The leaking of thousands of confidential messages by WikiLeaks has caused dismay in the diplomatic world, despite the soothing words of foreign policy observers and journalists who observe that there is actually little in these revelations that is really new. Official anger is considerable, with the US government taking the predictable line that the leaking of its secret puts lives at risk. At first sight that claim is neither strong nor very credible: Most of the published information is at worst embarrassing. However, one of the main goals of diplomacy is to avoid war; and it is certainly arguable that diplomacy must often be confidential to be effective.
The cause of the leak is also interesting. Apparently all this "secret" information was found in a computer system that is accessible to, depending on the source, anywhere between 2.5 and 3 million members of the American administration and military. The system was created after 9/11 to collect data that could be mined for information about possible terrorist actions, at first sight a commendable goal. Apparently it is trivially easy to extract data from it and burn those files on a DVD, a circumstance that seems less than commendable from a security point of view. It all appears rather amateurish.
However, it is as well to keep in mind that the first step to data security is to decide what data should be secured, and at what level. It is important to make distinctions and gradations in this, because there should be a link between the value of the information and the level of protection that is applied. The most secure system should be used infrequently and by a small group of people, and it should contain only information that is really highly important. In the case of the famous German Enigma cryptography system which was attacked so effectively by Allied cryptographers during the Second World War, the work of cryptanalysts was greatly simplified by the fact that the same system was used for both valuable strategic information and for trivial, stereotypical weather forecasts.
On the gliding scale of secrecy, it is difficult to argue that diplomatic observations that the Italian prime minister parties too much and a British prince behaved tactlessly and foolishly, can or should be rated Galactic Top Secret. Embarrassing as such comments may be, there seems not much of a case for rating them more than Confidential, and a pretty moderate confidentiality at that. The loutish arrogance of many comments made by US ambassadors should remind us of the sad reality that few of these men are professional diplomats. One becomes US ambassadors by having distinguished looks, a high level of tolerance for cocktail parties, and being a generous donor to a successful presidential election campaign. The latter characteristic is undeniably the most decisive one. These are not the criteria for producing brilliant diplomatic insights.
Putting such information in a data mining system that is widely accessible does not appear to be particularly objectionable from a security point of view. On the other hand, as information it is so low-grade that one should seriously challenge its inclusion in a data mining system, where it is just noise. Given that many US ambassadors are awarded there prestigious posts as a reward for their generous financial support in presidential election campaign, we should perhaps not be surprised to find this kind of gossip here. One hopes that communications from professional US diplomats have a bit more meat on the bone.
The question is what more information is in there, besides the juicy bits for the press. There have been reports that since 9/11, high security level clearances have been issued to a very large group of people: A practice that suggests that too much information has been declared to be secret, with a too high level of secrecy, and which is likely to have the ironic results that the real secrets are no longer very secure.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
The Art of Military Euphemism
On a fairly regular basis, journalists publish rants about the euphemistic language used by the world's military forces, and in particular their use of such terms as "collateral damage" and "friendly fire". On linguistic grounds, one can object to these terms, but the reality is that they are not particularly euphemistic, as everybody knows precisely what they imply. And they merely scrape the top of the iceberg of military jargon, which contains many gems worthy of closer scrutiny.
Peace Marble. The Pentagon has the long-standing habit of given code names to all military operations and projects. Among these projects are deliveries of weaponry to other countries under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. If these involve combat aircraft, these programs are traditionally given code names that begin with Peace, a habit that suggest that program managers suffer from a severe irony deficiency. Under the code name Peace Marble one finds sales of F-16 fighter jets to Israel. Peace Vector covers similar deliveries to Egypt, and Peace Gate to Pakistan.
Blue Circle. After the end of the Second World War, the British military used as system of 'Rainbow' codes, in which code names always consisted of a color and a noun. Hence Blue Danube, Orange Herald and Red Beard were names given to nuclear weapons, while Blue Vixen, Indigo Corkscrew, and Yellow Aster were radar systems. The sobriquet of Blue Circle originated in 1984, when due to technical problems, a number of new and very expensive Tornado ADV interceptor jets were delivered without their radar systems, and blocks of concrete were "installed" instead to maintain the balance of the aircraft. This ballast was promptly (and unofficially) dubbed Blue Circle, after the well-known brand of cement.
Delivery of kinetic effect. Kinetic energy is the energy of a moving object, and in particular is a property of small fast-moving objects, such as bullets. Kinetic effect is what happens when these strike their target. Hence delivery of kinetic effect has become official code for the acts of shooting or bombing. Close kin to this phrase is kinetic military action, which of course means combat. And yes, military officers routinely use this obfuscating terminology.
Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral. Under the official aircraft naming system introduced in the Royal Air Force in 1918 all fighter aircraft had to be given names of a zoological, vegetable or mineral nature. Seriously. The specific sub-category depended on the number of crew members: Two-seat fighters were to be named after mammals, but single-seat fighters after birds, reptiles or insects. The names also had to alliterate with the name of the manufacturer. This concept of an overheated bureaucratic imagination did result in experimental combat aircraft with enchanting names such as the Sopwith Snail, Westland Wagtail and Gloster Gnatsnapper. Perhaps unfortunately, this poetic system lasted only until 1927. In 1932 the RAF decided that hence forth fighter aircraft would get names reflecting speed, activity, or aggressiveness.
Just Cause. In a famous memorandum during WWII, Winston Churchill pointed out to his general staff that military operations should not have names that are over-confident, boastful, despondent, or frivolous. Other obvious requirements for code names should be that do not give away the nature of the operation to the enemy, and of course that they are distinct enough to avoid confusion. The US invasion of Panama in 1988 set a dubious precedent for another practice: The selection of code names that are blatant and transparent public relations efforts. Just Cause was the first in a series that now includes toe-curling gems such as Iraqi Freedom.
Peace Marble. The Pentagon has the long-standing habit of given code names to all military operations and projects. Among these projects are deliveries of weaponry to other countries under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. If these involve combat aircraft, these programs are traditionally given code names that begin with Peace, a habit that suggest that program managers suffer from a severe irony deficiency. Under the code name Peace Marble one finds sales of F-16 fighter jets to Israel. Peace Vector covers similar deliveries to Egypt, and Peace Gate to Pakistan.
Blue Circle. After the end of the Second World War, the British military used as system of 'Rainbow' codes, in which code names always consisted of a color and a noun. Hence Blue Danube, Orange Herald and Red Beard were names given to nuclear weapons, while Blue Vixen, Indigo Corkscrew, and Yellow Aster were radar systems. The sobriquet of Blue Circle originated in 1984, when due to technical problems, a number of new and very expensive Tornado ADV interceptor jets were delivered without their radar systems, and blocks of concrete were "installed" instead to maintain the balance of the aircraft. This ballast was promptly (and unofficially) dubbed Blue Circle, after the well-known brand of cement.
Delivery of kinetic effect. Kinetic energy is the energy of a moving object, and in particular is a property of small fast-moving objects, such as bullets. Kinetic effect is what happens when these strike their target. Hence delivery of kinetic effect has become official code for the acts of shooting or bombing. Close kin to this phrase is kinetic military action, which of course means combat. And yes, military officers routinely use this obfuscating terminology.
Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral. Under the official aircraft naming system introduced in the Royal Air Force in 1918 all fighter aircraft had to be given names of a zoological, vegetable or mineral nature. Seriously. The specific sub-category depended on the number of crew members: Two-seat fighters were to be named after mammals, but single-seat fighters after birds, reptiles or insects. The names also had to alliterate with the name of the manufacturer. This concept of an overheated bureaucratic imagination did result in experimental combat aircraft with enchanting names such as the Sopwith Snail, Westland Wagtail and Gloster Gnatsnapper. Perhaps unfortunately, this poetic system lasted only until 1927. In 1932 the RAF decided that hence forth fighter aircraft would get names reflecting speed, activity, or aggressiveness.
Just Cause. In a famous memorandum during WWII, Winston Churchill pointed out to his general staff that military operations should not have names that are over-confident, boastful, despondent, or frivolous. Other obvious requirements for code names should be that do not give away the nature of the operation to the enemy, and of course that they are distinct enough to avoid confusion. The US invasion of Panama in 1988 set a dubious precedent for another practice: The selection of code names that are blatant and transparent public relations efforts. Just Cause was the first in a series that now includes toe-curling gems such as Iraqi Freedom.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
The Colour Out Of Space
H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is likely to remain one of America's more controversial, although influential, authors. He left a substantial legacy of stories that blended together science-fiction and horror, with notable high and low points. At its worst, Lovecraft's prose aims for horror by numbers, by filling deep ravines with gnawed human bones and unleashing torrents of macabre adjectives. His best stories are clearly those in which he shows both some stylistic restraint and a fertile imagination.
