A Science of Simplicity

Brexit = Simplicity (LHS) vs Complexity (RHS) both built above "Pragmatic Legitimacy"

In the very first blog, How do you become a "eurosceptic" Brexiteer? it was noted that the foundation to all our communications and hence political decision making systems; "Representative Democracy": which like The Laughing Cavalier (can be seen at The Wallace Collection) seems neither representative nor Democratic, as per The Harrogate Agenda:-

 Much like representative democracy: The Laughing Cavalier is neither "laughing" nor a "Cavalier"!

is built on Trust. A very simple foundation. But it's presence as per Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday - At The Airport - An Airport Scene (Papua New Guinea) p.4

"Still another distinction of the 2006 crowd compared to the 1931 crowds was a feature that we take for granted in the modern world: Most of the people crammed into that airport hall were strangers who had never seen each other before, but there was no fighting going on among them. That would have been unimaginable in 1931, when encounters with strangers were rare, dangerous, and likely to turn violent. Yes, there were those two policemen in the airport hall, supposedly to maintain order, but in fact the crowd maintained order by itself, merely because the passengers knew that none of those other strangers was about to attack them, and that they lived in a society with more policemen and soldiers on call in case a quarrel should get out of hand." 

This passage feels particularly pertinent to consider in light of the Paris terrorist attacks on innocent crowds of people, and we easily forget that the simple, scalable act of individuals all deciding to "Trust" one another allows such large gatherings of groups of people, as per Squaddie TV. Trust is one of the Moral Foundations of legitimacy as discussed in Legitimacy & Listening for our political system to work effectively and ensure the feedback loop of our decision-making is providing both negative and positive feedback of decisions and policies.

What has happened with the loss of Trust is the increase in Apathy of electorates as per Power To The People and the increase in the manipulation of Anxiety of governments on their people because of the widening of the MIND THE (Credibility) GAP! between people, parties and politicians, the Political Class that is the displacement of Trust in politics. Dylan Moran manages to capture this apathy and loss of trust:-

The ineffable Dylan Moran: More 'home truths' than ALL our 650 MP's can manage

What we've seen with the above terrorist attacks is the realization that our politicians cannot be trusted and that is related to their political decisions on multiple policies across Foreign Policy, Migration Policy (Irregular Economic migrants and asylum of refugees) and of course the lack of democracy above all in these processes as mentioned. It's why Migration Immigration is so HIGHLY VISIBLE a policy invested with the increased public political will and demand for change: The loss of that simple assumption in our everyday lives: Trust. Dr. RAE North addresses this topic in detail here in the context of Brexit: Strategy Ten: Immigration.

Looking now at the top diagram, however we must define Brexit as a simple choice based on Trust, not on results nor on promises of results, but on Trust of past actions and past words and re-establishing Credibility into Politics BEFORE EVERYTHING that follows

What we can rely on however is those with vested interests: The Politicians, The Lawyers, The Bankers, to assert their own priorities and their own complexities above the people and we've seen the results of this in Lakshmi: Goddess of Prosperity (1). This is the path towards complexity and towards manipulation and a loss of trust in democracy and hence Black Swans.

 The Politicians increase complexity and Black Swans atst as selling FUD to voters!

This noted in Brexit For Beginners: The Hydra Of Complexity. However using a Macroscope as per My Kingdom For A Macroscope! and The EU Onion and The Brexit Number, we can make a hugely significant distinction as per Pub Signs:-

• Brexit = Present Simple x1 Day out of 14,625 days singular event
• FLEXCIT = Present Continous Many Years Process triggered by Brexit
• British Model EU rebranding = Continued complexity and fragility in the EU with sustained mistrust as per Breadcrumbing.

 So how do we simplify the Brexit choice down to a single number/day and a single word to vote for for people, and one that all the voters can above all TRUST?:-

FLEXCIT Process: Defining Brexit as simply as possible by burning away "hydra heads"

Here's a visualization of the structural organization of FLEXCIT. The objective as needs repeating is Simplification, simplification, simplification of Brexit as the binary option on the Referendum Day to choose that people can Trust (because behind it is a Plan that is superior to Cameron's received complexity and fudge and lies and manipulation from the EU: The EU is susceptible to Black Swans because it's so complex politically it is fragile and the only way it can sustain itself is via Deception using all the political power it has centralized to do so for over 60yrs.

