War in the East – and priorities

Almost exactly a decade ago I wrote this and, with apologies to one regular correspondent, we need to talk about it a lot more.

Some time before that, in 1997, Buz Luhrmann released a single entitled “Wear Sunscreen“, a list of advice from fortysomethings (which I now just about still am) to twentysomethings (which I became that year). It contained the line “The real troubles in your life are apt to be the things that never crossed your troubled mind; the kind that blindsides you at 4pm some idle Tuesday“.

So it is with geopolitics, and indeed any politics. While the UK Government desperately, for reasons known only unto itself, battles with courts for the right to fly people to Rwanda and the United States embroils itself in a court case about hush money against someone who should long ago have been tried for sedition, the world is becoming increasingly turbulent. Unfortunately, hoping this turbulence will go away is not really a strategy. Nor, in fact, is merely hoping one side will magically “win“.

The Middle East, sadly, was always a tinder box. However, in 2023, there were more terrorists deaths in Burkina Faso than in any other country. Burkina Faso, on some rankings literally the poorest country on the planet, is in West Africa, a region of (nominally) independent states until recently still dominated in practice economically and militarily by France. Angered by what many see as neo-colonialism, some have now turned away from the French for protection – choosing instead the Russians.

Further east, the Sudan region continues down the road to chaos. There are significant interests there for China too, as well as for the West (never mind the people who actually live there). “Interventions” rarely have much to do with helping out locals, but they are significant in geopolitical terms. Nearby Djibouti now hosts military units from a whole host of countries; neighbouring Somalia is so unstable it regularly impedes global shipping (this is one reason the lead-in time for Japanese cars in Europe extended to nine months around a year ago, though it is now back down to around four).

It is probable, however, that our main issue is still in Europe. Ukraine’s counter-offensive in 2023 to try to split Russian-held territory in the southeast of the country in two essentially failed; this was partially evened up by the failure of Russia to secure full naval superiority in the Black Sea, but the truth (whether we want to listen to it or not) is Ukraine is not winning. Russia’s ultimate goal of linking up territory all the way around to Transnistria (where there were even polling stations for Russia’s recent Presidential Election, despite the fact that almost everyone recognises Transnistria is part of the Republic of Moldova) remains on track, despite the huge toll. It is quite possible that, by 2030, all of Transnistria, south and east Ukraine and Belarus (already a “Union State”) will be under Russian control.

It is then that we get to the real flashpoints. Russia would then inevitably try to destabilise the rest of the Republic of Moldova, in which as a response French troops are now stationed. Which is interesting, when you consider what is going on in West Africa (notably in Mali). French and Russian troops are beginning to displace each other or to stare at each other in at least two locations.

Throw in the potential for China to destabilise Taiwan all while the United States is distracted by another Trump presidency (a 50/50 chance currently), and it is close to inevitable that Russia will continue to reshape its new Soviet Union while all this is going on. At some stage, that will mean attention turns to the “Russian” minorities in the Baltic States, particularly Estonia and Latvia.

The three Baltic States are members of NATO and of the European Union, and here is the crux – both of those include mutual defence pacts, not just NATO. NATO is, if anything, the lesser of the two – of all its members until recently only three of its members (the US, the UK and Turkey) spent the supposedly required 2% of GDP on defence (remarkably, even France will not pass this figure until next year), leaving it much more poorly equipped to deal with threats than it would be if the requirement had been met since it was agreed thirty years ago. The main issue to be noted here, however, is that it is practically impossible to be a member of the EU without also, de facto at least, being allied to NATO – this is a particular point of note for Austria and Ireland, not least since Sweden and Finland have already made it the case de jure. On top of this, the United States is not the only country being tempted by nativism; leaving Brexit quite aside, Slovakia recently elected a hard man populist to match Hungary’s (and, for that matter, Russia’s).

As I wrote back in 2022, this is not to alarm people unnecessarily; it is, however, to suggest we may wish to rethink our priorities and recognise that, as so often, decisive early intervention is better than a desperate later cure.

Cuba is anything but “committed to human rights”

We have seen over the past few days the serious perils of people transposing their own tribal affiliations at home on to situations in far-off lands. It is peculiar to see which sides they pick, and indeed which situations they choose – I have, for example, seen almost nothing on social media about the withdrawal of French forces from Niger, the effective end of Christian civilisation in Nagorno-Karabakh, nor indeed a range of other serious regional conflicts which could prove destabilising globally.

For all the discussion of the Middle East online, it was in fact a comment by someone which whom I usually agree which stood out: “Cuba has always been committed to human rights“.

It is essential that everyone who has the fortune to live in a free society understands how utterly wrong this statement is (at least if we assume “always” to mean “since the missile crisis”) – not least at a time when free societies are under threat. Remember, places like Iran were relatively free once too…

Firstly, historically, Fidel Castro led a band of guerillas or, perhaps we should say, paramilitaries who took power not because of their ideology (which would have been difficult, because they did not actually have one) nor because of any commitment to “rights” (nor even welfare of any kind), but essentially because they were opportunists who sought power for its own sake in a messy political situation. Indeed, they were not even very good at being guerillas; their success was a mix of fantastic (in every sense of the word) propaganda and egotistical incoherence on behalf of the previously governing authorities. No one in a free society should be supportive of paramilitary revolution.

The ideology of the new government was provided by Che Guevara, but the problem is that “ideology” is not a good thing. Principles are a good thing. Ideology, however, has a habit of getting in the way of the evidence. Of course, Guevara himself became estranged from the government before he was mysteriously located and killed in a way which could not have happened but for a tip-off. No one in a free society should be supportive of government by ideology.

Of course, government by ideology is even worse when the ideology does not work. In much the same as communist states in Eastern Europe remained relatively prosperous for ten years or so, Cuba’s economy soon began to crash from the early 1970s. You cannot, in fact, have a government planning everything – no one, least of all a paramilitary, knows enough to plan every aspect of an economy or a society. Deprived of capital, Cuba’s economy crashed and its people paid the penalty. No one in a free society should be supportive of equality just because it is brought about by universal poverty.

As for the commitment to human rights, the only golf course in Cuba just happened to be in Fidel Castro’s own residential compound. Meanwhile, particularly after Communism collapsed elsewhere and the huge subvention from the Soviet Union was switched off overnight, his people struggled even to feed themselves. Is nutrition not a fairly basic human right? Yet in the 1990s, the average Cuban lost 20kg and farming production stalled because of widespread rural crime. No one in a free society should be supportive of a government which fails to provide even basic nutrition.

