A few words about TB …
Some RSA Fellows think I take on every opportunity I can to pursue media appearances, regardless of whether they are good for the Society. So I am keen to report that I have turned down at least half a dozen invitations to comment on my former Boss’ appearance at the Iraq Inquiry.
I will stay off the airways. But, for what it’s worth, here are my very brief reflections on what – between meetings – I have managed to watch today. Some people may think it is inappropriate for me to comment at all, but it is the issue of the day and relevant to many of the debates about democracy and policy which we regularly host here at the RSA.
TB was highly unlikely to say anything new. He made his case as well as could be expected and he spoke with clarity and conviction. What he said was important not just for the historical record but in relation to current foreign policy and security challenges.
Overall, the picture painted by TB tallies with that of other witnesses, including those who are less inclined to take responsibility for the war. There is little evidence of a conspiracy or a cover up. On the strategy, legality, planning, the different views are there for people to see and to judge for themselves. Indeed not a great deal has changed since 2005 when Iraq hurt TB’s standing but not so much that he failed to win the general election..
TB was visibly tense at the beginning of the hearing and very focussed throughout. This was for real. I couldn’t help wondering how many other countries would have put a former leader through such a public interrogation (and how many former Prime Minister’s of the UK would have been willing to be questioned in this way)
The outcome, I suspect, will be that those who hate TB will continue to hate him, or maybe even hate him more because they will feel he has ‘got away with it’ again. In contrast, those who used to like TB may be reminded of why they did and what they miss about him as a leader.
On the lead up to the war itself my view (and, as I was not in Downing Street I have no greater claim to insight than any other observer) is that I trust TB’s motives. But I also think there were failures of governance. Methods of communication, persuasion and decision making acceptable for major domestic policy decisions were on occasions applied to the very different matter of a highly contentious and risky military conflict.
I’m not sure whether if things had been done differently the decisions or outcomes would have changed. What might have done is the level of suspicion and hostility that TB faces not just now, but quite possibly for the rest of his public life.
An occasionally useful halfwit …
Well folks, this is it. My 500th blog post. Don’t worry I’m not going to go back over the previous 499, listing my greatest hits, my unread classics and my favourite comments.
Instead I want to explore some questions about the study of human behaviour. These have come up in the context both of the RSA’s projects (such as the Social Brain) and my own writing and broadcasting as the Society’s Chief Executive. For example, I am currently engaged in a project for Radio Four under the working title ‘God on My Mind’. I can predict some of the criticisms that will be made when the programmes are broadcast. Indeed Ray Tallis, who recently criticised my Prospect piece, has shown remarkable prescience in already attacking this project despite, as far as I know, not even knowing of its existence.
The issues were rehearsed at a recent lunch organised by the magazine Prospect at which I was the guest speaker. From the outset I adopted my well practiced self-deprecatory pose, recognising the infelicities in my own recent Prospect piece on politics and the brain, and the dangers of trying to ‘explain’ human behaviour through brain scans or the theories of evolutionary psychology.
But despite starting with this tactical retreat, as the lunch went on I found myself wanting to defend the new science of behaviour from two of the charges directed at it by my learned and sceptical lunch companions.
The basis of the first attack was that even to talk about behaviour showing up in brain activity, particularly through the use of colourful fMRI imaging, would inevitably lead to a reductionist account of human behaviour. The risk of course is real and has been underlined both in Tallis’ articles and in critiques of ‘the voodoo correlations’ of social neuroscience.
The identification of brain regions with certain characteristics or behaviours may be simplistic and the idea that just to see where something happens in the brain is somehow to ‘explain’ it is ridiculous. Yet the scope for advancing our understanding comes from the capacity to cross reference observed behaviour with neural activity.
Here’s an example:
Yesterday Dan Pink spoke at the RSA about his new book on human motivation, ‘Drive’. Part of his critique of carrot and stick incentives as the primary means to improve performance rests on the famous candle experiment. In this, subjects are shown a table adjacent to a wall. On the table there is a candle, a book of matches and a box of drawing pins. The task is to attach the candle to the wall, light it but not allow any wax to drip on to the table below.
