People Sorting and the Next New Normal

 In my college years I would often find myself on a train from London to Eastbourne. I often had work or some other reason to pass through London, but my mum’s place in Eastbourne remained home.

 

The train always followed the same path with the same stops. First would come East Croydon, a scrappy outer London suburb. The stop after that was Gatwick Airport, and it was followed by Haywards Heath, a posh commuter belt town. Lewes remains a distinctive town of culture, while Polegate and then Eastbourne were seaside retirement places.

 

I would pass the time on the train by playing a harmless game in which I looked at all the passengers and tried to guess which stop they would be getting off at. I could usually score about 80%. The Croydon folk were usually young and casual, in a hurry and not really focused on the journey but the destination. Anybody not lilywhite was a near certainty for East Croydon, as was anybody who looked to be poor. Gatwick was even easier; those passengers had bags or uniforms and would look anxiously at their watches whenever the train slowed down unexpectedly. If travelling in a party they would often be short tempered or arguing.

 

Haywards Heath was for the male corporate warriors, smart in pinstriped suit and tie, and behaving as though they owned the train, which after privatisation they possibly did. The Lewes passengers could be a bit harder to spot. They might dress rather quirkily or appear a little disdainful of the situation they found themselves in. Finally, the Polegate and Eastbourne folk (lumped together in my game) were often old and prone to snoozing on the train. Another clue was that many had come prepared for their visit to hostile London, with ample supply of snacks or tissues or reading material.

 

If I was unsure, I could also find clues in the daily paper they read, a habit that nearly everybody followed back then in the days before mobile phones. Those going to Croydon might have grabbed an Evening Standard before boarding, Gatwick passengers had a book or nothing, The Times was a good indicator for Haywards Heath, The Guardian for Lewes and The Telegraph or Daily Mail for those going as far as Polegate or Eastbourne.

 

The game passed the time and was harmless because it had no real consequences, but of course what I was doing was algorithmic people profiling. In meeting up recently with a boarding school peer I have been reminded that I was into algorithms before anybody even knew what an algorithm was. Seemingly I would sit up in bed devising the school timetable under various invented goals and constraints. Since I recall the primary alternative activities to be fondling other kids, being fondled by other kids, being fondled by schoolteachers, beating up kids or being beaten up, maybe devising algorithms was a smart choice. I do know that many of my missed opportunities for fabulous wealth concerned thinking of valuable algorithms and being too lazy or distracted to follow up the idea. Just one example was devising something that could easily have morphed into an online bridge game that could have cornered the market.

 

Nowadays we all know what algorithms are but most of us still fail to spot when we are being subjected to one, whether it be adverts on websites or journey pricing or even the types of retail outlets that spring up where we live. We also know that there is a fine line between intelligent valid use of an algorithm and unjust discrimination. Most days on the news I see a mugshot of somebody caught on CCTV suspected of committing some offence. Day after day the mugshot shows a coloured man in a hoodie. I am so conditioned to expect that image that I did a double-take this week when the footage of somebody suspected of assaulting a senior turned out to be female, white and dressed in clothes that my wife might wear.

 

Should the police focus resources on the districts where people drawn into crime typically live? Yes, even if a consequence is that some races receive more attention than others. Should they then focus on racial subgroups of residents in those areas? Probably not. Should they single out black guys in hoodies irrespective on any specific evidence? Certainly not.

 

Anyway, this week I devised a new algorithm I could develop while travelling on the subway. Gloriously, New York is rapidly turning back into the bustling city it used to be, and the subways are busy again. Happily, we are in a lull in Covid and some restrictions have reasonably been taken away. But it astonishes me that even after two years of experience most people seem unable and unwilling to make sound personal judgments about Covid risk. A restriction is imposed or removed as an event in time. But the risk changes gradually not suddenly. A removed restriction is not an invitation to recklessness but rather flags a situation to exercise personal judgment. But few seem to want to do that.

 

In recent subway journeys, I notice that mask wearing has reduced to about 50%, even though it is still mandated (though not really enforced). This week I have been trying to devise some predictive indicators towards who is more or less likely to wear a mask.

 

It is not as easy a game as the Eastbourne train game, pr perhaps it is but I have not found the right indicators yet and will need a few more weeks to perfect my algorithm. But I can make a start. There are various possible factors to consider as parameters.

 

One factor must be the actual vulnerability to becoming very sick with Covid. I would expect older and immunocompromised people to be more likely to wear masks. From the other direction, people who have recently recovered or recently had a vaccine might feel safer.

