Good things coming from bad things
Are there any positives to emerge from the global pandemic? How can we make the most of a bad situation?
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Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg, Nick Hare, and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. And this week, we're discussing the good that comes from bad. And due to the lockdown, unusually, we're recording this remotely. Okay, Nick, go for it.
Speaker B:Tell us about the good that can come from bad. Well, I don't know. I don't know if you're much of a newshound, but you might have noticed that there's this coronavirus going around. And as a result, there's a lot of people talking about, you know, the apocalypse and how, you know, how society is going to collapse, how, you know, the economy is going to collapse, how we'll be paying it off for generations to come, how millions of people are going to die, all of those kinds of things. And I thought maybe for a bit of much needed contrast, we could perhaps just look at some of the positives. And, you know, obviously, it goes without saying that lots of people dying isn't a positive, right? So we're not saying that we're not, we're just ignoring the downsides. But I think, you know, what are some of the good things that might come out of this pandemic? But also this question of, you know, given that we look at decision making, and, you know, if good things do come out of it, you might ask, well, why, why couldn't we have been doing that before? Why does it sometimes take bad things, you know, to make us discover or invent good things?
Speaker A:I mean, that's a nice sort of economics question as well, because I guess it's about incentivization and trying to incentivize people to do stuff, but they don't actually do it until they have to do it. But let's start off, as you said, you know, not to take it lightly, it is a not nice situation. And, you know, there are awful things happening. But whilst acknowledging that, if we think about if we take each one of us for a moment, you know, I know that there are some things that I already sort of, I'm quite non, that I'm already not non-averse to, is that the right word way to put it? So for example, you know, why not? Exactly. So, you know, not having to get off the train every day, and seeing all my family, not going into work to sit with next to people who don't like me very much. I can, and also I can sit at home next to people who don't like you very much. Exactly. So yeah, so I know, sort of taking each of you for a moment, which one are you finding that's
Speaker C:okay about this? Peter? I've barely noticed a change. Because I really, I go into our office quite occasionally. So I've barely noticed a difference in my kind of day to day routine. Okay. Yeah, there's something slightly worrying about that. I know, it's sad. I think it's very sad. I'm worried now. I need to get I need to get out more.
Speaker D:Yeah. Chris? I think for me, it's the sort of the fact that nobody's nobody's bothering me particularly. So I can get on with the things I need to need to do. And all the kind of superfluous activity seems to have gone by the wayside. So kind of a more efficient way of working?
Speaker A:More efficient way of working. Yeah. But hold on, you've got kids. And do they just know better than to not bother you? Because they must be at home as well. But they're locked in the garage. So they're nice. Perfect advantage of a subterranean garage, I hope. Yeah. Nick,
Speaker B:what's been good for you? Well, that's definitely also true is the fact that, you know, it's almost like everyone just had a collective decision, the force on us, maybe, but a decision to sort of cut away the pointless bits of life and get on with the essentials in life. You know, well, do we really need that meeting? You know, do we really need to send those emails and fill in those forms? And it's like we've all said, nah, we're going to not do those things. There's suddenly, you know, suddenly loads of sort of more, you know, just the time is better. It's more, you know, you've got three hours to do work rather than being badgered about pointless stuff. So that's good. And then there's like specific things of being forced to find solutions to things that turn out to be better than the things you were doing before. So, for example, me and a bunch of other board game people have set up a community of, you know, trying to find, well, what online board games can we play, for example. And now we'll be doing that more than we would have done in the past. I think I've just
Speaker D:remembered another thing that's really appealed to me about the current crisis, which is the sort of evaluation of what key workers are, you know, who is essential for society to function. And it turns out it's not middle class people. It's delivery drivers, it's bin men, it's, you know, people involved in, you know, distribution of things and also healthcare workers. Again, basically, unless you're a doctor, it's pretty much showed that all of our jobs are entirely
Speaker A:dispensable. It's a bit worrying. And yeah, let's not forget telephone receiver cleaners as well. Yeah, I put podcast producers in the essential bracket. Essential, absolutely. Well, actually, that sort of brings on something else, actually, which is already in my regular work, we do a lot of remote communication. We're very clued up with that. And, and yeah, obviously, that's happening a lot more. And I see that with my wife, and she's a teacher. And I see her sort of working remotely and using remote platforms. And I can see her sort of quite struggling with it. And all our mates really struggling with it from work. And, but it's a new thing for them. But also, I was on the phone to a doctor this morning, and you know, and he was talking how he's been doing a lot of remote consultations as well, via things like Skype and zoom and stuff like that. So I mean, what's my point, I guess sort of it's sort of enforcing these sort of kind of technology technologies on us. They're quite good. And they're quite efficient. They're quite useful. Right, where do we want to go with this? So we've kind of talked about ourselves a little bit about what we're sort of personally finding, do we want to make some predictions on this, broaden it out? Who wants to talk about that? What can be the long term benefits of benefits of all these sorts of stuff?
