It occurs to me that some of you may not know who I am. Reading what I write is a good a way to find out what is in my mind. However, some may not consider that satisfactory as an introduction. I doubt the Queen is introduced by reference to her musings that day. More probably she is introduced as “Her Majesty The Queen” or something similar, even though that happens to be a very silly label to apply to any person. So please let me introduce myself. My name is Eric Priezkalns and I am dying. People say my name is interesting, or at least different. It prompts a recurring conversation. The abridged version goes:

“My father was Latvian. He came to the UK after fighting Russians in World War II. He died before Latvia regained its independence, so never returned. I went there after he passed away, to trace my roots. Priezkalns means pine hill or mountain. Latvia is a flat country; they think hills and mountains are the same.”

Though repetition has made this introduction dull for me, it is worth repeating here, because it was produced through iteration. That iteration has made it very slick. It conveys pretty much all the information people want to know, including some irrelevant stuff at the end. Of course, the irrelevant stuff is not irrelevant at all, because it ensures the spiel ends up on a lighter note than it would if it ended immediately after the mention of the heaviness of WWII or my father’s death, whilst precluding people jumping to conclusions about me actually being a Latvian, which I am not. People ask about my name out of casual politeness and curiosity. To satisfy their emotional needs they need the content to finish on a light note, so I try to oblige.

For similar reasons, I would not usually mention death when introducing myself. That was added here for shock value, just to get your full attention. It is true, though hardly unusual. We are all dying. If you say you are dying, people assume it will happen soon. Whilst I might die soon, I am not expecting to. It would ruin my plans for the future. People are negative about death. It makes me positive, which is also why I mention it. It gives me a sense of urgency, to achieve things whilst alive.

Is my name, and a fortune cookie attitude to life, adequate introduction? Hardly. But there are too many people in the world to read everyone’s biography. Even in a biography there is some editing of the irrelevant events that happen to people. Biographies give a window into a human psyche, not necessarily a tour around it. The reader wants to glimpse the important parts, which begs the question of what is relevant. This is my best guess of what is important about me, which may sound very pompous. Then again, given what facts made the cut, and those that did not make the cut, then probably not.

The reason why we die is linked to the reason why we live. Our code, found in every cell, degrades over time. It mutates when copied. Without mutation, people might live forever. Mutation, though, is a good thing. Without mutation, people would never have evolved. “Natural selection” is a dreadful misnomer. Nature does not select anything; it has no purpose. Nature just rolls the dice. Sometimes mutation improves the chances of survival. Sometimes it is fatal. Mostly it is irrelevant. Rolling the dice requires iteration, not intelligence. Yet evolution created intelligence. People use their intellect to make decisions, but not always. (Cynics might say people hardly ever use their intellect to make decisions.) If every decision was purely rational, I would always be able to anticipate what information to present or manufacture about myself in order to get the respect, love, admiration or whatever it is I want to get from writing this blog. I certainly would not introduce myself like this. Luckily, as far as this blog post is concerned, all thought processes involve an emotional element too. Which is why this silly introduction will do just fine, and is really very sensible.

For good decisions, or at least rational decisions, goals should be clear. The terrible truth of my life is that it revolves around a failure. I have failed to determine the purpose of my life. That may sound comical, but I am serious. I urgently rush around to make use of my limited time, and yet have no rational basis for deciding what to do with life. This vexes me. If I knew the purpose of life, I might calculate how to fulfill it. Instead, I rely on emotional input to make decisions and treat life like a work in progress, with no clear view of its aim.

I could blame Plato for my predicament. In my mid-teens, my English teacher lent me his dialogues. He broached questions that intrigued me. I thought his approach of rational enquiry and debate might deliver answers. For Plato, “good” was the Form that made other Forms into Forms. That may have satisfied Plato, but is useless as a practical guide. I kept looking for answers. Aristotle’s insistence on the middle ground was little better. Kant’s categorical imperative is a decent rule of thumb, but what makes it imperative? It echoes Jesus, but Nietzsche made strong counter-arguments to Christian morality. Utilitarians cannot foresee the consequences of their actions. Pragmatists act first and think later. Confucius had too many rules, Lao Tzu too few explanations. By the time I graduated I agreed with Wittgenstein that most philosophy is literally nonsense. Asking the purpose of life leads to more questions, not answers. So I behaved like Wittgenstein, and gave up philosophy to do something useful, and trusted my instincts to tell me what that would be. Wittgenstein designed a house and was a schoolteacher. I used computers and became a business consultant. However, the question of purpose keeps nagging at me. The absence of purpose leaves an unbridgeable gap in rational decision-making. I have failed on two scores: I did not find a purpose to life and I cannot ignore the challenge that poses. That double failure defines me. Sometimes philosophy offers solace. Russell said that:

