Great people

Speaker A: 00:00:00

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 Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing is Vladimir Putin that important really? Chris, so we're talking about Vladimir Putin, why are we talking about Vladimir Putin?

Speaker B: 00:00:30

Right, so yeah, the reason we're looking at this is because one of our loyal listeners, Caspar, got in touch to ask us to consider a topic which is, you know, what do we think Russia will look like post Vladimir Putin's reign? And as ever, I mean, you know, we'll obviously spend a little bit of time talking about that question itself, but in true Aleph fashion we wanted to look at the sort of broader meta question, you know, what is that question

Speaker A: 00:01:06

really, really asking? So I think what's interesting is you've all got a background in defence intelligence, I think, which is, I'm sure this is sort of exactly the sort of question you would have been thinking about sometimes. So he's asked the question, let's answer it.

Speaker B: 00:01:23

Well yeah, so I mean in terms of what you're interested in, to me the first thing you've got to work out is what does that question actually mean, right? So when you say what is Russia going to be like, you don't mean who's going to be top of the Russian, you know, hit parade, I was going to date myself there by saying hit parade, but you don't want to know, you know, about popular culture in Russia necessarily at that point, you're asking something else. So you're trying to think about, you know, states and categories which apply to the country. So you might be asking a question, you know, what's the political leadership of the country going to look like, or how's the economic performance of the country going to be?

Speaker C: 00:02:09

Well, I mean, I think it's right, how will it change? I mean, that's the thing where it may be some of those things, but actually the key question is what aspects will change if we take Putin out of the equation? Yeah, I mean, also, another way I'd be interested in

Speaker A: 00:02:24

framing that question is, can Russia change? Because it's a country that for quite a long time has, even going back to the Tsars, who were even by standards of a monarchy were peculiarly

Speaker B: 00:02:39

w, you get sort of, you know,: 1547

Speaker C: 00:03:58

strong personal leaders. Which brings us nicely on to the thing we want to talk about. What, big man theory? Which is, yeah, I mean, so what we just said really is that there have been a series of important personalities who are at the head of Russia from, you know, the Tsar through to, you know, Lenin and Stalin and up to the present day. But we've also touched on the idea that, well, actually, Russia seems in some way predisposed towards having people like that. If it wasn't Stalin, it would have been some other equally unpleasant character. And, you know, if it wasn't, is it perhaps, you know, if it wasn't for, if it wasn't Putin, you know, Yeltsin might have appointed another person who was just as similar, you know. So this is, so what we're touching on here is the kind of the great man theory and its relationship to some of those hypotheses. What is the great man theory? So this is, it only appears really, people only talk about it now in the context of claiming that it's discredited, but it's, it goes back to Carlyle, who said that the history of the world is but the biography of great men. And, you know, certainly since before I was born and my first, you know, encounter with the study of history and historiography, people have been saying, well, that's not true. You know, it's not, it's all very kind of outdated and a bit racist thinking it's all about great men. And actually it's more about, you know, the study of what we should be concerned with is the study of, you know, social conditions and mass movements and forces and stuff. And so the question is, yeah, is that true? Is the great, is it, are great men really important or not? Are we wasting our time looking at them? What do you think? Well, first of all, I want to split this into at least four, well, I'm going to do four, there could be more, distinct hypotheses, which get muddled together when people talk about this, right? It's all kind of mushed up together. So is this the Hare analysis? Yeah, this is my analysis, my personal analysis of what's going on here. First hypothesis, that the idea of a great person is meaningful, right? So that if you don't agree with that, right, then there's no point, the other ones don't count. But, you know, that there are, that individuals can have a significant impact on things that we consider important. I'll tell you right now, I think that's true. I think that's true. I think, I think you could say, you know, someone like Adolf

Speaker B: 00:06:22

Hitler was influential. And, and whether or not, whether or not it, it is true that, that uniquely then they were influential or whether, but, but the point is they, they definitely thought they were, they were great men. Right. And if you look at, you know, Napoleon, Napoleon and his, his seven great, great captains through history, you know, he was already thinking in those, in those terms, presumably about himself. And then, you know, Hitler comes along and has his own, you know, Frederick the Great and harking back to, you know, historical figures. They, those figures that have been found to be, or, you know, put forward as being historically very influential, very often. Have a personal sense of destiny. Have a personal sense of destiny, but, but believe that great, great men are important in history. Well, the fact that we've, I mean, I don't know

