Better Rhetoric For Brexit: "Acres Of Diamonds."

What is the value in Brexit?

There is one silver-lining from having to endure the nonsense rhetoric or what is given the (overly-) serious political description of "phony war", and that's that rhetoric can be made to work BOTH ways.

In one previous blog, the obervation was made that the common wisdom is that "no-body knows" if Brexit is good or if Remain is good or better or worse. Namely confusion and complexity at work before communication is able to even parse anything worth saying. This is one reason I find it particularly difficult these days to comment over at EUReferendum.com. I know in most cases I've not done the requisite work, research and preparation to master the details to be able to simplify enough to ask useful questions and hence develop/advance the discussion presented there.

I've seen a number of times group meetings where people have come out with the usual mantras irrespective that being present at these meetings they should, as preliminary, be familiar with the overall conceptual picture... and predictably you see a "flash of lightning" darken Dr. North's response the speed of which is probably proportional to the number of "man-hours" invested in these materials so that people might actually have the basics of communication wrapped up first before attempting to argue the details and logic in seriousness using this common platform.

For this reason I've chosen to attempt to limit the scope of this blog to policy areas: Environment, Fisheries and Farming, in future, at least that may aid in attempting to master the details as much as I am capable as a non-expert. As well as this, some of the thinking that goes around the subject of Brexit such as this blog: Namely connecting the principles to the details at different ends: Working on the problem from both ends.

I watched yet another BBC political production: Britain After The Referendum: What Next? which, did not answer the question: "What Next?" but did as with Question Time provide a pedestal for various talking heads to spout their rhetoric from.

The central question which keeps failing to be acknowledged, that from The Great Deception: "What is the EU for anyway?" then from that "Is it worth it?" is derivative. Instead we have from the speakers:-

• Ben Page's preferred filter from public polls: "You wot, mate?"
• Nick Clegg's student of the EU speech: "Friend Of Big EU Chief".
• CBI: "Business is about money. I rest my entire case."
• Polly Toynbee who demonstrates that being misinformed makes you more wrong than being ignorant time and time again.
• Tim Montgomerie: Seizing the negative tone of all the others to present a positive message to probably gain persuasion points?

All the speakers are very studied in the effect of their words, but none bothered to establish before "What Next?" first: "Where Right Now!"

So, looking for a countervail of rhetoric: Where words rely less on substance and more on style to shift attitude as opposed to carefully argue reason for reason, the "management style stirring speech" is a possible approach; one that has some merit and points out to people: That work, preparation and research are all prerequisites:-

Recognizing Opportunity: How?

These sorts of motivation or management style talks necessarily contain an amount of cliché to them, but that does not detract from the likely reason for this: How many people, have heard such "advice" a number of times  in a number of different ways? Or perhaps so many times that, and end up only feeling good about such speeches and the positive prospects mentioned, and then "What Next?" Do absolutely nothing about applying them or testing them to see if they actually work?

You have to laugh, not at some of the now quaint aspects in the above, which have aged, inevitably, but at the difference between the contents of this speech and the contents of our modern politicians' speeches but as important if not more so: The intent behind the messages proposed in both cases. Let's explore this concerning how it affects talking about Brexit:-

Normally in science, light (white) travels through the prism then separates out into the various different colours which we take delight in when it reaches our eye (sparkle in the diamond's multi-faceted case). However, in politics, this is often what happens in a lot of communication between the questioner (sending out the "light"), the process of communication inbetween and the answer from who ever is on the other end, now scale this up to the institutional processes of politics but in the same Q&A form of person to person (as we always see on our tv screens eg):-

1. A question is asked on a particular area, let's say "colour blue" using above.
2. The questioner expects this input to be processed reasonably and output in "colour blue".
3. But what the questioner often wants to know is the specific value of the "colour blue" after the processing. When I say value, it could be money or some quantitative change that can be measured accurately and definitively.
4. What instead comes out is the white light. From blue you get all the colours combined and hence the answer is often in politics "uncertainty" or it seems as if the politician has evaded the question (often the case due to party line) but also:-
5. How To Recognize what where in the fully complex system the question actually resides and hence the limits to what it's effects will be once processed.