Speaker B:So it could be a bit more structured about thinking about the kinds of impacts that that, that we're going to see, right. And you can draw on historical examples here quite, quite effectively. But, you know, first of all, the technological side of it. And in this, you know, the technology that we invented during World War Two, was all geared around trying to win World War Two. So for example, computers, well, you know, the kind of first really practical working programmable computer was invented to crack German codes, the atom bomb various, you know, machines, different types of electrical engineering solutions that went into, you know, bombers and, and more sophisticated types of equipment and rocketry and all these other things that jet engines, you know, all these things that are really still commonplace today, all came out of that necessity. And so here, you know, we might see something similar, we can going to be very quickly trying to look for some sort of cure, vaccine, you know, mitigation, something or other. And, you know, for all we know, that could lead to something, you know, really universal. I mean, people have been talking for a few years about a universal cure for flu type viruses. And, you know, it's possible that this will spur us on to create such a thing. Just so that's just on the technology side, which is the most obvious in that it's, you know, a specific response to the thing that we're trying to trying to do.
Speaker C:Lots of news reports already about lots of online service providers providing the Skype chats and Hangout type chats, remote working productivity tools. They are onboarding millions of workers, millions of new users every day at the moment. So they're a huge boon for the telecommunications industry, as people migrate from our traditional face to face working to online working.
Speaker D:I think the other thing that'll be interesting, because I mean, it's often with those things like World War Two or the space race, which actually kind of built on a lot of World War Two technologies, is that it's not necessarily about the creation of brand new things, but it's about the rapid acceleration of things that were already kind of bubbling around. And so, you know, I think things like, you know, there's been a lot of work trying to model what's going on with the virus with incomplete information and so on. And, you know, I wonder whether kind of solutions, AI solutions to disease tracking, you know, create more generally useful predictive algorithms that can be used for, you know, other kinds of behavior tracking or prediction.
Speaker B: , for example, which prior to: Speaker A:And indeed, isn't that the case where they talked about, is it Singapore and Hong Kong have been better at dealing with this, because of their experience with SARS. And so if that sort of duplicated, you know, in the West, etc, for the same reasons that you've just set out. So yeah,
Speaker B:that's a good thing. Okay, that's the kind of technology side. But then, more generally, we've got this, let's talk, I mean, I think the economic side is an interesting one. And I would put economic and society together here, because I think that, you know, the economy really is some total of, you know, everyone's individual decisions. But it, like something like the Black Death. Now, as you can tell from the name, I don't know if you- Wasn't good. How much you follow history, but it wasn't, it killed something like a quarter of people, possibly more.
Speaker D:I think it was about 40% of northern European population.
Speaker B:Yeah. And so if you were there, you probably, you know, it would have been a scary time. But of course, afterwards, not only, you know, did it again lead to the discovery of various, you know, the sudden lack of, you know, peasants led to the discovery of various, you know, labour enhancing technologies, types of ploughs and move to animal husbandry from, you know, grain farming and those kinds of things. But it also had the effect of effectively getting rid of serfdom and giving economic, you know, actual explicit economic power to the peasants.
Speaker D:But then you could, you could, you could say the same thing from the Second World War and the, you know, the establishment of the welfare state at the back end.