Speaker C: 00:07:19

if you're much of a history buff, but you've heard of Adolf Hitler, right? And you've heard of Genghis Khan, right? So these people, whether you like it or not, decades, centuries later. We're still talking about them. We're still talking about them. So I think it's beyond doubt that there is a meaningful concept of a great person. Now, whether or not you think that it's important in other ways, we'll get onto that. Second hypothesis, right? That the greatness of a person is a feature of intrinsic rather than acquired characteristics. Now this is the sort of born not made theory, and this is quite widely studied. There's quite a lot of literature looking mainly in the business press, actually, rather than politics. Just to say, this is fascinating, this stuff, but keep going. Yeah. And it is like a lot of things, a bit like the nature of the nurture debate, a bit meaningless. And the answer is, it's, it's a bit of both, you know, quantitative estimates vary, but it's kind of, you know, so the things, intrinsic things might be to do with personal charisma, you know, stature, even how good looking you are, that kind of thing. And acquired characteristics will be to do with knowledge and skills and those kinds of things. And it seems to be about 50 50. Hypothesis three. Are we discussing the hypothesis? I'm just going to lay them out. Okay, lay them out. For clarity. Third, the greatness of a person does not depend on contingent factors, right? So in other words, the greatness of Napoleon was to do with Napoleon, right, rather than something to do with the world Napoleon was born in. Had Napoleon been born in fifth century BC in Ethiopia, we would still, Europe will still have quailed under his iron fist. Okay. And then fourthly, and again, I think this goes back to the Russia point, that the existence of a great person in a particular time and place is not largely determined by exogenous factors. So in other words, somebody, if Napoleon hadn't existed, there wouldn't have been some other Napoleon, just, you know, the next Napoleon down wouldn't have just taken the place and done the same thing. All of those things, I think, constitute various

Speaker A: 00:09:24

facets of the great man theory. Give me a really quick rundown again of those four. Greatness

Speaker C: 00:09:28

is meaningful. Yeah. They're born not made. Yeah. They're timeless and placeless. Yeah. And they are irreplaceable. Okay. All right. They would be my four hypotheses, which I think jointly in some sense constitute a bundle of ideas, which you would call the great man theory. I think so just

Speaker A: 00:09:45

sort of keep my initial reaction is to point one or analysis one that yes, you know, an individual

Speaker B: 00:09:52

can and does matter. And then I've already forgotten all the other ones. But on that first one, I think it obviously can matter, right? So if you look at Alexander the Great from, you know, a growing Macedon, but you know, his father had sort of increased its power, but by no means was it a global empire. And then if you look at the almost instantaneous sort of or not, that's not quite true. But there's certainly quite dramatic collapse of that empire. That was when Roger the Mediocre took over. That's right. Yeah. All of his satraps, Ptolemy and so on. But and, you know, you can argue, did he ever conquer any of it? Or was he just sort of on a road trip, basically? But, but the point is, that one person's vision and ambition sort of built, you know, or was historically influential. And then that that historical influence receded quite, quite quickly, you know, in historical terms. But equally, you know, look at ancient Egypt, right? Obviously, a very sort of influential historical period. And most of us would struggle to mention, you know, to name more than about two pharaohs, frankly, and one of them, you know, wasn't very important, but we happen to find his, you know, his treasure trove. So in that context, I sort of think, well, you know, arguably, and I'm sure ancient Egyptian historians would argue that actually personalities and leaders were, you know, were very important. But, but I think you can have dominant political systems, you know, look at the US, for example, and yes, you can talk about the president, but the presidents aren't as influential on the achievements of that political entity, as, you know, leaders in other types of systems.

Speaker C: 00:12:00

oing to have an influence for: 1000

Speaker A: 00:12:31

And that's a bit of a cop out answer, because that's, hey, we all end up dead anyway.