In the above, using Dr. North's points about Brexit being a complete thing or using the quote again "Swallow it Whole", the diamond being the different angles of questions asked of the (sub-) components of this complete structure:-

• Any individual detail or regulation must fit within the wider policy which must fit within the wider political realities.
• Any "positive outcome" desired in any given specific area, will naturally process through this complex structure and churn out an output based on multiples of different components operating together.
• Any "positive outcome" is itself a question of "joint-up-policy" being the focus of the components to create the complete outcome (which will include other outcomes). Thus the inputs should be considered as tools rather than ends accountable in themselves.
• Inevitably these outcomes will lead to "unforeseen consequences" or "uncertainty" which will introduce mistakes or errors. The process should be considered continuous and aim more to avoid catastrophic error ie reasonable deviation.
• Dr. North moves the argument further along pointing out that any such system itself needs another level of 'consciousness' in what it is used for: In how effectively it can react to correct these mistakes or indeed recognize them from the complexity inherent.

Much like the motivation speech above, it may be that people can listen and read or look at such considerations and yet ultimately not pay any heed to them, because without learning the very many and sometimes boring and seemingly infinitely endless details upon details (ie hard work here and now); people decide they'd prefer to feel good and be comforted in hearing of stories of others who've "miraculously" found Acres Of Diamonds across the other side of the world. This seems to be the politicians' bread and butter basis of rhetoric?

The value in Brexit is much more inherent than is imagined, is probably the best conclusion to use. But the cost is equally inherent and I think more easy to come to terms with right now: A failure of investment of people in this politics, is as per the speech above, "going backwards" and the results may then be considered to be understandable in terms of their "perversity" of outcomes; if check-box listing these the list would be long, of notorious note to summarize however:-

• No alternative or full fact sheets presented during the Referendum unlike for example in Switzerland as per recently from Scribblings From Seaham: That’s the way to do it………

In the next blog I will cover the Environment subject as applied to Brexit, as I've attempted already with Fisheries. However, from the ideas "talked about here", I hope to apply them to examples within that policy's context and thus better explain them as "examples in action" and observable.

If there's one thing Brexit has exposed, it's how perverse politics can become and how the inherent message within the modern political rhetoric is a message of "powerlessness of people to the political systems".

Structured Information (Arguments) vs Visible Disintegration (EU Politics)

Network Effect: Graph Theory describing System Risk or Failure: Source/Attribution: http://www.turingfinance.com/computational-model-of-systemic-risk-for-the-banking-industry/


Well the Result did not match the Performance of the campaign and my prediction of a close Remain victory was wrong! What occurred was the choice by many millions that the Referendum provided a great opportunity to vote AGAINST our entire political establishment's own position.

Now I have to say, this inference by so many people shows good common sense. If the deductive arguments are so horribly polluted, then a proxy argument against people who time and time again distort and deceive, is a very fair way of discerning a choice to be made with low information.

Unfortunately, I don't feel that our politics has an underlying positive change from such a result. The Referendum was a "one-off" and little will visibly change after the Leave vote as predicted in FLEXCIT: The Market Solution.

My intention was to pack in the blogging for a time and move on with other things, but it's worth one more post to point out the observation of how people have reacted to the Referendum result.

Let me say that according to my own perception of Performance matching Results, I've been very pacific about either result: Some part of me wants the opportunity to campaign and educate in another Referendum more people more successfully. But another part of me is delighted to see so many people who used such horrible manipulation of communication (were they self-deluded?) to confuse so many people, and for me to see their works of deception destroyed in a big way. Pete North notices this also, particularly the malign effects of "Identity Politics" which have taken pride of place in the BBC's coverage of the past 24HRS+:-

We have established a beachhead but the fight goes on

I try to find ways of visualizing ideas, arguments, concepts and the like. If I were to paint a picture on a canvas between what appears so according to the Left/BBC and their "Identity Politics" I would paint a surrealism picture which is showing a lot of imagery in an incoherent but strangely captivating and slightly disturbing form: You can google such pictures if you like. When I look at these, they are powerfully engaging my emotional brain but I don't like them, they don't seem to have any greater ideas behind them (perhaps there's the odd exception I am unaware of?) that connects "function and form" holistically.

And so we see so much wailing and rending of clothes post-Referendum with so much inchoate nonsense spoken. There's two really good examples I watched and show of this:-

 The above presenter in Brussels conflates emotional reaction (you can decode it in her tone of voice change when asked the relevant question) with statements of facts and logical sequence of assertions and their degree of certitude or indeed that abused word in the media "Uncertainty". Secondly and a great example by Richard Starkey of the below:-