Speaker B:Well, yeah. So things that kill lots of people are actually good. They are good for the people who are left behind in general. Now, at the time, it's bad. I don't want to skate over that. But this is as opposed to things which create a lot of destruction, like physical destruction. Physical destruction impoverishes people. Everyone is worse off. You know, if you have a nuclear war, it's not good because everything gets destroyed. But in a type of, in a pandemic, where they actually, the only things, you know, it's only sort of hurting people, but not things, you would expect afterwards for, you know, the people who sort of survive to be better off in general. So, so, yeah, that's, that's, it's just the way that, you know, the transmission mechanism of the economic impact is different, whether you're destroying stuff or whether you're,
Speaker D:whether you're killing people. And I guess the, the issue is the extent to which people constitute the, the infrastructure of, of society. And, you know, so if you, if you lost all of your scholars, or, you know, it may not be good for those people remaining, if you, you know, if you lose medical knowledge or whatever it might, might be, you know, the kind of whole issue of the destruction of the Roman Empire and a regression of society. But, but yes, in general, if, if, if the, the loss is kind of evened out across all strata of society, then yes, I guess having fewer people puts you at a, at a competitive advantage. But you're right. There must be some
Speaker C:critical mass. I suppose though, there's a question of how quickly the economy will bounce back being a key thing in how long the negative effects are felt. And as you've pointed out, Nick, in a pandemic, things aren't destroyed. Capital and property is not destroyed. But there's kind of a, a, a, a, a, a, a gap that's been created in, in the economy. So a lot of small businesses are shutting down or going out of business, um, things like restaurants and, uh, small businesses rely on lots of face-to-face contact with customers or with each other. So they'll, they'll, they'll go out of business, but they'll, they'll be replaced once things return to normal. But this, there'll be this year or six months worth of gap that's not been, not been capitalized on where it's like, how, how quickly do we fill that gap up again? And the economy starts behaving or, and to what degree do the, these benefits that we're feeling that are going to be long-term benefits. Like now we work from home and now we have better disease control, and now we have better community spirit, et cetera, et cetera. How long do they last and how much, how much of a benefit do they give us long-term? Does that make up for the gap that we've had? I think, I think also, you know, if you look at, um,
Speaker D:if you look at, uh, the second world war and, uh, and the first world war, in fact, and U S arms manufacturers, uh, it was obviously a good, good business to be in, you know, um, uh, Bastiard, you know, talks about what is seen and what is not seen and uses the metaphor of, um, you know, a broken window and it being good for the glazes and how that then spreads out into, uh, you know, into a broader economy. And obviously if you're in the ventilator business or the, um, you know, the antibody testing kit business, then you are, um, it's a massive boom market for, for you. And the, the, the, the kind of balances the extent to which the, um, the disruption is, um, is causing opportunity and the extent to which it's, you know, that, that balance between it causing new opportunities and wiping out, you know, good existing opportunities.
Speaker C:Yeah. But if they take, for example, there's no tourism in the UK now, and there won't be for the foreseeable future tourism, yeah. Tourism. So then the terrorism of accounts for about five to 10% of foreseeable future is a bit strong annual turnover, you know, five, 10%, but that's five to 10% of whatever the annual turnover of the UK is, there's just not going to be there. I don't think the sale of ventilators is going to make up for that in the short term. And I don't
Speaker B:think British tourists who aren't going to Spain and they're going to be here and spending money
Speaker C:here. So they're not there. They're not, they're not going outside of their homes. There's no tourism at all. So there's a big, there's a big loss in revenue occurring, um, that will eventually re be refilled, but that lot, that historical loss will still be there. You know,
Speaker B:there's going to be a gap in people's, you know, if you look at like the world war two and you plot GDP, a world war two, it is the world war two is like a blip. It's GDP is like a straight line. And, and, um, it, you know, certainly within, within, you know, five years they were, we're back on the trend, um, you know, a previous, previous growth. So I, I, I'm, I don't, I think we, it won't register. I mean, it's obviously very significant now, but partly what's happening. And I think this comes back to what we were talking about earlier about discovering new ways of, of, um, of, uh, behaving partly what's happening is it's accelerating creative destruction. So I was reading today that, you know, GameStop, uh, which temp was controversially keeping its shops open in the U S is now, um, closing for good that surely they have an antiquated business model of selling computer games in person, physically giving games on hard copy to people. And, um, uh, you know, that, that, that is, be sad for the people who work for GameStop, but it's an inefficient use of resources. You know, after this is over, it's good. If those people all go and get a job somewhere where they're adding value instead of just, you know, um, adding no value. So, so I think there's an evolution at work. Yeah. This is going to sweep out some of the economic deadwood that's there. Um, and, and if someone is doing something, which is genuinely valuable and they can't, they can't because of, you know, coronavirus and that's temporary, they will still be valuable afterwards.
