Uh, what now? I take it from your response that you have interpreted my story as an attempt to invalidate experts in every situation. You assume too much. Experts can tell you about their specific areas of expertise and they are useful, indeed essential, in this respect. Where they fail though is when their narrow expertise is used to extrapolate a probable result in a complex system. In any complex human interaction, there are numerous unknowns which have a bearing on the result of the interaction. A psychologist can tell you what human nature has to say on how people behave in a negotiation but a psychologist will know nearly nothing about the financial consequences that may arise. An expert in economics may be of help there but there may be factors pertaining which aren't strictly economic in nature, e.g. political issues. A politician may be able to tell you how the folks at home feel about the situation but can he state categorically how foreign trading partners may respond? Or foreign competitors? There's the famous tale about the blind men and the elephant . It is a good story to learn. Um. Are you trying to solve the puzzle about the imaginary gardener's imaginary garden? Or did you try to grasp the point I was making and miss? You are suggesting that the problem can be solved by bringing the right kind of expert to bear. My whole point is that you cannot always do this because the right kind of experts don't exist for any truly complex problem.
i guess there's experts in every field, currently there is a field of experts working to convince people that no pre agreement was made with the EU over the Irish boarder, that they never said the devolved govs would be made permanent. and 25 of the 111 non reserved powers are not really devolved.
mr inieos could frack Scotland. they could introduce GM crops in Scotland they could sell of the NHS in Scotland they could relax the laws that protect brands in Scotland etc etc etc in scotland
My point is that you approach it like the tabloid Brexit sound bites. Yes a specialist in economics who has never stepped outside the area can't tell you much about politics, but an Economist who has spent half his life working in Government knows a hell of a lot about politics. Maybe he then becomes a politician? For every hardcore specialist there are several people who know a chunk about many things. Stick them in a team together and that collective expertise becomes more than the sum of its constituent parts. This is what Government and leaders and managers in general do and they are being dismissed when needed most.
Wow. Your planet must work like clockwork! Regrettably things are messier here on Earth. No matter how much you know about a subject, you cannot predict the outcome of a chaotic system with any degree of certainty. You can bet on probable outcomes but you are still betting, you aren't deducing. I mean, who really expected the UK to vote to leave the EU? What did the experts predict? In the case of NI, there are experts saying that you cannot have an open border with the EU. If the alternative is the loss of the Good Friday Agreement, do you think that, despite everything that experts on the Irish border and Customs know about the law, some way of making things work will not be found? Is it guaranteed that the GFA will be trashed if a hard border is established? Is it guaranteed that violence rather than negotiation will result from the ending of the GFA? It's a chaotic system, someone with expertise on border law is only a small part of the puzzle. What experts are there who know exactly what will happen, when we don't even know whether there will be a hard border or not? Do you not see what I am getting at?
On the one hand you are dismissing experts as they can never be certain, whilst on the other hand making the argument that the world is a complex system and that one expert is only a small part of the system; the very point I was making, which renders your dismissal of experts void. Would you rather be led by a drunk on a hunch or a guy with experience in the road you are taking? maybe the answer isn't as predictable as I'd assume looking at Trump...
Wow, perhaps its worse than i thought then. If id have known Brexit would bring on the end of the world then maybe I'd not be so optimistic and care free One thing i do have an issue with though is the suggestion of Irish Terrorism. If they cant keep their shit together then I'm sorry, thats an entirely different issue and hardly the fault of a UK citizen voting in a democratic way. We cant put life on hold because of the threat of the IRA coming back, astroids i can sort of understand, but that lot?
But it is the responsibility of the Government if that was the case. I dont see much motivation for them as a province to return to their old ways but there are most definitely people still there willing to do so.
It's the responsibility of the government to stamp it out yes, should they decide to get the gang back together for a greatest hits. All I'm saying is that the threat of the IRA, or any terrorist cell from Ireland coming back and causing mayhem because of Brexit isn't the problem of the vote outcome, it's a problem with the people who threaten or carry anything out. They should be dealt with appropriately should that unfortunately ever be the case. We shouldn't cower from it that's for sure. We can't and should not ever consider terrorist actions in this, never ever.