The solution to the puzzle is to remove the drawing pins from the box, pin it to the wall, stand up the candle in the box, and light it. To get to the solution requires the lateral leap of seeing that the drawing pin box is not incidental (merely holding the pins) but is an object in play. In repeated experiments it has been found that if subjects in one group are told they will win a cash prize if they solve the problem and subjects in another group are simply asked to solve it without any incentive, it is the members of the latter group who, on average, get to the solution quicker.
The experiment is suggestive of a specific neurological process. Perhaps the cash incentive increases the activity in parts of the brain associated with deliberate problem solving or anxiety and this somehow blocks or drowns out the activity in another part of the brain associated with intuitive leaps or pattern recognition. This is something that could presumably be tested (maybe it has already been) by asking people to solve the problem in a scanner. Whether or not such a pattern is observed does not affect the significance of the original experiment, and patterns of neuronal activity are not a useful finding in themselves, but the two together can give us interesting insights into the ways cognitive tasks interact. Such findings, could for example, complement other research which appear to show our will power is reduced after we have undertaken a taxing mental problem.
Back at the Prospect lunch the second critique I sought to rebuff was reminiscent of the 14th Century Pope’s hostility to translating the Bible in English: ordinary mortals aren’t to be trusted with information they might misuse. the line here is that human behaviour is so complex and reflexive that any model a layperson could understand would, by its nature, be misleading. So, when in the lunch I posited my metaphor of human behaviour as an elephant (our automatic brain) being ridden (by our conscious brain) though a cultivated jungle (society and culture) the reaction was the kind of dismissive shudder you might get if, while lunching at The Ivy, you asked for a bottle of Hirondelle (if you’re under 40 ask your parents).
The problem with this position – apart from its eye-watering elitism – is that the alternative to one model of human behaviour isn’t none but another. So, even if there are lots of over-statements and simplifications in new thinking about behaviour (for example, the ‘Nudge’ epidemic) the new debate is surely better than the unthinking reliance on the myth of homo economus that dominated policy throughout the nineties.
The RSA is interested in these issues because our overarching mission is to release human potential for the benefit of society. To understand how to do this we think we need a credible and comprehensible account of the key factors shaping human behaviour.
I didn’t convince anyone at my lunch and I dread to think what my learned interlocutors said about me when I left. But, and this is in no way meant as a slight on my lunchtime companions, all of whom have made a considerable impact on the world, I’m going to comfort myself with this motto for my 500th blog:
‘better to be an occasionally useful half wit than a purely decorative intellectual’.
Don’t read this, read that
A recently submitted comment on an old post, makes a valid point. It’s in response to my repetitive and transparently self-serving requests for evidence that people read this blog:
‘Matthew, ten people want you to keep on blogging. Please employ a cost-benefit analysis. R’
The comment (leading me immediately to suspect anyone whose name begins with the letter ‘R’) panders both to my unquenchable thirst for self-deprecation and encourages me to spend less time posting. (See what you’ve done, ‘R’ – bet you feel pretty low now?)
Fortunately, I can kill two birds with one stone. Towards the back end of last year, The Times ran a couple of articles by me in their ’4th plinth’ (as I call it) commentary slot. I also got invited to some great breakfasts to coincide with the publication of the newspaper’s Eureka supplement. At last, I thought, my ambition to be a regular columnist is about to be fulfilled. Sadly, the new dawn turned out to be a flash in the pan. Since then, I’ve sent in loads of ideas, and even a couple of full columns, with no joy.
So, human nature being what it is, you would expect me to read The Times comment pages with a jaundiced eye – ‘how can they reject me and print this rubbish?’ But I am bigger than that, oh yes, and being big is made very easy today when there are four brilliant pieces:
Duncan Bannatyne, urging British entrepreneurs to invest in Haiti;
Richard Kemp, on why we should feel positive and determined in the face of bin Laden’s latest claims;
David Aaronovitch, writing about the Edlington case with his usual mixture of common sense and scathing wit; and
Rachel Sylvester on Chilcot, making me feel (a little) better about my old boss. (Accompanied, for balance, by a clever and cruel cartoon.)