Upon Fidel Castro’s death, certain people who claim to be supporters of human rights sent messages of condolence which suggested that his period in power – a period completely devoid of basic freedoms and any hint of actual democracy – was somehow to be heralded. It was a period when people went hungry, basic medications became unavailable, hundreds of thousands fled and, notably, still 500 human rights activists were “missing” (or, ahem, “disappeared”). No one in a free society should be supportive of a government which suppresses opposition and arrests (or “disappears”) people for speaking out.

Constitutional amendments in 2019 signified a degree of opening, but the Cuba of the 2020s is still a country whose government still resolutely interferes as a matter of course with its own citizens’ human rights, far from standing up for anyone else’s. Its commitment to “human rights” is such that it will not even give its citizens a say in who governs their country. It blocks full access to information. It prohibits a free press. It denies free speech. It removed a prohibition on travel only because few Cubans can afford it anyway. This a land of arable farms which cannot provide a reliable supply of milk; an island which cannot provide a reliable supply of fish; a country which exports doctors but cannot provide a reliable supply of basic medicines. Basic public services are simply absent, basic freedoms trampled on, basic rights therefore denied. No one in a free society should be supportive of a government which continues to oppress its own people.

In other countries, when a Government chooses to cut itself off from trade with its nearest and biggest partner, when it chooses to restrict the right to protest, when it chooses literally to try to dump its undesirables and have them taken somewhere else, when it chooses to send its young men to die pointlessly in wars thousands of miles from home, when it chooses to become reliant overwhelmingly on oil exports, when it chooses not to pay its doctors properly, when it chooses and economic model which leaves everyone reliant on food banks, and when it chooses to restrict voting rights, this is seen by Liberals (however defined) quite justifiably as a bad thing. Those of us living in a free society cannot suddenly regard all these things as a good thing just because the government concerned is Cuba’s… and rest assured, it has done the lot.

We should be unsurprised that, to some extent, a government which came to power based on propaganda is still obsessed by it, to the extent that some people fall for it; this is most evident in its health system, which is a crumbling wreck still using decades-old equipment saved only by the fact there is no obesity problem because food is so scarce. Those people should be well aware that it is propaganda. This is a country where tourists are treated better than the native population; where people are still unable to trade in any way freely; and where opposition to the government can still result in conveniently coincidental arrests and mysterious disappearances. Human rights are implied in the widespread government propaganda at the entry to every town or in every main square (that is the only propaganda allowed, of course), but are in practice trampled on by an authoritarian, ideological regime whose only interest is not the welfare of its own citizens but rather its own survival in power for its own sake. Those of us who live in free societies should not be fooled; the Cuban people themselves deserve far better than that.

“End of days” goes broader than NI

You can tell Sam McBride is a fine journalist because even the more abusive responses to his articles demonstrate the discomfort that comes with the truth. So it was last week with his article on the “end of days” feel to Northern Ireland, which was uncomfortable reading in large part because nothing about it was wrong.

There are two aspects of this which require investigation, however.

Firstly, there is the natural human instinct to seek comfort amid the discomfort by simplifying complex points and pushing for easy solutions: apparently all of Northern Ireland’s problems, so of which I also listed here, would be magicked away if we just had a “United Ireland” or if we just “got rid of the Protocol”. As a matter of fact, seismic though such options at first appear to be, they would in fact make almost no difference – on the day after any “United Ireland” or any “full reintegration into the UK”, Northern Ireland would have the same civil service, the same police force, the same need to reform its health system, the same sectarian divide, the same over-reliance on public funding, the same paramilitarism, the same skills gaps, and so on. Those are complex problems and they require detailed, thought-through solutions regardless of the constitutional set-up. Of course, it is much easier to write a quick tweet about how we need change and here’s a change therefore that change will solve everything than it is really to investigate problems, work out the challenge in each of them and implement a series of practical solutions.

Secondly, there is a tendency in Northern Ireland to believe we are the centre of the universe and that everything that happens here – be they successes, problems or failures – is unique. If I were to offer any criticism of Sam McBride’s contention that there is an “end of days feel” to Northern Ireland is would simply be that this “feel” is not unique. In fact, we are witnessing the decay of democracy everywhere – a point which is perhaps at once both comforting and even more discomforting.

In the United States, a misogynistic narcissist who sympathises with Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine and who in any case should be in jail for an act of sedition in which five people were killed is ten points clear in the polls to become the next President. In France, riots are breaking out as discontent broadens. In England, the government is scattering for relevance as its role in trashing both the economy and basic public governance standards is becoming obvious (and if I refer to a devolved government with record health service waiting lists, crumbling schools, huge spending on inquiries after bureaucratic incompetence and recent pumping of sewage into rivers I could just as easily be talking about Scotland as NI). In Germany, the Foreign Minister had to abandon a trip to Australia because the official jet broke down (the second time this year) while the populist-right “AfD” challenges for top spot in the polls. Hungary should long ago have been thrown out of the European Union for its range of sins against democratic norms; neighbouring Slovakia is about to elect a Russia sympathiser; Italy continues to trend populist in response to a stalled yet unreformable economy and huge immigration arising in large part from war in the Middle East; Spain has to have constant elections since the voters are clear only about what they do not want. Generally, when you look around the Western World, many of the problems are similar – the scale and details may be different, but the strain on liberal democracy and on the collective ability to maintain cohesive societies with functioning welfare systems and economies based at least to some degree on the common good is familiar everywhere.

There are reasons for this. The end of the Cold War shifted the global economy fundamentally, so that much manufacturing ended up taking place on the cheap, often in the Far East; the consequent loss of manufacturing in the West led not just to economic change but also social change, with a real sense of left-behind communities (which, politically, have often switched from centre-left to populist right as a result). There has also been the reality, particularly in Europe and Japan, that society is ageing – it is harder to provide universal welfare and healthcare when, simply because of demographics, more people rely on it and fewer people pay into it; yet actually doing anything about the demographic time bomb will invariably be unpopular, so systems creep towards the cliff edge with everyone knowing what happens when they get there but with no one feeling able to apply the brakes. We have also seen the collapse in the emphasis on social cohesion, as both “right” and “left” have emphasised the individual – one may emphasise “freedom” and the other “rights”, but both do so with reference to the individual rather than to society as a whole and often with reference to the pursuit of relatively peripheral interests for their own sake rather than building consensus for the sake of the common good. There has also, perhaps aided by social media, been a marked shift away from detail and long-term thinking, towards making a huge fuss of whatever issue we have all chosen to comment on from behind our tribal trenches this week. To re-emphasise: this is true in Northern Ireland but it is also true pretty much everywhere else in the West too.

My contention would be that the “end of days” applies to liberal democracy, not to Northern Ireland. Liberal democracy remains the worst form of government apart from all the other ones we have tried, but without a basic sense of cohesion and fair play, it too will fall into decay. I do not know what the next steps should be, but I do know they will not be simple; so the first thing is to beware those offering simple solutions to complex problems.