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

My doubts and questions may suggest wisdom, but how can I be sure?

Perhaps the mistake was made at the beginning. Plato was sure the rational mind would find the truth, but he despised the Athenian democracy that killed Socrates, his mentor. Socrates’ love of knowledge made him enemies. Human rationality and emotion are both the product of evolution. Decisions result from their interaction, both within a person, and between people. Those decisions may reprogram the code of our lives: our physical and mental wellbeing, education and opportunities, environment, society, and soon, our genes. Our technological sophistication grows, but our decision-making prowess does not keep pace. The way we make decisions today would be familiar to the ancient Greeks. Meanwhile, our power now extends to the annihilation of the world, or the ending of poverty, depending on the decisions we make. Insisting on rational decisions is no solution, as every logical argument starts with an unproven premise, which is taken on faith. Perhaps we need technology not just to change the world, but to help us understand what we intend to achieve by changing it.

I would like to learn the purpose of existence, though I doubt I ever will. I would not expect you, dear reader, nor anyone else to furnish the answer. Feel free to drop me a line if you think you have the answer (but I reserve the right not to agree with your conclusions). One useful technique might be to learn how to use technology to inform and mediate decision making, and to use that in turn to learn of human goals, reasoning and emotions. Communications is a conduit, and I would like to tap it. Nature gets results because it is very patient. I do not have as long, so instead of performing many iterations of decision-making myself, perhaps I can speed the process by observing the decision-making processes of my fellow man. Unfortunately, blogs are one-way, and reading about other people’s thoughts is slow and sometimes misleading if they do not write honestly about their thoughts.

Economists, philosophers, psychologists and other clever people have plenty to say on how people make decisions. Unfortunately, none of them are entirely right, or they lack the data to make definitive conclusions. Nobody knows who will be the next incumbent of the White House or the last person to leave the Big Brother house. Finding ways to collect data on decisions, both rational and irrational, major and minor, might help. Most data gathering focuses on the decision itself. Knowing a decision is utterly superficial. Knowing the outcome of a vote gives no more insight than knowing somebody’s name. It is the history behind a decision that is interesting. One way to record those histories would be to utilize the ubiquity of modern communications technology, by weaving it into mechanisms for reaching and recording decisions, both by individuals and collective groups. (Do not ask for details on how someone would do this in practice - the blog is called “halfthoughts” for a reason.) That data would provide a window, or more modestly, a peephole into the human psyche. Would that be interesting and different? I think so. One problem is that there may not be a human intelligence great enough to understand the data, even when summarized. But whatever intelligence could understand the data would get one heck of an introduction: a biography of human thought, if you like…]]

In Britain, last week’s newspapers were full of stories about the number of people on incapacity benefit and other welfare payments. The subtext was that many people on benefits are actually able to do some kind of work, but have joined a welfare culture where it is easier and preferable to rely on state handouts instead of earning a living. At the same time, many people complain about the influx of immigrant workers, and how they put a strain on infrastructure, the availability of housing, hospital waiting lists and the like. In recent years there has been a surge from Eastern European countries thanks to the EU’s approach of enabling mobility of workers. As a result, the UK government is taking action to limit immigration of low-skill workers from outside the EU. However, the reason why the government allows immigration is straightforward and understandable: immigrants do jobs that either British people refuse to do, or do them for a lot less pay. That helps the economy overall, by ensuring there are willing workers and by keeping the tax money rolling into the government’s coffers. In the end, there is no tax to be made from British people who are slow to return to work and only willing to do so for overpaid jobs. More tax is made for the national economy if businesses can get the workers they need when they need them, then utilize their efforts in order to make a profit.

