Unusual Reasons

This post is about people who undertake significant life changes, but for unusual reasons.

1. Programming

Dr Hamid Lesan escaped to England from Iran, where, as a dissident, he was under the scrutiny of the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK. He worked as a colleague of mine at STL in the mid-1980s on formal methods research and AI. I asked him once how he had gotten into programming; he replied that he had first engaged with programming as an interesting application of the lambda calculus.

[Dr Hamid Lesan received his Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic from the Department of Mathematics of the University of Manchester in 1978. After a brief period of teaching, he joined STL in 1980, where his work has been mainly concerned with Formal Methods and Natural Language Processing. He is currently working on tools for supporting the formal specification and development of software in the context of the ESPRIT project RAISE. (ICL Technical Journal, Volume 7 Issue 1 - May 1990). He died in August 2006 - I’m not aware of the circumstances.]

2. Joining the revolutionary left

In the early 1970s, when I was at Warwick University, there was a plethora of far-left organisations looking to recruit: the International Socialists (IS, later SWP); the Socialist Labour League (SLL); the Militant Tendency in the Labour Party; and the International Marxist Group (IMG), British Section of the Fourth International.

It was a time of unrest, and we talked big. Our perspective was becoming a mass revolutionary party as the Bolsheviks had achieved in 1917. Once, one of our leaders, Peter Gowan, came to Warwick to speak. He looked forward to the future mass party, but mentioned that today, most of the leading cadres had elected to join the IMG - rather than other bigger, higher profile organisations - specifically because of its link with the International.

Probably not one in one hundred thousand workers and students had ever heard of the Fourth International: I certainly hadn’t before I was recruited…

3. Being received into the Catholic Church

People join religious organisations for many, often prosaic reasons. But JD Vance joined after an intense study of St. Augustine’s massive City of God. In this fifth century work, Augustine condemns Rome, the City of Men, devoted to present excess, hedonism, selfish ambition and heedless individualism. Vance had no problem identifying those ancient Roman pagans with contemporary American coastal elites with their mindless hedonism; their secular, patronising arrogance.

Augustine counterposes the City of God, the community of those who love God and live according to His will. The Catholic Church is a visible manifestation of the City of God on earth, and promotes the virtues of humility, communitarianism and morality.

JD Vance considered the Catholic Church as the right organisation of resistance: he decided to join.

[St. Augustine wrote "The City of God" over a span of several years, beginning in 413 AD and completing it around 426 AD. This period was during a time of great turmoil in the Roman Empire, particularly marked by the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 AD, which partly inspired Augustine to write the work. The full title of the work is "De Civitate Dei contra Paganos" (The City of God against the Pagans), and it addresses the decline of Rome and defends Christianity against the accusations that it was responsible for the fall of the Empire. (ChatGPT).]

"How I Joined the Resistance" by JD Vance

JD Vance being received into the Catholic Church

Some people find a 6,000 word essay a little daunting, so here it is distilled down to 250 words by ChatGPT.

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"On Mamaw and becoming Catholic

The author reflects on his grandmother, Mamaw, and her complex relationship with organized religion. She had a deep personal faith but distrusted religious institutions, often criticizing televangelists as corrupt while still watching them. Her faith was more about a personal connection with Jesus rather than formal worship.

The author contrasts Mamaw’s de-institutionalized Christianity with his own journey. He grew up with certain misconceptions about Catholicism, influenced by his grandmother’s ambivalence and Protestant anti-Catholic sentiments. Despite his initial skepticism, he gradually found Catholicism's historical continuity and balanced authority compelling. His transition included a period of atheism driven by a desire for social acceptance among elites and a flirtation with libertarianism.

His time in the Marines and subsequent education at Yale Law School prompted a deeper introspection. Encounters with intellectuals like Peter Thiel led him to question his pursuit of achievement over character. He began to see Catholicism as embodying virtues he valued: community, compassion, and a demanding yet forgiving Christ.

Overcoming his concerns, including the Church's scandals and the impact on his family, he converted to Catholicism. The process deepened his understanding of faith, emphasizing the importance of humility, community, and consistent practice. He realized that becoming Catholic was necessary to nurture the best parts of himself, particularly those related to family, patience, and forgiveness. The journey was as much about intellectual acceptance as it was about heart and community, leading him to embrace a faith that demanded personal growth and grace."