What if there’s nothing out there?

Last week I wrote a piece here on the increasing evidence that the our System, far from being made up of a “typical” star and a “typical” planetary system, is actually extraordinarily exceptional. This is evidence – arguably very scant, but still evidence – that the conditions of the one Solar System we know to have delivered a conscious spacefaring civilisation are perhaps close to unique. In other words, it is evidence that there may be no other spacefaring civilisations out there, because conditions like those here in our Solar System simply may not exist anywhere else.

Firstly to emphasise, it is merely evidence and that evidence is so scant that it may even be outright irrelevant; it is certainly not conclusive. Of course, it may be that conditions like those in our Solar System are completely coincidental to the development of a civilisation which reaches our levels of consciousness and technology (and perhaps goes on to exceed them). It may be that “close to unique” is not quite “unique” and that there are one or two solar system analogues out there (for example, just under 200 light years away, there is a star of roughly the same sequence, brightness and size as the Sun orbited by a planet almost exactly the size of Jupiter at a similar distance to Jupiter). Nevertheless, the presumption – common in astronomy until less than a decade ago – that conditions in other planetary systems would in all likelihood be similar to those in our Solar System has proven to be fundamentally incorrect. This makes the notion that there is in fact “nothing out there” (i.e. no spacefaring civilisation within a relevant distance in space or time) at least worth exploring as a thought experiment.

Definition

Firstly, as part of this thought experiment, we should probably define our terms. When we ask the question “Is there anything out there?” what I think we mean (though commenters may disagree) is “Is there anything at our technological level of development within a distance that may enable some form of communication?”

To put this is cosmic terms: the universe is expanding and even the rate of expansion is increasing; this arises essentially from a process known as entropy which is perhaps best described as the tendency of energy to scatter. To be clear, not only are the various objects in the universe accelerating away from each other (for the most part) because of entropy, but the space itself is expanding. The only known process which works against entropy and serves to clump things together is gravity, and it is currently believed that the Milky Way galaxy (in which we live) is the second largest of a Local Group of galaxies (of between about 17 and about 31, depending somewhat on how you define a galaxy) which are gravitationally bound.

I think, therefore, it is fair to define our question in terms of a quest for a conscious spacefaring civilisation within our Local Group of galaxies; because, even if there are other civilisations out there, if they are beyond that Local Group they will simply continue moving away from us to the point that communication is surely practically impossible and even detection is highly improbable. Of course, our understanding of things could change these variables, but the evidence is overwhelmingly that another “civilisation” will only be relevant to us (and us to it) if it is within our Local Group.

Furthermore, practically, the chances are that another civilisation will only be detectable if it has at least industrialised or otherwise manipulated its home to the point of creating an artificial impact on its planet’s (or perhaps moon’s) atmosphere and, in all probability, if it is itself spacefaring (which some would argue is probably an inevitable consequence of industrialisation anyway). So it is fair to specify that what we mean by “anything” is in fact a spacefaring or at least industrial (broadly defined) civilisation.

Mathematics

I am not a mathematician, but then nor are most people. Fundamentally, the sense in nearly all of us who think about it that there “must be something out there” derives from the sheer scale of the universe and the underlying notion that even if the chances of the development of a spacefaring civilisation in any given star system are millions to one, that would still mean that the universe had loads of them.

To put a little more detail on this, the current estimate is that there are around 150 billion star systems in the Milky Way alone. Though there is some dispute about it, most astronomers tend towards the view that there are more still in the nearby (i.e. “just” 2.5 million light years distant) Andromeda Galaxy, and perhaps roughly half as many in the Triangulum Galaxy. Add this together with all the satellite galaxies in our local group and it is at least reasonable to suggest a total of around half a trillion star systems.

Most people, intuitively, reckon that the chances of a spacefaring civilisation developing in any star system are surely lower than half a trillion to one.

Of course, no one really has any concept of “half a trillion”. However, it is worth emphasising that even this figure is not really the one we should be looking at; and there are also other ways of looking at the problem which put the odds at the other extreme.

Time

Firstly, we are not just looking for a spacefaring civilisation to appear in any of the roughly half a trillion star systems in our Local Group, but specifically for one to appear more or less “now”; in other words, it does not have just to be “near” us in space, but also in time.

Of course, “now” is a tricky concept to define when we consider that the largest galaxy in our “neighbourhood” is 2.5 million or so light years away – this means we see it as it was 2.5 million years ago. 2.5 million years ago there would not have been even the slightest hint of humanity on Earth, far less of tool-making, agriculture, industrialisation and spaceflight all of which occurred in the blink of a cosmic eyelid. A civilisation of our level of development somewhere in Andromeda “now” (at this exact point in time) would not have any notion whatsoever of our existence, and will not have (even if it survives) for several million years yet.

To be precise, therefore, what we are looking for is a conscious spacefaring civilisation that had reached our level of development some time in our past; if it is in our galaxy, that still likely means hundreds or probably thousands of years ago and, if it isn’t, that means millions of years ago.

For all that, millions of years is not a long time in cosmic terms; after all, the dinosaurs were wiped out tens of millions of years ago regardless of where in our Local Group of galaxies you were watching the asteroid impact…

Life on Earth

The dinosaur impact, however, does bring us to a means of putting the odds at millions to one against the development of a spacefaring civilisation at any time, even on the planet which we know to have one.

Out of interest, highly technically, if the dinosaurs had suddenly industrialised and were just at the point 150 years after they had developed a steam engine of putting the first reptile on the moon at the exact moment the asteroid hit, there would in fact be no trace of that development now. However, even accepting that, what we know about the natural history of Earth (including the atmospheric pressure at the time, which would have made dinosaurs’ brains smaller than hours and thus rendered them less intelligent in all probability) tells us that the chances of there ever having been an industrialised civilisation on earth prior to the past quarter millennium are as close to zero as anything reasonably can be.

That means we have been industrialised for fewer than 250 of the Earth’s 4.5 billion year history. The odds of an industrialised civilisation existing at a particular point in time even on Earth itself are, on the basis of what we know, many millions to one. Add in the other planets and moons in our solar system, and the odds of a spacefaring civilisation on any particular body even in our own star system surely enter the billions to one.

Therefore, we can make an argument that the odds need to be many billions to one, but also that there is some evidence that they are – even based on our own star system alone, where there is actually a spacefaring civilisation.

It is worth adding, of course, for the purposes of calculating the probability of a spacefaring civilisation developing, we have to discount our own because, without it (or at least the imminent prospect of it), we would not be debating the issue at all. Even the ancient Romans, comparatively advanced by the standards of any human civilisation prior to the modern era, did not think of time and human civilisation in terms of inevitable progress; in other words, even they would have had no real concept of an ongoing technological and sociological march towards spacefaring civilisation.

