The Perils of "Everybody Knows."

If only words were such apprehensible objects and hence so apprehensible problems... but it's a deceptively simple "transitive" mistake to make and it's so frequent.

I grabbed the above image from this source (and hence reference it appropriately) where they're talking about the meaning of a "missionary": I'd answer by saying if you saw someone struggling up a flight of stairs on the London Underground with a heavy suitcase (or often a pram or sometimes a disability etc), then you'd take a choice to ask if they need help and lend a hand until they're up the stairs. Seems good enough to me to use a simple example. More useful, I'd argue than a missionary would be an "Anthropologist": Someone who seeks to understand the actual culture they insert themselves within BEFORE attempting to provide their skills or provide their help and areas of expertise perhaps? Namely good intentions are at the start of such voluntary endeavours to "make things better" but without an understanding they may err otherwise. I have a friend who went to Turkey in a similar voluntary vein, and it will be interesting to find out how it went: They're nice people which tends to find some success but I think it's also more of a lottery concerning success with only such a basis.

In fact something I've been troubled a lot by recently: "Everybody Knows..." seems to be the default of most of the people I talk to, and often on different subjects this "Everybody Knows..." attitude dominates how the conversation goes. In particular, on Brexit, "Uncertainty" and indeed "Everybody Knows... That Nobody Knows," is equally seductive and prevalent. People who appear most confident of their point of view tend to be heard and possibly more persuasive than a simple: "I don't necessarily know, however..."?

I realize I fall foul of this way too much too. Better to be silent, listen then think in silence and consider how much do I actually know? How many words and excessive talking on things I don't really know a lot about is certainly something to feel an "inner-cringe" about. I remember the first Brexit models or papers I came across, the problem could be "solved in an afternoon in Westminster by repealing the 1972 European Communities Act; whereas today 10 years of continuous and flexible work is required across multiples of policy making areas." It's just like thinking the world is in the cup of my palm. Fast forward to after the Referendum and "oh dear" *To be said in David Attenborough's natural history narrative voice* when an animal does something that does not turn out with the reward it was seeking (missed sex/loss of food/a rival competitor intruding). As such the response of the animal is to transform from it's habitual in autopilot mode or second gear and stimulate an increased response rate either to loss or to gain.

I would guess humans behave in this way when posed with an apparently important question (perception of loss/gain) and hence provide a view that they feel is confident and more certain as it applies to them (at least) than uncertain? To say, I know enough to know that I really don't know at all or else realize that many questions are so open-ended that they could be answered in thousands of different ways all of which would be plausible or subjectively equally applicable.

Namely, people provide a heightened stimulus response, that falls into the "I'm an expert" phase. Politicians seem to be expected to perform this trick then equally expected to be "lying" but "allowed to be lying about being an expert" because they're "obviously partisan" and hence I'm sure you know the rest, as they say! Pretty much useless.

Coming back to missionaries and converting people, I think a good indication of someone who actually is an expert is the back to "I Know Nothing" phase. Unfortunately this does not sound like that sought after "stimulated response" and secondly it can be confused for "hedging" when it's actually very careful and cautious communication of complex ideas - it should be evident that conversion is not a priority, an attempt to help explain and understand, is. And of course, it requires that the parties in communication share a sufficient knowledge level, which seems always to be assumed but never actually tested on the deficient communicator's side of the conversation.

Interestingly a lot of the reactions of people concerning the Referendum is either:-

• "Experts? Pffft! What do THEY know..."
• "Ha! See!! That's what happens when experts are ignored, BAD THINGS happen."

Above, Mark Carney is being assessed for "independence", namely his role as an expert is being considered in contention to his possible role as a partisan actor. There's a few good (understatement) blogs on this subject at EUReferendum.com by Dr. RAE North. Now donning our "Anthropologist's hat" let's look at what can be for the time-being be labelled "False Experts" and we'll see why the former response is seen from people:-

• Brexit: Dougan on Liechtenstein
• EU referendum: our learned but stupid friends 

Another opportunity to see this reversal from "knowledge" towards "coercion" is exhibited (it's almost laugh out loud by this compromised and crooked institution's consistency in this vein):-

Theresa May has two clear options on Brexit – neither of them easy

The interesting thing here is an inversion: The behaviour of "our fake expert" above is to induce the former reaction but at the same time hold some truth concerning the latter reaction. Now if we take the opposite direction to the above where expert who acts like a politician is this time replaced with a politician who acts like an expert:

• Brexit: Farage resigns … again

I think enough is known of Farage to not expand from what is written in the blog above. But the effect here now is an inversion:  "our politician acting as an expert" to convert people (ALSO) is easy to identify, he points out that everyone is an expert and dismisses "bad things" of the "fake expert" and promote the "Pfft! Experts..." but at the same time as inadvertently ensuring that as time progresses "bad things" do happen or would happen with people like him at the helm of decision-making!