"Allopath" by Adam Carlton

Adam Carlton here. In between the present excitement in France, the disintegration of the Nouveau Front populaire, I thought I would share with you one of the stories from my first published collection, available to you as a PDF here.

It was written in homage to Greg Bear's "Queen of Angels".

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I take her hand - her fingers rest inertly on my palm. 

I lean across to kiss her lips - her head moves slightly to avoid my touch.

I reach my arm out to embrace her - my wife lies rigid and does not respond.

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At breakfast this morning she was sullen and withdrawn. Yesterday she was aggressive and contemptuous. I never properly anticipate how much these things affect me; how much they screw around with my ability to think.

Must concentrate.

My first one today is a psychopath.

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The psychopath is wired up on the table. I’m in the simulator: there are joysticks, sliders, buttons. The rising whine in my earphones is the system booting up. I'm about to enter my patient's subconscious.

The magnetic stimulators grasp the patient’s cortex, sculpting a setting for today's therapy. In the VR abstraction I see the patient as he sees himself: a vastly inflated, supersized body surrounded by dwarfed figurines of his sexual partners and hangers-on.

In a normal person, all those agents are similar. Normal empathy does its work: mirror neurons. This guy is nothing like that. He's the übermensch. His brain models everyone else as robots with paste-on human faces. Inside their chests are dials .. he's playing at adjusting them now.

He's quite the expert, I remind myself.

We've never met. Thankfully, he has no image of me, isn't aware of my presence. Not yet.

There's no cure for psychopathy. You can see why just looking at his deviant brain. Our controversial treatment is there to mitigate harm to others. Ego depletion therapy. In layman's terms I'm going to burn away that part of his brain which drives aggression, charisma and force of character. This man entered my theatre as a dangerous predator. He’ll leave as a timorous mouse.

I move in closer, centre the joystick on his self-persona, focus a reticle on his heart, select aggression/charisma and push the slider way up. Press the fire button.

In the simulation I hear pulsed gunfire.

In the world of the operating theatre, the AI maps the corresponding neural circuits, aims the lasers. The beam-constellation - tuned to penetrate the skull - converges to the target zone .. which starts to cook and die.

The brain has no pain sensors. The psychopath nevertheless feels something, some imbalance, a degradation of self-energy. You might think he would personify me as a baleful, fire-breathing dragon. But there is truth in the undermind, not physics. He can’t see the lasers, he only feels their effects

He pictures me as a worm-parasite, a lamprey with band-saw teeth, sucking at his life-force.

He scowls, raises his hands to grasp my black slimy body, to tear me loose .. yet he's deflating, weakening. Part of my skill is to know when to stop.

He still has to function afterwards.

I spit him out.

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My wife also works at the hospital. She's in administration, budgets. I'm having my lunch when I get the call. She's collapsed, an emergency scan has identified a life-threatening brain tumour.

Normally we wouldn't ask, there's a conflict of interest, but it's urgent and you're here .. .

So I'm wired. Back in harness. My estranged, distant wife unconscious on the operating table.

I've never visited my wife's mind-country. Unbearably intrusive. Quite unethical. In the old days this would have been a difficult, dangerous and risky operation. The tumour, though small, is buried deep within the limbic/brain-stem boundary.

The AI knows about the tumour. It's accessed the scan data. Together we'll track the cauterisation. I'll watch the psychological effects as the physical malignancy is excised. I'll precisely calibrate the boundaries of the burn.

The system powers up; status goes to green. I'm projected in-country and to my surprise it's our bedroom. She has subconsciously construed her incapacity as sleepiness .. and conjured up somewhere appropriate.

Readouts show the burn has already started. With the decrease of pressure her breathing is already stabilising. She knows me of course, I inhabit her ‘husband’ subpersonality.

I advance towards the bed.

“Are you awake, kid? How are you feeling?”

I don't know if I'm the husband or the surgeon in here. There's a reason we don't do this.

Her eyes open. She focuses, catches sight of me, recoils and screams. I see myself in a mirror - see myself as she sees me.

My breath catches .. I am hideous.

A pink, fleshy polyp, crowned with a frond of sharp tiny teeth, swaying and looming towards her.

She backs away .. hyperventilating .. recoiling.

I bow in desperate supplication and back off. My eyes flick between my wife - visibly gaining in strength -  and my own worm-self, detumescing by the second.