Astronomy

I have since childhood been a massive supporter of astronomical observation for its own sake. For me, gazing up at the skies in awe and wonder is part of what it means to be civilised.

However, the fact is that one of the best selling points of astronomy to prospective funders (in government, academia or wherever) is the “search of extra-terrestrial intelligence” – in other words, a solution to the ultimate question “is there anyone out there” (albeit defined roughly as above). It is quite heard for anyone to argue that they are searching for something on the off chance of finding it – and I would have to suggest this is why astronomers almost universally lean towards the view, often quite forcefully, that the likelihood that there is “something out there” is high and even that it is obvious that it is high.

I hope I have already demonstrated, however, that it is not obvious that it is high. The great Carl Sagan said that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” but we do have to confront the fact we still have an absence of evidence and even a hint of evidence of absence as our detections of planetary systems beyond our own move into realms even he could scarcely have envisaged. The issue is there is little to be gained by pointing that out.

Psychology

The reason there is little to be gained by pointing out that in fact all the evidence currently points to an absence of any spacefaring civilisation “out there” (at least, at a relevant point in time and space) is perhaps ultimately psychological. After all, in the end, no one likes to be alone!

The risks of encountering a spacefaring civilisation comparatively nearby are fairly well rehearsed by astronomers and futurologists. Given we attained that status so quickly in cosmic terms, the chances are that any other civilisation which has attained it would be much more advanced than we are (though in fact that does not necessarily follow; it could be that technological process inevitably slows down upon achieving spaceflight to nearby astronomical objects because, beyond that, distances just become too vast – indeed, this could be why we are not detecting anything “out there”). If we accept there is at least a probability that such a civilisation will be well ahead of us once detected (and once it detects us, more to the point), we are inclined to think it would treat us like the Conquistadors treated the New World or even like humans treat ants. So how would we possibly psychologically want that?

I would put forward, for the sake of this thought experiment, that the only thing worse than detecting such a civilisation would be detecting, definitively, that no such other civilisation exists. If this is so, and we are in fact alone (at least within our Local Group at this point in time, thus to all relevant intents and purposes), that puts a huge premium on the survival of humanity. If it turns out that we are probably the only conscious life form capable of understanding or even really experiencing the universe anywhere in that universe (or at the very least in our part of it), we arguably become the universe’s very consciousness. Such a responsibility cannot but have a psychological impact! Therefore, I would suggest, we choose to ignore the possibility that we have such a responsibility.

What if there’s nothing out there? The truth is, regardless of where the evidence points, we will always want to pose that question but never really want to answer it…

Solar System looks increasingly atypical

Two years ago I wrote a post, itself following on from one some years before that, noting that the evidence was increasingly that the solar system is atypical. This is important for two key reasons – and the evidence continues to pile up in that direction.

Firstly, why is this important, both philosophically and cosmically? Secondly, what is the evidence?

The reason this is important philosophically is that it is contrary to what we have rammed into us at school. There, we learn of the presumptuous figures of the past who thought the Earth was the centre of everything, and this is “corrected” with information that the Earth is in fact just another planet around just another star. Not quite, actually.

It is also important because it hints at the probability or otherwise of conscious spacefaring life, at least similar to ours, being “out there”. If we were finding lots of star systems set up similarly to our own, we could reasonably begin to assume that the conditions for life like ours were fairly widespread. We are not, so we can begin at least to ponder if the opposite is true.

The evidence is building even on top of that I outlined two years ago. Increasingly, it is apparent that binary star rather than solo star systems are the “norm”, insofar as there is one; we are also still seeing much more unevenly distributed and less even orbits of planets around their stars than is the case in the Solar System, and a still evident comparatively high number of planets almost exactly between the size of Earth and of Neptune (a size absent in our own system).

However, what is increasingly apparent as we build a picture of nearby star systems is that the order of planets – small terrestrial innermost to large gaseous outermost – is extremely unusual. It has initially been widely assumed that this set-up, the one which applies in our own Solar System, would be typical. In fact, it is possible that as few as 1% of all planetary systems have that set-up. Conversely, many systems have a mix, with terrestrial and gaseous planets interspersed; and many (at least, more than the reverse) seem to maintain the division but have gaseous innermost and then terrestrial outermost.

It is increasingly clear, therefore, that if there is conscious life out there looking in our direction it will notice just how exceptional the solar system is – with its major planets remarkably on the same plane, nearly all conveniently rotating in the same direction as they orbit, with astonishingly circular orbits, and ordered unusually with terrestrial planets innermost followed by gaseous outermost. It turns out that the regularity of our home is, frankly, pretty odd in cosmic terms.

This outcome is somewhat challenging. It has long been noted that the only thing more profound for humanity than finding conscious spacefaring life out there would be, well, not finding it. Yet the odds from the evidence are increasingly on the latter…

“The Traitors” was compelling because it was real life…

The UK has not been doing much right recently, but I suspect it did produce the best version of “The Traitors“, which aired on the BBC over Christmas. By ignoring the original Dutch version’s selection of celebrities as contestants, and also by avoiding the trap the Americans fell into of intentionally ratcheting up tensions by using contestants from previous reality TV game shows, the UK version gave us a direct and compelling insight into human psychology. All versions were correct to identify the traitors from the outset – this in fact added to the drama, in a similar way to the famous detective series Columbo became extremely popular precisely because the viewer knew who the perpetrator was from the outset. Revealing the outcome is not the point; watching others work it out is the entertainment.

Put more simply: it was a superb demonstration of exactly what is right, and wrong, with human civilisation! Let us look at how…

Spoiler alert: I do not intend to name winners and losers here (for those still wishing to watch the UK version, be it on BBC iPlayer in the UK or elsewhere), but inevitably some of the points I raise will require reference to the actual show outcome.

Delusions of ability

One of the most obvious early factors in the game was the assumption by some contestants that they were good at a certain thing because of who they were – for example, that they could identify liars because they themselves were actors, or some similar sentiment.

This is a version of an old classic – 90% of drivers think they are of above-average ability at driving. Clearly, this cannot be so.

More specifically, we tend to think of ourselves as less likely to be the victim of plots or scams. Those are things which happen to gullible people – but none of us likes to think of ourselves as gullible.

Yet we all are – as the contestants soon found!

These delusions of ability, in real life, can be quite stark. They cause significant problems in all walks of life, and explain why completely deluded charlatans like Liz Truss end up as Prime Minister (and don’t even realise how terrible they are at it when they attain the position they should never have attained).