One of the obvious challenges for a horror writer with a bent for science-fiction, is finding believable things that the reader can be horrified about. Lovecraft's imagination ran to producing, besides the Cthulhu mythos, various huge and squishy monstrosities, vaguely humanoid beings that are related to fungi and live in outer space, and ghouls living in dark corridors below New-England's cities. Today, at a distance of nearly a century away, it is inevitable that some of them no longer retain their capability to induce belief in the reader, if only for a short time. One suspects that the more elaborate the invention was, the quicker it lost its effectiveness.
The brilliance of the Colour Out Of Space, from the story of the same name, is in its sheer intangibility. The storyteller, who hears his own account from a witness, recounts how it landed in the garden of Nahum Gardner, near the well, on a meteor. The substance of the meteor defies explanation and scientific investigation, as it refuses to cool, but slowly shrinks and vanishes, despite showing no tendency to react with any chemicals in the laboratory. It has a spectrum unlike that of any known element, also reflected by the indescribable color of a globule embedded in the meteor, which on investigation turns to be hollow and empty. Finally, the residue of the meteor vanishes without leaving a trace, although there is a strong hint that something remains in the well.
From this apparent return the normality, the malign influence of whatever intangible entity that remained behind slowly establishes itself. At first it warps nature, so that trees, fruits and animals grow large but distorted, and in the case of the fruit, acquire a disgusting taste. It establishes its influence over Nahum Gardner and his family, slowly sapping their health and driving them mad. It remains intangible, but not invisible, as the area of its influence becomes marked by the luminescence, "shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour." In the finale, it sucks all life from its area of influence, causes people and animals alike to become brittle and crumble into grey dust. Until at last the Colour Out Of Space returns to where it came from, leaving behind a lifeless area in which all organic matter has decayed forever into grey dust. As behooves a good horror story, some small part of it remains behind, to constitute a future threat.
It is tempting to read in the Colour Out Of Space a warning of the dangers of radioactivity. Lovecraft died in 1937, well before the great public became aware of nuclear energy and the associated dangers, and the story was published in 1927. Still, Marie Curie won her two Nobel Prizes in 1903 and 1911, and toured the USA in 1921, making this at least a possible source of inspiration.On the other hand, Marie Curie herself was notoriously unaware of the dangers of radioactivity, and she died of radiation disease in 1934.
One might also read into it a more general expression of concern about the evolution of human society, of the general dangers represented by scientific advance, by modern technology, by people abandoning ancestral traditions to live in urbanized, anonymous societies. Pessimism and fears such as these were certainly part of Lovecraft's mindset, and while scientists feature in a lot of his stories, they are generally there to discover things they later wish to be able to forget. Lovecraft sometimes antedated his letters by two centuries, expressing the wish that he would have lived in the 18th century.
It almost certainly goes well beyond the author's intentions to equate the Colour Out Of Space with the color of Red Tape. Nevertheless, the story also seems an apt metaphor for the morbid dehumanization of society itself, for the irresistible expansion of bureaucracy, the gradual morphing of men into the anonymous custodians of the rules. Slowly absorbing the life energy out of human activities, until all crumbles into grey dust.
One of the obvious challenges for a horror writer with a bent for science-fiction, is finding believable things that the reader can be horrified about. Lovecraft's imagination ran to producing, besides the Cthulhu mythos, various huge and squishy monstrosities, vaguely humanoid beings that are related to fungi and live in outer space, and ghouls living in dark corridors below New-England's cities. Today, at a distance of nearly a century away, it is inevitable that some of them no longer retain their capability to induce belief in the reader, if only for a short time. One suspects that the more elaborate the invention was, the quicker it lost its effectiveness.
The brilliance of the Colour Out Of Space, from the story of the same name, is in its sheer intangibility. The storyteller, who hears his own account from a witness, recounts how it landed in the garden of Nahum Gardner, near the well, on a meteor. The substance of the meteor defies explanation and scientific investigation, as it refuses to cool, but slowly shrinks and vanishes, despite showing no tendency to react with any chemicals in the laboratory. It has a spectrum unlike that of any known element, also reflected by the indescribable color of a globule embedded in the meteor, which on investigation turns to be hollow and empty. Finally, the residue of the meteor vanishes without leaving a trace, although there is a strong hint that something remains in the well.
From this apparent return the normality, the malign influence of whatever intangible entity that remained behind slowly establishes itself. At first it warps nature, so that trees, fruits and animals grow large but distorted, and in the case of the fruit, acquire a disgusting taste. It establishes its influence over Nahum Gardner and his family, slowly sapping their health and driving them mad. It remains intangible, but not invisible, as the area of its influence becomes marked by the luminescence, "shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour." In the finale, it sucks all life from its area of influence, causes people and animals alike to become brittle and crumble into grey dust. Until at last the Colour Out Of Space returns to where it came from, leaving behind a lifeless area in which all organic matter has decayed forever into grey dust. As behooves a good horror story, some small part of it remains behind, to constitute a future threat.
It is tempting to read in the Colour Out Of Space a warning of the dangers of radioactivity. Lovecraft died in 1937, well before the great public became aware of nuclear energy and the associated dangers, and the story was published in 1927. Still, Marie Curie won her two Nobel Prizes in 1903 and 1911, and toured the USA in 1921, making this at least a possible source of inspiration.On the other hand, Marie Curie herself was notoriously unaware of the dangers of radioactivity, and she died of radiation disease in 1934.
One might also read into it a more general expression of concern about the evolution of human society, of the general dangers represented by scientific advance, by modern technology, by people abandoning ancestral traditions to live in urbanized, anonymous societies. Pessimism and fears such as these were certainly part of Lovecraft's mindset, and while scientists feature in a lot of his stories, they are generally there to discover things they later wish to be able to forget. Lovecraft sometimes antedated his letters by two centuries, expressing the wish that he would have lived in the 18th century.
It almost certainly goes well beyond the author's intentions to equate the Colour Out Of Space with the color of Red Tape. Nevertheless, the story also seems an apt metaphor for the morbid dehumanization of society itself, for the irresistible expansion of bureaucracy, the gradual morphing of men into the anonymous custodians of the rules. Slowly absorbing the life energy out of human activities, until all crumbles into grey dust.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Sauce for the Black Swans
I am reading The Black Swan (second edition) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Lebanese in exile, New Yorker at heart, financial trader, philosopher. A book that has caused a modest stir in some circles. Its author would probably agree that most books that cause a stir in the circles of financial managers are a waste of good ink and paper, but The Black Swan is worth reading.
The thesis of the book is that large areas of human activity are dominated by the Black Swan events: Unpredicted, seemingly random occurrences with a high impact. Unpredicted, rather than unpredictable, as Taleb concedes that what constitutes a Black Swan is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore the book focuses not on the nature of such events, but on the human psychology that causes people to overlook their possibility, indeed (given a sufficiently long period of time) their probability. And why Taleb adds a third characteristic of a Black Swan that people are always, with hindsight, able to find a explanation for them, which enables them to forget about the lesson for the future. As a potential cure for these ills, Taleb advocates skeptical empiricism: Proceeding on a cautious observation of the world, while resisting theories and models. The underlying philosophical problem is how skeptical empiricism (supposedly taking into account the Black Swans) can be separate from inductive reasoning (supposedly not). As one cannot prove a negative, one can never exclude the possibility that a Black Swan may occur – Taleb's concept is not falsifiable! – yet it is obvious that inductive reasoning is often useful, despite the risk.
Taleb presents his concepts from the background of a financial trader and analyst, which provides him with experience and examples. However, very much to his credit, he does not roll out endless tables and graphs to try to prove his case using anecdotal evidence, nor does he confuse the reader with financial jargon. This is a very accessible book. At times the perspective does appear a bit too narrow and biased: In a footnote Taleb argues in apparent seriousness that the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 came as a surprise, because "bond prices did not reflect the anticipation of war." Maybe bond prices didn't, but military preparations did! Yet Taleb is probably wise to draw his arguments from the financial arena, because this has the benefit of offering a lot of quantitative data -- and besides, judging from some errors in the book, his knowledge of general history is scant.