It seems a bit harsh to always blame the newcomer for the burden placed on public services. Okay, schools are under pressure to accommodate children who speak English as a second language, but British benefits claimants probably use as much space on the roads, as much time at the local doctor’s surgery and as much legal aid money at the courts as immigrants do. At least the Polish workers work, which in turn generates tax to help pay for pensions, wars and all the rest of government expenditure. Benefits claimants take, but do not give. They are a net drain on the rest of society. Some claimants are deserving, others are not. Stories about crackdowns on fraudulent claimants may help put some people off, but when I read about marathon runners who claim for years to be unfit for work because they cannot walk, I always conclude that if these are the fraudsters that get discovered, there must be lots of less conspicuous fraudsters who are never found out.

This leaves us in a pickle. We have too many people, wanting too many state services. Some work, others do not. You cannot just cut off benefits payments because some people deserve them, even if you know the undeserving will always find a way to play the system. How can we reduce the burden on the state overall, but still keep everyone happy? First, we should consider some facts, side-by-side, about the UK and Poland (source: the CIA World Factbook)

I would have liked to present recent figures on the cost of living in each country, but the best survey, from Mercer, is based on cities rather than countries, and the most recent survey which is fully available dates back to 2006. This gives the index cost of living in Warsaw, Poland’s capital, at 80.4, compared to 110.6 for London. Warsaw is the only city listed in the survey. Interestingly, Glasgow and Birmingham are listed as being slightly cheaper than Warsaw, but I think it is fair to surmise that capital cities are typically more expensive than the other cities, suggesting that the cost of living in Poland is less than 80% of that in the UK.

Is there a solution? Well, we could send our benefits claimants to Poland. Think of it as an exchange program. For every plumber we receive, they have to receive somebody who has been a long-term recipient of benefits. British patients increasingly travel overseas for operations, so this is just an extension of the idea of procuring social and public goods from overseas. Any deal to move benefits claimants to countries like Poland should be a win-win. We take the pressure off our overburdened infrastructure. We might even find that we need fewer immigrant workers in the country to build and repair our houses, roads and the like. In Poland, they get the economic benefit of servicing the needs of our benefits claimants. Their shops, food outlets and the like will make more revenue, and generate tax for the Polish government. Our businesses would lose that income, but taxes could be cut to compensate. Taxes could be cut because benefits could be cut. This is because the cost of living is lower in Poland than the UK, so monetary value of benefits could be reduced without reducing the spending power or the quality of life enjoyed by complainants. According to the relevant treasury statistics the UK spends around UK£4bn on unemployment benefits alone. A 20% reduction in that bill would be worth UK£800m.

Some of you may have noticed an objection to this plan. We are talking about the forced migration of British citizens. These people will be uprooted from the places they know and love and forced to live in a strange foreign country. Hmmm. How much of a hardship is that? I want what is best for my nation, which is not the same as what is best for a minority who make no contribution to the nation. Living in the place you want to live is a privilege, not a right. Polish plumbers do not move to the UK because they love Britain’s culture or way of life. They do so in order to work and generate income. Lots of Britons have also learned in the last few decades that they need to make sacrifices in order to generate an income. One of those sacrifices is being mobile enough to go where the work goes. Why should it be different for benefits claimants? Why should they have superior rights to live where they like, irrespective of the economic realities? We should keep Britain an economic powerhouse by making it a decent home for people who want to work, not a holiday home for people who cannot or will not work. Complaining about foreign beneficiaries of our welfare state is understandable, but why should we be more tolerant of British citizens that take advantage of it? If the best outcome for Britain means turning Polish plumbers into Brits by teaching their children English, and forcing British benefits claimants to take foreign holidays until they are able and willing to join the working world, that seems like a fair exchange to me. And it might just encourage a few more marathon runners to find their route back to work.