Herd mentality

One of the most remarkable psychological aspects of the show happened towards the end when, with three men and three women left in, literally all of the contestants agreed that the/a remaining traitor must be male – which was, in fact, entirely sound logic.

Yet, when it came to the round table, all six voted for women!

They knew, and had indeed discussed, that if there were one remaining traitor it would be a man – regardless of whether they were “traitor” or “faithful”, they all recognised this would have to be the assumption and that they would have to vote accordingly. Yet none did.

Ultimately, this came down to herd mentality, which was common throughout – one name got mentioned early in the round table discussion, and then other contestants could not remove that name from their consideration even if they had never previously considered that name. Indeed, this also occurred at the start of the show, when they almost all voted for the same contestant (with no evidence and, of course, wrongly, as she was a “faithful”) on the basis simply that her name was mentioned.

This is a problem in everyday life too; most notably, perhaps, it is why meetings and committees fundamentally do not work. Ultimately, far too much relies on who speaks first and on which idea the group gets stuck on. It is very hard to get an idea out of a committee’s collective heads, even if the idea is in fact nonsense; indeed, studies show just how common it is for committees to end up making decisions that no individual on the committee really agreed with (despite having put their hands up to vote for it).

Recency bias

Another issue with that bizarre “banishment” of a female contestant when they had all agreed to go for a male was that she was consistently singled out simply for having added some information about herself later in the series.

This became a sort of “recency bias”; contestants could not get it out of their heads that she had added the information and thus homed in on the idea that she must be some kind of liar. The fact she had added information did not make her a liar – she had never lied; indeed, she had gone out of her way to add information about herself. Yet, far from being rewarded from this, she was ultimately banished (wrongly, as she too was a “faithful”) simply because other contestants could not let this irrelevant and in fact erroneous notion that she had “lied” out of their heads.

Again, “recency bias” is a massive problem in society, perhaps most obviously in the news cycle in the social media age. Shorn by 280-character tweets or 10-second tiktok clips of any sense of long-termism, our entire discussion – both in terms of how we pick our priorities and in terms of what we say about them – is incredibly short-termist. This means we are probably more inclined than ever to get recent ideas into our heads that we just cannot shake, even when it would become apparent if we gave them any actual thought that they are plainly irrelevant or clearly erroneous.

“Knowing” someone

One constant feature of the series was the sense in contestants that they “knew” each other. In fact, they had only met each other a few days beforehand (a key reason, in my view, that the UK version was so well done – in the US version, this was not the case).

Yet, despite the obvious fact that in fact they did not know each other at all, they came to believe that they did. Viewers were constantly treated to statements of certainty that so-and-so was “100% faithful” from other contestants – yet this was as likely to be said about a “traitor” as it was about a “faithful”.

This is also what underlay the sense of “betrayal” when contestants added extra information about themselves; there was this underlying idea that they all “knew” each other so well already (despite only having actually met a few days earlier) that any added information had been someone “kept secret” and therefore constituted a “lie”. Essentially, three contestants ended up “banished” on this entirely illogical and nonsensical basis – all three were “faithful” and none had, by any reasonable definition, lied. In fact, they were probably the three contestants who had been most open about their personal lives. (Did we know the relationship status and full career path of the other contestants? No we did not…)

The notion of “knowing” someone is in fact a well known bias in everything from choosing (or indeed rejecting) a romantic partner to voting for a particular candidate at elections. If we feel we “know” someone, we tend to be biased about them: often, this works in their favour – who doesn’t want their child’s teacher’s cousin’s mate in elected office so that when they appear on the news we can claim we “know” them? Sometimes, it works less well – for example, we may reject a romantic advance from someone on the basis that we put too much store on one particular thing we know about them (say, that they prefer dogs to cats when we prefer cats to dogs) even though there is a lot we do not know about them (say, their favourite holiday destinations or preferences in household financial management, which are probably more important in the long run and may be entirely aligned). We get obsessed by small pieces of information thinking they are large pieces of information ultimately because we think we “know” someone, when in reality they are no more familiar to us than the person standing behind us in the shopping queue.

Trust

Similar to this is the human desire to seek out love and trust (which most would probably see as interlinked).

Remarkably, contestants were very liberal with the phrase “I love you” (one I would use only with my immediate family and very specific close friends of decades-long standing), even when “banishing”. They spoke with considerable certainty about how much they “trusted” fellow contestants – even though those fellow contestants were in fact practically unknown to them and were actually opponents for a prize amounting ultimately to a six-figure sum. This was a clever aspect of the challenges built into the series – the challenges did, in fact, require a degree of trust and teamwork – leaving contestants to rely on people who could be “banishing” or “murdering” them just hours later.

The desire to seek love and trust is often an uplifting aspect of human nature, but it can also be extremely dangerous. For example, it plays a key part in scams, where (typically lonely but by no means stupid) people are brought into a stranger’s trust and then deceived – almost exactly, in fact, as on the show (this is in fact something one of the “Traitors” was open about in the media after the series ended and even in interviews during the episodes). We cannot go through life without trusting people, but knowing when we can and when we cannot is the key – and it is not easy, as the contestants found out!

Words don’t matter

Interestingly, contestants also said of themselves that they were “100% a faithful” – this was the specific term adopted. It did not seem to occur to them that this phrase was meaningless – every contestant was going to say it, whether they were or they weren’t. Words, to some extent at least, simply do not matter – actions do (or should).

In fact, on another version of the show, the lone winner was a contestant who had started out as a “faithful” but switched to be a “traitor”. She made the point, in media afterwards, that she never once said in as many words that she was not a “traitor” or that she was a “faithful” after the switch – but she noted that everyone believed she was still a “faithful” without her needing to confirm it (albeit mendaciously) in words.

We all know the lesson here. Words are a very low share of communication. Testing someone by making them say something is close to pointless. Put another way, demanding everyone makes the same commitment openly while knowing some are not committed behind closed doors renders the making of the commitment pointless. There are lessons there for every walk of life, from work to politics.

Refusal to shift viewpoint even when evidence shifts

At the roundtable discussions, the brutal truth is that contestants were utterly hopeless at identifying “traitors”. Some of the reasons are outlined above – they were deluded about their ability to pick them, they followed the first thing that was said without properly analysing it, they went with the most recent point made regardless of its relevance, they felt they knew and trusted people that they did not know and should not have trusted. Another reason, simply, is that our instinct for such things can be very poor.

Notably, on all versions of the show bar one it has taken at least six episodes for a single “traitor” to be identified (and banished) – and in fact the norm is for a “traitor” (or even “traitors”, plural) to win.

