The Knight 'N Knave

The Knight & Knave: Who is lying and who is telling the truth and: Who is who?

Maybe this is a question you can sit down with a friend, place the 2 cards above in front of them, while watching some Squaddie TV, and pose this riddle to them: "Knights and Knaves - Fork In The Road":-

"John and Bill are standing at a fork in the road. John is standing in front of the left road, and Bill is standing in front of the right road. One of them is a knight and the other a knave, but you don't know which. You also know that one road leads to Death, and the other leads to Freedom. By asking one yes–no question, can you determine the road to Freedom?"

In the previous blog, Argument Abstraction, it was seen that it took 33 blogs to reach the 34th blog on "Argument Quality". That was the easy stage. In this blog we examine an underlying assumption in "the quality of arguments" in application: Who is arguing honestly and who is "cheating" the quality of arguments by lying ie "who is not who they appear or purport to be"? The method given is summarized nicely (apart from Truth Tables/Boolean):-

"Notably, if all we want to know is whether a man is a knight or a knave, you can test this by simply asking "Is a truth, true?". As a truth is always true, this is a tautology and hence a known truth which we can test against the answer they give."

If you understand the above, then putting it into practice such as the recognizable satire of our politics as portrayed in: "Yes, (Prime) Minister"

"May I just clarify the question? You're asking who would know what it is that I don't know and you don't know but the Foreign Office know that they don't know and you don't know that the Foreign Office know that they know, that they are keeping from you so that you don't know but they do know, and all we know is that there is something we don't know and we want to know but we don't know what because we don't know." ~ Principal Private Secretary Bernard Woolley, played by Derek Fowlds, p.173

The above played through enough times seems to indicate that the information is on the borderline of being an "unknown unknown" except that they have "social information" that it exists enough for it to become a "known unknown" because the FCO know something and they know the state of knowledge of their FCO secrets against what others know and don't know and that itself is known by "I"! You can also see the prediction of politicians for over-complicating, hedging, using flowery language, inverting meanings and definitions and chaining together various guises of "intentionality" or dressed-up versions of such; so as to obfuscate their direct responsibility at the same time as increasing their indirect potential responsibility should "events" turn out positively!

 We want our Referendum Question Context to be as close to "very predictable" binary

 Q1: Gaussian World is SAFE & Predictable!

"Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his insightful books, explains that most of us think we live in a world dominated by averages and normal distributions, when in fact the things that matter most are those governed by "scalable" or power distributions. One of his examples is the turkey, who lives every day of his life happily roaming the farm, pecking on corn, getting his fill, being treated nicely by the farmer, and goes to sleep each night knowing that the next morning will be just like the last. Until one day the friendly farmer picks him up, carries him to the back yard, chops off his head, and throws him in the oven. 

Some of the standards we come back to in our Brexit debates, considering all the above:-

A Gaussian (Normal or N-Distribution) world is safe (no big surprises) and events and observations are normally distributed. There are two categories of observations in the first quadrant:-

1. Binary
2. Small Range

Everyone likes a Gaussian world – normally distributed and safe – where predictions without errors are easy. Such perfect environments are every risk manager’s dream.

Risks are binary or cover a small range of possibilities, and are not life-threatening. Only probability is important – not magnitude. 

 If we look at the most FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) arguments against Brexit:-

• Magnitude (fear):-

- Ed Miliband: Leaving the EU would be catastrophic for business
- Exit will be a disaster for UK and Europe, say many City heavyweights

•  Unpredictability (uncertainty):-

-  The morning after: Brexit uncertainty and what it means for business
- CBI warns of ‘huge’ uncertainty from Brexit

• Intentionality (doubt):-

- BREXIT: the impact on the UK and the EU (EU member nation and EU institution emphasis)
-  JPMorgan warns Brexit could trigger Scottish independence vote
-  How a 'Brexit' could unravel the Northern Ireland peace process
- US warns Britain: If you leave EU you face barriers to trading with America

We can transform the above now firmly applied into characterizations of the behaviour of the people making these arguments:-

• Magnitude = Threatening
• Unpredictability = Pleading
• Intentionality = Blaming

 EU Reformers vs "eurosceptics": Who is telling the truth and who is who?

If we look at the above picture, it can in the context of The Knight And The Knave Riddle, be interpreted as two competing visions of the UK/Britain's future:-

• Fish of the Left is dreaming of Association Membership
• Fish of the Right is dreaming of Global Sovereign Britain
• BOTH Fish are in the current EU Goldfish Bowl.

As above we use "what we know about each type of fish" to work out whether what each fish is saying is true compared to the other and hence which fish is which!

It comes down to this, the more complex, the more assumptions and the more promised: The more likely the fish is to be a Knave on which ever side of the argument it is making an appearance.