The fact is I could write articles till the cows came home, made themselves a light supper and settled back to watch Newsnight (or should that be ‘Moosnight’?) and still not match any of these.
I guess I’ll have to stick to the quality-assurance-free zone that is my blog. Sorry ‘R’!
Leave the outcomes to the people
Lots of travelling recently – I am writing this on a train from Chester to Bangor (and what a great train journey it is too) on my way to do some interviews for a couple of Radio 4 programmes I am presenting. Friday saw me near Stafford at an AwayDay for the 2020 Public Services Trust.
One of the sessions at the AwayDay involved my group examining the proposition that the state should move from the goal of social security to one of social productivity. The notion of social productivity is based on the idea that there’s a lot of good ‘stuff’ outside the state which is vital to the functioning of a fair and decent society: self-reliance, caring and volunteering, for example. Public services should aim to recognise, nurture and grow this ‘stuff’. The more services do this, the more productive they are.
Our conversation led us to see the key sets of issues around this proposition. Firstly, if the state is seeking to tap into and shape people’s own efforts, there is a need for strong legitimacy. Secondly, however commendable the principles might be, how practicable is the idea that the state can enhance pro-sociability? Thirdly, if services are the outcome of the combined efforts of the state, individuals and communities, how does accountability work?
From this sprang a surprising conclusion: if service outcomes flow from explicit collaboration between public servants and citizens, then those outcomes must be both negotiated and contingent upon that negotiation.
Among public service planners and commentators, there has been a common call in recent years for outcome based performance management. But, if outcomes are merged from collaboration between service providers and people in specific and varying circumstances, then they shouldn’t be centrally specified.
Instead, the state should focus its energies on the core functioning of public services. Whether school children achieve good exam results, neighbourhoods are safe, or towns become healthier should be seen as a function of the objectives jointly agreed between the state and citizens and the ability of both sides to deliver on their commitments. Rather than services promising to meet outcomes which are not, in the end, in their hands (in which case they may resort to ‘fixing’ the outcomes to meet the targets) they should ensure they are guaranteeing specified levels of functioning, levels which make them a credible and respected partner, with which the public can deal.
This is not a conclusion I expected to reach and I haven’t thought through the implications in full. Perhaps some of my readers can help?
Good news is no news
On the face of it last week contained two really good bits of news. First, there was unemployment apparently peaking at nearly half a million fewer people than most analysts, including the Government’s, were predicting this time last year. Second, the crime stats showed an 8% headline fall, again defying the widespread prediction that there would be more offences committed during the recession.
I am sure the Government wishes more attention was being paid to the good news, and hoping an effect might show up in the opinion polls. If so, ministers will have been disappointed to open Sunday newspapers, brimming not with glad tidings but endless analysis of the child assaults in Edlington, plus pages of speculation about how the current and previous Prime Minister will perform in the Iraq inquiry. But it’s not so much the politics that interest me.
Both the employment and crime news are genuinely interesting. There are various explanations for the former and tucked away on the BBC website is a very good overview from Stephanie Flanders. So the news was reported and there are analyses available, but why don’t people seem particularly interested? Compare this with the endless agonising – on the news, in the papers, but also in bus queues and pubs – about whether this would be the worst recession since (or even including) the Great Depression.
It’s a cliche that the news focuses on bad things. Over the years various people, from newsreaders to website founders, have tried to get people interested in a more balanced offering. But our lack of interest in how we have come through the downturn better than we expected, and our willingness to put so much more emphasis on the terrible crimes of two disturbed boys than the benign social trend revealed in the crime stats, underlines the depth of our social pessimism.
Last week, in an RSA Thursday event discussing optimism, a telling point was made. One of our advocates for pessimism, the Guardian’s Lucy Mangan, said that a great thing about thinking the worst is that pessimists are surprised and delighted when things go well. But, as Laurence Shorter, author of The Optimist replied, what actually happens when inveterate pessimists are presented with good news that they ignore it, discount it or start looking for its drawbacks.
So wedded are we now to social pessimism that we are unwilling even to acknowledge that as a country we appear to have become both more economically resilient and socially responsible. If we don’t take in the good news we will be even less able to deal intelligently with the bad.
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