Nathan Taylor

Society has got it wrong.

We focus on the bank robber when it is the bank teller who is ripping us off. The bank robber will turn up with a sawn off shot gun and demand money. They know they are crooks. The bank teller would swear black and blue that they are honest, and every lie detector test would confirm it. But it is the bank teller who walks off with the manila folder or the hole-punch who is costing the bank the most money.

Studies have shown that the vast majority of people cheat. They constantly smudge the edges of truth in their favour. We are self-interested, but within limits. In fact, only about 1 per cent of the population go the whole hog and are completely dishonest. About the same amount are completely honest. The remaining 98 per cent of us are willing to be liberal with the truth if it serves our purpose.

The amount that people ‘smudge’ the truth is highly dependent on the social situation they are in. If they see someone else cheating, and getting away with it, then the general level of cheating goes up. Reminds me of tax collection in Greece. On the other hand, if people are reminded of social norms or values, then the level of cheating drops off dramatically. For instance, if people are reminded of the Ten Commandments their morality improves regardless of whether they believe them or are atheists.

This is interesting. It suggests that our law enforcement and our corporate governance arrangements should be focused on encouraging morality among the 98 per cent rather than being entirely focused on the outliers waving sawn off shot-guns. After all, there are there are very few bank robbers but a great many more tellers.

Our society’s focus on the 1 per cent reminds me of a story from when I worked at the Reserve Bank and related to one of the few thieves to ever rob the place. Now the Reserve Bank stores the nation’s gold and millions of dollars in cash reserves. They are pretty focused on security.  So it didn’t take them long to be suspicious about a worker who left every Friday with a wheelbarrow full of rubbish. No matter how thoroughly they checked the rubbish they never found anything worthwhile. It was always full of rubbish.

Eventually security worked it out. The man wasn’t carrying off stolen loot in the wheelbarrow. He was stealing the wheelbarrows!

Human’s learn best from each other. One of the most distinguishing features is how much of our time we spend teaching each other. Unlike most other animals, humans are born with little understanding of the world and few instincts to guide us. This is our great strength. We are born with far less of a destiny than, say, salmon forced to return to their ancestral spawning grounds even though the effort kills them.

But it is also a weakness of our species. Take for example agriculture. This enabled the development of human civilisations, as people were no longer constrained by the energy available from the sun at any point in time. They could store a portion of the annual energy for future consumption, rather than having to rely on what fruits were in season or what game was wandering around.

The agricultural revolution occurred 95 per cent of the way into the total amount of time our species has spent on this small green planet. Thus far.

That means for 95 per cent of humanities history we didn’t even have the rudimentary basis for civilisation! I find it incredible!

What is particularly interesting is how the Neolithic Revolution only took place in a number of places. To be specific, archaeological data indicates that various forms of plants and animal domestication evolved independently in six separate locations worldwide circa 10,000–7000 years ago.

So, the BIGGEST invention in human history only occurred six times. That is to say, the rest of humanity, for the majority of our frail species existence, did not even have the fundamental basis of civilisation.

Despite it being ‘invented’ in only a few places. The innovations spread through copy cats.

What is interesting to me is how the internet has fundamentally transformed the human capacity to learn from each other. Now our social domain is not restricted to just the cousins and close relatives you might be wandering the African savannah with, but the entirety of the human race. Or at least those of the seven billion of us that are wired to the net.

How exciting!

For the most perfect expression of the creative potential of our species, I present to you:

INTERNET MEME!

These are fascinating expressions of collective creativity as people take a shared expression/situation or image and add a little wrinkle to the idea.

Some examples of these memes include: Rick Rolling or Ridiculously Photogenic Guy.

At heart, internet memes are shared creative endeavours. Pouring scorn/humour or attention on the irrelevancies of life.

I have developed my own, very first ever, contribution to this process via adopting the “Call me maybe” internet meme. Newsweek describes this as:

The chorus to Canadian singer Carly Rae Jepsen’s hit song “Call Me Maybe” goes like this: “Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number, so call me, maybe?” Those catchy lyrics, which have propelled the poppy song to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, spawned a variety of playful images referencing various moments in history and pop culture. As it pops up everywhere from Billboard to photos across the Internet to business cards in bars, “Call Me Maybe” is crowned our Meme of the Week.

