DEADEND JOBS AT NO. 10
Running a government requires highly intelligent people who know how to do it. If you can successfully lead a project to send people to Mars, setting up a government that serves the people should be a piece of cake. Big data together with AI and simple aims like ‘win this election’ (like go to Mars and come back) is all it takes. The best of the best mathematicians, physicists, programmers, economists under the leadership of the very best project and policy manager will deliver the goods. Such is the vision of one Dominic Cummings, who has the meta-wherewithal to recruit such ‘weirdos’ (in his own words, to delimit so-called establishment jocks who run the current system). Obviously he must be right, as he just got Boris Johnson elected, against all rational odds, just as his savvy compatriots across the ditch had an unlikely Donald Trump elected. While Boris jetted off to Mustique to get away from the common people who apparently elected him, Dominic is busy planning to change the world, as we know it, by employing the best of the best, who are dedicated to the task as much as he is. Since Dominic employs only the best science there is, he cites an example with which applicants should be au-fait with, namely a 2016 paper published in Nature, entitled ‘Early warning signals for critical transitions in a thermoacoustic system’ by E. A. Gopalakrishnan, Yogita Sharma, Tony John, Partha Sharathi Dutta & R. I. Sujith. Since I wanted to apply for a job at No. 10, I read the paper, sort of. So this is a hard-core physics-engineering paper that in the introductions states that
Many complex systems such as ecosystems, climate systems, financial markets and neurons in the mammalian cortex exhibit critical transition. In first order transitions, the transition occurs at the bifurcation points (the so called tipping points) where the system abruptly shifts from one stable state to another stable state. This state shift can have undesirable consequences ranging from the extinction of species in ecosystems to sudden crash of economy in financial markets. The undesirable state following a critical transition creates the need to develop early warning measures to detect the proximity of the system under consideration to a critical point or tipping point. Early detection of critical transitions has great relevance because it can initiate appropriate management strategies to prevent a forthcoming catastrophe.
As Chomsky has pointed out, science always uses ideal laboratory systems to investigate cause and effect, and so do the present authors in setting up a laboratory experiment, constructing a ‘thermoaccoustic system’, which they can manipulate to create ‘tipping points’. There are highly complex mathematical formulae that fix various states, and obviously there are various ‘warning signs’ that can be extrapolated when states transition to another state. The experimental data obtained is most likely a correct basis for figuring out such warning signs (I lack the expertise to check this out – hence disqualify myself from the job). The point I want to make, however, is that such an experiment has absolutely nothing to do with real-world phenomena such as the current climate crisis – as wrongly claimed in the introduction. Climate crisis deniers such as Trump, Morrison, Modi, Bolsonaro and Johnson simply ignore the science that claims that the ‘tipping point’ has already been passed or is being passed as we speak – note how Morrison denies that the catastrophic Australian wild fires have anything to do with climate change. So when our science authors recommended by Dominic say that ‘early detection of critical transitions has great relevance because it can initiate appropriate management strategies to prevent a forthcoming catastrophe’, we can only respond by pointing out that your early warning system has already failed (of course the authors will say in their defence that their model would have predicted the coming catastrophe if it had been available before the event, sorry folks). The second application in terms of ‘financial markets’ is equally bizarre, as we all know by now that only after a financial crash do we learn what the ‘tipping point’ has been, just that nobody saw it coming, or worse, they saw it coming but ignored it, or worst of all, welcome the tipping point because you can make a lot of money out of a catastrophe. Another fallacy is that the thermodynamic equilibrium physics (the conservation of energy between states) is somehow applicable to human economics and the impact it has on the natural environment. In these systems, even before a ‘tipping point’ has been reached there is no point of return, i.e. no way of preventing the catastrophe (e.g. all wars could be prevented but are generally described as inevitable by the militarists). Sure, in economics we experience boom and bust cycles that span generations of people, and even the natural environment may recover when human intervention ceases.
So, Dominic, just because some clever algorithms can manipulate elections, AI and algorithms cannot serve as a blueprint for ‘serving the people’, for the simple reason, that you can fool the people most of the time but not all of the time. As one of your capitalist heroes says (whom you quote):
‘There isn’t one novel thought in all of how Berkshire [Hathaway] is run. It’s all about … exploiting unrecognized simplicities.’ Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner.
You and your ilk (including some very savvy mathematicians, physicists, programmers and communication experts you want for No. 10) have successfully exploited ‘unrecognized simplicities’ in the Westminster system. Eventually, however, you will be found out, and then the ‘people’ will disown you. Imagine what life would be like then. You might have to live in a ‘hellhole’ (as you say of all the losers that never make it). Or maybe such a hellhole is programmed into the fabric of British society, for who else would do the real jobs? While you do not specify it, let me give you an example of a misguided sports journalist who commented on the new darts world champion as a great example of one who pulled himself out of such a hellhole:
… he worked a series of thankless deadend jobs, none of which he could ever seem to hold down. He fitted tyres and windows, hauled fence posts, worked all-night shifts in a supermarket warehouse, spent his days knee-deep in freezing water laying pipes.
So, I imagine, Peter Wright should qualify for a job at No. 10, for, as you say ‘we need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole’. In the meantime those who slave away in supermarket warehouses and lay pipes in freezing water will continue to vote for Boris and Brexit, because you told them that Boris will deliver them from evil (and the incarnate devil called Jeremy). It’s that simple. Welcome to some really lucrative but really real deadend jobs at No. 10.
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