Conflation, Confusion and Conditioning ~ Pointman's Blog

"Negative conflation, which is used mainly in attack propaganda, is employing a negative presentation idea to deliver a desirable payload idea. For instance, Stephen Lewandowsky used a negative presentation idea in a subsequently retracted paper, which was that climate skeptics had been scientifically classified as conspiratorial, reactionary and psychologically disturbed individuals. Reconstructing the shattered propaganda syllogism and expressing it explicitly; skeptics are deranged, you’re a skeptic, therefore you’re deranged. The implicit and unexpressed payload idea is of course that the last thing you’d want to be known as is a skeptic."
"Attack propaganda, as its name suggests, is nothing more than aggression against opponents but it also serves the useful purpose of scaring any of your own fellow travellers, who may be having doubts, to stay on side.
When used skilfully, explicit conflation very often goes unnoticed by those on whom it is being practised, but even when they do happen to have vague doubts about the payload idea, it does tend to mute objections, if not suppress them entirely. It takes a strong personality not to hesitate expressing reservations with a subtly conflated idea, which everyone else around you appears to think is obviously a good idea."

Newsnight - 24/06/2016: In-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines with Evan Davis. So... now what? ~45:30mins onwards

We see in the Newsnight debate with Paris Lees an attempt at "negative conflation" but fortunately we have Richard Starkey who is indeed a "strong personality" and he points out problems he has with this "group psychology" form of identity politics above and around the fallacy of arguments on display, veiled by so much hyper-emotional conflation and confusion (and likely as Pointman suggests Conditioning). It ends with Paris Lees attacking Richard Starkey for being "white, male" and apparently "privileged" just after he's pointed out perhaps the major reason why "unprivileged" people voted for Leave: And thus imo successfully answered the question why people in a democracy voted Leave. Thus understanding the situtation, is the first step to helping resolve problems for people! But no, for those conditioned by "Identity Politics" the stimulus of hyper-emtional signals is too big a reward or too big a personal cost to leg go of...

Now coming away from the first picture which is visible, when I trained as an undergraduate scientist, one of the core lessons was to "DEFINE: WHAT?" before working forwards with explanatory value of theories and hypothesis. Indeed the eventual result of the EU I think is fairly certain from extrapolating it's trajectory once this definition is zero-in'd on:-

To me what this allows is a network of arguments around the entire subject to form the visual image I have in my mind of the EU Referendum and Brexit subjects as per the blog's opening .gif image of graph theory showing system risk and failure in banks, to illustrate. This mental imagery is for me infinitely more structured and pleasing than the surreal images of emotion and incongruous confusion that issues forth like a tidal wave from the BBC and politicians. It's why I said before that the "Performance" vs "Results" once skillfully arrived at give a sense of pacific emotion towards the outcomes which are understandable and not confusing at all, but the rational analysis of the performance is where success and failure and detail is found.

Instead what we're witnessing is a lot of emotional people worried on a scale of millions of millions and guess what? This surrealism is manifest in the markets and volatility of currencies! It's self-made with the blame on "a dangerous referendum" and the like being bandied around.

If you look at things, the EU/EZ is in much more severe existential and concrete risk of failure and disintegration of it's over-elaborate political networks and the repercussions these have on the other areas such as economy and hence much further on people's lives. All you had to do was read the 615 pages of The Great Deception to consider that this "network of 28 nations" is at serious risk of failure.

They now expect the UK to trigger Article 50 due to this, but the UK has it's own problems to attend to and the should not trigger Article 50 until the problem has been examined and worked on in anticipation of the EU's own silly 2 year limit on Article 50!



See FLEXCIT: The Market Solution: 3.0 The Negotiating Framework

"Assuming a referendum has been held, culminating  in a victory  for the "leave" campaign, there will be a number of preliminaries that the UK government will have  to  address  before  the  parties  can  even sit  down  at  a  table.  These  are  not incidental to the process, but will define and shape the negotiations and strongly affect their outcome."

And, to compare the "Visible Disintegration" with the above FLEXCIT structured arguments (sanity):-

 The patience of a Saint compared to the madness of the Crowd.

"While they're sweeping up all those chicken heads, we have Flexcit for you: it's all worked out here. Just follow the instructions and you won't go far wrong. Written by hundreds, read by thousands (currently over 80,000), this is the definitive exit plan, as noted by The Register.

There is also the video which helps explain some of the issues, and the short version here.

Over the next hours, weeks and months we are going to be assailed by ill-informed comment in super-tanker quantities, much of it from the BBC whose David Dimbleby referred to Article 50 as "Chapter 50" - reflecting the degree of knowledge and insight in the institution.

In this and other media organisations - and in government itself - there is terrifyingly little knowledge of the workings of the EU, and next to none about how we should extract ourselves from it. Listening to some of the offerings is painful."

Be careful who you allow yourself to listen to!

Finally, Farewell: I hope this blog despite it's many deficiencies has been useful!