My contribution to humanities collective creativity is:

While there is every reason to suspect that this expression of a momentary meme will not achieve world wide web immortality, it was fun being involved! At the end of the day is that not a perfect summary of what humanity is about?

Classic economics assumes that we are all self-interested. It’s not a bad assumption and certainly serves to model most human behaviour most of the time. However, behavioural economics is focused on the bounded nature of humanities self-interest (and our bounded willpower and bounded rationality), with some fascinating results!

Recent studies published by Dan Ariely put some bounds on our honesty and our willingness to cheat. It turns out the vast majority of us, approximately 98 per cent, are willing to cheat if we think we can get away with it. That’s pretty interesting. What struck me is that people only cheat only so much and then they stop. They either worry about being caught or, more likely, above some threshold they are unable to hold the self-illusion they are honest.

By providing subjects a capacity to self-report how successful they were at a series of tests, Ariely was able to get a measure of their honesty. There are two particularly interesting results:

• That people’s dishonest taps out at certain levels. People were offered between 50 cents through to $10 for cheating. It turns out that when they could benefit by $10 for cheating they were actually more honest!

• Out tendency to cheat is context dependent. If it was ‘for the team’, or people were wearing fake designer clothes, or a range of factors, then they were more likely to cheat. Likewise, changing the location of their name on an insurance form (so it came before they provided answers to form) resulted in them being more honest than if they had to sign their name at the end of the form.

We are all inches away from dishonesty.

PS. Can I have my watch back please?

Building on the idea that we are cavemen wielding space age technology, our brains have not evolved for calculus.

Dan Gardner, in his excellent book Risk details how Stanislas Dehaene, a neurologist at the College de France, has found animals as varied as rats and dolphins have a basic grasp of numbers. They can differentiate between two and four. They also have:

“Elementary addition and subtraction abilities.”

But as the size of the numbers increase, even from one or two to six or seven, their abilities rapidly fall away.

It turns out that humans aren’t much better. Dehaene writes that, “We are systematically slower to compute, say, four + five than two + three.” Just as it takes animals longer to work out that eight is larger than nine, so it does with us. It takes effort to become numerate.

The difference between us and other animals is our capacity to create systematic representations of reality and to process them. The fact that the modern world is built on numbers – from the accounts department that pay you through to the computer that process information to displays this blog – is all built on the learning and experience of those that have preceded us.

Our brain is not wired to engage with large numbers. There have never been as many humans in the world as there are now, so how could I possibly have the capacity to emotionally relate to the fact that there are almost seven billion people alive? It is emotively meaningless.

Consider the case of the Tassie miners. Their dramatic situation, and their eventual rescue, captured the attention of the nation. The story dominated the news cycle for the two weeks they were trapped nearly a kilometre underground until they emerged, blinking into the sunlight. This was an emotive, gripping story that focused on just two men.

Larger disasters are harder to grasp.  Joseph Stalin captured the essence of this point when he said:

“The death of one man is a tragedy, the deaths of millions is a statistic.”

Starkly true.The same unfortunate emotional reality is described beautifully by Wendell E. Berry:

“To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we “know” that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined. The economic hardship of one farm family, if they are our neighbors, affects us more painfully than pages of statistics on the decline of the farm population. I can be heartstruck by grief and a kind of compassion at the sight of one gulley (and by shame if I caused it myself), but, conservationist though I am, I am not nearly so upset by an accounting of the tons of plowland sediment borne by the Mississippi River. Wallace Stevens wrote that “Imagination applied to the whole world is vapid in comparison to imagination applied to a detail” — and that appears to have the force of truth.