An alert from the AI. It thinks it's done. I toggle the switch to cease the burn.

Simultaneously I'm ejected from her mind.

Removing the helmet, I see her wheeled out to intensive care. It's mostly precautionary. We're done here.

All the bad bits have been burned out.

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What did it all mean?

The textbooks would say:

The tumour caused distortions in emotional response and erratic behaviour. Later, as it grew larger, pressure on the brain stem caused her physical collapse.

It all makes sense of course. Yet somehow, I felt that things were a bit more complex, more nuanced in there.

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I hasten to visit her, enter her private room. She’s propped up, quite conscious, looking surprisingly well.

“Hi kid,” I say, “How’re you feeling?”

She looks at me blankly.

“Who the hell are you?”

On my Kindle bookshelf right now

 

"Queen High" and the Reacher books are more Clare's choice than mine.

In Praise of Étienne de La Boétie (1530-1563)

Étienne de La Boétie

The king thinks he is the king because of his intrinsic properties: he acquired the divine right from God; he has ‘blue blood’ through his aristocratic lineage. Because of this his subjects bow and abase themselves before him.

The truth is exactly the reverse. The king is just an individual, not necessarily tremendously special, who happens to occupy the central prestige/authority role in the network of power relationships in that kingdom. 

However, if the mass of people, through some revolutionary process, come to repudiate those social relationships and choose, say, a republican form of governance, the king is revealed as no more than just another man (albeit with quirky traits).

There is a quote by Marx where he says something like: "It's not because he is king that his subjects bow before him; it is because they bow before him that he is king." 

This sentiment can be traced back to the wonderful: “The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude” by Etienne de la Boétie (1577).

Some monarchs discovered this the hard way: Charles 1st in the English civil war; Louis XVI in the French revolution; Tsar Nicholas in the Russian Revolution.

Intrinsic qualities are not irrelevant however. The king ought to have the talent, character and ability to occupy the role. Sadly, kingship is seldom subject to competitive tender; incompetent kings have historically presaged ruination.

People who previously occupied a lowly position in society's hierarchy - but who are elevated to success by dint of some narrow skill, or by luck or the flow of events - sometimes complain of imposter syndrome. They think their new, exalted role is really meant for someone else, someone with intrinsic merit way beyond their own.

They may be right: subjects need their king to look convincingly kingly, not like a janitor in ermine. 

Nigel Mansell was a champion racing driver but he never looked the part; no surprise that he ended up a volunteer Special Constable, working the beat. We much preferred the look of James Hunt whose family included a baronet, a real aristo: Hunt thankfully behaved like one.

Next time you look at a preening, narcissistic, entitled celebrity, patronising you from their media pulpit, remember that they only occupy their platform of outraged self-righteousness because their subjects have agreed, collectively, to bow and abase themselves before them. They truly reap what they have sown.

COVID: Day 4

 So Wednesday night was the unexplained coughing; Thursday was the feeling cold-ish - yes, it's a cold! - followed by a night of spouse-awakening coughing.

Friday morning (I know now how COVID feels) I asked Clare to pop down to Boots and buy a flow test. It's a bit complicated, following the instructions; something like fourteen steps? I had no confidence that the test would work. Twenty minutes later I was looking at the image you see above. And only five weeks since I had an identical bout! That can happen, apparently.

I'm lucky so far: nothing in the lungs, no serious muscle pains, manageable lethargy. I have no appetite but even that can be spun positive - it's been months since I was below eleven stone (70 kg) and yet... here I am at 69 kg and a bit. 

I think it will be next Sunday, a week today, before I can freely meet with any old and infirm people. Meanwhile I am self-exiled to the back bedroom, where I feel psychologically sedated but prone to bedding-changing night time sweats. Yes, yeuk!

In other news today, ex-President Trump was shot at and slightly wounded. I found out this morning because, naturally, I was early to bed last night. All the usual stereotypes and narratives are to-hand and I have nothing remotely original to contribute.

Now for some more rehydration...

The Future of the British Military: (Gemini)

From OpenArt

Introduction

The British military stands at a crossroads. Traditional threats are evolving, and the rise of unconventional warfare and technological advancements necessitate a re-evaluation of defence strategy. This post explores the potential of a special forces-centric army and the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in shaping the future force structure, while acknowledging the importance of maintaining a balanced approach in light of the UK's likely threat portfolio.