That is not to say that Nassim Taleb is a one-dimensional figure which understands only market numbers. He clearly possesses erudition and makes an effort to demonstrate it. His erudition, evidently, is that of a writer, scholar and soft scientist. It is also that of an egocentric full of an idea, who can at times be unthinkingly dismissive towards activities in other areas. Nike, Dell and Boeing, he writes, make money through "thinking, organizing and leveraging their know-how" while outsourcing "the grunt work" and "the noncreative technical grind." That is managobabble. I doubt that Nike is leveraging much beyond the American dominance of the media markets and its established brand position. But Boeing? Modern airliners are enormously complex machines, and in the endless pursuit of savings in fuel and cost of operations, every little detail counts. Creative design work cannot easily be separated from the "grind" of technical skill, and knowledge of how the "grunt work" is done is vital, because it determines the limits of the feasible. Yes, Boeing outsources a lot, but that actually includes the outsourcing of a lot of creative work, while a lot of the technical grind and construction work is still done in Seattle. Boeing splits up the work by components – fuselage, tail, wings, flaps, engines, instruments, seats – and not by easy categories such as "creative" and "non-creative".
The author, then, is a erudite man with an idea that he proposes and defends energetically, forcefully, and sometimes bitterly. His strong rhetoric can be confusing as he repeatedly slices and dices the universe into categories, subtly changing the dividing lines by introducing new terminologies: Creative versus noncreative, scalable versus nonscalable, techne versus episteme, Mediocristan versus Extremistan, domains in which useful experts can be found and domains were the supposed experts do a very poor job of predicting the future, Gaussian versus Mandelbrotian. The proposed division of reality is a ragged, frayed one, but attentive readers will nevertheless get the point: We should be more cautious in the use of our mental predictive "machinery" with its reliance on the law of averages. We usually depend on it in everyday life and it serves us well for many purposes. But we should be aware that there are also areas in which it breaks down because the unpredicted, the outlier, is the dominant force there, instead of a detail that can be glossed over: A natural disaster, a major invention, a very rich man, a financial collapse. And, Taleb argues, these areas are growing more important as society gets more complex and interconnected, and may now involve the majority of the decisions that we will be required to make. We need to be aware of this, because we are not mentally equipped to take Black Swans into account: It takes a conscious effort to do so.
Taleb has an axe to grind with economists who use formal mathematical models to predict the markets: He is not opposed to the concept in principle (he suspects that fractal statistics may work) but dismissive about approaches based on Gaussian statistics, which in his view have been proven a failure again and again, because they are too reductionist and start from flawed assumptions on uncertainty and risk. The fierceness of his attack on the idea may be justified, but in defense of the economists I would say that they would not be the first ones to formulate a model under a given set of assumptions and approximations, then see it abused to make predictions under entirely different circumstances. Some of them may be guilty of hubris, but there may be some innocent victims.
I am not very impressed by the forays in evolutionary psychology, and there are other weak points. For example, there is a section with the bold title Information is bad for knowledge, but in this he only demonstrates that a gradual flow of information is bad for knowledge – and that a less gradual flow may be better. If subtle, the difference is very important. Even worse is the technical gaffe in the chapter on the Gaussian distribution, where he claims that the distribution will become narrower as sample size increases. This is a common misunderstanding among people with a tenuous grasp of statistics, but that does not make it excusable in a book that pretends to challenge conventional statistics. Nor is it accurate to assume that the fundamental uncertainty is the quantum world, as defined by Heisenberg's principle, obeys a Gaussian distribution. There are some other strange statements in the extension to the second edition, which lead to the conclusion that for the more academically and mathematically schooled collaborators of his scientific publications, Taleb must be a difficult man to work with.
Yet these problems do not undermine his central thesis, and he does make some strong points. If you think that the inventions we see around us came from someone sitting in a cubicle and concocting them according to a timetable, think again. Having spent most of my career in research, I can observe that although it is many ways the art of generating (falsifiable) predictions, the activity itself is inherently unpredictable, because the study of the unknown produces inherently unpredictable results. Nevertheless I have seen a lot of people sitting in cubicles who were expected to deliver new inventions according to a timetable. That approach does not work, but so far that has not stopped anybody from trying it – quite the contrary. The human (managerial) desire for predictability, control and guaranteed outcomes is so overwhelming, that we continue to rely on predictive frameworks even after they have failed time and time again, and seek to impose them on others.
Taleb's strong recommendation is to try to incorporate room for the unknown and unpredicted in your (business) strategy. The Black Swans cannot be predicted, but by a smart strategy you can mitigate the impact of negative ones and maximize the effect of positive ones. He highlights the foolishness of acceptiong the risk of rare, but very damaging events on the assumption that they will never happen – especially if they actually have a history of happening from time to time, like financial collapses. On the other hand, you should be ready to grasp the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: A serendipitous discovery should not be ignored, merely because it doesn't fit into your strategy.
Having finished reading the book and the lengthy extension added to the second edition, I cannot escape the observation that Taleb has something of the crank about him. There are the dazzling intellectual maneuvers, the scattering of small factual and logical errors, the solipsistic ranting of a self-declared genius against the establishment: You can also find these in a book dedicated the the mysteries of the pyramids, the Bermuda triangle and Atlantis, all explained at one stroke. The redeeming quality that makes the book worth reading is that the central points are nevertheless entirely valid. The more straightforward point is that in a domain where the outcome can be determined by rare events with a high impact, statistical approximation breaks down; and the abuse of Gaussian statistics in areas where they are not applicable is inherently misleading. The less obvious point, which really makes the work significant, is the argument that this condition of statistical breakdown is not the exception but commonplace, and dominates financial markets.
The thesis of the book is that large areas of human activity are dominated by the Black Swan events: Unpredicted, seemingly random occurrences with a high impact. Unpredicted, rather than unpredictable, as Taleb concedes that what constitutes a Black Swan is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore the book focuses not on the nature of such events, but on the human psychology that causes people to overlook their possibility, indeed (given a sufficiently long period of time) their probability. And why Taleb adds a third characteristic of a Black Swan that people are always, with hindsight, able to find a explanation for them, which enables them to forget about the lesson for the future. As a potential cure for these ills, Taleb advocates skeptical empiricism: Proceeding on a cautious observation of the world, while resisting theories and models. The underlying philosophical problem is how skeptical empiricism (supposedly taking into account the Black Swans) can be separate from inductive reasoning (supposedly not). As one cannot prove a negative, one can never exclude the possibility that a Black Swan may occur – Taleb's concept is not falsifiable! – yet it is obvious that inductive reasoning is often useful, despite the risk.
Taleb presents his concepts from the background of a financial trader and analyst, which provides him with experience and examples. However, very much to his credit, he does not roll out endless tables and graphs to try to prove his case using anecdotal evidence, nor does he confuse the reader with financial jargon. This is a very accessible book. At times the perspective does appear a bit too narrow and biased: In a footnote Taleb argues in apparent seriousness that the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 came as a surprise, because "bond prices did not reflect the anticipation of war." Maybe bond prices didn't, but military preparations did! Yet Taleb is probably wise to draw his arguments from the financial arena, because this has the benefit of offering a lot of quantitative data -- and besides, judging from some errors in the book, his knowledge of general history is scant.
That is not to say that Nassim Taleb is a one-dimensional figure which understands only market numbers. He clearly possesses erudition and makes an effort to demonstrate it. His erudition, evidently, is that of a writer, scholar and soft scientist. It is also that of an egocentric full of an idea, who can at times be unthinkingly dismissive towards activities in other areas. Nike, Dell and Boeing, he writes, make money through "thinking, organizing and leveraging their know-how" while outsourcing "the grunt work" and "the noncreative technical grind." That is managobabble. I doubt that Nike is leveraging much beyond the American dominance of the media markets and its established brand position. But Boeing? Modern airliners are enormously complex machines, and in the endless pursuit of savings in fuel and cost of operations, every little detail counts. Creative design work cannot easily be separated from the "grind" of technical skill, and knowledge of how the "grunt work" is done is vital, because it determines the limits of the feasible. Yes, Boeing outsources a lot, but that actually includes the outsourcing of a lot of creative work, while a lot of the technical grind and construction work is still done in Seattle. Boeing splits up the work by components – fuselage, tail, wings, flaps, engines, instruments, seats – and not by easy categories such as "creative" and "non-creative".