I have been struggling for a while with collecting all the data necessary for this blog, so this is me giving up and admitting I do not have it all. But what I do have is pretty darn persuasive, so here goes…

Anybody who has been following the primaries in the US must have noticed that Barack Obama has established a lead over Hilary Clinton in the race to be the Democrat Presidential candidate. Seeming concerns about the electability of a black man, or a woman, have been pushed to one side as many polls have concluded that race and gender is not that important to most electors. However, you should always be wary of polls. People have a nasty habit of making pollsters draw the wrong conclusions, especially when they are asked questions where there is an obvious “right” answer. Asking someone if race influences the way they vote is a pretty much asking them if they are a racist. That means that some people know to respond that race does not matter, even if it does to them. Before we go too far, let me state that I have no opinion on whether racism will influence the outcome of the elections in the US. What I am more interested in is that black voters may have obtained a disproportionate influence over the Democrat’s selection process, and that may lead to shockwaves on many fronts - racial, political and cultural - if their preferred choice, Obama, wins the candidacy but turns out to be a lot less popular with the wider electorate than is currently supposed.

After doing lots of research, I eventually stumbled across someone who had preempted my arguments. Earl Ofari Hutchinson nailed the main elements of the argument in this blog for The Huffington Post. In short, black voters have backed the Democrats over Republicans by a ratio of about 9 to 1 in every Presidential election in the last few decades. That level of support may have helped Bill Clinton win his campaigns, but was not enough to elect Al Gore or John Kerry. Black voters are hence not a key swing demographic if the Democrats are going to take back the White House. They cannot swing much more behind the Democrats than they already do. For the Democrats to win, they need more white and Hispanic votes; some estimates suggest George W. Bush carried almost 40% of the Hispanic vote against Kerry, and typically about a third of Hispanics have backed the Republican Presidential candidate. Those are the voters that the Democrats need to aim for.

Whilst the commentators have worked hard to present both Clinton and Obama as having their natural followings, with Clinton doing best with women, Hispanics and the over 60’s, there is no doubt about which subset of the populous is the most unified in support of one candidate. Blacks who have voted in the primaries have cast over 80% of their votes for Obama. If you take black votes out of the equation, Clinton is the clear leader in the contest. The solid and unwavering support for Obama from African-Americans has effectively reversed the position of the two main candidates, turning the underdog into the clear leader. That is interesting, but not the main point I want to make here. The really interesting question is whether the influence of the black vote is higher in the Democrat selection process than it would be in a national election.

Obama recently informed his backers that his goal in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary, set to be won by Clinton, is to keep the losing margin to less than 10%. Some of the polls put Clinton ahead in Pennsylvania by nearly 20%, though others are around the 10% mark. African Americans are forecast to vote for Obama by the same kind of 80 point margin in Pennsylvania as he has enjoyed elsewhere, and they are expected to account for 18% of the likely Democrat voters in that primary. Here comes the key point, though: blacks only account for 11.4% of people in Pennsylvania. Not only are blacks heavily backing Obama, they are also turning out for the Democratic primaries in disproportionate numbers. Compared to a national election, they are heavily overweight in the samples being used to decide the Democrat contender. A little maths should explain the importance this has to the results. If Clinton was to win the Pennsylvania primary on a 55:45 split of the vote, that would she would close the delegate gap by about 18. If the black vote is consistent with the poll projections, Clinton needs to win the non-black vote in the state by a margin of 65 to 35 in order to win by 10 points overall. However, if the black share of the vote was only 11.4%, i.e. in line with the actual racial split in the state overall, then all things being equal, Clinton would do much better. If Clinton won Pennsylvania non-blacks in the ratio of 65:35 and Obama won Pennsylvania blacks in the ratio of 90:10, then the total result would be a win for Clinton with 58.7% instead of just 55%. In other words, the over-representation of blacks in the primary relative to the state’s population would be worth nearly 4% to Obama, which is equivalent to about a 7-delegate swing. If we re-run the equations on the assumption of a 60:40 overall win for Clinton with the state as is, and with the black vote as predicted, then that would require Clinton to win the non-black electorate by 71 to 29, which in turn would make the over-representation of black voters worth over 5% to Obama.