Simplicity is what we're interested in and here's why for two reasons. First:-

• Remove Segments
• Reduce Segments
• = More Simple!!

This means Brexit is more understandable for more people and hence they can TRUST this choice more; because it's an event built into a fuller process FLEXCIT itself. It is made for the people, it is including the people, it is educating the people unlike the politicians who attempt to deceive the people for so many decades over the EU.

The blue headings effectively point out a very simple truth connecting the 4 starting conditions with the eventual future dividends (all in green):-

 Utilizing the smallest of deviations that accumulate into very large end changes over time

The "Starting Conditions" must be accounted for:-

1. Stuffing 45 Years + x7 Major Treaties into x1 Referendum Day = Our Politicians failures against democracy
2. The Membership of the EU has accumulated from 1972 huge complexity; only small changes via the the correct legal route of Article 50 are valid and also viable to the UK's secure withdrawal. 

Looking after these may lead to "Future Dividends" that are not immediate so can be removed (for the time-being). Hence all promises of global trade and real democracy by our politicians should be removed from the debate.

That leaves the Yellow Titles. The largest segment are policies. Hence removing this from debate is essential to slaying that Hydra of complexity. Simply on withdrawing repatriating the entire EU acquis to eventually be modified means there's very little to no immediate change: Hence all fears and criticisms are removed

It also means for "eurosceptics" to start Learning & Playing The Rules Of The Game and keeping your eyes on the ball as per Off The Ball Movement. If you get bogged down in the above details you add complexity and that plays to the status quo effect, the real enemy of the Referendum, The Top-Down Referendum tool of the professional poltiicians as per How about a nice game of Chess? and again we looked at how complexity is the friend of the trickster in The Knight 'N Knave and the enemy potentially to political progress away from stagnation and control by those in power.

The next biggest is "Withdrawal Options": Without unity and without unity of understanding, why should people/voters trust us? They will trust prestige, and authority as we already covered Legitimacy & Listening, the Dominance-Submission Relationship exerting it's negative effects. We know that if Brexit is defined as simply as possible then it is the nearest layer out of the EU in the EU Onion and the option that is quickest and easiest to reach The Brexit Number which is The Norway Option as per Brexit For Beginners:-

We know why because it is not only simplest even if not optimal, it also satisfies our starting positions and hence is also the most honest position to take and that is the task we're really talking about: Trust!

If this is accepted, then the next largest slug in the pie is The Single Market and that is covered via the Norway Option through EEA access via EFTA membership. This does mean however that such memes as:-

• Cost-Saving
• Regulation
• Control of Borders

Must be removed also from the argument of Brexit. Remember simplifying is GOOD FOR THE PEOPLE! It also means both sides of the argument must be simplified including our side! Goodbye outdated memes, hello simplicity.

I just say an interesting comment on Immigration, it's own slug in the pie and therefore of course important but it is the smaller of the above! if you choose any guide that as per simplicity is an abstract rule of thumb to use to reassure about this decision:- Comment is found here: Strategy Ten: Immigration

Those who want more immigration control will fall into Cameron's complexity trap...

What needs to be understood by "eurosceptics" who I hope after reading this will convert into "Brexiteers" is the above works like this in visual form:-

How Cameron can quickly reassert credibility and authority on Immigration in the EU

You can go over the vast stats on this, for example covered in OMG !!! Parakeet Invasion which references both Dr. RAE North and also Migration Watch. Two of the sources I've found most useful. The above graph shows how politically all Cameron has to do is as per ScepticSid above implement what he can do already and which the EU will ensure also, and the electorate perception will shift on the immigration issue. The proportion is not proportional to the perception, but for most middle-swing-voters that's the type of reassurance they'll vote for.