The author, then, is a erudite man with an idea that he proposes and defends energetically, forcefully, and sometimes bitterly. His strong rhetoric can be confusing as he repeatedly slices and dices the universe into categories, subtly changing the dividing lines by introducing new terminologies: Creative versus noncreative, scalable versus nonscalable, techne versus episteme, Mediocristan versus Extremistan, domains in which useful experts can be found and domains were the supposed experts do a very poor job of predicting the future, Gaussian versus Mandelbrotian. The proposed division of reality is a ragged, frayed one, but attentive readers will nevertheless get the point: We should be more cautious in the use of our mental predictive "machinery" with its reliance on the law of averages. We usually depend on it in everyday life and it serves us well for many purposes. But we should be aware that there are also areas in which it breaks down because the unpredicted, the outlier, is the dominant force there, instead of a detail that can be glossed over: A natural disaster, a major invention, a very rich man, a financial collapse. And, Taleb argues, these areas are growing more important as society gets more complex and interconnected, and may now involve the majority of the decisions that we will be required to make. We need to be aware of this, because we are not mentally equipped to take Black Swans into account: It takes a conscious effort to do so.
Taleb has an axe to grind with economists who use formal mathematical models to predict the markets: He is not opposed to the concept in principle (he suspects that fractal statistics may work) but dismissive about approaches based on Gaussian statistics, which in his view have been proven a failure again and again, because they are too reductionist and start from flawed assumptions on uncertainty and risk. The fierceness of his attack on the idea may be justified, but in defense of the economists I would say that they would not be the first ones to formulate a model under a given set of assumptions and approximations, then see it abused to make predictions under entirely different circumstances. Some of them may be guilty of hubris, but there may be some innocent victims.
I am not very impressed by the forays in evolutionary psychology, and there are other weak points. For example, there is a section with the bold title Information is bad for knowledge, but in this he only demonstrates that a gradual flow of information is bad for knowledge – and that a less gradual flow may be better. If subtle, the difference is very important. Even worse is the technical gaffe in the chapter on the Gaussian distribution, where he claims that the distribution will become narrower as sample size increases. This is a common misunderstanding among people with a tenuous grasp of statistics, but that does not make it excusable in a book that pretends to challenge conventional statistics. Nor is it accurate to assume that the fundamental uncertainty is the quantum world, as defined by Heisenberg's principle, obeys a Gaussian distribution. There are some other strange statements in the extension to the second edition, which lead to the conclusion that for the more academically and mathematically schooled collaborators of his scientific publications, Taleb must be a difficult man to work with.
Yet these problems do not undermine his central thesis, and he does make some strong points. If you think that the inventions we see around us came from someone sitting in a cubicle and concocting them according to a timetable, think again. Having spent most of my career in research, I can observe that although it is many ways the art of generating (falsifiable) predictions, the activity itself is inherently unpredictable, because the study of the unknown produces inherently unpredictable results. Nevertheless I have seen a lot of people sitting in cubicles who were expected to deliver new inventions according to a timetable. That approach does not work, but so far that has not stopped anybody from trying it – quite the contrary. The human (managerial) desire for predictability, control and guaranteed outcomes is so overwhelming, that we continue to rely on predictive frameworks even after they have failed time and time again, and seek to impose them on others.
Taleb's strong recommendation is to try to incorporate room for the unknown and unpredicted in your (business) strategy. The Black Swans cannot be predicted, but by a smart strategy you can mitigate the impact of negative ones and maximize the effect of positive ones. He highlights the foolishness of acceptiong the risk of rare, but very damaging events on the assumption that they will never happen – especially if they actually have a history of happening from time to time, like financial collapses. On the other hand, you should be ready to grasp the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: A serendipitous discovery should not be ignored, merely because it doesn't fit into your strategy.
Having finished reading the book and the lengthy extension added to the second edition, I cannot escape the observation that Taleb has something of the crank about him. There are the dazzling intellectual maneuvers, the scattering of small factual and logical errors, the solipsistic ranting of a self-declared genius against the establishment: You can also find these in a book dedicated the the mysteries of the pyramids, the Bermuda triangle and Atlantis, all explained at one stroke. The redeeming quality that makes the book worth reading is that the central points are nevertheless entirely valid. The more straightforward point is that in a domain where the outcome can be determined by rare events with a high impact, statistical approximation breaks down; and the abuse of Gaussian statistics in areas where they are not applicable is inherently misleading. The less obvious point, which really makes the work significant, is the argument that this condition of statistical breakdown is not the exception but commonplace, and dominates financial markets.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Bromides: Top-Ten Excuses for Bad Management
10. It is inevitable.
The Hand-Of-God excuse is frequently invoked by managers who have elevated their lack of imagination to a strategy. The principle is simple and attractive: If there never were any choices, then no wrong choices can have been made.
By avoiding any serious consideration of alternatives, the responsibility for a decision can be deflected very effectively .
9. We are in an economic crisis.
The Herbert Hoover excuse holds that in a time of economic crisis, difficult decisions need to be made. Surprisingly, the mere fact that these decisions are difficult can be used against a shield against those who question their wisdom.
A plan that would be subjected to serious scrutiny in a more benign environment, and might on closer consideration not be the wisest course, can be pushed through in a rush if there is a crisis atmosphere. The sheer urge to do something may even induce people to rummage the dustbin for plans already abandoned and ideas already dropped, and execute them anyway.
Admittedly there are benefits to this as well: A time of crisis can offer opportunities for plans otherwise considered too radical or too risky. But the selection is often made randomly. Beware of politicians declaring "War on X". Excuse them, Lord, for they do not know what they do.
8. I am sure we can make it work.
The Voluntarism excuse holds that, no matter how convoluted, impractical, bureaucratic and cumbersome a process is, there are ways to make it work. Which is likely to be true, at some level. Just fill in the paperwork.
The problem with this reasoning is that it is like eating soup with a fork: Given time and persistence, it can be done. But it is not a particularly efficient procedure, and the time and energy spent on it could be used for better purposes. Any competitor with enough wisdom to use a spoon will leave you in the dust.
7. It is policy.
This is the Meaningless excuse. It implies that we do this, because, well, we have decided to do this. Or at least somebody has. At some time. Don't ask who, when, or why.
6. All our competitors do the same.
The Lemming excuse is used surprisingly frequently by companies operating in a notional free-market environment. Of course conforming to the behaviour of the pack fails to ensure a competitive advantage, but on the other hand it requires no initiative and does not entail the risk of falling behind the others. Therefore a bad strategy that was already adopted by the competitors will often be embraced more eagerly than a good one that was not.
Financial markets are particularly vulnerable to this kind of logic. Common sense may tell one that the best strategy to make money is to buy low and sell high, yet most actors will sell in a bear market and buy in a bull market.
5. It is what we have been told to do.
Although this must have been invoked countless times since the dawn of history, I consider it fair enough to call this the Admiral Markham excuse. Markham was British admiral, who in 1893 was ordered to turn his ship to port, and duly did so, although he knew a collision would inevitably result. HMS Victoria sank in 13 minutes, taking 358 men with her.
As one of the exasperated Sea Lords put it, "Any fool can obey orders!"
4. It is the American / Chinese / French / European practice.
It is appropriate to call this the Syphilis excuse, after the disfiguring, sexually transmitted infection that was called the French disease by the Italians, the Italian disease by the French, the Polish disease by the Russians and the Frankish disease by the Turks.
In any international collaboration or organization, there is a tendency to assume that some completely brain-dead process is part of the national culture of the other parties involved, perhaps even a matter of national pride. From this one can then conclude seamlessly that any effort to change the practice would be wasted. And perhaps even offensive.
Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
3. We need to think positively.
The Bay of Pigs excuse seeks to silence critical voices simply but effectively by encouraging them to fall in, for the sake of group cohesion and a positive team atmosphere. Any dissenters can be accused of not being good team players. (Or, in politics, of being unpatriotic.)
The practice leads to "groupthink", a kind of collective self-hypnosis that protects the members from challenging the status quo or proposing alternatives. Groupthink is dangerous, but easily rationalized by extolling the virtues of conformity.
The excuse earns his name from the disastrous invasion of the Bahia de Cochinos in 1961: Later Kennedy realized that a lack of critical thinking had allowed a doomed plan to move forward, and during the Cuban missile crisis he took great pains to stimulate his advisors to think independently.