The irony of using the above cartoon in the aftermath of the preceding week should not be unnoticed:-

WorldFishing.Net: Norway: A model industry

FLEXCIT: The Definitive EU Exit Plan For Britain - 14.0 Fisheries p.266

While there are aspects of the CAP which may be tolerable, at least in the short to medium-term, there are no redeeming aspects of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy  (CFP).  Limited  reforms  have been  largely  cosmetic  and  do  not  address the fundamental deficiencies of the policy. However, restoring national policies in a post-EU environment is extraordinarily complex.

When Conservative Farming and Fisheries spokesman Owen Paterson undertook a review of the CFP, it took two years to produce a draft outline, embodying  the basic principles of a repatriated policy. On that basis alone, given the need for extensive consultation, and setting up the administrative and other systems needed to manage the implementation of policy, it would not be untoward to argue that  it could take longer than five years – and perhaps more than a decade – to get to the stage of introducing a UK policy.

The starting point of the Paterson review was the recognition  that, prior  to UK entry to the EEC, the British fishing industry had been a model of sustainability. Yet, after decades of the CFP, areas of the most fertile and productive fishing grounds in the world were being threatened with closure.

 There's 2 take-homes here:-

1. Brexit: The Event & Definition of Leaving (withdrawing from EU Treaties) must be as simple and predictable "space" as possible.
2. Derivative Policy is immensely complex.

It does not matter which suite they're in, not following the above = Knave:-

David Cameron, Nigel Farage, Daniel Hannan, Matthew Elliott

If you remember we've already met a "Knight" on the Pro-EU side in The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. as per Andrew Duff in Cameron’s bid for irreversible guarantee means constitutional chaos, who must be credited correctly and with good grace for the honesty of his arguments for the EU. Likewise, this first step in making quality arguments in my honest opinion is made by the various groups affiliated in the side-bar.

The EU Referendum is a simple Remain OR Leave binary question. Defining the practical political consequences more closely to this question seems both more accurate, more honest and more accessible to understanding for more people:-

The Knight is revealed: For Pro-EU and for Pro-Brexit

Jean Monnet's "Engrenage": Destination Unknown?

Above is a Virtual Model of the Antikythera Mechanism, considered one of the first analog computers ever discovered, dating from 150-205 BCE by the Ancient Hellenic Greeks. It was designed to: "Predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendrical and astrological purposesas well as the Olympiads, the cycles of the ancient Olympic Games."

If you watch the video above you can see a clear demonstration of how the interlocking different sized gears and different number of "teeth" all orchestrate together according to the mathematical movements of the planets calculated and related to each other to therefore be able to mechanically turn and hence be "coded" for computation of future combinations of planet, time and position as per the picture:-

 Effectively small gears turn larger gears at a slower periodicity which simulates the different rates of the celestial movements.

To repeat a recent remark by Dr. RAE North for the third time: EU Referendum: flawed understanding

Described as a member of Business for Britain, one of Matthew Elliott's business ventures, this woman would have it that the EU was turning out to be a "flawed concept" because it had monetary union without fiscal or political union.

Seemingly a small detail, the EU cannot be regarded as a flawed concept for this reason. The very essence of the single currency was to launch an incomplete construct in the knowledge that the stresses would create political pressures which would drive further integration.

This is the mechanism of engrenage, at the core of the so-called Monnet Method, relying on the doctrine of the beneficial crisis. It is not, as they say, a bug, but a feature. The European Union was designed to act in this way.

To elaborate again from The Great Deception p.569:-

There  would  never  be  any  single,  clear  definition  of  these  terms. But  every ‘project’ insider would know what was meant by engrenage, or ‘gearing’. It provided a blanket  word  to  describe all  those  various  techniques  whereby  the ‘project’ could advance what was really its only underlying agenda: a steady, relentless pressure to extend the Commission’s supranational powers. Each new advance it  made would  merely be regarded as a means  of gearing up for the  next.

Each  new  addition  to  its  competences  might  begin  with  a  small, innocuous-seeming proposal to which nobody could object: until the principle was  conceded  and  those  powers  could  then  be  steadily  enlarged. Each  new problem or setback could be used as a ‘beneficial crisis’ to justify further extending the Commission’s powers to provide the remedy. Thus,  brick  by  brick,  would  the  great  supranational  structure  be  assembled. Above all it would be vital never to define too clearly what was the ‘project’s’ ultimate goal, for fear this would arouse the countervailing forces which might seek to sabotage it before it was complete.

In this sense, an intention to obscure and to deceive was implicit in the nature of the ‘project’ from  the  moment  it  was  launched. This  habit  of  concealment was to remain such a defining characteristic of the ‘project’ that it would come increasingly to affect all those caught in its spell.

