Passive Tolerance

A couple of weeks ago in the Guardian, I read a joyful article about race relations. It was celebrating how communities experiencing an influx of people from foreign cultures eventually learned to move forward. Fear moved through resistance and separation towards acceptance and finally true integration.

Essentially the article argued that all that was required to achieve this breakthrough was time. Once we live next to people from other cultures the fears dissipate. We see how they are human beings just like us, with strange ways but big hearts. Some of their strange ways and our strange ways merge into even stranger ways, ways that develop humanity further.

I am privileged to live for much of my time in New York City. Queens is the most ethnically diverse borough in the whole USA, which I guess makes it the most diverse in the whole world. I love it. Many days I can laugh and learn by simply observing all the cultures and how they interact. I won’t claim that there is equality of wealth or opportunity or even happiness, but there is plenty of mutual respect, and also plenty of learning. How do you think Fusion restaurants got started?

In Queens, we have the advantage that everyone is packed so close to each other that we cannot live apart even if we wanted to. There are a few blocks where each group has its base – most Filipinos live in Woodside, for example – but the Columbians and Greeks are so close down the road that the boundaries merge over time. Each community retains local customs, and offers support to members in need and new arrivals, but people also look beyond their own culture. It is a wonderful model, and a great place to live. Parts of London have something of the same, and cultural diversity also drives places like Dubai and Singapore, but I don’t think there is anywhere quite like New York.

Last weekend my wife and I had the honour of attending the wedding of two people who have grown up in well-integrated societies. Not surprisingly their guests were also very diverse, and the resulting atmosphere was joyfully multi-cultural. Many in the younger generations have such advantages, and it is my main reason for optimism about humanity. If we can take the benefits of globalization to progressively learn to live as a single human race, we can achieve miracles. Many of the things holding us back could be conquered, including inequality, war and lack of sustainability.

When I was working, it took me a while to really understand the power of diversity. I initially saw it as a compliance or fairness issue, since that is the way it tends to be approached in companies. I thought I was a paragon, since I made sure I had a fully diverse team. It was only afterwards that I learned that the diverse team was a more powerful one, if I only allowed that power to emerge by really using the difference. Later, I put down a lot of any success my teams had to the diversity of the group and our willingness to really embrace and value that difference.

Indeed, if we think of God as CEO of humanity, that might be his current change project. Previous change projects have offered technology and globalization. This one is more difficult though, since it requires staff to change attitudes.

This thought set me thinking about ethnic and cultural integration in a new way. It helped me to understand more about the issue and what we might do to overcome obstacles to change.

For obstacles are many. A depressing share of current popular politics is about fear of difference. Most European countries have far right parties pandering to fear of immigration and disrespect of rival traditions. In tough economic times, these parties are growing. So far, the only way to stop them seems to have been to allow them into positions of power and seeing them fail (since such policies don’t really help in government).

Pandering to fear of difference, and its sister, patriotism bordering on supremacy, have been behind most wars and genocides in history. Arguably, the US only gets away with its disastrous bullying foreign policy because of the patriotism card it plays so readily at home (and sometimes even starts to believe).

God the change-leading CEO might start to despair of the integration project given so many setbacks. That is why stories like Queens are so important, and so is the apparent emergence of successful integration highlighted in the Guardian. It shows that there may be a way through the resistance.

And isn’t that just like all change projects? Think of all the models we are taught about change. There is SARAH – Shock, Anger, Rejection, Acceptance, Healing. There is the model of new teams – Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. These and many other models point to a curve whereby things must get worse before they get better.

It is significant that scare-mongering seems to work best in areas where integration has not yet happened. The BNP and UKIP in the UK have their strongholds not in multi-cultural areas but in white areas. The people there are in the earlier stages of the model – denial or anger – and open to arguments pandering to their fear of change. Once some degree of integration has taken place, the vote for such parties declines again. The same could be said of whole nations: the UK is more ready to be frightened of Bulgarians and Romanians before they actually arrive (and, of course, prove not just harmless but beneficial).

Given these parallels, those of us looking to help society through this change process would do well to look at change literature for ideas. Kotter’s eight step model could be helpful. Or we can examine well-established realities about change for their relevance.