2. Our credibility is at stake here.
The Domino Theory excuse holds that any change in direction or admission of error must have devastating consequences for the credibility of the leadership or of the organization. Therefore, it is actually better to continue a policy that has failed, than to try something else.
In practice very few, if any, senior managers are willing to admit to an error of any kind. To avoid this, they find ways to talk up the devastating consequences of admitting failure. It is not difficult to construct hypothetical scenarios involving a cascade of disasters triggered by a loss of confidence.
As Edmund Burke pointed out to the British government during the American Revolution, one's dignity can become a burden, and seriously conflict with one's best interests.
1. This is a large organization.
The Dinosaur excuse takes it for granted that a large organization must be ineffeciently organized. And of course the challenges of a managing an organization increase steeply with its size. But as some large organizations nevertheless continue to exist and flourish, it is evident that solutions for these structural problems can be found: Otherwise they would all have become extinct long ago.
However, the search for solutions is easily inhibited by telling people that they don't stand a chance to see them adopted. And both colleagues and superiors have a motive in doing so, as people who find better management solutions are likely to rise through the ranks.
The Hand-Of-God excuse is frequently invoked by managers who have elevated their lack of imagination to a strategy. The principle is simple and attractive: If there never were any choices, then no wrong choices can have been made.
By avoiding any serious consideration of alternatives, the responsibility for a decision can be deflected very effectively .
9. We are in an economic crisis.
The Herbert Hoover excuse holds that in a time of economic crisis, difficult decisions need to be made. Surprisingly, the mere fact that these decisions are difficult can be used against a shield against those who question their wisdom.
A plan that would be subjected to serious scrutiny in a more benign environment, and might on closer consideration not be the wisest course, can be pushed through in a rush if there is a crisis atmosphere. The sheer urge to do something may even induce people to rummage the dustbin for plans already abandoned and ideas already dropped, and execute them anyway.
Admittedly there are benefits to this as well: A time of crisis can offer opportunities for plans otherwise considered too radical or too risky. But the selection is often made randomly. Beware of politicians declaring "War on X". Excuse them, Lord, for they do not know what they do.
8. I am sure we can make it work.
The Voluntarism excuse holds that, no matter how convoluted, impractical, bureaucratic and cumbersome a process is, there are ways to make it work. Which is likely to be true, at some level. Just fill in the paperwork.
The problem with this reasoning is that it is like eating soup with a fork: Given time and persistence, it can be done. But it is not a particularly efficient procedure, and the time and energy spent on it could be used for better purposes. Any competitor with enough wisdom to use a spoon will leave you in the dust.
7. It is policy.
This is the Meaningless excuse. It implies that we do this, because, well, we have decided to do this. Or at least somebody has. At some time. Don't ask who, when, or why.
6. All our competitors do the same.
The Lemming excuse is used surprisingly frequently by companies operating in a notional free-market environment. Of course conforming to the behaviour of the pack fails to ensure a competitive advantage, but on the other hand it requires no initiative and does not entail the risk of falling behind the others. Therefore a bad strategy that was already adopted by the competitors will often be embraced more eagerly than a good one that was not.
Financial markets are particularly vulnerable to this kind of logic. Common sense may tell one that the best strategy to make money is to buy low and sell high, yet most actors will sell in a bear market and buy in a bull market.
5. It is what we have been told to do.
Although this must have been invoked countless times since the dawn of history, I consider it fair enough to call this the Admiral Markham excuse. Markham was British admiral, who in 1893 was ordered to turn his ship to port, and duly did so, although he knew a collision would inevitably result. HMS Victoria sank in 13 minutes, taking 358 men with her.
As one of the exasperated Sea Lords put it, "Any fool can obey orders!"
4. It is the American / Chinese / French / European practice.
It is appropriate to call this the Syphilis excuse, after the disfiguring, sexually transmitted infection that was called the French disease by the Italians, the Italian disease by the French, the Polish disease by the Russians and the Frankish disease by the Turks.
In any international collaboration or organization, there is a tendency to assume that some completely brain-dead process is part of the national culture of the other parties involved, perhaps even a matter of national pride. From this one can then conclude seamlessly that any effort to change the practice would be wasted. And perhaps even offensive.
Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
3. We need to think positively.
The Bay of Pigs excuse seeks to silence critical voices simply but effectively by encouraging them to fall in, for the sake of group cohesion and a positive team atmosphere. Any dissenters can be accused of not being good team players. (Or, in politics, of being unpatriotic.)
The practice leads to "groupthink", a kind of collective self-hypnosis that protects the members from challenging the status quo or proposing alternatives. Groupthink is dangerous, but easily rationalized by extolling the virtues of conformity.
The excuse earns his name from the disastrous invasion of the Bahia de Cochinos in 1961: Later Kennedy realized that a lack of critical thinking had allowed a doomed plan to move forward, and during the Cuban missile crisis he took great pains to stimulate his advisors to think independently.
2. Our credibility is at stake here.
The Domino Theory excuse holds that any change in direction or admission of error must have devastating consequences for the credibility of the leadership or of the organization. Therefore, it is actually better to continue a policy that has failed, than to try something else.
In practice very few, if any, senior managers are willing to admit to an error of any kind. To avoid this, they find ways to talk up the devastating consequences of admitting failure. It is not difficult to construct hypothetical scenarios involving a cascade of disasters triggered by a loss of confidence.
As Edmund Burke pointed out to the British government during the American Revolution, one's dignity can become a burden, and seriously conflict with one's best interests.
1. This is a large organization.
The Dinosaur excuse takes it for granted that a large organization must be ineffeciently organized. And of course the challenges of a managing an organization increase steeply with its size. But as some large organizations nevertheless continue to exist and flourish, it is evident that solutions for these structural problems can be found: Otherwise they would all have become extinct long ago.
However, the search for solutions is easily inhibited by telling people that they don't stand a chance to see them adopted. And both colleagues and superiors have a motive in doing so, as people who find better management solutions are likely to rise through the ranks.
Monday, May 24, 2010
The Death of Valeri Chkalov
Valeri Pavlovitch Chkalov is almost forgotten now, but in 1937 he became the Soviet equivalent to Charles Lindbergh. Together with his crew mates Baidukov and Belyakov, he crossed not the Atlantic but the Pole, flying 9130 kilometer non-stop from Moscow to Portland, Washington in 63 and a half hours. A national and propaganda hero, Chkalov's fame heightened the impact of his death in 1938: He received a national funeral, counting Stalin among the chief mourners, while over a million of Soviet citizens paid their last respects. An airfield, his home town and an island were renamed after him.
The public was not told that his death had been a breathtakingly predictable accident.
Enter the other hero of this sad story: Nikolai Nikolaievitch Polikarpov, designer of fighter aircraft and a close friend of Chkalov. Polikarpov, with the able assistance of Chkalov, had created the most advanced fighter aircraft of the early 1930s, the I-16. The small, tubby I-16 earned lasting fame when operated in support of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, where it became known as "Mosca" (fly) to the Republicans, "Rata" (rat) to the Nationalists, and "Boeing" to foreign journalists who refused to believe that the Soviets could produce an aircraft this advanced. (It did have an engine of American design.) By 1939 it was obsolescent, and Polikarpov was under great pressure to develop a new fighter. Under Stalin, such pressure was not only verbal, and Polikarpov himself already had spent over a year in jail with a death sentence for "sabotage" hanging over his head. A reprieve was granted in 1931 after he had designed the I-5 biplane. He had been released but, as his file ominously stated, "not found innocent", and that file would remain open until Stalin's death, twelve years after Polikarpov's.
The Soviet industry separated design, which was performed by a design bureau or OKB, from manufacturing, which was done by state-owned factories. But for the construction of prototypes, a design bureau needed a factory, and hence Polikarpov's OKB was assigned the factory No.156, headed by M.A. Usachev. The Supreme Directorate of the Aviation Industry also assigned a project supervisor, S.I. Belyaikin. From the start, the design team and the factory were at cross-purposes. The friction was exacerbated by the tactless Belyaikin. Hence, when Chkalov arrived on Moscow's Central Field in December 1938 to start flight testing of the new I-180, the engineer in charge of the testing team warned him that there were quality issues with the construction work, and that the prototype had numerous defects. This did not worry Chkalov too much, because he regarded it as his role to help cure the defects of new aircraft, and because he had faith in the skills of Polikarpov. As for Belyaikin, he was insisting that tests should go ahead as fast as possible.
