What People Don't Want Is Not To Be Not Confused

After the storm-clouds: A Rainbow

It becomes onerous to bang on about the "bubble effect" of politics. But it seems to work: On one side I have friends who give their primary or first reason for "Leave" because the UK is too small to fit any more foreigners and on the other side friends who give their primary or first reason for "Remain" because without those same foreigners our NHS would fall apart! What is interesting is that these reasons don't actually belong to either set of friends: They're parroting what they've heard in accordance with their baseline sentiments, most likely. And so evidently the drumming of various bespoke "memes" or messages along "sales pitch lines" seems effective for sheer scale of message distribution. So much for lies and campaigning.

So instead of a destructive picture, a  rainbow feels like the kind of picture full of hope and a positive outcome to all these dark clouds of confusion in the political conversation around the entire UK's chatting people. If you look at the rainbow it consists of layers of colour:-

Interestingly Wikipedia points out the origin of the colour number/order:-

"Newton, who admitted his eyes were not very critical in distinguishing colours, originally (1672) divided the spectrum into five main colours: red, yellow, green, blue and violet. Later he included orange and indigo, giving seven main colours by analogy to the number of notes in a musical scale. Newton chose to divide the visible spectrum into seven colours out of a belief derived from the beliefs of the ancient Greek sophists, who thought there was a connection between the colours, the musical notes, the known objects in the Solar System, and the days of the week."

 If only nature was so neat and tidy.

Anyway, the idea of layers is in this case very intriguing as per yet another example as per EUReferendum.com:exit: hard or soft … in the head?.

It does not warrant much discussion as illustrated:-

Layer 1 (primary sources below this = Layer .0):-

Article 50 And Withdrawal: An explainer

Layer 2: Bernard Jenkin MP "SAYS":-

Layer 3: Reported by/in the Prestigious Financial Times (Legacy News-Media):-

Layer 4 Reaction and inflation of "noise" by the respondents reacting to it:-

In this case the noise production by this article can be observed in part by reading the FT comments, presumably written by well-meaning observers in the public (there's always astroturfing and bots and seeding). Here it does seem that Jenkins attitude is being called out. No doubt in other similar media, such as SpikedOnline! or The Daily Express, his comments will be championed. It's interesting that this time the FT ran the article, which usually along with it's stable mate of bs The Economist runs Economic FUD as it's main narrative against political change. Perhaps the obviousness of Jenkin is too good an opportunity to miss?

But this is still a problem: Nowhere does the FT investigate or build the knowledge base from the primary sources: It along with the rest of the accursed Legacy News-Media is merely "reporting" and selecting hot air from Jenkin. One of the major functions of newspapers is to confirm the biases of audiences: The "eurosceptic industry press" on "bonfire of red-tape" has been accused by Remainers of decades of indoctrination of voters that partly "explained" the Referendum result by the "old, left-behind, low income, uneducated, rural" blockheads in the UK!!!

Delusional:-

1. The systems of informing the public/voting base, especially the Legacy news-media.
2. The representatives in professional politics working between these layers to sell "memes" into peoples' heads effectively at scale.
3. The "white noice" amplifying this confusion.

If taking a step back and considering politics in the UK: The above are the prevailing conditions. It seems to me it's much easier to communicate what people DON'T WANT than to suggest what the NATION NEEDS according to the parameters of the actual arguments in politics; and hence the lure of incredible stupidity that "people are too stupid to be given a referendum on this issue!" that tempts some commentators. But there is an underlying reason why that is tempting: It's that in general people prefer confusion and this itself is the bread and butter of the successful politician in our society: It seems to me this explains why are loathsome politicians are so extraordinary slippery and able to aggrandize their positions in our society so successfully: Pay rises, expenses, rubbing shoulders with the prestigious, able to say what they like on the podiums and platforms devoid of the actual arguments:-

1. It's more effective to tell people what they don't want than to present the rigourous research on what the nation needs: Few will make the effort to understand and fewer the effort to promote this as evidenced by this Referendum.
2. They know people need to be confused and enjoy being cajoled in shaping their own preconceived biases; hence why politicians are so fashionable so long as their lies are clever or charming and appear to align with their followers' values. Equally the repulsion of those that do the same thing on the other side, is perhaps doubled! Those "filthy remainers/leavers!"

Alternatively, I noticed Dr. RAE North is producing a series of monographs Brexit: change of tactics:-

Monograph 1: Single Market participation and free movement of persons;

Monograph 2: The WTO Option and its application to Brexit; and 

Monograph 3: Financial contributions after Brexit.

And likewise, this will be the final "general blog" here: I plan to change tactics and start learning and blogging more specifically on FLEXCIT:-

• 12.0 Agricultre
• 13.0 Fisheries
• 14.0 Environment Policy

UPDATE1!: Monograph #4 : "Article 50 and Brexit negotiations" ("Layer 0").

(02/08/2016) Within this mongraph is the direct reference to the government's "White Paper" 'on' Article 50. The monograph itself covers a lot of the framework of thinking around this subject that's needed to contextualize as much as searching for "definitive content" on the reasons why Article 50 is the actual Withdrawal process for the UK from the EU.

Finally, there's so much nonsense concerning " "Brexit means Brexit" (Theresa May) - What does that mean?"

Brexit (British Exit) = "WITHDRAWAL from EU TREATIES by ARTICLE 50 only."