Speaker A:Um, I just want to change direction slightly. Um, Nick, you started talking about, um, the economic side of things and the social side of things and putting those together, but what about if we separate it out for a moment, do we want to talk a little bit about society and things that we see going on? Can we draw any conclusions from that? Um, is that, so is that an interesting
Speaker D:direction to go in guys? Obviously, one of the things you talk about in adversity is this notion of both individual and societal resilience that, that, that it is, um, theoretically at least increased and, you know, people refer to the blitz spirit, but of course there's also the counter analysis, which is that the blitz spirit was in fact, you know, the construct of propagandists at the time and that you had, you know, uh, bomb chasers going, going along and looting shops that, uh, were actually, um, uh, clean, you know, had been, had been destroyed the night before and so on. Um, but, but in general, I think, you know, you obviously had, um, last night there was the applause for, you know, NHS staff and, uh, so on and you, you know, you perhaps get those, um, you know, everybody faces the, not the great thing about a virus, but one thing about a virus is that, um, it is, it is, you know, it doesn't acknowledge, um, most of the barriers that kind of separate us as a society. And, uh, so, you know, everybody's kind of at, at the same level of, of risk, albeit, you know, there's some, some age factors and so on that, that affect it. But, um, but yeah, so I, I think one of the things we're, you know, we potentially see is after a long period of political division, perhaps more cohesion and acceptance of, oh, I suppose we're all vulnerable
Speaker B:to this, to this thing. Yeah. Cause I guess the post-war, the kind of post-war consensus that came out of World War II was based on the fact that people realize, I guess there's a realization that the market had not been providing a lot of things that people sort of needed. I mean, World War II, Britain went more or less to a totally statist centralized economy and it worked. So naturally, um, you know, afterwards people were inclined to say, well, okay, well, perhaps we need some kind of compromise, you know, perhaps we do need to have, um, health provided by the state and, um, you know, and, uh, and to have much more comprehensive system of benefits. And then we'll have the market as well on the side. Uh, you know, it lasted a good 50 years, didn't it? The only, my only, and I don't know the answer to this, but my feeling is that, um, World War II had such a cracking story. There were some baddies and there were some goodies and there was a, an act one where the Germans were taking over the world. And then there was, you know, the end of act two, Britain is on it, on it, we're on our own. And, you know, then act three income, you know, the Americans and the Russians, and we all win, uh, against some baddies. I, I don't, I'm not sure if coronavirus is giving us quite the same narrative and I'm not sure, you know, it, it's kind of interesting to think, well, we'll, I mean, I said to the, you know, one of the things I said to the kids a couple of weeks ago was, I'm pretty sure you'll tell your grandchildren about this, you know, but actually like we know, you know, people remember World War I, but they don't remember Spanish flu. Now it's just going to be the same. Yeah.
Speaker D:I mean, potentially, but I do think those, those narratives are often constructed. You're, you're right. You know, the second world war did have a, a compelling narrative, but, um, at the time, you know, like were, were the Russians really on, on, on the good side, you know, was that better that, uh, that they prevailed and then what happened afterwards and so on. Um, so I think those, though, you know, history is written by the victors, right? Well, let's hope, um, uh, COVID-19 isn't, uh, isn't writing our, um, obituaries in the future. Okay. So we're close to rounding up
Speaker A:here, but before we do, is there anything anyone wants to move on to before, just one last thing
Speaker D:before we finish off? Yeah, I was just gonna, gonna sort of talk about, um, you know, what, what this might mean specifically for countering, um, uh, COVID-19, but what the, um, what the longer term implications might be for the sort of, um, pharmaceutical market and, and so on. And, um, you know, one of the, one of the things, um, that has been argued, particularly in the U S and there's a whole, the whole industry of studying the FDA and whether it saves more lives or it costs more lives, you know, does it, by preventing drugs getting into circulation, does it actually, um, you know, hold up perfectly good drugs that would have got through and saved lives versus making sure they're, you know, safe and efficacious and so on. Um, but I think, you know, the, the, the process we're going through now to accelerate, you know, the introduction of, um, um, you know, uh, uh, immunization and, um, you know, treatments for the symptoms of, of COVID-19 and so on. Um, you know, they could have a very long lasting direct benefit on, um, on saving, saving lives. You know, if we can streamline that process and strip back the bits that aren't necessary because of this, this current emergency, that could be a legacy that could have very, you know, very profound
Speaker A:effects. Um, yeah. So before we finish off to round things off, we started at the beginning talking a little bit about, um, how we feel about this personally, how it's been affecting our lives personally. Um, we'll let, let, let's return to that, um, and think about going forward, um, how we think this might change things for us personally. Um, uh, Nick.