Brexit: plus ça change

Fortunately "Complete Bastard - The Hero We All Deserve" flies to the rescue and explains this particular inversion very well and expands the point from Farage to the entire Leave Campaign rounded of by Vote Leave and their failure to "master the Brexit Argument".

Interestingly, not an expert view, but one that manages to capture the major flaw in both the above types of behaviour without fully appreciating it and neither from an expert nor politician but in a very "I know nothing" but at least I have some "common sense" to use even if there's a good number of "leaps of faith": When people try to "convert" other people they're invariably whether or not they realize it, are acting in a "coercive" way: "Everybody Knows..." is a terrible form of self-deception and group-deception. There are some things "Everybody Knows..." but everybody realize they don't need to talk about those things or else bore people. Brexit has been talked about far far too much by far too many people in a way that has been dominated by "Coercion" motivation.

Keep calm and Brexit on: History suggests leaving Europe is great for Britain

There's a number of different connections here. But I have to pick one that is at present most important and most urgent and hence discard the rest for sake of brevity (much like Brexit!!):-

Even if this last article touches on a core "truth" at the very heart of this argument, it fails to deal with the very serious consequences that the "fake experts" are able to continue trading off: "Bad things!"

There we really do need a real expertise that acts as such. And people in their millions muddling along in the middle of the communication of knowledge will likely never begin to understand through all the cacophany of "converting" going on that leads to those two opinions of experts: How can two different opinions both be right and wrong at the same time?! The simple answer is: Asking The Wrong question(s) is likely.

In a crazy way, the inversion that both sides through avoiding improving the quality of arguments, create it seems unintentionally, "equal each other out" and that "core" above just peeps through might be somewhere within the numbers where the Referendum result lies?

But what is most important and most urgent now?

Read this:-

Hopefully it's the first thing Theresa May, upon becoming our new Prime Minister, will advice her new Cabinet to do on Wednesday. I don't think the difficult answer is very comforting, but it might suggest that where there is a clear assessment of loss or gain, then such a Referendum choice on so large a single argument (without multiple divisions of it) will necessarily lead to a scope of enormously magnified loss or gain depending on the correct or mistaken decision-making taken by our new government.

The Referendum was won by Leave it seems without expertise, but the process of Brexit cannot be successful without the right expertise applied correctly.

The Great Deception: A Shift in Attention

Higher perspectives in time and space: So calm above, what lies below?

Dr. RAE North in EU Referendum: open that DOR points out the simple message required to be transmitted to voters:-

"Hence, enter the open DOR strategy: Debunk; Offer; and Reassure. The first priority is to Debunk Mr Cameron's deal, and ensure that the public are fully acquainted with the fact that he is perpetrating a fraud on the British public."

1. The Great Deception: The future follows the past

Here we have many details, a history of evidence as per The Great Deception and summarized by Christopher Booker:-

1. How it all began

"Winston Churchill’s call for a “United States of Europe” in 1946, which led two years later to the “intergovernmental” Council of Europe. But no one was more scornful of this than the Frenchman Jean Monnet, who had a wholly different model in mind, first conceived back in the Twenties. His “United States of Europe” would be centred on an entirely new kind of “supranational” government, able to overrule the vetoes of any of its individual member states."

2. 'Switch-sell’ in Rome

"When Monnet’s first bid to move straight to the complete political union of its original six members was rebuffed in 1954, he and his allies realised they could only achieve their real goal step by step."

3. Macmillan joins deceit

"When, in 1961, Britain first applied to join “the Six”, Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath had been fully briefed by Monnet’s allies as to the project’s ultimate goal, full economic and political union. But papers released under the 30-year rule show that, at the end of June, the Cabinet accepted their urging that, for “presentational” reasons, this should not be revealed to the public or Parliament. British entry should be sold as being only to a “Common Market”, concerned just with trade and jobs."

4. Britain taken in by Heath

"His Europe minister was sent to plead with Brussels to keep quiet about its already emerging plans for a single currency (another Monnet idea). And although we were repeatedly told that British entry would involve “no essential loss of sovereignty”, a secret Foreign Office paper, released 30 years later, shows that the government knew how important it was to conceal just how untrue this was."

5. Towards 'Union’

"In the early Eighties, much more ambitious plans were afoot for a further leap forward to integration." 

6. The Maastricht treaty

"The 1992 Maastricht Treaty on European Union brought out into the open the next instalment in the march towards the ultimate goal, centred not just on full “economic and monetary union”, including Monnet’s single currency... but also much else, never fully explained at the time."

7. Blair 'at heart of Europe’

"Tony Blair’s ambition to be “at the heart of Europe” led him to collaborate fully with moves to make the European Council (another Monnet idea) the EU’s political “Cabinet of Europe”, with its own foreign and defence policies, and also towards giving the EU its own “Constitution”, to make it in effect a sovereign government on the world stage." 

