A World Unplugged

Uniformity = dependence = risk

Let me carry on from last week’s blog about the march of AI and what that implies.

First, to get a perspective on where I’m coming from let me go back to the beginning of this century.

I could see that the UK was heading towards the abyss and I decided to move out. I also thought the EU had gone about as far as it could.

We all know Parkinson’s wonderful law which he applied to the civil service: Work expands to fill time available. He also came up with rather a lot of other intriguing laws, one of which related to committees, groups, and associations. I cant quote the actual law but the rule was that a small organisation, say three people, is hardly an organisation, but five to ten undoubtedly is. But what about twenty, or thirty? His rule was that once any form of committee gets into the teens it has reached its maximum efficiency, and that any increase above that level reduces its effectiveness.

The EU, or its forerunner, worked very well when there were only six members. All was well as the number rose to nine, but from there on it has become more and more unwieldy, and less and less efficient, until it is now, with the number at twenty-seven, plagued with open hostility. At that level, it doesn’t work, and can never work. That’s why it is falling apart. And that is why I am relocating out of the EU.

But when we arrived in Portugal we stepped back a century. Here was a country which purported to have electricity. It did, some of the time.

What was I saying last week about the danger of reliance upon too many helpers? What happens when the power lines go down? What happens when the internet stops working? What happens when your AIs start lying to you?

Let’s go back to Portugal in 2001.

What were the most important things to get right in your house? Naturally, I assume the roof doesn’t leak and the walls were reasonably straight, but what technology posed a risk? The public water supply? The electricity supply?

Progress comes to Portugal. Now you can have a fridge, and actually boil a kettle. You can even get electric heaters. But what happens when the power dies, as it did about six times a day in 2001? If you are in a shop and you want to pay for your groceries and the power goes down, you stand around, and everyone smiles and puts up with it until everyone starts to get cross and starts fuming, and eventually the shoppers just dump their shopping on the floor and leave.

Let’s tale a slightly different example. You are at home and the lights go out. Your electric fire no longer pumps out heat. The taps no longer dispense water because there is nothing to pump it. The internet no longer functions, and the dinner on the stove stops cooking, and you cant see your hand in front of your face.

“Where are the bloody candles?” goes up the cry.

What question did I ask earlier? What’s the most important thing to get right in your house?

You need to know exactly where the candles are, so you can at least feel your way to the right place and the right drawer. You grab a candle, and a box of matches which you have conveniently put next to the box of candles. Now you can strike a match and light a candle. With one small source of light you can start to light more candles and rearrange your life as if you were back in the middle ages, but you can at least carry on. Things may be tough, but you get by.

So the modern question is, what happens when the power goes down, either through system overload, or through a cyber attack, or a radiation burst from the sun?

Things have reached a stage where everything is so inter-related, and dependent upon a similar technology that when that system breaks, which it will, the whole world comes to a sudden halt.

To put a question in a slightly different way: where is the modern equivalent of those candles we needed in Portugal back in 2001?

We are also seriously out of date with our views on modern warfare. The Brussels idiots want to spend a huge fortune they dont have on buying weapons. How absurd!

I’ve said this before, but if anyone seriously wanted to invade Britain (and who would be stupid enough to actually want to?), all they would have to do is shut down the country’s imports. In less than six weeks the country would be starving, and would fall. Not a single shot need be fired. There is no defence.

Want to defend Britain? Easy. Make the country self sufficient. That could be done if the idiots in government didn’t shut down so many essential parts of the economy, but instead took measures to limit the population, which, for the country to be economically viable, needs to be cut by at least a half.

I’m not suggesting mass euthanasia, but child benefit could be phased out, and the third and subsequent children in a family could be severely taxed. That would be a much cheaper option than buying a whole arsenal of weapons which in a modern world could never save the country from invasion. It would merely encourage annihilation.

The most important thing in our increasingly dependent societies is diversity. What are governments doing? Creating more uniformity. Sorry to be a sourpuss, but no good will come from that approach.