The Allure of Special Forces and Rethinking Traditional Forces

A special forces-centric army offers undeniable advantages. Special forces units are agile, adaptable, and adept at unconventional warfare, counter-terrorism, and surgical strikes – all crucial capabilities in the contemporary security landscape.  The resulting smaller force structure could minimise casualties, logistical burdens, and overall costs. However, this approach presents limitations. Special forces are not designed for large-scale, state-on-state warfare.  Furthermore, recruiting and training these elite units is expensive and resource-intensive, requiring a large, trained mass of soldiers as a recruiting pool.

The Royal Navy and Royal Air Force (RAF) would also require adjustments to support a special forces-centric model. The Navy might transition to smaller, more agile vessels for troop insertion and support, while the RAF would likely prioritise airlift/insertion capabilities and specialised attack aircraft.

The affordability of a special forces-centric force hinges on a careful analysis of offsetting costs. Possible reductions in overall manpower, base upkeep, and traditional weaponry might balance the increased expenditure on special operations capabilities.  Recruitment would target demographics drawn to the prestige of special forces, though potentially limiting the pool of qualified candidates.

While special forces offer a compelling vision for the future, the inclusion of powerful state actors like Russia as potential adversaries complicates the equation. Special forces are ill-equipped to counter a full-scale invasion or hold territory in a conventional war. A more balanced approach that leverages special forces' strengths while maintaining a credible conventional deterrent through investment in essential areas like armour and air defence might be more prudent.

Meanwhile, AI should be considered a teammate, not a replacement. The potential of AI-powered smart machines to revolutionise warfare is undeniable. However, entirely replacing a mass army with autonomous systems within the next 3-5 years is unrealistic. AI technology for complex military tasks is still under development, and the UK's diverse threat landscape necessitates a nuanced approach. AI may excel in specific areas but it can't  replace the human element entirely or en masse.

The focus should be on integrating AI for tasks like logistics, intelligence analysis, and unmanned vehicle operation, freeing up human soldiers for critical decision-making and adaptation –  essential for navigating the UK's evolving security landscape.

Conclusion

While a special forces-centric model offers agility and effectiveness, it must be weighed against the need for a credible conventional deterrent. AI integration offers significant potential, but it can only complement, not replace, human soldiers.

As regards manpower, a hybrid approach combining a core special forces unit with a lean conventional force might be most suitable. This would likely result in a smaller overall manpower requirement compared to a traditional mass army.

Freed-up resources from a smaller force could then be directed towards special operations capabilities, AI integration, and maintaining essential conventional elements. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, but it's generally suggested developed nations allocate at minimum 2-3% of GDP to defence spending, following a thorough strategic review.

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I would add that voluntary national service, including into such units as the Territorial SAS/SBS would enlarge the funnel of qualified recruits that the above force architecture requires.

Moonlight over Mallorca (June 2018)

 

This is a portrait of Clare produced by the AI program Deep Art Effects. We were in Mallorca six years ago.

This is the version when I turned off the "Moonlight"...

The Glorious Next Ten Years?

 

Globalisation left the urban and rural working class behind.

Why?

Companies working as part of a globalised supply chain typically require specialised, highly skilled workers; firms congregate in clusters with good commercial and logistical links: famous hubs, which in the UK include Oxford, Cambridge and trendy boroughs in London.

By contrast, to poorer parts (the countryside, those left-behind cities and market towns) investment capital does not flow. The economy ticks over, supplying basic needs of a low-wage population going nowhere.

Globalised centres have plenty of money and talent; nice places to live, work and play. There are career paths to power, riches and status. These are basic human desires. But in most advanced capitalist countries, only a minority of the population participates in this globalised utopia. The sans-culottes, dispossessed of their present and future, are alienated, restive and mutinous. Populist leaders, disgruntled members of the elite hungry for dominance of their own, emerge to champion their grievances. They promise to level things up.

In fact there are two restive subpopulations, reflecting the massive bifurcation of the working class over the last sixty years: non-graduate manual/low-skill workers; and the mass-produced graduates who aspire to higher things.

Today, the non-graduates (the traditional manual workers) are the engine of classical populism on the political right: gilets jaunes and RN, Trump voters, AFD, Nigel Farage supporters in the UK. Their lives and livelihoods are localised in their often-crumbling communities which they seek to defend and restore. They are the ‘somewheres’.