 

That leads to the related factor of self-assessed vulnerability. Young people tend to think they are immortal. Macho types like to boast of how they must die of something as an argument not to protect themselves from Covid. Education and awareness and the sort of conspiracy theories people might swallow will also influence this factor.

 

Then there are the civic factors. Some of us will go to great lengths to avoid any possible confrontation with the NYPD or angry fellow passengers, whereas others seem to actively seek it out. Many might feel relatively safe personally but wear a mask to protect others. Sadly, that category seems to be far from universal in the USA these days.

 

Then there are political factors. In certain quarters, mask wearing (or its absence) is seen as a political statement in this polarised country. Some groups from outside the city might want to protest against a prevailing culture here. Others might just what to stick up a middle finger to the mayor or somebody else they feel lectured by. This group overlaps the so-called libertarians, who in most cases seem to me to be people who just want to do whatever they want without any regard for the impact on others. Sometimes I am surprised that driving on the right side of the road has not yet become optional here.

 

A sad final factor relates the value of a human life, whether that of self, family members or others (subdivided into people like us and other others). A good way to measure societal progress is by estimating how human lives are valued. It drives attitudes to health care, law and order, compliance and much besides. Looking at mortality in the US across a host of categories, I can only conclude that this nation is less developed that it seems to think it is.

 

Many of these factors overlap, but it should be possible to develop an algorithm over the coming weeks to help long subway journeys to pass more pleasantly and quickly. I will keep it to myself and try to avoid judging one group or other, but probably fail in that endeavour. And I do know that I will be wearing a mask myself on those journeys.  

The Ramifications of this War

 This week I have tried the sequence the most significant geopolitical events of my lifetime. I suspect we are currently witnessing one of them.

 

I was the ripe old age of two during the Cuban missile crisis, so was probably rather less frightened than most. The crisis had the potential to destroy large chunks of humanity, but in the end it didn’t. Everything went back more or less where it was before, except for the unfortunate Cubans. This does not qualify.

 

Another event during my pre-school years does; the formation of what became the EU, initially with six members. The EU has defied history and the stability it has enabled has driven Europe and the rest of the world forward, not least in setting standards for commerce and behaviour.

 

Next come a cluster of events in China. There was Nixon’s visit, then Mao’s death, then the choices of his successors to open up the economy. I think this one qualifies, perhaps even as number one. The prospects for 20% of humanity suddenly brightened, the spin-off effects for everybody else were as real, and China has followed through to enable the benefits to multiply.

 

The other obvious candidate is the collapse of the USSR around 1989. This was more dramatic and visual, and surely qualifies as well. I grew up in a landscape of paranoia and propaganda and where large parts of the world, indeed even Europe, were closed to me, and where proxy wars raged around the globe. Then Russia made a fatal mistake in Afghanistan and its empire collapsed. I was given the unbelievably wonderful job in Shell of visiting the previously forbidden places to try to develop petrol station businesses, and could feel the sense of history, both happy and sad history.

 

9/11 might be a candidate, but I don’t think it qualifies. It certainly traumatised America and it has its footprints all over its foreign policy since. But America did more pointless damage in Korea, Cambodia and Vietnam than it did in Afghanistan or Iraq, so its dumb militarism was established before rather than awakened by 9/11. That event was significant, but not at the same scale.

 

IN 2016 the USA elected a deranged narcissist to the most powerful position on the globe. The globe survived. The primary legacy of Trump may be to have accelerated and entrenched the economic and political fight with China. But this trend was already quite marked so I don’t think the event qualifies. 

 

Now Russia has invaded its neighbour with barely a semblance of an excuse and with brutal force. Within two weeks that force has become completely bogged down, making a protracted and messy conflict more likely, with the rump of Ukraine becoming a forward proxy for NATO. It seems certain that a new iron curtain will descend, only its precise path across the landscape still to be determined. After the opening of China and the collapse of the USSR, this might be the third seismic geopolitical event of my lifetime.

 

With the daily pictures and human stories of suffering and cruelty, it is hard to pull back to observe the bigger picture. I have avoided watching TV or reading daily papers, partly because it makes me depressed and partly because I don’t trust all that I read. When I hear of plucky Ukrainians and incompetent Russians the narrative feels a little too convenient. But as usual The Economist has risen to the occasion, and so far seems to have kept the man from MI5 out of the editorial office as well. Who needs propaganda when the opponent gives all the logical ammunition that could possibly be required?