One fact about change is that we all have different expectations and fears. Some of us are more welcoming of change, others more fearful. Language that might work for me might not work for other groups. A common theme is that marketing is often left to those who are positive about the process. Inevitably these people choose messages that do not work.

Other imperatives in change situations are to address fears head on and to continue to promote a positive big picture message. It might be argued that most politicians run away from these needs. Some underplay the likely extent of immigration, or make promises that they cannot deliver. An overall positive message is sadly rare, not just about immigration but also on related topics like trade liberalization or the EU.

The integration that becomes inevitable with globalization is truly a wonderful opportunity for humanity. In our youth and in places like Queens we can already see where it can lead, for individuals and for society. Making this work is a worthy change project for all of us. We should not be surprised to find resistance, and we should all we can learn from change literature to help to facilitate the journey.     

Ceteris Paribus

Ceteris Paribus means “all other things being equal”. You might remember it from school, where it is used sometimes in mathematics proofs. It is a little phrase that we would all do well to remember.

I am bamboozled by the recent advances in science. First we had the Higgs boson, and now we have something about the first moments after the big bang. Science correspondents on the TV make valiant efforts to explain the concepts, supported by graphics reminiscent of the “Tomorrow’s World” programme of my youth, but I am comprehensively defeated. I am sure I am not alone.

Ceteris Paribus helps me. Many of the hardest concepts to understand in science try to explain things on the edge of normality. I was asked to study the very basics of both quantum theory and relativity during my first university year, and failed completely. I remember sitting one three hour exam where I could not understand a single question, and submitted an answer paper only quoting Maxwell’s equations.

From my very limited understanding, both concepts try to deal with situations at extremes, such as travel close to the speed of light. Because we can never experience this, it is hard for us to understand. For centuries, we had good old, simple, Newton’s laws. These were intuitive because they explained things as we experienced them. If a truck hits another truck, they both continue movement at different speeds and angles, in ways we can derive formulae for and test in school laboratories. Thanks, Newton.

Then Einstein debunked Newton, and Quantum theory debunked someone else. This is because our lovely equations only work in normal conditions. If the trucks are travelling at unlikely speeds or pressure conditions or in unusual magnetic fields, the equations fail. And so does my understanding.

My simple mind at this point evokes Ceteris Paribus. The equations are good, but they assume external conditions lie within a range. Other things are assumed equal. When they are no longer equal, we need an enhanced theory. Enter Einstein and Maxwell.

I am not sure, but I believe that Higgs Boson and the more recent advance are modeling even more extreme conditions than those explained by Einstein and Maxwell. Other things are now even less equal than they were before, and still better theories are required. No doubt in several more years someone else will enhance even these new theories.

Why this musing on a subject I know nothing of (as supposed to subjects I know little, as usual)? Well, because I find the Ceteris Paribus concept can help us in more mundane fields, especially Economics. Scientists find all this natural, but Economists seem to struggle with it.

Health professionals do their best to isolate conditions. Experiments always have control groups, and try to cover every external variable. That is tough, which is why it takes so long for new drugs to emerge, and why sometimes new data emerges only after a drug is in common use. Other things are not equal, and there are so many other things that firm rules are hard to find.

Economics is even less mature, and the variables are even harder to model, since so many of them are behavioural. It starts at the very beginning. Much of Economics is built from something called utility theory, whereby we assume that people act somewhat rationally and seek to maximize their utility. So offered something at half price and double effectiveness, we will choose it over the full price, ineffective item.

Of course we are not always that rational. We form habits. We are confused by packaging. We like to show our expensive but useless trainers off to our friends. Utility theory is very flimsy. Other things are not equal enough. Economists make a brave effort to account for our foibles, but they struggle mightily.

Progress is finally being made by the combination of Economics with another imperfect science, psychology. Instead of utility, people maximize something like happiness. It is fuzzy, but great progress is being made, and I predict major impact from this combination of fields in the next decade.

Meanwhile, Economics goes through the embarrassment of finding apparently useful formulae and then discovering them to fail some years later. The 2008 crash was not the first time textbooks have required ripping up – there have been a few iterations since I studied the subject back in the 1970’s.

At that time, inflation was the bugbear, and monetarists had come up with the theory that simply controlling the money available in an economy would hold down prices. The equation quoted was MV = PT, a truism, where M is money supply, V is how fast it circulates, P is average price and T the number of transactions. First generation monetarists felt that T and especially V were sort of constants, and concluded that reducing M would reduce P.