The mass-produced graduates, by contrast, have fuelled left-wing protests since the sixties. These people are the results of university expansion, of potential-elite overproduction. They are the educated but surplus: the impoverished baristas, penniless artists and toilers at ‘bullshit jobs’. They are the subjects of authors such as Sally Rooney.

They aspire to the dream - but there are not many suitable niches available and these go to the connected, the talented and the lucky few. The graduate-masses, frustrated, deploy their progressive ideas as communal signifiers, hoping to righteously topple elite incumbents and replace them. 

Dream on!

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A note about progressive ideology. Although often blamed on Marxism, it's really a natural fit to globalised capitalism, but not a good fit for historical human nature.

For most of history (and prehistory) people lived in stable communities where everyone knew everyone else and personal trust networks mediated transactions. Strangers were viewed with justifiable suspicion until they had proved themselves. The ideology called 'communitarianism'.

Cities and large-scale commerce changed all that. At professional and elite levels people spend their time, a lot of it, dealing with strangers. A bland, prosocial persona is a precondition of success. Career routes filter out those incapable of the desired extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and calmness, as well as rewarding intelligence and openness to experience.

The politics of the elite ‘anywhere’ personality type is progressivism: it's cool and detached, compassionate in the abstract, egalitarian not domineering. It values strangers.

As judged by traditional cultural standards however, it's feminised, wimpish and weak: the rabbit in the headlights look when confronted by masculine aggression. Stand up Jeremy Hunt.

I wrote about genetic selection for this elite trait-constellation in my previous post (‘Elites are not like us’).

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Across the advanced capitalist countries the fortunes of the anywhere-elites have decoupled both from the ‘somewhere’ uncredentialed workers and the ‘anywhere’ precariat of graduate aspirants. The forces of the ‘extreme’ right and left are now resurgent. The ‘moderate centre’ struggles to hold, wouldn't you say, M. Macron? "President of the rich"?

There have been periods when capitalism developed hand-in-hand with social cohesion: les trente glorieuses. But that period in the fifties and sixties was powered by mass blue-collar manufacturing and labour-intensive white-collar work (teachers, clerks, junior managers).

Capitalism continues to automate, and to concentrate - in just a few locations - a diminishing need for those kinds of jobs. Consequently labour market demand has dried up while the supply of workers fitted to those kinds of jobs has not. Call Centres and Distribution Depots are not a satisfying substitute.

If it was easy to fix it would have been.

Growth (easy to say) is the rising tide which lifts all boats (but not all equally - those mass industrial/bureaucratic jobs are not coming back). But growth increases the size of the total ecosystem of services. Places where the non-elite can find occupations which, at least to some extent, can match their goals.

It's not a panacea but perhaps the new UK Labour government is on the right track after all? Time to embrace creative destruction, comrades!

Elites are not like us

A young member of the British elite - by OpenArt

When I was a teen, commuting to grammar school from my working class housing estate, I thought people like my teachers and the parents of my school-friends were a separate species from my working class community.

• Middle-class people were polite, pleasant, organised and thoughtful. They could follow a train of thought with interest and contribute with sophistication.
• By contrast the working-class people of my acquaintance seemed loud and boisterous, crass in their humour, impulsive and easily distracted. No conversations about ideas.

Gemini tells me that there are correlations between socioeconomic status (SES) and the Big Five personality traits.

“Here's a summary of the findings:

• Conscientiousness and Agreeableness: Individuals from higher SES backgrounds tend to score higher on conscientiousness (organized, disciplined) and agreeableness (cooperative, helpful).
• Extraversion and Openness: Studies suggest a positive association between SES and extraversion (outgoing, sociable) and openness to experience (intellectual, curious).
• Neuroticism: Lower SES is linked with higher scores on neuroticism (anxious, tense).”

This class-sorting by personality type is accompanied by an IQ gradient (of almost 2 SD). With assortative mating - recall that personality traits and IQ have heritability greater than 50% - this inexorably leads in the direction of a persistent caste system. Indeed, as Gregory Clark has shown ('The Son Also Rises'), social mobility in modern societies is already far less than most people imagine.

Another reason why populism, the revolt of the dispossessed, can never win, merely providing shock troops for cynical, shameless, but aspirational elite members jockeying for their own place at the summit.