So UKIP'ers, LEAVE.EU look at the above and reconsider the ranking of immigration I would suggest in terms of SIMPLICITY to achieve your goals.

If you purport to be "The Peoples' Campaign" you will best serve the people through simplicity else you'll fall into Cameron's complexity trap as well as not convince swing voters and again failing the Pragmatic Legitimacy test

To finish, if we go to the top diagram about TRUST. Having FLEXCIT or Cameron's British Model PROCESSES behind each option is the key to each side of the Referendum question (hence Strategy Ten: the need for an exit plan); which itself is an event. Brexit itself must be defined as an point-in-time-event crossing that Supranational line into Intergovernmental context: It needs to be as simply as who do you trust? The people if they are given a chance or the politicians who we have recorded their lies and their lack of legitimacy and hence illusion of authority. We've also previously visited why conceptually both LEAVE.EU and Vote Leave are failing the people on the side of Leave as much as our own government fails the Remain side of people in the question via complexity as per The EU Onion and The Brexit Number.

The top diagram proves why this organization is intellectually bankrupt for not having a brexit plan; it underpins TRUST by removing Pragmatic Legitimacy as a risk!

For that simplification, we must look at how FLEXCIT as a process reduces, removes and hence simplified can be scaled up democratically to more people and empowers them more - the total opposite of a few people behind closed doors deciding the future decades of millions of people with that terrible weight of responsibility and the corrupting influence of power centralized.

Which would you choose?

My Kingdom for a Macroscope!

A Grey River perhaps?

A Canyon maybe?

A Mountain Range more likely?

A Lunar Surface possibly?

A Thick-Skinned Animal probably?

... An (Angry) Elephant! 

 In the first blog post here, How do you become a "eurosceptic"? (Note: Now "Brexiteer" is now the newly defined group name as per White Wednesday and "We're All "eurosceptics" now? as per Dr. RAE North at EUReferendum.com which demonstrates the pollution of the quality of arguments as per Argument Abstraction via The Knight 'N Knave through false actors ie a derived deception which has it's intellectual roots in The Great Deception) I pointed out the spark for my own scepticism; which was the blatant lies and deception concerning the EUROZONE which led to grow into now "Brexiteer" categorization. I don't generally find "labels or self-styled tags" to be at all useful or constructive as they imply limited identity and hence often revert into "defending one's identity" instead of actually arguing about the arguments! However with "Brexiteer" we have a technical working definition as per The Great Deception to paraphrase Theodosius Dobzhansky famous quote on evolution:-

 "Nothing Makes Sense in present British Politics except in the light of the Supranational EU", The Great Deception.

As per Pub Signs an attempt was to made to convey this "Fact And Theory" in our intellectual architecture of when we talk about the European Union = we talk about the Supranational governmental nature, in intent and in execution as recorded and reported from it's history above in The Great Deception. A "Brexiteer" is not only someone who does not accept this form of governance but also who points out that this form of governance leads to certain results as per Jean Monnet's "Engrenage": Destination Unknown? which IS THE MECHANISM on The Road To The European Union . One of the biggest derivatives of this established as fact, is that it has intentionally been "hidden" or down-played or de-emphasized by our politicians. The results is the spread of confusion as described in Power To The People and the manipulation of the confusion in the mass Legacy News-Media, in Understanding The Mountains Of Madness? The above exercise in the application of (lack of) Perspective to Problem-Solving was previously looked at in The Price Of A Glass Of Water: And again a metaphor can again be used in another charming and related form to the above:-

 The Story of the Six Blind Men and The Elephant (Indian high quality version)

If we have defined both WHAT IS THE EU? and therefore WHAT IS IT WE'RE WITHDRAWING FROM? then the problem solving of "making decisions that make positive changes" answers WHY? we should withdraw from the EU or else remain a part of it (defining what it is which is WHAT IS IN IT as much as "the tag" of EU that the Pro-EU arguments have relied upon for so many decades without providing a direct vote to the public on >9 major treaty changes to the EU). Once this has been done then the problem can be decomposed as per Sequential Problem-Solving in Corvids:-

"A macroscope is, according to designer John Thackara, "something that helps us see what the aggregation of many small actions looks like when added together". His theory is that such a device could help to focus ideas in the same way that a microscope focuses light, because it's seldom true that experts have access to both the micro and the macro views simultaneously.