Before flight testing could begin, an official document had to be signed for the handing over of the aircraft, declaring it to be ready for testing. On the morning of December 12, Polikarpov refused to sign. However, having been assured by the test team that the aircraft and engine appeared to be in good order, Chkalov decided to fly it anyway. He started to taxi the aircraft at high speeds, making small hops to get a feeling for its controls before the first flight. But before he could take off, an order from the test center arrived banning the flight, perhaps because somebody had noticed that the paperwork was not in order. Chkalov was furious, but perhaps it was just as well, for as he taxied the aircraft back in, the cable that connected the throttle handle to the engine broke, and the engine shut down. In flight, this might have killed him, and the incident added to Chkalov's frustration and anger. He was assured that the defect would be repaired and a new occurrence prevented.
When he returned on the 15th to renew tests, Chkalov was presented with a modified flight release document, which stated that the defects of the prototype did not prevent a first flight. But Polikarpov had still refused to sign it. And after the stubborn chief designer had been sidelined, his deputy Dmitriy Tomashevich refused as well. It says something for the foolhardy courage of the famous test pilot that he still decided to make the first flight. After a ground run to test the brakes and controls, he put the new fighter in position for take-off and waited for the green flag. The I-180 took off without difficulty, and Chkalov began a slow circuit of the airfield at low speed, without retracting the landing gear. In the third turn, the engine emitted a puff of black smoke and began to lose power. Struggling to regain the airfield for an emergency landing, Chkalov found a telegraph pole in his way. He died in hospital two hours later, never having regained consciousness.
Officially, the engine failure was attributed to a combination of the cold weather and pilot error. Whatever the cause of the accident, Tomashevich, Usachev, Belyaikin and a number of others soon found themselves in Stalin's jails. Polikarpov narrowly escaped jail, but his career never flourished again. Tomashevich may well have been partially responsible: As a matter of course, Soviet aircraft were fitted with the necessary equipment for operating in a harsh winter, but to save time Tomashevich had omitted some of this vital equipment from the prototype, and its engine had been warmed up only perfunctorily after a night in which the thermometer had dropped to -25 C. It is also tempting to some of the responsibility for the incident to Chkalov himself.
However, that would overlook the root cause of the problem. The design engineers, the factory managers and the bureaucrats that were quarreling with each other on these cold December days did not have a shared purpose. For each of them, the issue had become less whether the aircraft could make a safe flight, than whether a flight would put the others in the wrong. All had reason to fear the displeasure of Stalin, and the new aircraft was urgently required. The situation had all the marks of a disaster in the making, but it is understandable that Chkalov did not know what to think of it, and chose to rely on his own judgment.
The fundamental problem was that although several people had recognized the dangerous risks that were being run, none of them turned out to be in a position to stop this first flight from being attempted. Least of all Nikolai Polikarpov, although he was the head of the design team, and his consent was officially required. A bureaucratic policy of "pressing on regardless" had made a mockery of risk management and quality control. That ultimately killed Valeri Pavlovitch Chkalov.
The public was not told that his death had been a breathtakingly predictable accident.
Enter the other hero of this sad story: Nikolai Nikolaievitch Polikarpov, designer of fighter aircraft and a close friend of Chkalov. Polikarpov, with the able assistance of Chkalov, had created the most advanced fighter aircraft of the early 1930s, the I-16. The small, tubby I-16 earned lasting fame when operated in support of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, where it became known as "Mosca" (fly) to the Republicans, "Rata" (rat) to the Nationalists, and "Boeing" to foreign journalists who refused to believe that the Soviets could produce an aircraft this advanced. (It did have an engine of American design.) By 1939 it was obsolescent, and Polikarpov was under great pressure to develop a new fighter. Under Stalin, such pressure was not only verbal, and Polikarpov himself already had spent over a year in jail with a death sentence for "sabotage" hanging over his head. A reprieve was granted in 1931 after he had designed the I-5 biplane. He had been released but, as his file ominously stated, "not found innocent", and that file would remain open until Stalin's death, twelve years after Polikarpov's.
The Soviet industry separated design, which was performed by a design bureau or OKB, from manufacturing, which was done by state-owned factories. But for the construction of prototypes, a design bureau needed a factory, and hence Polikarpov's OKB was assigned the factory No.156, headed by M.A. Usachev. The Supreme Directorate of the Aviation Industry also assigned a project supervisor, S.I. Belyaikin. From the start, the design team and the factory were at cross-purposes. The friction was exacerbated by the tactless Belyaikin. Hence, when Chkalov arrived on Moscow's Central Field in December 1938 to start flight testing of the new I-180, the engineer in charge of the testing team warned him that there were quality issues with the construction work, and that the prototype had numerous defects. This did not worry Chkalov too much, because he regarded it as his role to help cure the defects of new aircraft, and because he had faith in the skills of Polikarpov. As for Belyaikin, he was insisting that tests should go ahead as fast as possible.
Before flight testing could begin, an official document had to be signed for the handing over of the aircraft, declaring it to be ready for testing. On the morning of December 12, Polikarpov refused to sign. However, having been assured by the test team that the aircraft and engine appeared to be in good order, Chkalov decided to fly it anyway. He started to taxi the aircraft at high speeds, making small hops to get a feeling for its controls before the first flight. But before he could take off, an order from the test center arrived banning the flight, perhaps because somebody had noticed that the paperwork was not in order. Chkalov was furious, but perhaps it was just as well, for as he taxied the aircraft back in, the cable that connected the throttle handle to the engine broke, and the engine shut down. In flight, this might have killed him, and the incident added to Chkalov's frustration and anger. He was assured that the defect would be repaired and a new occurrence prevented.
When he returned on the 15th to renew tests, Chkalov was presented with a modified flight release document, which stated that the defects of the prototype did not prevent a first flight. But Polikarpov had still refused to sign it. And after the stubborn chief designer had been sidelined, his deputy Dmitriy Tomashevich refused as well. It says something for the foolhardy courage of the famous test pilot that he still decided to make the first flight. After a ground run to test the brakes and controls, he put the new fighter in position for take-off and waited for the green flag. The I-180 took off without difficulty, and Chkalov began a slow circuit of the airfield at low speed, without retracting the landing gear. In the third turn, the engine emitted a puff of black smoke and began to lose power. Struggling to regain the airfield for an emergency landing, Chkalov found a telegraph pole in his way. He died in hospital two hours later, never having regained consciousness.
Officially, the engine failure was attributed to a combination of the cold weather and pilot error. Whatever the cause of the accident, Tomashevich, Usachev, Belyaikin and a number of others soon found themselves in Stalin's jails. Polikarpov narrowly escaped jail, but his career never flourished again. Tomashevich may well have been partially responsible: As a matter of course, Soviet aircraft were fitted with the necessary equipment for operating in a harsh winter, but to save time Tomashevich had omitted some of this vital equipment from the prototype, and its engine had been warmed up only perfunctorily after a night in which the thermometer had dropped to -25 C. It is also tempting to some of the responsibility for the incident to Chkalov himself.
However, that would overlook the root cause of the problem. The design engineers, the factory managers and the bureaucrats that were quarreling with each other on these cold December days did not have a shared purpose. For each of them, the issue had become less whether the aircraft could make a safe flight, than whether a flight would put the others in the wrong. All had reason to fear the displeasure of Stalin, and the new aircraft was urgently required. The situation had all the marks of a disaster in the making, but it is understandable that Chkalov did not know what to think of it, and chose to rely on his own judgment.
The fundamental problem was that although several people had recognized the dangerous risks that were being run, none of them turned out to be in a position to stop this first flight from being attempted. Least of all Nikolai Polikarpov, although he was the head of the design team, and his consent was officially required. A bureaucratic policy of "pressing on regardless" had made a mockery of risk management and quality control. That ultimately killed Valeri Pavlovitch Chkalov.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Diamond Head
"Do you mean to say they could be rounding Diamond Head and you wouldn't know it?" The man who asked this was Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the US Pacific fleet, and he addressed the question to Edwin Layton, his intelligence officer. "They" were the Japanese aircraft carriers, and Diamond Head is a famous mountain peak on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, just 20 kilometres from Pearl Harbour. The date was December 2, 1941. Kaga, Akagi, Hiryu, Soryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku were not off Diamond Head, but they had left port seven days before, to launch an attack that would start a war - and incidentally, bring an inglorious end to Kimmel's career.