Speaker C: 00:12:35

Right. So, you know, why cut your fingernails, they'll only grow back. No, I agree. But I mean, I think, you know, what we're saying is that, yeah, there are very influential people, but their influence does not extend very far. In comparison to perhaps the actions of less influential people, but who, but who do things like invent new technologies, or, you know,

Speaker B: 00:12:55

yeah, no, no, exactly. And I think, you know, for whatever reason, we, we focus, I mean, yes, there are great scientists that people think of, but we tend to focus on political leaders. And, you know, coming to your sort of second point, the the intrinsic versus acquired characteristics. And also a bit, you know, do you need to be in the right place at the right time? The third one, you know, Hitler is a great case study in these points. And we probably overfocus on Hitler, you know, as a non representative kind of leader. But, you know, up until his like early 30s, a failed artist bumming around this, you know, the streets of Linz or, you know, or, you know, Munich or Berlin or wherever he happened to be, almost like a semi vagrant figure, complete failure corporal in the Austrian army, you know, and yet went on to be the 20th century, maybe even history's most influential figure. So that notion that he sort of had some intrinsic qualities that were, you know, destined to sort of, he, he, he had been a failure up until a set of conditions came to be to exist, which enabled him to to exploit them. So yes,

Speaker C: 00:14:21

I mean, I think like, this seems just patently the case. I don't I mean, it barely needs to be argued if Napoleon had been born a caveman. It's unlikely we'd be studying him in history books. Right? I mean, that's the thing. So what I suppose what what is worth pointing out, because it isn't it is very confused when people discuss this, is that you can believe both you can say yes, there are such things as great people and actually great historical, most of the things, you know, the modern world is shaped by a bunch of, you know, primarily by by either the inventions of or the actions of significant individuals. And you can also say, those individuals would only have been significant if they'd emerged at that at that time in that place. And, you know, those

Speaker B: 00:15:04

u hadn't come off the back of: 1970

Speaker A: 00:15:50

they're selling at the time. Yeah, there's a kind of intersection, isn't there? Okay, well, look, a couple of things. I just do think we should return to the initial question and, you know, have a stab. Given all the things we just said, we should still have a stab at Casper's question about what happens to Russia after Putin. Let's have a stab at that. What do we think then,

Speaker B: 00:16:14

given all that we've said? Yeah, well, I mean, for me, there's a couple of things, right? The first is, I mean, there's the question of when Putin might disappear, because he doesn't necessarily show any signs of- How old is Putin, by the way? He's in his 60s, I think. Okay. Yeah. I

Speaker A: 00:16:30

mean, he could easily go for another 20 years, right? I mean, exactly. Yeah. And, you know-

Speaker C: 00:16:34

Very healthy, all that horse riding with his with his churl. Yeah, archery and judo and

Speaker B: 00:16:38

spearfishing and so on. That's right. But so there's a question of when he might go, but assuming at some point he's going to die, right, that much is certain, you know, what comes afterwards. His approval ratings are apparently still pretty good, you know, within Russia. So, you know, we don't know what will happen to that. But I think the case we were talking about in, you know, in Russia's particular case, it seems that there is a- the baseline is pretty high for autocratic style rulers. So, you know, it doesn't seem to me like there's a strong case for, you know, to a very democratic and open society in Russia. So that's the first thing. The second thing is you look at the direction of travel, right? Is Russia going to sort of decline as a power? Is it going to increase as a power? And if you, you know, post-Soviet Union, it lost half its population by, you know, the secession of Soviet Union territories or independence. And, you know, it lost about a quarter of its landmass, you know, down to a mere 17 million square kilometers. It's now only the biggest country in the world. But since then, you know, we've seen an increase in both their sort of sphere of influence, but also taking back bits of territory, right, you know, like the Crimea and so on. So, you know, I think there's an argument to be made that they will continue in that direction of trying, you know, Russia trying to become a larger territory than it is potentially, you know, some expansionism or at least increasing their sort of sphere of influence. And then there's the sort of intransigence to the West. This is what I was saying, you know, when you say what's going to happen to Russia after Putin, you've got to define what are you talking about with Russia that's going to change. And, you know, one of the key factors is their intransigence towards the West. And I can't really see any signs of a kind of rapprochement with, you know, with Europe and America, because I, you know, don't see the kind of appetite for that.