I am saying that experts cannot be relied upon 100% when the issue at hand is complex and not subject to a full analysis on the basis that there are significant unknowns. Thus, a legal expert can tell me that a given action is legal, or illegal, but he cannot tell me that the law will never be changed in the future. He may have an opinion but he won't be able to guarantee it. To give you an example: In theory, an individual lawyer will tell you that murder is illegal but he could not predict that murderers will not be prosecuted due to, say, a peace process. A peace process is a political action and outside of the purview of an individual lawyer. Another example: An expert on border law and customs will tell you what constitutes an "open border" but said expert cannot tell you whether or not some form of legal legerdemain will in future mean that a formerly "open border" is no longer open, in the legal sense. I do not dismiss experts. They can tell you what you need to know about a given attribute of a system but the more complex the system, the less reliable experts are in predicting outcomes. Teams of experts covering relevant fields will help somewhat, but given sufficient complexity, even teams are not enough. As for Trump ... well, you can go about things the right way and get unexpectedly bad results but you can also go about things the wrong way and get surprisingly desirable results. This won't apply with regard to servicing your Ducati but it could do, when riding your Ducati around Britain's roads. Simple vs complex systems!
"If Britain has to choose between Europe and the open seas it must always choose the open seas" Gary Oldman aka Winston Churchill
Sorry to hark back to Mr Junker and the rest of his EU cronies, but given the refreshingly honest and quite damning nature of this piece on Sky News, I thought it relevant especially with such a clear opening statement: Last September, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Jean-Claude Juncker delivered his annual State of the Union speech. "The wind is back in Europe's sails", he declared. The President of the European Commission was reflecting on the previous 12 months. But he was talking nonsense. His words were a clear demonstration of how out of touch the political elite across Europe often prove themselves to be. https://news.sky.com/story/italys-populist-victory-heralds-choppy-waters-for-europe-11277693 You see for me it's not about wanting Europe's decline, or wishing ill on our trading partners and friends across the continent. It simply comes back to the extreme arrogance and blinkered nature of the EU and derogatory use of the word 'populism' as though it's a bad thing entirely. Mr Junker Et Al are the ones out of touch, and had that not have been the case then maybe the Brexit vote wouldn't have happened. The EU 'political elite' go about their daily lives with such a untouchable attitude and that their way is the only way mantra, that in itself breeds 'populism'. Looking back to 2014 Mr Cameron did raise serious concerns about Junker as featured by the pro eu guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-european-commission-leadership-david-cameron Isn't it about time that people stopped blaming the UK, stopped blaming alternative 'populist politicians', and looked squarely at the head table of the EU and did something about it? If this was a private company and he / they were part of the board, they'd be gone. No ifs, no buts Wikipedia : Populism is a political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against a privileged elite.[1] Critics of populism have described it as a political approach that seeks to disrupt the existing social order by solidifying and mobilizing the animosity of the "commoner" or "the people" against "privileged elites" and the "establishment".[2] Populists can fall anywhere on the traditional left–right political spectrum of politics and often portray both bourgeois capitalists and socialist organizers as unfairly dominating the political sphere.[3] Political parties and politicians[4] often use the terms "populist" and "populism" as pejoratives against their opponents. Such a view sees populism as demagogy, merely appearing to empathize with the public through rhetoric or unrealistic proposals in order to increase appeal across the political spectrum.[5] Populism is most common in democratic nations and political scientist Cas Mudde wrote: "Many observers have noted that populism is inherent to representative democracy; after all, do populists not juxtapose 'the pure people' against 'the corrupt elite'?".[6] Now given that description of 'Populism', can somebody tell me what the difference is between that and the more recent uprising of support for our own Jeremy Corbyn? Is he not a populist leader? Promising change for the common man, suggesting unrealistic proposals, fighting against the establishment? Once again, it's not about people not liking Europe or countries residing within, it's about people pushing back against 'the elite', and I for one hope that Mr Junker & Mr Verhofstadt's time is coming to an abrupt end Maybe then the EU will begin travelling in a direction more people can get behind. Italy will not be the end, and unless things drastically change at the head of the EU privileged table the whole thing is precariously balanced on a knife edge.