 

The Economist, in a series of articles in many sections, paints a very sanguine picture of the medium-term impact of this war, even if Biden and his state department continue to successfully finesse the Russian position to avoid serious escalation. Rapid rises in the prices of energy and of grain seem almost inevitable, and these tend to trigger famine, recession and civil unrest, often to surprising places and with impacts that snowball. This could be a rocky decade for humanity.

 

As ever, China poses a key conundrum. China is adept at learning from the American playbook, and will have noticed from the last century that keeping out of other people’s wars while making money from both sides is an effective route towards economic power. I don’t see China losing credibility and leverage by leaning too far towards Russia, but will not easily sway too far on the other side of the fence either, without good reason.

 

Once again, this opens a door for the US, if only they have the foresight and guts to open it. To be fair to Biden, he has elections to fight and the congressional opposition has riled up public opinion against China to such an extent that any overtures would probably involve much self-sacrifice. But if the stalemate drags on in Ukraine, as seems quite likely. Perhaps the grand bargain with China can finally be struck. A ceasefire in the economic war, a decisive movement towards the West in political for a and a slow-burning Hong Kong style deal over Taiwan should be an acceptable compromise to both sides. I can live in hope.

 

War does tend to concentrate the mind and clear away a lot of pettiness, and we can already see the beneficial effects. The EU is acting as a bloc, Poland is no longer bickering, Hungary may follow, nationalists are on the wane, Germany has stepped up, Macron will be strengthened, and money laundering may be attacked with authenticity rather than hypocrisy. Who knows, perhaps even the British will decide to re-join the human race if this drags on. We can also already see the EU taking decisive steps towards renewable energy, and that should trigger others in the same necessary direction.

 

In the end, the only way out of this, short of Armageddon, is a change in regime in Moscow. There are clearly dimensions to the politics in Russia that we can only guess at, although the CIA still seems to have a pretty good idea what is going on there. As Putin backs himself further into his corner, he will threaten everybody he can, whether in Ukraine, the US or in Russia. The response within Russia will ultimately determine how quickly a sane path can be found.

 

I sense the denouement in Russia will occur more quickly than Putin may suspect. The eyes of the Russian people have been opened since the last days of the previous regime in the 1980’s. At that time few people in Russia had any view of a world beyond the iron curtain. Nowadays, having experienced the joys of IKEA and i-Phones and having learned to communicate more widely on social media, the police state will be more difficult to maintain. It will take some time and there are horrific risks along the way, as well the likelihood of Ukraine being carved up into non-viable slices all of which resemble rubble, but the exit door from this mess lies within Russia.

 

In the meantime, we will have to accept a new iron curtain, more dangerous than the last one because its borders are murkier and more porous. When I was visiting the former eastern bloc countries in those heady days of the 1990’s, I never imagined that some of those places would become closed again during my lifetime. That is precisely what we are witnessing now. For those of us on the right side of the curtain, that is very sad. For those on the wrong side, it is tragic. 

Splinters and Beams

 What a tragic week this has been for humanity. Reading optimistic authors like Steven Pinker, I like to believe that our species is maturing, albeit fitfully. Then something like the Ukraine invasion occurs to demonstrate just how much we still need to learn.

 

As a European this realisation is especially galling. We are arrogant enough to think that we are more civilised than others. America has its guns and its Trumps, Africa has its despots (admittedly in large part owing to the legacy from we Europeans), Asia has its castes and its ethnicities. True, Europe tore itself apart twice during the last century, and then endured a mini war in the Balkans in the 1990’s, but we like to put that conflict down as clearing up unfinished from the cold war. We are Europe, or most of us are. We have our flag and our anthem and our institutions and our welfare states and our soccer tournaments and even our song contest (as a vehicle to laugh at ourselves). We should be above all this.

 

Indeed, let us spend a moment to reflect on the wonderful creation that is the European Union. We still find it easier to divide along fault lines then to unite around our common humanity. 1947 saw the founding of the UN, but the EU was altogether more ambitious and courageous. History will look very kindly on its originators.

 

The thought that one European nation can trample over another with horrifying violence, well into the 21^stcentury, is sobering indeed. I did not think it would come to this. The Russian leadership must be living in a giant bubble and must have severe mental frailties to even consider such action, leave alone brazenly carrying it out.

 

While the suffering of Ukrainians is frighteningly apparent on our TV screens, it is hard to see how this will end well for Russia or its leaders. Afghanistan was a quagmire that ultimately led to a regime change in Russia in 1989. Surely Ukraine will prove the same. It is just about possible to suppress twenty million Belorussians for thirty years, because one authoritarian regime took over from another and inherited its apparatus of fear. Forty million Ukrainians and a large diaspora have become used to something very different and their rejection will linger long beyond the overt resistance of its armed forces.

