I'm the sort of person who has favourite Laws of Social Science. Don't judge me. The two "Laws" (let's be honest, they're rules of thumb) are Goodhart's Law and Campbell's Law. The first, Goodhart's Law, is best described in paraphrase from Marilyn Strathem:When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. … Continue reading Goodhart, Campbell and Elections
Category: Politics
As a part of my current mini side project #NotAWebinar I was watching a clip from the psychologist and former NBA star John Amaechi. In it he talked about how behaviours that would be otherwise unacceptable in modern life are tolerated if not positively encouraged in the world of sport. He talked of a hypothetical … Continue reading Management by decree
Imagine that tomorrow your government announced that a new App was to be released. That every citizen over the age of 16 would be obliged to install this app on their phone, and would be duty-bound to carry the phone around with them at all times. Travelling without a phone with the active app install … Continue reading Hard choices
Back in the autumn of 2016, in those few months after the the EU referendum before everything went completely hatstand, I wrote something that described the UK's leaving of the EU as being akin to a lobster leaving a lobster pot. The idea was that whilst many people who believed in the UK's departure from … Continue reading Off Ramps
Something strange is going on in Westminster. Actually, a whole lot of strange things are going on in Westminster, but there's one in particular that is leaving me concerned. It's the way that it appears that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock has taken on responsibility for policy around the … Continue reading Is Social Media a Public Health Issue?
Our world is dominated by ideas of problems and solutions. Of questions and answers. And I'm beginning to wonder if there are cognitive biases at play that prevent us from being able to contend with the complexity that often arises from the answers that are required to solve seemingly simple questions. The trigger for this … Continue reading The Simple Question Fallacy
So apparently Theresa May has asked her Brexit subcommittee to go away and think a bit harder about their two proposed solutions to the post-Brexit EU border and customs problem. One of the two approaches has been summarised as: A 'highly streamlined' customs arrangement - This would minimise customs checks rather than getting rid of … Continue reading Problem-less solutions
When Chris & I spoke on Sunday evening about the emerging Cambridge Analytica story as we recorded WB40 I was confused. As further revelations have emerged through Carole Cadwalladr's fantastic and dogged reporting (which I have been following for months), I am reminded of the Morrissey lyric "I was happy in the haze of a … Continue reading A state of confusion
Back in the early 1980s my then senior school, Bushey Hall, was faced with closure. The local education authority had proposed that the place should be shut, merged into another school a mile or so up the road. Parents and pupils fought the proposal. We organised. We created a petition, and got many thousands of … Continue reading Appocracy
I'm currently preparing a talk for a group of HR professionals on the subject of AI, machine learning and robots. My opening gambit is going to be that robots have already taken over our houses and have us enslaved. A strong pitch. What are these robots of which I speak? Well, you probably know them … Continue reading The everyday sexism of AI