When that attack came, Kimmel had done nothing to prevent it or blunt its impact, although his question showed that he was not entire unaware of the danger. Intelligence failure is of all times, and when it happens it is common to say, as is done now after the attack in Detroit, that it was a failure to connect the dots. That is a convenient explanation, but it doesn't do any justice to the problem of analysing a diverse collection of bits of information into useful intelligence. In reality, the paper tends to be full of dots, some of them true and some of them false, and the problem is one of selecting the relevant dots and connecting them in the right sequence. Usually the problem cannot be solved by studying all possible combinations, because the number of these is simply too vast, and a method must be devised to create the potentially most useful ones. Even then, every picture that emerges has to be assessed for the probability that it is real. Kimmel, as his question illustrates, did not fail to connect the dots in the correct threatening picture, but he dismissed it as too improbable.
In 1976 president Ford agreed to have two teams conduct a parallel analysis of all intelligence the USA had about the military capabilities of the Soviet Union. Team A consisted of the professional experts of the CIA. Team B was deliberately composed from people outside the intelligence community: Among the names associated with this effort, we encounter Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. Both teams were given full access to the same information. Needless to say, a completely different picture was produced by the two teams. It is perhaps unsurprising, given the involvement of the people mentioned above in the 2003 intelligence fiasco about Iraqi WMD, that Team B's specific claims about Soviet weapons systems later turned out to be "all wrong. All of them." Yet these people had the same dots to connect. The difference was generated by their assessment of which patterns were the most valuable ones. Team B started from the assumption that worst-case scenarios deserved more credence, because Soviet intentions were hostile. That turned out to be a wretchedly poor criterion, both in 1976 and in 2003.
Paranoia is a poor guide in such matters. Occam's Razor may be a better one. R.V Jones, who provided Churchill with information about German weapon systems during WWII, advised his successors in 1947 that "You will find yourself confronted with many frightening bogies conjured up by the agile imaginations of men often at higher levels than yourself. You will be unable to lay all these bogies at once, because to prove a negative case is one of the most difficult of intelligence exercises. But you must find the simplest, commonsense hypothesis and stick to it until a fresh fact proves you wrong, however eminent an authority is attached to another view." Occam's Razor has the disadvantage that it does not weigh possible scenarios for risk. Clearly an interpretation that is only moderately likely but carries a very high risk, deserves to be investigated. But it is all too easy to dream up scenarios that combine astronomically high risk with vanishingly low probability --Hollywood script writers do so all the time-- and Occam may at least help us to eliminate these.
The big question today is how the analysis of intelligence can be improved. In the USA, the post 9/11 analysis suggested a bureaucratic solution: The office of the DNI, or Director of National Intelligence. More than anything else this marked a phase in the long struggle between the various civilian and military intelligence agencies, which were united in disunity by making them all report to the DNI. Characteristically, if the Director is a civilian then the Principal Deputy Director is required to be military officer, or the other way around. That this would not actually improve the situation much should have been obvious, and it probably made things worse by adding even more bureaucratic layers between analysts and policy makers. Such layers don't just pass information, but they rewrite, reinterpret, edit, summarize, and filter. When an intelligence analysis that was prepared by a professional who had the facts at hand, passes through the hands of a number of amateurs who don't, information is inevitably lost.
There is tendency to regard intelligence analysis as an arcane practice, as complex and secretive as the ritual of some eccentric sect. This bans professionals to quiet back rooms, where members of arcane sects belong, while the levers of interpretation and power remain comfortably in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. This situation is harmful and unnecessary. To get accurate and relevant intelligence in a timely manner, it needs to be handled by professionals. There is nothing particularly novel about this: Since the 19th century, it has been military practice has been that every operational commander had an intelligence officer on his staff.
When that attack came, Kimmel had done nothing to prevent it or blunt its impact, although his question showed that he was not entire unaware of the danger. Intelligence failure is of all times, and when it happens it is common to say, as is done now after the attack in Detroit, that it was a failure to connect the dots. That is a convenient explanation, but it doesn't do any justice to the problem of analysing a diverse collection of bits of information into useful intelligence. In reality, the paper tends to be full of dots, some of them true and some of them false, and the problem is one of selecting the relevant dots and connecting them in the right sequence. Usually the problem cannot be solved by studying all possible combinations, because the number of these is simply too vast, and a method must be devised to create the potentially most useful ones. Even then, every picture that emerges has to be assessed for the probability that it is real. Kimmel, as his question illustrates, did not fail to connect the dots in the correct threatening picture, but he dismissed it as too improbable.
In 1976 president Ford agreed to have two teams conduct a parallel analysis of all intelligence the USA had about the military capabilities of the Soviet Union. Team A consisted of the professional experts of the CIA. Team B was deliberately composed from people outside the intelligence community: Among the names associated with this effort, we encounter Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. Both teams were given full access to the same information. Needless to say, a completely different picture was produced by the two teams. It is perhaps unsurprising, given the involvement of the people mentioned above in the 2003 intelligence fiasco about Iraqi WMD, that Team B's specific claims about Soviet weapons systems later turned out to be "all wrong. All of them." Yet these people had the same dots to connect. The difference was generated by their assessment of which patterns were the most valuable ones. Team B started from the assumption that worst-case scenarios deserved more credence, because Soviet intentions were hostile. That turned out to be a wretchedly poor criterion, both in 1976 and in 2003.
Paranoia is a poor guide in such matters. Occam's Razor may be a better one. R.V Jones, who provided Churchill with information about German weapon systems during WWII, advised his successors in 1947 that "You will find yourself confronted with many frightening bogies conjured up by the agile imaginations of men often at higher levels than yourself. You will be unable to lay all these bogies at once, because to prove a negative case is one of the most difficult of intelligence exercises. But you must find the simplest, commonsense hypothesis and stick to it until a fresh fact proves you wrong, however eminent an authority is attached to another view." Occam's Razor has the disadvantage that it does not weigh possible scenarios for risk. Clearly an interpretation that is only moderately likely but carries a very high risk, deserves to be investigated. But it is all too easy to dream up scenarios that combine astronomically high risk with vanishingly low probability --Hollywood script writers do so all the time-- and Occam may at least help us to eliminate these.
The big question today is how the analysis of intelligence can be improved. In the USA, the post 9/11 analysis suggested a bureaucratic solution: The office of the DNI, or Director of National Intelligence. More than anything else this marked a phase in the long struggle between the various civilian and military intelligence agencies, which were united in disunity by making them all report to the DNI. Characteristically, if the Director is a civilian then the Principal Deputy Director is required to be military officer, or the other way around. That this would not actually improve the situation much should have been obvious, and it probably made things worse by adding even more bureaucratic layers between analysts and policy makers. Such layers don't just pass information, but they rewrite, reinterpret, edit, summarize, and filter. When an intelligence analysis that was prepared by a professional who had the facts at hand, passes through the hands of a number of amateurs who don't, information is inevitably lost.
There is tendency to regard intelligence analysis as an arcane practice, as complex and secretive as the ritual of some eccentric sect. This bans professionals to quiet back rooms, where members of arcane sects belong, while the levers of interpretation and power remain comfortably in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. This situation is harmful and unnecessary. To get accurate and relevant intelligence in a timely manner, it needs to be handled by professionals. There is nothing particularly novel about this: Since the 19th century, it has been military practice has been that every operational commander had an intelligence officer on his staff.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Blahnik
I am reading Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee, an interesting and thought provoking book. Published in 1991, it already shows the lines of thought that he expanded in his later works.
One of Diamond's less convincing ideas --at least to me-- is that the human propensity to abuse drugs is an extension of some forms of animal behavior or evolution that are also "counter-productive" -- or appear to be on first sight. As examples, Diamond mentions the beautiful but cumbersome feathers that male birds of paradise grow to impress the females, and "stotting", a demonstrative form of jumping adopted by gazelles and other four-legged animals to demonstrate their strength and health, and presumably discourage predators. The reasoning is that behavior that seems to waste energy and put an animal at greater risk, can be beneficial because of the impression it makes on others. The implicit message is "Do you see what I can get away with?"
