Gove and Gramsci ...

... are the two big Gs of the thinking wing of the modern Conservative Party.

Here is a cracking Ditchley Lecture by Gove, entitled the Privilege of Public Service, but much more interesting than that sounds. I do not agree with all Gove says, but he is reassuringly intelligent and sensitive in his thinking. It is worth a read (particularly if you are in the Civil Service - your career path could well change).

The thinking Right (NB not an oxymoron) has the advantage over the thinking Left not only of being familiar with the intellectual landscape of its opponents - hence Gove's knowledge of Gramsci - but also of being unashamed about appealing to its opponents' holy cows. (And why not? Once an impressive left-wing achievement or person becomes old enough, it/s/he becomes another National Treasure.) So Gove appeals to FDR as a touchstone throughout his speech. Here is using FDR to remind us in London about Leavers:

"Almost every arm of Government, and those with powerful voices within it, seemed estranged from the majority in 2016. That is not to say those people’s views were not honest, principled and public-spirited. It is just to observe that a view, a perspective, a set of beliefs, which the majority, albeit slight, held in this country were rarely heard within Government. FDR asked his Government to remember the Forgotten Man. In the 2016 referendum those who had been too often forgotten asked to be remembered."

Gove is a confident thinker too, which makes his writing more interesting than most politicians. "My first attempt as Education Secretary at a new history curriculum was deeply flawed ... My cancellation of the Brown government Building Schools for the Future programme was a political fiasco ... My proposal to bring back O-Levels strained the bonds of the 2010-2015 coalition and had to be abandoned ...". He adds "buts" to all of these, but even so, it refreshing - and a sign of confidence - to see a politician set out failures as plainly as this.

I would be interested to know how much of what he says would prompt vigorous disagreement from a Starmer-type Labour Party. Possibly very little. Gove (and one detects the work of Cummings too - feel free to play "DARPA" and "Bayesian" bingo) might be writing the future of sensible centrism in this country. I rather hope so.

Someone who did change her mind

Following on from my post about people not wanting to change their minds, here is a great example of someone who did. She is Zion Lights (great name! rather like the best kind of Puritan name from the 1640s), formerly spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion UK and the founder of its climate reporting newspaper The Hourglass, who has quit the organisation to take up a position as a campaigner for nuclear power.

"For many years I was skeptical of nuclear power. Surrounded by anti-nuclear activists, I had allowed fear of radiation, nuclear waste and weapons of mass destruction to creep into my subconscious," she says. But then Lights looked into the science and "realised I had been duped into anti-science sentiment all this time."

She adds, poignantly: "To my surprise, when I shared the data with my anti-nuclear friends, they argued against the science. Alas, we parted ways."

Just think how strong her desire for truth is that she left her friends and her job simply to follow what she believes to be true. And not to adopt a fashionable cause that comes with fashionable new friends, but simply to save the world. Zion Lights indeed.

The New York Times and Slate Star Codex

It seems that the NYT has done this, i.e. it has indicated that it will "doxx" (reveal the real name of) Scott Alexander, of Slate Star Codex fame. So he has deleted his blog. Why? For various reasons, incuding that "some people want to kill me or ruin my life, and I would prefer not to make it too easy. I’ve received various death threats ...." He hopes that deleting the blog will kill the story and thus prevent his name becoming more widely known.

Anonymity is a mask for the good and bad alike, and it is difficult to come up with a good rule for when it should be respected and when it should be unmasked. Anonymity is often used to give freedom, and what it gives freedom from may be something we regard as good (the requirements of honesty and good faith) or something bad (improper pressure and threats). It is just too easy to come up examples on both sides of the line.

So I am a utilitarian on the subject of anonymity. It would be a great shame if we were to lose SSC, I think, and therefore my utilitarian calculation is that the NYT should back down.

People don't want to change their minds

You have probably noticed that it's rare that people change their minds. People are wrong about lots of things - you know that and I know that - so we know that the reason they don't change their minds is not because they are right. It's because they're stubborn. Or, really, just because they don't want to, and people tend not to do things if they don't want to if they can help it.

Religion is a good example of how rare it is to change one's mind, so much so that we have special words for the different ways in which people can sometimes do it: conversion, reversion, lapsing, apostasy, losing faith and so on.

Politics nowadays is pretty similar, with quasi-religious levels of commitment demanded of adherents to various causes. We are even developing a vocabulary to show how unusual changing one's mind is: I give you "being red-pilled" (and other colours of pill) as an example. I might have more to say about this in the future. 

So I am interested in people who do change their minds. This is an interesting interview with Marc Andreessen. (If you think an interview with Marc Andreessen, particularly about how he lives his professional life, can be interesting then you will want to read this.) He says this:

"So, generally speaking, most of the people you're around most of the time hate being told that they're wrong, right? They absolutely hate it. It's really an interesting question as to why that's the case. The best explanation I'm able to come up with is: people treat their ideas like they're their children. I have an idea the same way that I have a child and if you call my idea stupid, it's like calling my child stupid. And then the conversation just stops. I've really been trying hard to do is to spend less time actually arguing with anybody. Because people really don't want to change their mind. And so I'm trying to just literally never argue with people.