Have black voters been over-represented in other Democratic primaries? That is where I have so far struggled to get comprehensive data. News stories from individual states do suggest that is what has happened. In South Carolina, for example, which was key to generating positive momentum for Obama, a reported 55% of voters were black. Clinton did better with black voters in this state, picking up 19% of black votes compared to Obama’s 78%, and the remaining 2% going to Edwards who was still in the race back then. However, 55% of the primary’s electorate is severely at odds with the actual racial composition of South Carolina. According to the most recent census data, over two-thirds of South Carolina is white. That means in South Carolina there was a similar numeric over-representation of blacks to that which is being predicted will occur in Pennsylvania, with blacks accounting for almost double the share of Democratic primary votes than would be proportionate for their numbers in the state.

I admit I have not done all the numbers for all the states, but I think it is reasonable from what I have seen to assume the skew calculated for Pennsylvania, which was worth 4 points in the context of a 55-45 win for Clinton, is roughly consistent nationwide. At the time of writing, CNN says that Obama has 1411 pledged delegates to Clinton’s 1242. If the results are rebased to eliminate the 4% skew due to black over-representation, as would inevitably be the case in a national election where blacks voters could not be over-represented to anything like the same degree, then we see Clinton gain, and Obama lose, 106 delegates. That would place Clinton as the delegate leader, with a 1348-1305 lead in pledged delegates, and a 1585-1512 lead overall. Rebasing the poll results by this level of skew would also be enough to convert Obama’s impending victory into a clear win for Clinton.

There is nothing to stop any part of the population being over-represented in the primaries. In practice, if Obama gets the delegate numbers he will have won the candidacy fair and square, even if he needed the high turnout of black voters to put himself over the top. However, it is relevant to question whether this process really guarantees selection of the strongest candidate to contest the national election. In the national election, each voter gets one vote, whether black or white. Blacks may feel very strongly about Obama, and hence be more motivated to vote in the primaries, but one strongly felt black vote counts no more highly than the vote of a white person who shows no interest in the Presidential election prior to the big day. The current head-to-head polls suggest both Clinton v. McCain and Obama v. McCain would be incredibly close. Like I said above, treat polls with caution. Democrats do not need to look that far back in history for a valuable lesson about how Americans actually vote. Nixon, a loser against J.F. Kennedy in the 1960 election, identified the “silent majority” of voters as more crucial to determining electoral outcomes than any minority, no matter how active they are. In the face of an ever-present counterculture and enormous resentment over Vietnam, Nixon won by a landslide in 1972. The silent majority Nixon identified was composed of the older generation, blue collar workers and many ordinary white citizens in the Midwest and South. That sounds a lot like the people who have been voting for Clinton, not voting for Obama, and who McCain will target as the constituency he needs to retain from Bush’s 2004 victory in order to secure another Republican win. If the silent majority ultimately decides the 2008 Presidential election with a victory for McCain over Obama, the fallout for race politics in the US could be very severe.

Who you gonna call?

Terrorbusters!

Recently I have been accosted by a glut of radio adverts encouraging me to call the “anti-terror hotline” if I see anything suspicious. Anything suspicious? According to the ad, suspicious activity includes people taking photos and loitering in public places. In other words, the kind of thing you see every day. Of course, the point is that I should have the common sense to tell the difference between a probable family photo and possible military reconnaissance, which rather begs the question of how the person down the far end of the line can help me tell them apart. No mention is made of skin colours or any other characteristics of suspicious people. The listener is left to decide for themselves whether an elderly blonde Scandinavian woman should be treated with the same degree of suspicion as a young adult asian.

Osman/de Menezes

Now, I do not know about you, but I am pretty sure I have never seen anything suspicious that might fit into the “potential terrorism” category. I am not saying that nobody else has; obviously some people must sometimes see suspicious activity because terrorism does happen. However, I am bamboozled by the idea that setting up a hotline might lead to more useful info on terrorism, as opposed to an awful lot of crank calls. For a start, what did people seeing suspicious activity do before there was a hotline? Did they just shrug shoulders and decide not to report it to anyone? “Ah, darn it, it looks like that guy is building some kind of bomb in his cellar. I just wish there was some specialist phone line so I could tell someone about it and stop him before it is too late.” So who is the hotline aimed at? Presumably it is aimed at people who struggle to distinguish a genuine cause for concern from paranoid fantasy. Which leads to my next point. Who would set up a phone line, available all day and all night, just to have to separate out a few useful leads from a deluge of demented ravings? It turns out it is London’s Metropolitan Police, the same people who shot Jean Charles de Menezes in the head because they could not tell the difference between an unfortunate Brazilian student riding the underground and a terrorist suspect that looked vaguely like him. So vague was the similarity, that even after the Met touched up the picture I still see more in common between James McAvoy and Keira Knightley than between these two men.