In other words, the ability of contestants to pick a “traitor” at the roundtable has been zero – on all versions of the show, when they did get a traitor, it was either pure chance (the odds are that they will get one sometimes even if selecting purely at random, after all) or because another “traitor” voted for a contestant (knowing that they were a “traitor”) and managed to persuade others to do likewise.

Spoiler alert: now I am about to write a couple of paragraphs which, while not identifying the winners, do hint at what happened in the last couple of episodes of the UK version.

In fact, even on the UK version, the only reason a “traitor” did not win was that another “traitor” cryptically warned the remaining contestants about him in the knowledge that he himself was about to be “banished”; and even at that, one of the winning contestants still refused to believe that a contestant who was a “traitor” actually was and thus did not act on this information despite the risk analysis being 100% in favour of acting on it; that contestant would not have been among the winners (and indeed would have ceded all the prize money to a single “traitor”) but for two fellow contestants heeding the warning.

In other words, one contestant was so committed to a narrative that had another contestant as a “faithful”, that there was no shifting of this narrative even when the evidence clearly shifted and the risk was entirely with sticking with the (obviously false) narrative. What this shows primarily is our bias towards building a story of things in our heads and refusing to shift from this story even when it is plainly in our interests (and probable based on the evidence) that we should do so. If you want to know why politics is such a mess, now you know…

If I can’t have it, nor can you…

Of course, the UK version also had a contestant, realising his hopes of victory had gone thanks to the deception of another contestant, then throwing that contestant under the bus for no reason other than that he could do so. He gained nothing from doing so himself, but felt it necessary to even up the score – or, more to the point, to ensure he and the other contestant ended up scoreless.

This is again human instinct, and it shows how everything from politics to competing for promotion in a bureaucracy can turn into a zero-sum game.

Don’t get ahead of yourself…

Of course, one other obvious problem with human society demonstrated on the show was that contestants who did show some aptitude for identifying the “traitors” were then “murdered” by them, precisely because of that aptitude. In fact, one of the “skills” required to win the game, particularly by a “faithful”, was not to show any discernible ability at picking “traitors”. “Faithfuls” presenting themselves as fairly clueless tended to survive both “banishment” (as they drew few rivals and created little attention) and “murder” (as they were no danger to the “traitors”).

This is the classic problem with bureaucracies. Those down the ranks who show any discernible talent are not promoted for it, but rather ganged up on – precisely because they are a danger to those further up. Rather than competing on aptitude, those further up may simply choose to ensure they are, well, maybe not “murdered” but quite possibly “banished”. In the long run, this ends up with those not demonstrating aptitude being promoted… (look up “Peter Principle” for more on this…)

Teamwork and tribalism

For all that, teamwork (cooperation in general) is an essential aspect of humanity, and indeed central to the success of the species going right back to the Bronze Age and well before it. The challenges were an essential part of the show because they created bonding towards a common goal – it was in all contestants’ interests to add money to the prize pot.

Successful societies are those which have a lot of “challenges” but very few “roundtables”!

Nevertheless, teams can also be funny things. Contestants ended up identifying strongly with their status either as “faithful” or “traitor” (to the extent that one, given the chance to switch and with it clearly in her interests to do so, simply could not). This is, and I am using the term in its original rather than in any cynical sense, “tribalism” in its basic form. In fact, the assignment one way or another was fairly random (albeit based a little on personality profile), so whether someone was a “faithful” or a “traitor” was very little to do with any talent or ability that they had. Yet it did create a sense of belonging – contestants were genuinely agitated by other contestants accusing them of not being “faithful” when they were, not just because it could see them eliminated from the game but also because of a genuine sense of attack on their game identity and affiliation; and, as noted above, they wanted to believe fellow contestants that they liked were of the same (“faithful”) identity even when they were not.

Again, we see this in so many walks of life – from partisan politics to celebrations of patriotism to the selection of sports teams to support. We feel insulted if our loyalty to the group is called into question; yet in fact this can reach the stage that loyalty requires such a performance that those who are disloyal cannot be meaningfully distinguished from those who are genuinely loyal.

Past success bias

When the “faithfuls” finally did get a “traitor”, they thought they had cracked it. They then, of course, became complacent or even arrogant. Believing they now knew how to identify “traitors”, they in fact missed that the runner-up in the vote which saw the first “traitor” eliminated was also in fact a “traitor”, to the extent that he received no votes at the next roundtable and in fact only one contestant ever subsequently voted for him to be “banished” until the end! They had also missed that the only reason they got the first “traitor” was that one of the other “traitors” guided them towards her for his own ends.

Here we have almost all the previous biases in action, plus another. Human beings, psychologically, believe all their past decisions were better than they actually were; they then base future decisions on those past decisions. This causes a skew; decisions which are not as good as we think they are piled upon other decisions which are not as good as we think they are – a kind of psychological entropy as our decision-making becomes ever more disorderly over time. We saw an admission of this towards the end as some contestants admitted that it was become more difficult, not less so, to identify “traitors” – one reason was that they had been thrown by the circumstances of the first (and for a long time only) occasion on which they had (apparently) identified one.

This is an issue across huge areas of human society. One such area mentioned before on this blog and elsewhere is “coaching” on social media – on any subject, from fitness to language learning to financial advice. In many instances, a self-styled “coach” may have had apparent success once – but they may also have misconstrued the nature of that success, and misinterpreted the lessons to learn from it. In other words, even when we have success, we often fail to understand why…

Humility

To finish on an optimistic note, if I were to identify a common characteristic among the winners of the show, it is that they were humble. They were not, in fact, the ones who tended to claim they were especially brilliant at anything; you never heard them saying they were “two or three steps ahead”, nor even particularly “strategising” about how to win the game. One quite openly just wanted the prize money to help his mum out!

Perhaps, therefore, if there is a lesson to take from all of this, it is that humility is not given sufficient priority. None of us knows anything like as much as we like to think we know, least of all the authors of blog posts like this one! It is perhaps worth reflecting on that more often than we do.

Tips for Cuba

When I was part of a group doing a tour of western and southern Cuba in 2007, it was a truly exception place to visit (though by no means always for good reasons) – what was also striking, however, was how out-of-date some of the information about it was. This, tied to its own government’s incessant propaganda, makes it difficult to plan a visit properly.

Speaking recently to someone who had visited on health consultancy business (the health system is nothing like as good as the aforementioned propaganda makes out, by the way), it struck me that there have been two fundamental changes from my own time there which are worth noting.

Currency

It appears now that there is only one Cuban Peso, but no one wants it.

The official exchange rate is around 20:1 versus the US dollar or euro, but apparently it will go for 120:1 at time of writing. Payments are much preferred in US dollars or euro, although one or the other (not both).

In 2007, Canadian dollars were also widely accepted (although they were stronger then) and it appears that even pound sterling would work in major hotels or airports now.

