Pub Signs

The Hand In Hand Pub on Wimbledon Common, London, UK

I've always enjoyed different pub names and their signs outside. Above, The Hand In Hand pub on Wimbledon Common always struck me as both a nice name and an appealing sign outside too. From yesterday's blog I thought to myself, The Knight 'N Knave might be a good name and a good sign too, for a pub, if "We The People" win the Referendum vote?

According to Historic UK, under their article Pub Signs Of Britain:-

"The origin of inn signs goes back to the Romans. The 'Tabernae' would hang vine leaves outside to show that they sold wine - in Britain, as vine leaves are rare (due to the climate!), small evergreen bushes were substituted. One of the first Roman tavern signs was the 'Bush'. Early pubs hung long poles or ale stakes, which might have been used to stir the ale, outside their doors. If both wine and ale were sold, then both bush and pole would be hung outside."

"The naming of inns and pubs became common by the 12th century. With pub names came pub signs - as the majority of the population could not read or write. In 1393, King Richard II passed an Act making it compulsory for pubs and inns to have a sign (his own emblem the 'White Hart' in London) in order to identify them to the official Ale Taster. Ever since then, inn names and signs have reflected, and followed, British life at that time."

Old Coffee House, Soho, London

 

Looking at the above public house in Soho, London, The Old Coffee House, the similar public place for people to meet and chat and talk as per Coffee Houses:-

The 17th-century French traveler and writer Jean Chardin gave a lively description of the Persian coffeehouse scene:

"People engage in conversation, for it is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government in all freedom and without being fearful, since the government does not heed what the people say. Innocent games... resembling checkers, hopscotch, and chess, are played. In addition, mollas, dervishes, and poets take turns telling stories in verse or in prose."

In Argument Abstraction the idea of "sticking" to the central point of the argument would promote superior quality arguments and ways with which we resolve our disagreements and hence promote quality democracy on a greater scale. The problem of actually achieving this basic state was considered in The Knight 'N Knave and how the increase in complexity (fragility), in magnitude (fear) and in unpredictability (uncertainty) were effectively weapons of discouragement to people making decisions based on their risk vs pay-off perception.

looking at the Pub Signs, and their practical reasons under conditions when most people were simply "illiterate" in their origins for public use, it is possibly instructive to compare today's "Political illiteracy" and lack of political knowledge across the public, aka "The 90 Fools" as per Argument Abstraction. It seems to me that FLEXCIT acts as another major Concept Shift:-

The Referendum Question = Time Point = Fixed Event = Brexit as Threshold Defined

Both our present Frame Of Reference = Supranational Membership for >40yrs and our possible/potential future, Frame Of Reference = Intergovernmentalism are both Complex. Arguments will easily become bogged down in details, and that makes the work of "The Nine Knaves" that much easier than of that of the "One Knight" to educate and inform "The Ninety Fools" (The People and yes that's what the Knaves really think of their people for letting them in charge: Derision!). What FLEXCIT does is:-

 

FLEXCIT: Light-Years ahead of all other Brexit plans

• Identify the link between the pre-Referendum ie the Campaign (reduce uncertainty loops)
• The minimization of Risk on the decision itself Quadrant 1 tendency as much as possible (reduce magnitude and hence over-promising also!)
• Understand that processes work more superior if they are "iterative" as opposed to all the other Brexit plans which are "declarative" fallacies" (reduce fallacies via minimizing assumptions)

 This is an attempt to abstract the essential qualities of FLEXCIT itself; let alone actually analyse in detail it's sheer complexity on policy and strategy and conceptual power. And hence returning to the idea of pub signs, the actual decision itself if accepting that the Central Point of the Argument is Disagreeing absolutely with Supranational Membership and replacing it with Intergovernmentalism leads to the Pub Sign Equivalent for people to use, of FLEXCIT on the Referendum Day:-

 Arguing The Central Point + Using a Pub Sign "to go with the words"!

I've laboured in thinking how could I possibly provide the shortest, simplest answer to being asked why I think people should vote "LEAVE" supposing a TV Crew and all the crassness of that context was put to me. And I think the idea of The Pub Sign as a means of communicating to a politically illiterate people (thanks to the Knaves who have seen to this result being sustained for decades, bear in mind) then if they complain that's "over-simplifying" the decision, they have only themselves to blame. What all arguments hinge on whether or not their quality is the zenith of the nadir of the "pyramid of Argument Hierarchy Quality" is Honesty and Truth with which hence to make an informed and free decision on. Take that away and you take peoples' real political freedom from them.

Given we do have FLEXCIT, we can use that promote the idea of The Referendum Question as a Pub Sign with which to act as a guide for people who just want a good drink of democracy on their life's travels without the lies of politicians depriving them of that one simple demand!

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