Even I could see through this, and argued long and hard with my Economics teacher (he must have loved that!). It seemed clear to me that V is likely to be an equalizing variable. PT would be determined by other factors, and reducing M would simply increase V. The reason V had been a constant historically was that no one had previously tried to manage PT via M.

This is a good example of Ceteris Paribus as a healthy check. The lazy assumption about V came from analyzing history within one set of conditions, whereas the “rule” would break down under different conditions, in this case precisely the conditions that would change by applying the “rule”. Sometimes it is not so blatant, and the different conditions arise for unrelated reasons. Nonetheless the rule has to be treated with great caution. Remember that whenever someone tries to sell you an investment based on past performance.

In the 1970’s we also had something called the Phillips curve, where inflation and unemployment were deemed to be correlated (I think their multiple was meant to be a constant). I have no idea what the flaw in that one was, but I can guess it had something to do with ignored external variables. In any case, Mr Phillips has been consigned to the dustbin of history now.

I should not criticize Mr Phillips too much. In an imperfect world, policy makers need some clues. Looking for correlations and rules is a reasonable response. We just need to always add the magic words Ceteris Paribus. The ones who tend to fail to do that are those with vested interests, either seeking academic acclaim or as advocates of a particular policy. Early monetarists fell into the second category.

The advent of Big Data should help, since theories can be more rigorously tested and then monitored during implementation. I expect great strides in Economics during the next generation. I wish more practitioners were less dogmatic and less in thrall to vested interests. It is not called the dismal science for nothing. Even the Economist is not immune: it builds its theories on axioms, even after many such axioms become challenged.

A current example is about allocation of labour and capital. In a mature capitalist economy, prices of these factors are supposed to move in cycles, driven by trends, external factors and policy. Prices change in response to signals, and a good outcome is reached. The Economist continues to argue for policies such as education and labour market flexibility as a result.

But can we be sure such policies are still effective or sufficient? In recent years, we have seen a breakdown in the historical relationship between labour and capital. The share for labour has been largely constant if viewed across cycles, but no more – there seems to be a new definitive trend reducing labour’s share.

This is precisely the sort of change that Ceteris Paribus should alert policy makers and economists to. Globalisation could certainly have invalidated the fundamental assumption, and a fundamental rethink of policy is required as a result.

Science is lucky, even if progress is expensive and requires people with planet-sized brains. Ceteris Paribus only comes along to bite scientists rarely, and even then progress can still be made, by doing something inexplicable at the South Pole for example. Economics is messier. For me that makes it more interesting. But a result is that poverty and stupid policy persists longer in the world than perhaps it should. Ceteris Paribus can help us all.

On Time

This time of year I always make the same mistake. I settle down for my regular 2.45pm dose of Champions League soccer on TV, only to find it is not on. Some minutes later, after trying different channels and checking schedules I remember that there are some weeks during March when the US has moved onto daylight savings time and Europe has not. An hour later my match starts.

I recall crossing the channel on a ferry once with my ex-wife. I remind her to move her watch forward an hour. She does so, and then muses “But what is the right time?” That innocent question entered family folklore, but actually it is rather a subtle one. What is the correct time?

So this March, after getting over my usual sulk about why America can’t just join the rest of the world and start their Daylight savings on the same day as Europe (after all, even the British have managed to converge on that one) I went onto Wikipedia to read up a bit on the subject.

The original definition of correct time at any point of longitude seems to be determined by the sun being at its highest at noon, thereby having equal amounts of light before and after noon. So, at Greenwich in London, when the UK is not on daylight savings, you can see the sun due south and at its zenith at exactly noon, and sunrise occurs the same time before noon as sunset does after it. The UK only has a limited spread of longitude, so that time was then used for the whole country.

Much of the world then followed this convention for a while, not surprisingly since at the time much of the map was coloured pink as part of the British Empire. At this point, Wikipedia yielded its first surprise. I was aware that India is now an anachronism since it is always half past some hour there when it is something o’clock everywhere else, but now I know that this used to apply to more places. Before Holland was overrun by Germany in 1940, it used to be on Amsterdam time, just twenty minutes ahead of London. Can you imagine early travellers having to adjust their timepieces by twenty minutes? Apparently Nepal is still operating on something and three quarters hours gap with London, which must be a nightmare for frequent travellers to Katmandu.