Food

In 2007 all shops, hotels and restaurants were government run. It appears now that there is some “liberalisation” around hotels, 49% of which may now be owned privately, and restaurants, which may now be family run (no doubt subject to strict licensing).

However, there appears to be a warning there: such restaurants charge European prices for what is not European-standard fare. When I was there, it was difficult even to get milk or meat of any kind, though there was fish; it appears even that latter is now rare. Food remains bland and my recommendation from 2007 to carry sauce sachets around to liven it up a bit appears to remain a good one.

ESTA (United States)

Note also that at time of writing any visit to Cuba since 2011 (if my information is correct) can make applying for the Visa waiver scheme for entry into the United States more difficult: my understanding is that the better bet having visited Cuba within that timeframe is simply to apply for the full visa which, while more expensive and initially time-consuming, has a longer period of validity in any case. However, check for updates on this.

Russia – what are our objectives and parameters?

I would strongly urge people to stay away from social media, rolling news and news alerts currently. They are bad for mental well-being and typically full of misinformation. Notably, almost every single post on social media is too biased, too emotional or too ill-informed to be useful. For our own well-being, it is better to spend time in the real world with friends and colleagues making our own contribution as best we can.

If we absolutely must spend time thinking about Ukraine, we do need to deal with the uncomfortable parameters within which Western decision makers are operating.

Actually, it’s not just Putin. Russians are paranoid about invasions from the West – and, after Napoleon and Hitler, this paranoia is not totally irrational. The average Russian was over 100 times likelier to be killed in World War II than the average American. Therefore, Russian geopolitical priorities are and always will be focused on creating buffers against invasion from the West.

We will not occupy Russia. Western allies have just left Afghanistan, effectively deeming a 20-year operation failed. Nor were they prepared to nation-build in Iraq. So there is absolutely zero prospect of the West occupying Russia or anything of the sort. That immediately places a restriction on what the outcome of the current war can be.

Put another way, we will always have to deal with a Russia which is huge and which is paranoid about invasion from the West. That will still be the case post-war and post-Putin.

We should not overstate the opposition to the War within Russia, nor should we assume Russians who do support it do so because of propaganda. Remember, Russian paranoia about invasion from the West may be wildly exaggerated, but it is not entirely irrational.

To emphasise, this is not remotely to suggest that indiscriminate shelling of cities is for one second justified. It is to say, however, that most Russians will seek to justify it, and we all live in a world in which that is the case. Remember, in a world of nationalism and fake news, sadly the truth is not the only thing which is relevant – anything which is remotely plausible to a group of people can become their reality and the rest of us have to find a way to deal with that.

After all, we also live in a world where over a third of Americans outright support last year’s coup attempt in their own country, demonstrating a paranoia which is absolutely irrational. Remember, at the moment it is best to plan on a Trump-like candidate winning the next Presidential election and on ongoing racial tensions and democratic instability in the United States.

The argument is made, perfectly reasonably, that Ukraine is not Russia and that it must be allowed as a free and sovereign state, to choose its own future democratically. That is not really the question though. The question is how far Western allies should go to achieve this objective when they did not do so in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria; or indeed when they allowed a hardman to wreck Zimbabwe and Venezuela; or when within the past generation they left genocide and brutal civil war to rage in Rwanda/Burundi or even Yugoslavia.

We may want to believe this is just Putin being mad, that the West can intervene to control Russia, that Russians themselves do not support the War or do not have historical impulses based on experiences very different from our own, that we are ourselves not guilty of fake news or nationalism, that the United States still provides us with a reliable democratic anchor, and that principles such as sovereignty and freedom have always been sacrosanct in post-Cold War international affairs. But what we want to believe is often not what we need to believe. That none of this is actually true provides the parameters within which we are operating – that is the uncomfortable reality.

I certainly don’t have any answers. The only thing I am sure of is that, if we want to have a go at any kind of sensible public discussion, we do at least need to be honest about the questions.

What explains Germany’s “defence” policy?

Resignations are not very popular in politics just now, but twelve years ago Germany’s very popular President, Horst Koehler, suddenly did just that. He did so because of remarks made in a radio interview in which he suggested that Germany may have to use its military to defend its trade interests. He was in fact referring to an anti-piracy mission off Somalia, but given Germany’s unpopular involvement in Afghanistan at the time, his comments caused some indignation and he felt compelled to leave office.

His resignation came, it must be said, as a surprise, but what was most notable from a foreign (or geographically western) point of view is that saying your military may have to defend your trade interests is, to most countries, like saying the grass is green. It is a statement of the completely and utterly bleedin’ obvious. Yet in Germany it is not seen that way.

There was a further resignation last week when Germany’s naval chief resigned over comments that Russia deserved respect and that Crimea would never be handed over to Ukraine. In this case, it is many Germans who thought he was stating the bleedin’ obvious.

Meanwhile, Germany’s new Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock charts a steady-as-she-goes course which to most Germans looks like common sense but to allies looks like something close to blatant Russian appeasement.

What explains this curious detachment in Germany’s foreign and defence policy versus that of other western countries, including many other EU member states (not least France)?

Firstly there is, of course, an obvious historical reason, but this goes well beyond 20th century Wars. Here, however, again it is essential to recognise (as mentioned here in September) that Germany is much further to the east – both geographically and psychologically – than many in the Anglo-Saxon world (or even France) recognise. It looks upon Russia as a large nearby power and a significant trading partner. For centuries there were German-speaking communities deep into Russia, and many Russians right up to the present day have made their home in Germany.

Yes, part of this is to do with the 20th century. World War Two – in which both countries lost tens of millions of people (versus hundreds of thousands in the United Kingdom and United States) – left a scar, which is all the more apparent because both countries had previously held each other in high esteem, notably culturally. The sheer depravity of their actions towards each other continues to cause an understandable political trauma; most obviously, Germany has a deep-seated psychological fear of returning to any sort of situation which would involve conflict with Russia.

Secondly, however, Germany’s removal from the world of military powers also led to an underlying sense among its population that the use of military can never ever come to any good. This was why comments about using the military to defend trade routes – regarded as obvious in other large European countries – actually caused a popular President to resign. To other western countries, this is unbelievably naive; but Germans see their position as backed up, not least most recently by the failed incursion into Afghanistan in which it participated (in fact its first post-War participation in such a conflict). Ultimately, it is probably not unfair to suggest that most Germans see the purpose of “defence” as defending Germany if it were ever to be attacked – and since there is no chance of Russia seeking to retake Berlin any time soon, that means there is no need for any kind of confrontation with Russia.