Reading the Met Police’s webpage about the hotline, I note that it reinforces the message on the radio ad, by insisting that the hotline is staffed by “specialists”. What kind of specialist sits behind a desk waiting for a phone to ring? Presumably not junior James Bond’s and Jack Bauer’s just straining at the leash to go out and do some real field work. Nope, it must be the kind of specialist you find in every other call centre on the face of the planet. This kind of specialism = 2 weeks on an induction course + the ability to read scripts from a screen. At least I hope so. If the call centre staff are very good at distinguishing real terrorism from a lot of hooey then perhaps they should be the ones running around with the guns instead of the guys that shot de Menezes. Or perhaps it is the other way around. This might be a comfortable “desk job” for everyone who screwed up and contributed to the shooting of an innocent man.

I do hope that the call centre staff have some decent scripts to read from, because some of the signs of suspicious behaviour described by the website are pretty laughable. Here are a few examples:

Credit card - Terrorists need funding. Cheque and credit card fraud are ways terrorists generate cash. Have you seen any suspicious transactions?

Presumably this question is aimed at people who normally have no objection to credit card fraud, but think fraudsters should draw the line at funding terrorism…

Camera - Terrorists need information. Observation and surveillance help terrorists plan attacks. Have you seen anyone taking pictures of security arrangements?

Tourists had better stop taking photos of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Or at any tourist spot that might also serve as terrorist target.

Computer - Terrorists use computers. Do you know someone who visits terrorist-related websites?

Visiting a website is hardly rock-solid evidence that somebody is a terrorist. And does the Met’s anti-terror website count as a terrorist-related site? This encourages people to draw no distinction between someone who sympathizes with terrorism and somebody who actively supports terrorism. We may not like somebody’s sympathies, but that does not make them criminals.

Suitcase - Terrorists need to travel. Meetings training and planning can take place anywhere. Do you know someone who travels but is vague about where they are going?

Imagine Valentine’s Day in future years - any plans to surprise your other half with a romantic break abroad might lead to a conversation with the Met! This suggestion is a mandate to be nosey, and any smart terrorist can easily avoid being “vague” by simply telling bare-faced lies about where they are going!

Police suspect this man is the “Minder”

Padlock - Terrorists need storage. Lock-ups, garages and sheds can all be used by terrorists to store equipment. Are you suspicious of anyone renting a commercial property?

Police took a gentleman by the name of Arthur Daley into custody yesterday, and are still looking for his accomplice, known only as the “Minder”. They are also keen to locate the whereabouts of a Derek “Del Boy” Trotter, normally resident in Peckham…

If the idea of an anti-terror phoneline had me doing a mental cartwheel, I was launched into full somersaults when I saw that there is an on-line webform to share your terrorist suspicions. Thankfully, the police have thought this one through with the help of their lawyers. In order to send a message, you have to tick the box saying you agree with the following statement:

I confirm that this form is not being used to report something that needs urgent police attention.

Come again? So suppose somebody submits the form anonymously, sends information that is urgent, and ticks the box? Presumably the Met are in the clear because, legally, they are not to blame if the email sits in an inbox for 72 hours before somebody reads it. And exactly what kind of terrorist activity needs to be reported, but does not require urgent attention? The only kind of report of terrorist activity that does not need to be acted on urgently is the report of unsubstantiated gossip, tittle-tattle and scaremongering.

The problem here is that, without any sense of irony, the Met Police would like to rely on everyone to use their common sense, but then assumes nobody has any. Of course, the real common sense would be to deploy all available resources on fighting terrorism, and not to waste them advertising the fact that you are fighting terrorism. But given the Met supremo’s penchant for spin over substance, as revealed by the de Menezes fiasco, it is no surprise there is a preference for gaudy publicity over quiet, but conscientious, policework.