It seems to me the Internet itself (eg Big Data, the ability to translate information into "computational forms") is beginning to act like a "macroscope" and where Brexit and the EU are concerned, no better an example can be provided, as per Lost Leonardo A Revolution In Public Policy-Making than "Dr. Richard AE North with Robert Oulds of the Bruges Group and the assistance of readers of EUReferendum.com" have managed to achieve with FLEXCIT:-

 FLEXCIT: Breaks the problem defined down into Six Stages

When we consider the EU we have an answer: The Great Deception documents it's history, whether or not you like the sound of it's title "it's tag": "WHAT IS IN IT" is what counts. For Brexit we have such tediousness, to quote the The Six Blind Men and The Elephant:-

"It was six  men of Indostan, who learning much inclined, went to see the Elephant, though all were blind, that each by observation, might satisfy his mind..."

"... So these men of Indostan disputed loud and long, each in his own opinion, exceeding stiff and strong, though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong."

Looking at the below we see that numerous different relationships with the EU is  in fact The Rule And Not The Exception as opposed to how the politicians and news-media attempt to portray the EU as The Singular Regional Rule for UK/Britain :-

 ALL the exceptions PROVE to be The Rule and not the exception to the EU!

We already looked at this perspective change in The Road To The European Union and how UNECE has x56 members as well as the EEA containing x31 members to the EU's x28 members to the EZ's x19 members. And we confirmed where that Road leads to:

A Black Swan arrives at Abbotsbury, Dorset

Reviewing where we are at the MACRO-Scale:-

1. WHAT IS THE EU? (TOP)

• PAST: The Great Deception
• PRESENT: "The Five Presidents' Report": Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union - Report by: Jean-Claude Juncker in close cooperation with Donald Tusk, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Mario Draghi and Martin Schulz. State of the Union 2015: Time for Honesty, Unity and Solidarity - Speech by Jean-Claude Juncker - President of the European Commission
• FUTURE:  Bertelsmann/Spinelli: Fundamantal Law 

1. WHAT IS BREXIT? (LHS)

• LEAVE
• Trigger Article 50 TEU Lisbon Treaty

A Macroscope of EU, Brexit and FLEXCIT to effect secure and controlled transition from Supranational - Intergovernmental

Here is an attempt to use a MACROSCOPE to understand what Brexit is. The past defines the EU. The Present confirms the EU and the Future predicts the EU. If we consider ourselves "Brexiteers": Then Brexit (LHS) is merely boiled down to a  FOCAL POINT for our perspective no-matter what auxillery or supplementary ideas we may have or hold or contest. It is a declarative PRESENT SIMPLE event on the day of the Referendum, that requires for that date, minimizing of unpredictablity, of magnitude and of spurious intentionality and is x1 major component of a larger process as per FLEXCIT itself, which makes this fundamentally clear: The continuum feedback-loop of the full continuous process:-

1. WHAT IS FLEXCIT? (RHS)

• Iterative decision-making via stages
• Continuous PROCESS connecting time points
• Flexible adaptation to Withdrawal content (WHAT IS IN IT)

 For more on Article 50:-

• Lost Leonardo: Language Matters
• The Brexit Door: Article 50 – reading the intent.

 What's so important is that we Learning & Playing The Rules Of The Game because our present frame of reference is >40yrs of EU Membership. Brexit is a portal or threshold from that point of view: ie x1 Day compared to 16425 days of EEC->EC->EU->EU+EZ Membership via The Great Deception:-

What is the purpose of Article 50: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up of our Government and our systems of governance For The People By The People in our Popular Referendum as per Power To The People. which is worth far far more than false promises from our deceptive politicians of Turkish Delight! Turkish Delight! and again made clear as per Dr. RAE North: EU Referendum: the "better deal" fallacy.

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.