It is a horrible fact that we can read in the daily paper, without interrupting our breakfast, numerical reckonings of death and destruction that ought to break our hearts or scare us out of our wits. This brings us to an entirely practical question:  Can we—and, if we can, how can we—make actual in our minds the sometimes urgent things we say we know? This obviously cannot be accomplished by a technological breakthrough, nor can it be accomplished by a big thought. Perhaps it cannot be accomplished at all.”

We live in an infinite world that is resolved into our immediate, tangible, limited reality. All else is theory and speculation.

This is the background information I have on the commedia dell’Arte, most of which is derived from here.

What I like about this particular art form is how it came to represent some pretty basic characters that were archetypal to human society at the time. The fact that for almost two hundred years they characters performed pretty much the same stories is fascinating.

It’s not like humans have changed. The Simpsons is the longest running prime time show in the US, running for 23 seasons while a feature length film, The Simpsons Movie, grossed over $527 million. Despite all that time there has been no real character development, no change in the characters circumstances or anything else. Bart should have graduated from college by now and have his own family, or at least have left high school.

Despite the lack of change or progression, and the fact that each episode is pretty much just like the last one, people still watch Bart and Homer do almost exactly the same things they has always done, just is mildly different settings. The fact that Homer Simpson’s fictional beer, Duff, can be purchased in Richmond, Melbourne far from Springfield indicates how pervasive their stories are.

The commedia dell’arte was simply the Simpsons of its day – only it was played continuously for almost 200 years!

Commedia dell’arte was improvised around the interactions between three basic characters, the elders, lovers and the servants. The basic story line is that the lovers want to be together, but the elders want them to be kept apart. Both parties employ the help of servants to thwart the others ambitions.

What is interesting is how the characters of commedia dell’ arte developed such distinctiveness that uneducated audiences throughout Italy could instantly recognise them.

Zanni was the generic name given to the servants in the commedia dell’art. There behaviour can be guessed in that it resulted in the English word zany. Unfortunately for the zanni, they were at the bottom of the social peaking order, at the beck and call of the other characters.

The stance of the zanni resulted from their physical labour and represented their social status. They had a lowered centre of gravity. They would stand with an arched back, knees bent and apart and feet splayed. The support knee is bent with the other leg extended, toe pointed. The zanni would change feet repeatedly while talking or listening within the same position and without his head bobbing up and down. The elbows are bend and the arms half lifted. The elbows are bent and arms half lifted.

The distinctive poses of the zanni were to be: crouching with elbows on knees and chin in hands; collapsing completely into a puddle; feet being splayed, bent forward at hips with the elbows slightly raised; and finally, to be asleep while standing up.

Bart and Homer Simpson are modern representations of the zanni. Good natured but stupid.

One of the main elders, or vecchio, was Pantalone. He was always an old man who loves money more than anything and, typically, would try to marry off his daughter to a wealthy man and avoid giving her a dowry.  When things do not go his way he quickly slips into emotional extremes, particularly enraged petty tyranny.  He has a long memory and never forgets or forgives the slightest past transgression. While he uses him money to exert power, he rarely parts with it leading him to often promise the zanni funds but never pay them for their efforts.

The stance of Pantalone represents his age and desire to hoard his wealth. His back bends the other way to the zannis, giving him an old man’s stoop, protecting his purse and effectively restricting the motion of his legs.  The feet are together, toes apart, knees well bent and facing apart creating a focus on the crutch.

The distinctive poses of Pantalone were to be stooped over as if his spine just went out and he would support his upper body with a cane. He would also often lean slightly forward with his nose in the air. While his head might dart about like a bird, the rest of his body is lethargic, as if he is moving through water.

In the Simpsons, Pantalone is Mr Burns.

The final category of characters is that of the lovers, the Innamorati. Unlike every other character in the commedia dell’arte, the lovers did not wear distinctive masks but relied on heavy makeup for both sexes, with distinctive beauty spots. While the lovers have high status, they are brought low through the hopelessness of their infatuations.

The stance of the lovers was to suggest that they lacked firm contact with the earth. Their feet were invariably in ballet positions, creating long lines leading to their pelvis or chests. They are full of breath, but then take little pants on top.  Sometimes when situations become too much for them, they deflate totally.  The lovers were also extremely vain. Their vanity means they often look in a hand mirror, only to become upset by any minor imperfection they discover.  Even in extreme situations they will want to ensure that everything about them was perfect.