It has been pointed out that in fact many of those Soviets killed by Germans in World War Two were in fact Ukrainian, but that simply does not figure in the average German’s calculations – nor, therefore, in the calculations of those they elect. Germany’s foreign policy is to be conducted entirely via the projection of trading power rather than military power – and that simply makes Russia very important and Ukraine, well, not so much. That is why the naval chief said what he said – ultimately he resigned for saying it rather than merely thinking it.

This is all to leave quite aside that Germany relies on Russia for 55% of its gas imports (accounting for 15% of its energy consumption), a figure which will only rise as Germany moves away from nuclear; in the UK, this figure is 15% (5%) and in France 25% (5%), a figure likely to remain stable. Cutting off energy supplies, even when it is the morally right thing to do, is rarely popular with the electorate.

This is why a German foreign policy which is seen as somewhere between naive and immoral in Washington, London and Paris is nevertheless very (if not quite universally) popular in Germany. The policy is not a result of the new Government failing to function, but of it functioning.

There will come a time of reckoning when Germany, the largest EU state, realises that pretending it is Switzerland is just not going to work. It is unlikely a three-party coalition is going to do anything other than postpone that day for as long as it possibly can, however.

Life just isn’t black and white

A year ago I lost my father; barring that I could not visit him for the last six weeks of his life, it was probably as good a departure as you can have – there were no regrets and plenty of happy memories. The quote I always associate with him is “If you hit a bad shot, make sure your next one is a good’n“, which for me is particularly good because it accepts that we all hit bad shots.

This is one of the great difficulties of the social media age. People get hung out to dry over one poorly drafted sentence or one misplaced tweet. Ultimately it is all very tribal (I know academics do not like that word but I insist it is apt to describe this aspect of human nature) and everyone is deemed “for us or against us”.

Yet life just isn’t like that.

Countries

One thing which came to mind around the anniversary of his death was my dad’s tendency to like lists and charts – he listed my school grades (plenty of “bad shots” there, it is fair to say), sporting performances (that did not take too long as I was poor at all of them) and whatever else. Because of his job as well as, it must be said, my mum’s understated Wanderlust, one thing he also wanted to do was list the number of countries I had visited as a child.

There, however, we ran into trouble. How do you define “country”? And indeed, how do define “being in” a country?

As time went by, this only became more complex. Is Scotland separate from England? If so, why are the Canary Islands not separate from Peninsular Spain? If not, then is Guernsey a country? If so… if not…

Then what happens if a country ceases to exist? What happens if it breaks up, like Yugoslavia? Or merges into another one, like East Germany? Or has uncertain status, like Kosovo? Or is widely but not universally recognised, like the West Bank? Or is not generally recognised but clearly exists, like Northern Cyprus (leaving aside the “Sovereign Base Areas”)? Or changes sovereign status but remains a place apart, like Hong Kong?

And in any case, how do you define being “in” a country? If you are in the air, are you in a country? At sea? If you land on the ground, have you entered the country? Or pull up in a port? Or do you have to set foot in it? Or clear customs? Various incidents cast doubt on all of these – I recall driving for fully 50km through the desert having left Namibia before reaching the South African border checkpoint, but surely I was already in South Africa? But if so, why not count places where I entered “No-Man’s Land” between borders on foot but never went through the checkpoint? Does a place where I left the plane and even ate in the airport count? A place where I never left the plane but was clearly on the ground? What about if I had the option of leaving the plane but opted not to?

These things are actually quite difficult, and there are several legitimate consistent “right” answers!

Planets

This came to mind further this month by a social media storm around an academic report suggesting Pluto should have its “planet” status restored.

Those of us of my age will recall “nine planets” in the Solar System plus the Asteroid Belt, though that is itself biased to our generation. In fact when the largest object in the Asteroid Belt, Ceres, was discovered it was deemed a planet for many decades. Those growing up now, used to “eight planets” would see no reason that Pluto should be a planet when similarly sized objects like Makemake (and, for that matter, Ceres) are not – and indeed that is what the paper says.

In fact the paper goes further – it recommends that, under the strict original definition of “planet”, the moon counts. So do satellites of other, er, planets. The point here is that the moon (and Ganymede and Titan and Triton etc) all orbit the Sun, just like Earth and Jupiter etc.

This seems counterintuitive. Surely the moon, Ganymede and all the others clearly orbit a planet? Yet in fact strictly that is not the case. The Earth and the moon, for example, orbit a common spot between them – because the Earth’s is so dominant, that spot is much, much nearer to the centre of the Earth than to the centre of the moon, but technically they orbit each other.

That though, yields hundreds of “planets”. Which is unwieldy. So back it is to eight. Or maybe not? After all, is Earth not a bit puny to be considered a “planet”? If you were living in orbit around Jupiter, you would probably think so…

Again, there are several legitimate right answers…

Language

Of course, this all ultimately comes back to the biggest query of all on this particular blog – what is a language, and what is a dialect?

Again, this is not black and white by any means. In some ways, currently at least, English is a “super-language”, being used for global communications and utterly dominant in science, diplomacy, sport and so on. It was not always so and it will not always be so, of course.

Then there is another set – definitely including the likes of Spanish, Chinese (whether we need to be specific as to which Chinese is another matter), Arabic, Russian and Hindustani (or just Hindi, if we view it distinct from Urdu?) and probably including Portuguese, French, German, Bengali, Japanese and Malay (and Indonesian if we insist on giving two names to varieties of what are surely the same language?). After that we look at other major languages such as Italian, Dutch, Polish, Korean, Persian/Pashto, Turkish and others of significant regional import; and then there are major trading languages such as Wolof or Swahili, or regional languages such as Gujurati or even Catalan, which need to be considered. These all hold different roles, however, and speakers are likelier to speak another languages “further up” the scale towards English the “lower” you go.

That is all before you get to real queries. Some are touched on above – Hindi and Urdu, Malay(sian) and Indonesian, Pashto and Farsi Persian and even Brazilian and European/African Portuguese are different varieties of what are widely accepted to be the same language. Though who do we define “widely accepted”, really? And are these really much different from, say, American versus British English?

Then there are the languages which are argued about – in Western Europe alone we can consider Leonese/Asturian, Aragonese, Occitan/Provencal, Romansh/Friulian/Ladin, Low German/Saxon, Frisian in various varieties, Scanian, (Ulster) Scots and others, some of which are even internally contested (note also Valencian versus Catalan). Then there are the dialetti italiani, actually languages directly derived from Late Latin rather than from Standard Italian (i.e. Tuscan) but which are generally deemed “dialects of Italian”. People may also speak on a spectrum between, say, Scots and English or Neapolitan and Italian, in which case which language is that?

Such status issues are just not black and while. There are several legitimate right answers.

When exploring such questions, we will inevitably hit the odd bad shot!