Speaker B:Well, one, one of the things that I, uh, I remember sort of hearing about years ago, it's about tube strikes, uh, and the fact that one in 20 people apparently after a tube strike permanently changed their route to work. I mean that to me, that suggests that, you know, a lot of the time we're not, um, a 5% is not insignificant, right? Because you, you imagine rolling that over to all sorts of other patterns of life. Um, and, uh, you know, to sort of suggest that we are, most of what we do is habits and, and, and one of the benefits of, of being forced into a situation like this, where you can no longer do what you've been doing habitually is, you know, you try out different things and some of those things are going to turn out to be more optimal. Um, so yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm touched on, um, I touched on board games, but, but it's more generally kind of more frequent communication. I mean, one of the things I've discovered has been spending a lot more time on online messaging on, on Slack and WhatsApp and stuff because people are really desperate to keep in touch and, uh, you know, I, I dunno, maybe it's, uh, I might just be being optimistic, but it seems like people actually just enjoy that and that could, you know, just it becoming much more the norm to say, you know, I mean, last Friday I had a virtual birthday party. Um, you could do that more often, right? I mean, there were friends of mine who'd live, you know, in a hundred miles away, um, who, you know, you don't, you see maybe once a year, but, but why not? Why not have a virtual get together every now and then it seems like, well, it works, right? So, so I don't know, I sort of imagine a lot more virtual socializing. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like
Speaker A:an upside for you, you know, you're communicating more with, with your friends, but, um, watch out anyone who knows Nick, he's going to be in touch with you more in the future. Yeah. Yeah. It's a
Speaker C:good change from having your sort of weekly check WhatsApp thing in your diary. If you just have it on all the time, it makes much more sense. No, I still don't have notifications on. I would
Speaker A:never, all I'd ever do is check my phone. Hmm. Um, Peter, what about you? What do you see changing?
Speaker C:Something I've noticed that normally I'm quite sedentary and I'm naturally very lazy and I I really like cycling, but only when I'm actually doing it, getting, getting on the bike is the hard bit. Once I'm on the bike, I love it, but not having the option of just being able to do that whenever I want makes me want to do it more. So I've actually been enjoying my constitutional walk every day, uh, that I wouldn't have otherwise done, uh, because I, you know, cause I'm only
Speaker A:allowed one. So I'm like, I've got to make the most of it. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe that'll be a habit that develops and you continue in the future. Uh, Chris. Uh, I think for me, it's probably,
Speaker D:uh, well, a couple of things. One is, um, the, because goods haven't been easy to come by first of all, cause you can't just go out and shop whenever you want. And secondly, because some things are, uh, you know, been panic bought, um, out of circulation, um, having sort of stocks of things and planning, um, methodically, how you're going to use those, those things for, for, for your meals, I think has, um, has been something that's actually quite gives me a feeling of satisfaction of, of kind of efficiently using all of the, all of the goods you have. Um, the second thing is, um, just an appreciation of, of travel and holidays, the inability to, to do that. I mean, you always forget the impact of, of these things. And within, you know, six months or something, you're back to all of your old habits, but, um, certainly in the short term, I anticipate
Speaker C:booking lots of, uh. We should do this every year, aside from all the deaths and all the businesses going out of our business, we should do this every year. Chris is quietly celebrating the profligate society getting its comeuppance. I think that's awesome.
Speaker B:I mean, I, I, if I could design a perfect three month holiday, just spending it at home would be up there to be honest. Um, yeah, I mean, I think spring and summer, you know, it reminds me of when I was at university and we had a, it was one night where we had a power cut all night. Instead of sitting about watching telly, we got the candles out and chatted and, you know, had a bottle of wine and probably played a game or two. And at the end of it, we all said, you know, this is great. Why don't we do this more often? But the problem is we
Speaker A:didn't. We were stuck to the telly the next day. Yeah. And that's what would be interesting if we, you know, we have this conversation a year from now, um, with the two or three of us that are still alive that, you know, will we have continued with these good habits? Um, okay, look, so we'll stop there. Thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm, I'm Fraser McGruer. I've been here with Peter Coghill, Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights. And until next time, goodbye.