 

I can only conclude that there is a dimension to this that is not in the public domain. The Russian leadership are cavalier but they are not usually dumb. There might be a mafia conflict between elite groups in Russia and Ukraine that got out of hand. More likely, the CIA somehow touched one nerve too many. Even that feels unlikely, since US intelligence has been demonstrated as excellent throughout the crisis, unsurprising since Russia had been its single focus since 1945. Still, Trump did more damage than we see on the surface, and perhaps the uneasy equilibrium started to collapse under him and the frenzied restaffing of the state department came too late.

 

Now there can never be any equivalence here, but the gospel on the Sunday after this all started sent me pondering US foreign policy over the last forty years. It is uncanny how often the weekly gospel seems to be apt. The gospel was the famous one about the wisdom of focusing on removing the large wooden beam from our own eye before trying to remove a splinter from that of our neighbour. The last week has seen most of the world accusing Russia of having splinters in its eyes. It has been all about them. It is possible we are missing the beam somehow?

 

Well, of course it is. It is what we do. That is why the gospel is so powerful. It always seems to be right and it is always helpful if we take the time to think deeply enough.

 

While US foreign policy did the world a wonderful service after the last world war and has notched some achievements since then, there have been many areas when it has served its own country badly and left it in a compromised position when trying to cajole others.

 

We can start with Cuba. A threat sixty years ago led to drastic action. The threat level seemed high because of the proximity of the adversary, some ideological differences and the strident views of minority concerning culture and history. Justified or not then, surely such an aggressive embargo against a weak neighbour cannot possibly be justified all of sixty years later? And how can the US lecture Russia over Ukraine or China over Taiwan as a result?

 

Then there all the questionable interventions with troops, both overt and covert. Many an autocratic regime in Africa has been propped up. We all know about Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Guantanamo Bay remains a stain on so-called US values, removing legitimacy from many claims. Can we sure that CIA black sites no longer practise torture or even exist?

 

This is manifested in the approach to international institutions. Financial ones are captured to pursue the US view of the appropriate economic order, even if most of the world would disagree. Political ones are treated only to project power, their effect reduced when the US refuses to accept jurisdiction when that does not suit. Many pundits and headlines this week have called for Russia to be tried by various world bodies, failing to mention that the same bodies are not ratified as applying to the US. There has been no attempt to reform UN protocols that have lost legitimacy over time, such as security council membership and vetoes. And every year without fail the general assembly passes a resolution concerning Israel that passes something like 190 to 2. Might the 190 be onto something?

 

Arms control is also seen as only applying selectively. Iran is sanctioned brutally for not following a non-proliferation treaty over which India and Israel were given a pass and which also mentions obligations on nuclear powers which are ignored completely.

 

More recently China policy has been short-sighted and self-defeating. There is little happening in Xinjiang that native Americans would not recognise, so human rights are hardly a strong talking point. But now we have economic bullying in reaction to sense of being overtaken. The Chinese are justly lauded for stealing the playbook of others. There is little doubt that their new prowess in cyber warfare was learned from the CIA.

 

When I even start to explore this list with Americans, I often regret it. First comes the question about whether I actually like America. I do, very much, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with all its policies, even as a guest rather than a citizen. Next comes a stunned denial. That is no surprise either, because education, culture, churches and especially politics all conspire to prevent Americans asking hard questions of themselves. Next comes a sweeping argument that our side is good while their side is evil and evil must be fought, just like the US (eventually) did against Hitler. Hollywood can answer to that one. Next, everything is blamed on Trump. Well, there is a lot to blame to apportion in that direction, but all of the worst policies predate his presidency. Finally comes the argument with some merit, that of comparison. Yes, we have made mistakes, but look at the other side! That, of course, is precisely the argument that Jesus was warning us against.

 

World weary cynics and those attractive to binary logic about Putin being either a reincarnation of Hitler or Stalin like to argue that there is no practical alternative. In the heat of the moment, that can be true. I feel that the Biden administration has played this crisis very well so far. It is over the longer term that lost opportunities come home to roost. None of the calumnies listed above is beyond restitution. A working deal with China remains possible, while the lack of any attempt to strike one is what has resulted in damage to the west from China abstaining in the current dispute.

 

What would be wonderful would be a true commitment to international institutions with teeth and with no nation above the law. It takes courage to stop bullying and to start treating others with respect. A reformed security council would be a good start, one that would surely have helped this month. What about a commitment that 20% of all military spending, rising over time to 50%, must be allocated to global peace-keeping bodies? Now that would be a game changer.