Around the turn of the twentieth century, two possible improvements were identified, which have complicated matters ever since.

First, people realized that the standard day for anyone not running a farm was skewed towards the afternoon. If you had exactly twelve hours daylight to enjoy, most of us would choose something like 7.30am to 7.30pm rather than 6am to 6pm. As a result, countries started swinging towards the Western side of their “correct” time zones. The fewer people work on farms as the years pass and the more work and social lives shift to evenings, the more pronounced this trend has become.

Then, someone in New Zealand proposed daylight savings time. When a day has only ten hours of daylight, 7am to 5pm is not a bad solution, but with fourteen hours, choosing 5am to 7pm seems a perverse waste of daylight. So, in places at latitudes far away from the equator, countries started to move the clocks in spring and autumn to allow longer summer evenings.

I can certainly testify that daylight hours make a difference. I vividly recall Swedish Decembers. Stockholm lies at the Eastern end of its time zone, so it would get dark around 2pm for a few sad weeks. Standing in the freezing cold for a child’s ice skating lesson would have been tough enough, without the added burden of early afternoon darkness. During those months we were permanently tired despite sleeping long hours. In the summer, we were lively even with less sleep. The body responded to the degree of daylight.

So far, this feels logical. Then compromise and politics takes over from logic. How much longitude should a country cover before employing multiple zones? Are farmers more important than kids’ safety (from more light morning journeys to school)?

According to Wikipedia, the safety arguments are not as clear-cut as you might think. There is some dispute about what traffic accidents can be attributed to darkness. Also, the Monday after the clocks go forward creates a spike of accidents as people drive less well from being sleep deprived. Again, I can understand that. Jet lag seems to last for ever when you travel across many time zones, but even a journey across just one zone creates some problems the next day.

Still, reading these arguments did not really convince me. As usual, lobbyists have been up to their tricks with selective statistics. Farmers are not the only powerful interest-group with an incentive. Think of all the media companies who have to plan and market schedules across multiple zones – this must add cost.

Some countries choose a single time even when spread across many theoretical zones. China is the largest of these. Seemingly, if you cross a border from China to Afghanistan, you don’t just have to adjust your watch by one hour, but by three and a half. Imagine that!

Hitler and his mate Franco were behind more than the change in the Netherlands. France and Spain were also forced to change to German time. In Spain’s case this puts them to the extreme Western edge of theoretically correct time. An argument is raging about whether to change back to UK (or Portuguese time). Seemingly, the status quo encourages lazy starts to a working day, longer lunch hours, unnecessary siestas, later finishes to working days leading to sacrifice of family time, lower female workforce participation and unhealthy late dinners and parties. That is quite a list of potential failings. Some go so far as to attribute the recent collapse of the Spanish economy in significant part to Spanish time practices.

I find this interesting. I do recall visiting Madrid to work in mid-winter and finding it freezing cold and dark in the mornings. I wonder if there is an East-West effect to match the North-South one of attitudes. In Scandinavia, people take vacation in July and start work early because they are trained to make hay while the sun shines – who knows what problems lie around the corner? This attitude evolves over hundreds of years, but might there be a similar effect where people on the western end of a zone develop more of a manãna attitude? That would be interesting to study.

Finally, consider how fraught this simple area is for politicians. It is just one other example of something where most will not have the courage to propose change, since any change will annoy someone any potentially cost votes. The Spanish campaign could easily become mired in memories of Franco.

It would be great if the world could at least agree some simple rules. Perhaps we could adjust all standard time zones one hour westwards. We could make a global o’clock time for all countries. We could even specify fixed dates (two in the North, two in the South) for all daylight savings adjustments. These steps would improve things for the world. But don’t hold your breath – there is next to no chance of such agreements taking place.

All this only makes me celebrate more what has been achieved in Europe over the last fifty years, and despair at the small-mindedness that resents anything at supra-national level. We can also celebrate areas where somehow uniformity has occurred, for example that all planes seem to have passenger exit doors on the same side. But if time zones are difficult, think how hard it must be to promote standards for weights and measures, or plug and socket shapes, let alone things like UN Security Council representation.