Speaker C: 00:19:03

There's no particular reason to believe it's going to happen is the key thing. I mean, that's right. You know, so you, yeah, you've got on one hand, you approach this, you know, the two things you will look for are, you know, what, say, once we define what we're interested in, say something like, you know, will Russia and the West, you know, become more allied, say, you know, and you think of some indicators. And that might be things like, you know, participation in international institutions like the NATO Russia Council and things like that, you know, and you define those particular hypotheses. And then you look at the base rates. Well, you know, as Chris said, the base rate for Russia is, you'd have to say it'd be unlikely, it'd be surprising if they suddenly changed their kind of overall political tone, because it is based on, you know, powerful people. And you get ahead in Russia by knowing powerful people and by working those networks properly. And so I can't, there's not, I don't think there's any particular, I'm not ruling out, there's not zero probability that Russia will suddenly liberalise and become a sort of modern democracy. It's just, you'd have to judge it unlikely. And the other thing you want to look at is who is in, who's in control, and what are their incentives? Does anyone have the incentive to make that happen? No, it's kind of locked down. You know, Putin certainly doesn't, he doesn't have the personality to be ambitious to create that kind of Russia. And, you know, the way that he has designed the system of power in Russia means that the only people who are going to one day succeed him are people who've also succeeded in that. Now, you know, arguments along these lines were advanced in the 80s by, you know, the Department of State and the CIA, and, you know, who concluded that the Soviet Union would never disappear. And then, of course, you know, up popped Gorbachev and, you know, and Perestroika and Glasnost. So you can't rule these things out, but they're unlike, it's unlikely, you know,

Speaker B: 00:20:49

change is rare. So... And I think that points to, you know, that reflects back on this great man theory that if you're saying effectively the 90s was an aberration in Russian history, and there's a baseline which, you know, a certain set of conditions, you know, perhaps a counterpoint, you know, Russia being a counterpoint to the West, it being kind of autocratic, and it wanting to be as big as possible, you know, all Putin really has done is sort of nudge back towards Russia's baseline, you know, so in many ways, you know, while he was at the steering wheel, the car was kind of already going in that

Speaker C: 00:21:39

direction. Yeah, and I don't think, I think you wouldn't necessarily think of the 90s actually as that much of an aberration. It was, you know, Yeltsin was hardly a raging Democrat. And at the same time, you know, what happened to Russia's industry, you know, it transferred from being controlled by a bunch of state apparatchiks to being... No, exactly. And also, you know, thrown

Speaker B: 00:22:01

in with that is that Russia's flirtation with democracy wasn't, you know, wasn't a good affair they had, you know, it was a very traumatic affair from their perspective. So... I think

Speaker C: 00:22:16

we've answered that nicely. I've got some, I looked at, I was interested in this question of sort of the longer term prospects for countries, empires. Go on. So I did some data gathering about empires, and countries, and how long they last. And just looking at countries, right? Do you know what the longest lived country that's still in existence is? Oh, that's a tricky one. You'll be able to get this. I can tell you how old it is. It's 2,673 years old. It's going to be somewhere like Ethiopia or something. Oh, very good. Although I'm afraid Ethiopia's independence as a country ended in, with the Italian invasion. Tragic really. They are the longest country ever, right? So they were around for 2,916 years. The ignominy of having that ended by an Italian invasion must still rile the modern day Ethiopians. But no, this is the third longest lived country, and it is still around. You'll get it. Think of a famously long lived people. Egypt? No. Long lived people?

Speaker B: 00:23:24

Well, they're not just towards a hemisphere or something. Is it the Sudanese? Think east. Go

Speaker C: 00:23:28

east. China? No, go even more east. Japan? Japan, yeah. Okay. And then the second most... That was a third continuous... Okay, right. Second? The second longest lived country that's still in existence is Sweden. And then England. The third. Oh, really? Yeah. 1,086 years young. England. So anyway, I've got... Thank you, Alfred the Great.

Speaker B: 00:23:52

Just while we're at it... Alfred the Great. There you go. The foundation of the English people.

Speaker C: 00:23:56

can empire, which lasted from: 1821

Speaker A: 00:26:59

There's a question there about, there's a question there about hegemony versus empire, but nonetheless, we won't go there. Yeah. I mean, I'm just, I'm smashing all these terms together. Yeah. Okay. So, well, I hope Caspar that's answered your question satisfactorily.

Speaker C: 00:27:12

Well, it hasn't, but hopefully it's been interesting.

Speaker A: 00:27:15

Yeah. Hopefully it's been interesting. We'll wrap up there. Thank you as always to listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. Goodbye.