You might say that Marge Simpson comes closest to the lovers. Like these lovers, she is constantly being dealt a harsh hand that she must endure for the betterment of the family. Unlike the commedia dell’arte lovers, Marge is not matched in her love.

These simple characterisations were enough for generations of Italians, from all walks of life, to engage with and instantly appreciate the comic nature of the performance. The simplicity of the characterisations enabled them to be told and retold for generations.

Despite our material wealth, despite our intellectual progress, at heart we are still the same people who marvelled at the antics of the zanni, the scheming of Pantalone and the naivety of the lovers. For over 503 episodes we have watched some yellow four fingered folk go about their dysfunctional ways.

The identification of the ‘big polluters’ by the Clean Energy Regulator has highlighted some of the stupidity of people’s understanding of economics. Approximately 330 entities have been told they will be liable to pay the tax in 2012-13.  One of them is the City of Brisbane, one of the largest local governments in the world.

The reaction from the Mayor was stupidity personified. The Australian Finanical Review reported him stating:

Mayor Graham Quirk said it was ludicrous Brisbane ratepayers had to fund the carbon tax, given council offset all of its public transport and vehicle fleets and bought 100 per cent green power.

He said the carbon tax was expected to add $65 million to the council’s bottom line over four years and this would be passed on through household rates bills.

“We provide public services, we’re not generating massive corporate profits and the sad reality is we will have to pass this cost on to ratepayers and that’s not fair,” Cr Quirk said.

Actually it is fair.

The original sin of the carbon tax/emissions trading scheme is that it is focused on production rather than consumption. This sin has been compounded by a wilful political campaign that talks about ‘big polluters’. For instance, in this (chosen at random) interview of Bob Brown on the ABC, he states:

“We’re sheltering average households and say the big polluters should pay for the problem they’re creating.”

Clearly, someone has focused group this phrase to within an inch of its life.

Unfortunately he fails to recognise that the big polluters are every single Australian citizen. Our rich and wealthy lifestyle results in us polluting far more than almost anyone else in the world. Ultimately, we will have to change if the impact on the climate is to be minimised.

A very strong argument could be made that identifying a small number of entities is the most efficient way of incentivising change while minimising the administrative burden. But the reality is that, at the end of the day, the price will flow through to domestic consumers.

The alternative is for domestic consumers to source their consumption from international providers – that is what the ‘big polluters’ of Europe have done.

(There are some minor caveats here, but they are irrelevant in the long term and if climate change is not a long term issue than nothing is.)

What we need is a carbon tax focused on consumption. After all, you and I are the only big polluters that really exist.

People are physically unable to quantify incremental changes in stimuli, so rising congestion largely goes unnoticed. This is called Webber’s Law after the German physiologist who discovered the relationship. It applies to our ability to appreciate change in many aspects of our environment, including congestion.

Sitting in the car, driving to work, it is not possible to appreciate how much worse the traffic is today compared to yesterday and how much of it is due to rising population versus other factors. The changes are so small, with such natural variability in traffic conditions, that it becomes impossible to say with certainty that migrants are adding to congestion. Unless you take a long perspective, the trees block the view of the forest.

A common metaphor to describe the problem of generating political momentum to take action about congestion is that of boiling a frog – put it in a pot and slowly raise the temperature.

The common understanding is that because the temperature increases slowly, the frog doesn’t realise the change in its environment and so does nothing about it. Until it’s served to a French man. But this ‘common understanding’ is false. It is based on a series of experiments conducted in 1869 by German physiologist Friedrich Goltz.

But the thing is, he was using frogs that had their brains sucked out. Oddly, these lobotomised frogs couldn’t recognise and react changes in their environment whereas normal frogs don’t actually wait around to be boiled.

The temperature is rising for Perth’s level of congestion.

The question is how will its business and political leaders respond? Or, how will they respond to the policy perspective I released the other week?