However, there *is* a group of people who do love to change their mind. And interestingly, it's the people everybody wants to hate. It's hedge fund managers. The really good hedge fund managers seem to all have this characteristic: if you get into this heated argument with them, they'll actually listen to what you're saying. They won’t always change their mind but sometimes they'll go “Oh, that's a really good point”. And then they'll say, “Oh, thank you” which is just really weird for it’s not usually the result of an argument. The reason they're thanking you is because they're gonna go back to the office next morning to reverse the trade."

This is similar to Rory Sutherland's point about business being the only activity where you are paid to change your mind. 

Business in general - and finance in particular - is not getting a good press at the moment. The thinking Right has turned somewhat against free markets because of, well, everything that has happened since 2008, while the thinking Left is pleased not to have to pretend to be ok with the grubby business of making money any more. But it is worth remembering McCloskey's account of the bourgeois virtues that business requires and nurtures: honesty, good faith, keeping one's word, hope, courage, courtesy in dealings with strangers, and so on and so on - doux commerce. To which we should add, courtesy of Andreessen and Sutherland, open-mindedness. 

In the years to come, open-mindedness may come to be regarded more as a vice than a virtue, a sign of weakness of faith rather than of confidence of mind. If you think of any of the fastest-growing political movements we have now, on either the Right or the Left, you will not find the phrase "easy-going, good-humoured tolerance" springing to mind. If we do want to find that kind of attitude in those who disagree with us - and I think we do, given that the alternative is someone changing their mind to reach agreement, and no one likes doing that - then we might have to look to the worlds of business and finance to find it.

Quarantine content

If you are in isolation, here are some things that might you pass the time. I hope to add more links over time.

Virtual tours of museums.

A restful tour of London traffic in 1970.

An invisible glass Rube Goldberg (Heath Robinson) machine.

H20 - Just Add Water. This is an Australian TV series, available on YouTube, about teenage girls who turn into mermaids. It seems to be thoroughly wholesome (I have so far spotted just one joke about 'your body going through changes', although I have not been 100% engrossed in it) and suitable, I would say, for tweenage girls.

The Kid Should See This. I am sure I have recommended this before, but now is a good time to look at it again. Expertly curated links to things of a generally improving or at least inoffensive nature, but almost interesting and engaging, and not just for children.

Honest Trailers. What the trailer for a film should say, if it were honest. Generally not for children, but often funny.

Kurzgesagt. Educational science videos. Interesting.

Herbert Hoover, amazing guy.

Get a Japanese loo.

How JD Vance joined the resistance (i.e. became a Catholic).

What is Tory Socialism?

Not corrupted by commerce? Are priests more blase about God than amateur religionists?

The Big Bad Sister?

Do you remember Brexit? "Recent political contests across Europe and North America have been propelled by a wave of populist, anti-immigrant resentment, and it was widely expected that these populist victories would further fan the flames of xenophobia. This article reports the results of an experiment around the Brexit referendum, designed to test how populist victories shape anti-immigrant attitudes. The study finds that anti-immigrant attitudes actually softened after the Brexit referendum, among both Leave and Remain supporters, and these effects persisted for several months. How could a right-wing, populist victory soften anti-immigrant attitudes? The authors use causal mediation analysis to understand this ‘populist paradox’." This was "widely accepted" only among the most bubble-inhabiting Remainiac classes. To everyone who voted Leave or thought it reasonable that someone might do so then there is no paradox to explain. But if you really want to read more then here it is.

The China Question.

Why is Germany so good at making cars? "The combination of legal quasi-immunity, specialist technical know-how in several pockets of mechanic and chemical engineering, and wage policies that reduced Germany's real exchange rate inside the eurozone, have been behind what is often described as a second economic miracle." More here.

Ireland and England: a long but sensible piece. A couple of quotations, which don't really tell you what it is about, but which I liked anyway: "London (not Paris or Berlin) is the metropolis of Ireland. And London, metropolis or not, is in England. ... There must be many Irish in Britain who love their lives in Britain; if so, it is a love that dare not speak its name." For those of us who wish England and Ireland just to get on in a sensible way - or even more warmly and closely than that - this is cheering and bittersweet by turns. 

A judgment from the future?

I don't know how to explain this. Perhaps it is proof that the universe is really a simulation and this is one of the little glitches in the matrix that people spot from time to time, a bit like the Mandela Effect. All I can do is tell you what happened to me.

So. I was looking through the BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute) website for the most recent cases in England and Wales and I found one dated 2050, namely Taylor v St Mark's Healthcare Trust [2050] EWHC 1893 (KB). It's not on the website any more so I can't give you the link now and you'll just have to take my word for it. I clicked on the link (of course!) and downloaded the case to see what the law will look like in 30 years time. In the event, it was a bit of a disappointment: the case is a pretty anodyne one that simply illustrates that the law will continue to develop in predictable ways. Nonetheless, as it may possibly be of wider interest I've cut and pasted it below and so those who can't wait 30 years for the story can read it now.

There is no such thing as bad publicity

That is an advert in the TLS itself. (Seen here.)