The roots of deception

The big difference between The EU's "Engrenage" and the above he Antikythera Mechanism of course is that one is physical, the other is an organizational principle of systematic increase in it's competencies: The scale of each is different both is size and in scope of function. But as above the function is clearly defined and what's more cannot be "reversed" or otherwise significantly amended without breaking either device's inherent functioning. This example is made real from the mountain of evidence showing the flow of policy powers from Nation Members to the Supranational EU:-

Evolution of EU Competencies (policy powers) x1-Direction

We've already covered this in Can we have our cake and eat it too? with the "piling up of more Treaties over old Treaties. But as per How do you become a "eurosceptic"? where it was pointed out the observed gap between the EURO's performance and it's predicted or promised performance and the way Tim Worstall manages to dig into the history of the decisions, this is an exemplar of the Monnet Method as Dr. RAE North points out above: "It's not a bug, but a feature." From this insight we're recorded here, it follows that a fundamental consequence of EU Membership is:-

• The Nature of the EU Treaty Structures is to actively produce "Political Uncertainty" as part of the political gearing design of the EU.

When I read Tim Worstall's article it was not that I was surprised by the result and hence based by opposition of the EU off this even though it was very elegantly presented:-

The European and Monetary Union (EMU): A Road Less Travelled

It was reading the history involving the founders of the EURO

Many of the euro’s problems can be traced to its birth defects. For political reasons, countries were included that weren’t ready at the time. Furthermore, a common currency cannot survive on the long term if it is not backed by a political union. Even as the euro was being born, many experts warned that currency union members didn’t belong together.

But it wasn’t just the experts. Documents from the Kohl administration, kept confidential until now, indicate that the euro’s founding fathers were well aware of its deficits. And that they pushed ahead with the project regardless.

he government files from the founding phase of the monetary union reveal that this construct cannot function. The message the documents convey is that political opportunism will ultimately prevail.

The political dimension of the EURO and not realizing how typical this was of the whole EU "Le Projet" as it became known to it's advocates around Jean Monnet.

Time-line of the Major EU Treaties

What is the significance of this? We learnt the immense importance of the breadth of discussion/understanding for argument in How about a nice game of chess? We then looked at the direct agency of the Conservatives in very general terms connecting to historic patterns of "Centralization" in The Goldfinch and the Gilded Cage and then very specifically because power is already centralized the ability to deploy deliberately lower quality arguments by our Prime Minister David Cameron to fix the context ie breadth of the discussion according to narrower limits in Big Ben: The Four-Faced Liar

What this leads to as per Dr. RAE North of these "Johnny-Come-Lately's": Beware of semi-sceptics The problem is they manage to equally narrow the breadth of the discussion down and hence build an incorrect "intellectual architecture" for useful communication and hence democracy in action for a national referendum, also.

I'm starting to think a 'Brexit' is a good idea and I never thought I'd ever say that

It's a very reasonable piece. It's also a pattern that is now becoming acceptable. The Political Correctness of Pro-EU Membership fashions has been superceded by this "latest fashion". The reason I style it such is because the underlying arguments are built on levels of superficial reasoning, there's a clear pausity of crowd movement in the Pro-EU direction, the media attention is swinging around to this position encouraged by the Prime Minister and Business For Britain and people are imitating "Monkey See Monkey Do" this change in attention and reshaping of the narrative. We've seen it with Owen Jones, it's been the fashion of various Tory "eusceptics" for years and so on. There's very little indicatio of historic context to these emotional inferred "U-Turns" in opinion.

A little better is: Ten Reasons to Rethink U.S. Support for British Membership of the European Union but as with the above example all they can contextualize is the failure of the EURO and the context of greater future growth elsewhere in the World. This context shapes things as an economic arrangement not a political one which you can clearly see above.

Why should "The Monnet Method" of "engrenage" be so imperceptible and so vitally important to the central point of our argument as Brexiteers? Is such as Anna  Soubrey right about "eurosceptics when she says: Cabinet minister tells Eurosceptics: 'Get a life!'

Ms Soubry went on: “It means that they have this obsession that they will do almost everything and anything, they will devote all their time in a way that really is not healthy for them in this run-up to the referendum.” “Because as I say, they live it, they eat it, they drink it. You want to say to them For God’s sake, get a life. But they’ve gone beyond that. That makes it very difficult for us.” 

What could be so vitally important that people would argue from principle and not practicality as the new Orthodoxy over our discussions concerning the EU are now being shaped by Matthew Elliott's Business For Britain budding from Westminster to deliver as reported extensively by The Boiling Frog (see blogroll)

Epiphanies from Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The European Union is a horrible, stupid project. The idea that unification would create an economy that could compete with China and be more like the United States is pure garbage. What ruined China, throughout history, is the top-down state. What made Europe great was the diversity: political and economic. Having the same currency, the euro, was a terrible idea. It encouraged everyone to borrow to the hilt.