8. The 'Lisbon switch-sell’

"After the “Constitution for Europe” was in 2005 rejected by French and Dutch voters, virtually the same document was then smuggled back in as the more harmless-sounding “Lisbon Treaty” in 2007."

9. Mr Cameron’s 'treaty’

"Almost everything about Cameron’s “treaty” to give Britain a “special relationship” with the EU is yet again smoke and mirrors, not least the insistence that it is “legally binding and irreversible”. Under the Vienna Convention, a treaty is only valid when the signatories can guarantee delivery of what they have agreed."

It's worth assessing this history of the EU because one of the founding principles of Jean Monnet was to ensure a Supranational government above national democracies could prevent wars in Europe via pooling political power above those nations.

2. The Great Deception: The Present Political Storm Arising

But what we see is a long history of deception to acquire those powers. The damage done to nations to acquire those powers exists today in the EUROZONE Crisis, in the state of Greece. At the same time the EU has been adding more members to ensure it is the Regional centre of power via the Eastern former Soviet states. Naturally Freedom Of Movement from weaker economies has been part of this agreement to promote growth in these economies after decades of stagnation behind the Iron Curtain. But this has inevitably led to a conflict of the EU with Russia in prizing more states via numerous methods into it's political sphere of influence.

 The Great Deception: Today - Where has your attention be drawn to in the Legacy News-Media and by Politicians and where should it be drawn towards?

With this war in Ukraine and sanctions in Russia, comes Syria. Here Russia also has the facts on the ground driving the migration crisis currently into Macedonia. Already the high youth unemployment in the Eurozone is not a suitable destination for many of these migrants.

Yet the UK has already had it's mass immigration "helping" the Eastern European nations as no doubt the full intention of the EU has been and conducive via the Supranational overriding of democracy so that governments past and present can simply ignore the electorate's preferences whether or not those preferences are either foolish or well-reasoned.

And currently we have David Cameron perpetuating this cycle as it grows into a stronger and stronger political storm increasing fragility and uncertainty spilling over to markets with knock-on effects around the world.

What we see with the likes of Trump or Farage or Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece is a growing uneasiness with those in power who control political power and feed it ever higher and more central away from people in the politicians bid to control meta-politics ie geopolitics against Russia with predictable results of war. The EU has not stopped our governments own stupid and bloody foreign policy in the Middle East either exacerbating the cultural and political transitions of those societies as closed-communities become ever opened up by globalization, mass communication and growing networks of information distribution eg Internet.

 The Sum of David Cameron's "fraudulent new deal": The same broken arguments of The Great Deception Then & Now

3. Real Democracy: Will the patient take the medicine?

There is an unspoken acknowledgement in the Pro-EU Remain supporters whether or not they have fully realized it. In their arguments for EU Membership there is very little acknowledgement of the Great Deception towards "Ever Closer Union". From that, they concede the core of the argument that membership is positive. Instead we get the deceptive "EU Reform", the light at the end of the tunnel, despite the long duration of political storm clouds over Europe under the EU.

One of the outcomes of this type of argument is the attempt to make reality appear as if there is no way the UK could leave EU Membership because our interestins are tied up with what the EU has done for us. A good example is this recent blog post by Dr. RAE North:-

EU Referendum: those trade deals

The message here by Philip "lying scum of the universe" Hammond is that it is not within our political right to cease our membership with the EU despite all the laws at international level above the EU that set out precedents for nations to be able to amicably and fairly do just this - so long as they are careful with each other.

This is one side to another side: There is also no alternative to which we get study after study after study looking at "What happens to the UK after Brexit" invariably then making up Economic models based off garbage scenarios that are not clearly defined but in fact are erroneously defined:-

If the UK leaves the EU, any path it chooses would carry economic costs

This is not Scientific Method - !!!

I looked at the source paper. I then looked at the references and indeed the only possible relevant link reference on the question of The Norway Option.

When I studied science at university, for my dissertation I had to studied a specific area. I ended up reading the TOP SCIENTIFIC PAPERS in that field, by the research groups who produced it. I knew the top four names from which a lot of progress had been established and hence to which multiples of secondary science had been successfully conducted to gain new details to add to these original papers conceptual shifts.

If I was looking at this question I would split up the top research on each possible category of Brexit: The Norway Option, Swiss Bi-Laterals, WTO/FTA etc. I would know the names of the top researchers and reference their works and other works around the context of those primary works.

This is how a body of knowledge is developed within a specific knowledge domain, coming back to "joining the whole" from The Leave Alliance: Sharing Knowledge. We know this works in this political subject of Brexit as per FLEXCIT: Changing The Political Reality.

So what happens we this does not happen on an epidemic scale? Eventually people lose trust in the state, there is a disconnect between the state and society and it throws up any visible alternative no matter if their arguments are poor too.

What are we looking for that can help here? An alternative Offer:-