But Diamond seems to jump too far when he seeks to explain drug abuse in this way. Certainly, young men are often driven to use alcohol, tobacco and other drugs by a desire to impress their peers. But I have never heard of animal species that routinely consume intoxicating substances for this purpose, although I have heard of isolated incidents of intoxicated animals. I have never seen the hypothetical David Attenborough sequence in which male birds eat toxic seeds until their heads spin, and the female chooses to mate with the one that waggles least -- or the last one standing. And this cannot be from lack of opportunity, for nature contains plenty of suitable substances.
That is not to say that there are no human equivalents of the feathers of the bird of paradise, but in this festive period, it is easily observed that humans differ in an unusual way: In our species, females wear the colorful plumage. Obviously there are very important cultural factors, because even European male dress once used to be far more colorful than it is today, at least for those who could afford it: An expression of rank and social order. Nevertheless it seems to be a distinct human feature that women dress to impress, and on consideration, it is not an illogical one. Male birds who invest heavily in exquisite plumage to demonstrate their good genes, are often those whose parenting role is limited to contributing their genes: Such a bad deal for the mother who has to rear the chicks, that biologists have wondered why sex exists at all. Therefore it is logical that the bird would have to go to extremely lengths to prove his genetic qualities. But the price we humans pay for our big brains, is being born prematurely and utterly helpless, demanding a far greater commitment from both parents if the child is to survive. It is a comparatively worse deal for the male, who has the sacrifice his ability to father a numerous offspring to look after a small number of children, some of which may not even be his. Therefore it would be logical that at least part of the burden of advertising good genes, has shifted to the females of our species.
If this is the case, an evolutionary theory of fashion might explain one of its eternal debates: That on the possibility to reconcile pragmatism with good looks. As Diamond explains, evolution may dictate that ostentatious display is only convincing if it has a real cost to the wearer, because a peacock train would not be evidence of its owners ability "to get away with it" if it was not a real handicap. In humans, men tend to be attracted by feminine fashions that are distinctly impractical, and at least to some degree, impractical equals sexy. Stiletto heels may be the closest equivalent that a bipedal species has for stotting. Of course, impracticality also equals status, and a bride's train has something in common with a peacock's. That is not to say that practical clothing cannot be beautiful, but the effect on others will never be quite the same.
Of course the principle is not limited to female fashion, and not only to relations between the sexes. In the Napoleonic wars, soldiers went to battle in uniforms that are an amazing absurdity in modern eyes. Some of this splendor may have been directed towards women (or at least towards recruits who joined up in the hope that their uniform would impress women) but evidently a lot of it served to impress other men, both ally and enemy. Bearskin hats, colorful breeches and gilded braid were adopted as the mark of an elite of soldiering, not only despite a conspicuous lack of relevance in combat, but because they were irrelevant. Me great warrior: I can get away with wearing silly hat.
Where does this leave drug abuse? To return to birds, it makes sense to me that hens would evolve to prefer males with bright colors, but not those with a strong head for drink. The females can pass on the genes for bright colors in males without a too large cost to themselves, because they don't have to carry these advertising colors, and even if a larger number of males get eaten by predators, enough will remain to ensure the survival of the species. But passing on genes that lead to a preference for consuming brain-addling substances seems much more dangerous.
Is this too different in humans? It is possible that for a species that is so dependent on its brain as ours, there were evolutionary forces that opened the door to tolerating some use of mind-altering substances. Our survival depended not only on our intellect, but also on our sophisticated ability to communicate, on a complex system of emotions, and our ability to innovate. It is possible that even in stone age cultures, groups of humans that indulged in social drinking --or even in religious rituals involving hallucinogenics-- had more cohesion and a better chance of survival than those that did not. Thus we could have developed and retained genetic factors that makes us vulnerable to substance abuse, without requiring any precedent in the animal world. The fact that we tend to be more tolerant (regardless of the real medical risks) of drugs that are perceived to have a social function, such as alcohol and tobacco, suggest that the origin of our vulnerability may lie there.
One of Diamond's less convincing ideas --at least to me-- is that the human propensity to abuse drugs is an extension of some forms of animal behavior or evolution that are also "counter-productive" -- or appear to be on first sight. As examples, Diamond mentions the beautiful but cumbersome feathers that male birds of paradise grow to impress the females, and "stotting", a demonstrative form of jumping adopted by gazelles and other four-legged animals to demonstrate their strength and health, and presumably discourage predators. The reasoning is that behavior that seems to waste energy and put an animal at greater risk, can be beneficial because of the impression it makes on others. The implicit message is "Do you see what I can get away with?"
But Diamond seems to jump too far when he seeks to explain drug abuse in this way. Certainly, young men are often driven to use alcohol, tobacco and other drugs by a desire to impress their peers. But I have never heard of animal species that routinely consume intoxicating substances for this purpose, although I have heard of isolated incidents of intoxicated animals. I have never seen the hypothetical David Attenborough sequence in which male birds eat toxic seeds until their heads spin, and the female chooses to mate with the one that waggles least -- or the last one standing. And this cannot be from lack of opportunity, for nature contains plenty of suitable substances.
That is not to say that there are no human equivalents of the feathers of the bird of paradise, but in this festive period, it is easily observed that humans differ in an unusual way: In our species, females wear the colorful plumage. Obviously there are very important cultural factors, because even European male dress once used to be far more colorful than it is today, at least for those who could afford it: An expression of rank and social order. Nevertheless it seems to be a distinct human feature that women dress to impress, and on consideration, it is not an illogical one. Male birds who invest heavily in exquisite plumage to demonstrate their good genes, are often those whose parenting role is limited to contributing their genes: Such a bad deal for the mother who has to rear the chicks, that biologists have wondered why sex exists at all. Therefore it is logical that the bird would have to go to extremely lengths to prove his genetic qualities. But the price we humans pay for our big brains, is being born prematurely and utterly helpless, demanding a far greater commitment from both parents if the child is to survive. It is a comparatively worse deal for the male, who has the sacrifice his ability to father a numerous offspring to look after a small number of children, some of which may not even be his. Therefore it would be logical that at least part of the burden of advertising good genes, has shifted to the females of our species.
If this is the case, an evolutionary theory of fashion might explain one of its eternal debates: That on the possibility to reconcile pragmatism with good looks. As Diamond explains, evolution may dictate that ostentatious display is only convincing if it has a real cost to the wearer, because a peacock train would not be evidence of its owners ability "to get away with it" if it was not a real handicap. In humans, men tend to be attracted by feminine fashions that are distinctly impractical, and at least to some degree, impractical equals sexy. Stiletto heels may be the closest equivalent that a bipedal species has for stotting. Of course, impracticality also equals status, and a bride's train has something in common with a peacock's. That is not to say that practical clothing cannot be beautiful, but the effect on others will never be quite the same.
Of course the principle is not limited to female fashion, and not only to relations between the sexes. In the Napoleonic wars, soldiers went to battle in uniforms that are an amazing absurdity in modern eyes. Some of this splendor may have been directed towards women (or at least towards recruits who joined up in the hope that their uniform would impress women) but evidently a lot of it served to impress other men, both ally and enemy. Bearskin hats, colorful breeches and gilded braid were adopted as the mark of an elite of soldiering, not only despite a conspicuous lack of relevance in combat, but because they were irrelevant. Me great warrior: I can get away with wearing silly hat.
Where does this leave drug abuse? To return to birds, it makes sense to me that hens would evolve to prefer males with bright colors, but not those with a strong head for drink. The females can pass on the genes for bright colors in males without a too large cost to themselves, because they don't have to carry these advertising colors, and even if a larger number of males get eaten by predators, enough will remain to ensure the survival of the species. But passing on genes that lead to a preference for consuming brain-addling substances seems much more dangerous.
Is this too different in humans? It is possible that for a species that is so dependent on its brain as ours, there were evolutionary forces that opened the door to tolerating some use of mind-altering substances. Our survival depended not only on our intellect, but also on our sophisticated ability to communicate, on a complex system of emotions, and our ability to innovate. It is possible that even in stone age cultures, groups of humans that indulged in social drinking --or even in religious rituals involving hallucinogenics-- had more cohesion and a better chance of survival than those that did not. Thus we could have developed and retained genetic factors that makes us vulnerable to substance abuse, without requiring any precedent in the animal world. The fact that we tend to be more tolerant (regardless of the real medical risks) of drugs that are perceived to have a social function, such as alcohol and tobacco, suggest that the origin of our vulnerability may lie there.
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