and let my "creative"/contextual side of brain function take over (like autopilot) and "go with the flow of the voice" and generally pick up agreement signals how much I accord with my impression of the speaker already!!!

 I'm not at all sure our present culture is very "suitable" on the RHS and nor is our education very "successful" on the LHS?

I think the Right Brain (as it's modelled for convenience) "comes more naturally" to people. The Left Brain requires a significant investment of "learning" to tackle complex information. Perhaps this disparity is a foundation for working on/with in future democracy and politics?


What we see above is that books and long speeches tend to narrow down the elements of communication. What President Obama is able to do so successfully is add that extra 55% of "body language" which it seems to me our Right Brains "love" so much! And I think the betting firms are reflecting this as opposed to the little "exercise" I contrived in the top image of "Spot The Odd One Out".

And if we really want to question Obama's credentials further:-


"One born every minute..."


There seems to have been a huge amount of information today and that will require another blog to consider on another subject. The subject here is working out why people are so apparently "vulnerable" to politicians' tools of persuasion.

An interesting comment was made by Andrew Stuttaford in Brexit: Plan? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Plan!

"Mario Cuomo famously said, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” There’s a lot to that, but a campaign designed to reassure (as the Brexit campaign must be) will need to include quite a bit of prose too."

Which I found from the link at EUReferendum.com courtesy of Dr. RAE North. It's a very good piece, not only citing "The Definitive Brexit Plan" FLEXCIT (and referencing/linking directly to it), but it's well argued and equally insightful using interesting ideas such as above, which neatly fits in with our idea about Right and Left Brain thinking. I'm tempted to quote the whole thing but must resist, again connecting:-

"To that end, Brexiteers need to explain why those risks are far less than the undecideds now fear, and a pretty good way to do it is—smelling salts—a plan. Brexiteers need to demonstrate not only why Brexit, but how."

We've had a lot of "Why?" from Leave Campaigners, the so-called "poetry/RHS Brain". But we've effectively had FALL! (or indeed FAIL!) on "How?" the so-called "prose/LHS Brain" for fear that voters won't "get it" given the discussion above, this all begins to fit together. And quoting another piece to use examples to illustrate this:-

"Many undecided voters, I suspect, have no great love for Brussels, but they are unwilling to take the risk (as they see it) of leaving the EU, a risk that the Bremainers are, naturally enough, playing up."

This comes after the below quote but the order or elaboration works this way: The current strategy as per the Legacy-News Media is:-


  • Obama for EU vs Putin for Leave. (Good vs Bad Narrative)
  • Vote to Remain for your children (risk-averse parents are finely-tuned to economic disruption given the extra burdens they're under with children and childrens' futures): This message is very RHS Brain and popular.

 It's literally called: "FamilyFuture960.jpeg" from Gov.uk!


 Making a nuisance of myself on twitter: Fighting RHS Brain with RHS Brain!

And here's the conundrum for the Leave side:- 

"It’s true that the ‘leave’ campaign is not in a position to determine how Britain’s departure from the EU would be negotiated. At the same time, it does need to show that there are Brexit routes and that they can be navigated in a safe and straightforward way. 


I'm actually not at all sure who Lilico is, except he has the same "aura" as Vote Leave it always appears to me, and the total lack of  "Intellectual Honesty" and hence "Message Discipline" seems to pervade all their messages as EUReferendum picked up on:-


Here we are talking about LHS Brain and it is particularly important at the "top level" of the campaign where supposedly the leadership and higher levels of learning will have for example read all the books and more in the opening image of this blog and/or better the ability to assort the information rapidly for quality and hence selection to people who rely on other humans to deliver their message accessing their RHS Brains more.

A for choosing a Brexit Plan, it's a sign of intelligence:-





Something our politicians dominating the campaign in Vote Leave - lack.