The concept of definitions using parsimony does not include excessive ASSUMPTIONS beyond the core meaning. When this happens, an original meaning loses it's accuracy or "ambiguity in communication" (confusion reactions) is likely effected.

This leaves enormous scope for 'speculation' concerning the practical details ofEEA outside of the above conditional change of status. Anything excessive of EEA (via/by EFTA) namely EEA MINUS is distracting away from the core objective above. In fact... Hosuk Lee-Makiyama at 23 minutes... Namely an EEA PLUS (actually: EFTA/EEA + UK/EU residual negotiation settlement).

In fact, coming back to this process which should be initiated already: Go back to Monograph 1 !!

Update2! : On the confusion and commentary "layer" some recent articles today: 04/08/2016

Guardian: Britain should be offered tough Brexit deal, say voters in EU
FT.com: From gloomy to glad, Europeans respond to Brexit vote

Or to summarize what the legacy news-media of the FT and Guardian are offering their readerships here:-

"Those Filthy Remainers/Leavers! And I hate myself too, in case that's not enough alone!"

So not only do we have the legacy news-media creating crap upwards, it forces downwards crap from the confusion around people too. Evidently this is stimulating to people; particularly the peculiar sentiment above I've tried to capture. Fortunately the odd comment recognizes this and injects some common sense:-

Meanwhile right at Layer 0: Some technical trade discussion is provided in the latest monograph clearly splitting the confusion of "Treaty Politics or Relationship Expectations" from "Trade Technicalities or Practical Progression". Brexit: Monograph 5 

This is more applicable to Leavers to appreciate: The Relationship argument was right to reframe but the technical details and Trade arguments come later, don't mix the two foolishly or you'll heap on confusion (apparently preferred by most people....)

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!

The Greatest Political Problem of Our Time

Harrison's final triumph - the compact chronometer

The author Dava Sobel, in her famous book "Longitude", recounts the story of John Harrison, who created the first reliable chronometer with which to accurately gauge longitude at sea and hence solve the serious problems that failure to navigate and chart the positions of ships at sea invariably led to at the time, which was so serious it was a question of National Interest to the very future success of Great Britain, leading to:-

British government established the Board of Longitude in 1714:-

"The Discovery of the Longitude is of such Consequence to Great Britain for the safety of the Navy and Merchant Ships as well as for the improvement of Trade that for want thereof many Ships have been retarded in their voyages, and many lost..."

This historic problem parallels todays Proposed Rerendum on membership of the European Union, in my opinion. A simple question to start with: What happens if we do not understand first of all what the EU actually is? If we do not define it we cannot then understand either our position within it or indeed our future direction with it or without it either. To Remain or to Leave, effectively we are in both cases "all at sea" :-

This is an extension of the nautical phrase 'at sea'. It dates from the days of sail when accurate navigational aids weren't available. Any ship that was out of sight of land was in an uncertain position and in danger of becoming lost.

Until we solve the problem of how to get our bearings and then use these tools to chart our future path we persist with Political Uncertainty irrespective of the changing winds of fortune and chance: "Fair Winds and Following Seas."

Hence if we do not "begin at the beginning" then it's useful to show the results of this and how ubiquitous they are and how easy it is to demonstrate how lost most of the arguments and debate on the EU currently are.

A modest sample from various online commentary systems illustrates this. Here is a comments section on the website reddit in the subreddit "europe" on a Daily Telegraph article questioning the "democracy" of the EU (though interestingly not the UK). The results are the disintegration of discussion as if a classroom of school-children are all allowed to talk at once in answer to the debate question on the board after the teacher says: "Go!"

To transform the above word form into a picture form:-

To illustrate another example: A small group have arrived at London Charing Cross Station are are planning on walking to the London Palladium theatre. They bump into you randomly outside the Station, on The Strand and ask you for directions. You pause, rack your brains and then give it your best shot from memory:-

1. Go Left until you come to Trafalgar Square.
2. Turn up the road to Haymarket, past the Portrait Gallery and the building with the Texas Flag on it.
3. Turn up the next street (I forget it's name) then turn right left at the top.
4. You should be looking towards Piccadilly Circus.
5. From here walk up Regent's Street.
6. Curve all the way up past Hamley's on your right and you are looking for Great Marlborough Street. Turn right here.
7. On your left 1st or 2nd turning you should see the road leading up to The London Palladium Theatre.
8. Keep asking for directions at any stage if you get lost and try to remember all of this too!

Or,

The directions with the fixed context creates a complete map which is far easier to use and far more reliable and requires less need for the group of theatre goers to ask more people for more directions much of which will be incorrect, contradictory, stressful possibly and generally fill the whole experience of walking to the destination with an atmosphere of Uncertainty.

 Before we ask such questions as the Referendum Question as per the Electoral Commission:-

"Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"

perhaps we might do a lot better asking a prior question:-

"What is the European Union?"

And if we ask this question it also follows that we should ask another question:-

"Who is working on answering that question and do we have a political equivalent of a "chronometer" or "map" as tools from which we can personally use to help us navigate towards answering the question?"

Back in John Harrison's day the British government opened up the problem of solving Longitude to the general public with a prize to motivate their participation. Once again the British government has been unable to solve a problem of the greatest national interest for the future success of Great Britain. There are people working on developing these tools; however as voters the only question we have to ask ourselves honestly is:-

"Am I going to find and make good use of them?"

 And contribute to solving "the greatest political problem of our time".