Turning It Off and On Again

Fraser McGruer: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGruer. I'm here with Nick Hare, Peter Coghill and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights.

On this podcast we take a look at a wide range of topics from an analytical viewpoint. And today we're discussing turning it off and on again. Nick, what's this all about? This turning off, turning on?

Nick Hare: 00:00:28

Yeah, well, I, I was having an online call with actually these two fine gentlemen. Here we go.

So a week or so ago, and I kept having stuttering video, like every sort of 30 seconds the video feed would freeze and my Internet would kind of cut out. And Peter told me to turn my router off and on again. Well, because he's an engineer, he always says, please power cycle your networking device.

But that was the gist of it. And I was like, you know, I just sort of thought, well, that never works. And I did it and it worked.

And it's a very low cost intervention, turning it off and on again. But it made me think, well, what, what actually happens when you turn something off and on again?

And are there other things we could go around turning off and on again? I don't just mean computers, I mean people, systems, societies. What would work anyway? Peter, what happens when you turn something off and on again?

Peter Coghill: 00:01:28

Okay, well, that's probably what you heard, not what I said. So I probably just said, turn your router off. So, yeah, the key concept here is the state of the machine.

And computers and routers, they're relatively complicated things. There's lots of bits of hardware in there, lots of bits of software all doing stuff. And essentially what happens is no software is perfect software.

And particularly in things like commercial routers, the software is usually pretty terrible.

There will be memory leaks which mean that a particular process has run for too long, just starts eating up the memory and never giving it back to the system for it to then be allocated to other, other processes. So that could be a problem.

Nick Hare: 00:02:15

Sorry, I don't want to get too technical, but a router is just a computer that runs software that makes it think it's a router.

Peter Coghill: 00:02:22

Yes.

Nick Hare: 00:02:23

It's got no weird hardware in it that makes it a router.

Peter Coghill: 00:02:25

It's just there's a few, there's a few bits of hardware which are unique to routers. Well, sort of unique to that class of thing like the WI fi radios and things like that, but nothing too special. It's just a computer.

Fraser McGruer: 00:02:37

Okay, so far, so gripping. Keep going.

Peter Coghill: 00:02:39

So, yeah, so memory leaks, zombie processes Sometimes processes which should be short lived don't get killed off properly or don't exit properly and they just stick around. So you'll start using up system resources. In routers particularly, they have a network address table.

So when you send out a message to the Internet saying fetch me google.com, the router remembers you having sent that request. So when the response comes back, it routes it to your computer and not to the TV or some other thing on the network.

And another, another thing is bitrock, a random cosmic ray can just zoom in and flip bits in your memory, which can screw things up.

So what you do when you turn something off and on again, you're returning it to a known good state, which is when it first reads all of its memory, loads the operating system, loads the processes and starts working. So you're getting it back to a good known state.

Nick Hare: 00:03:36

Right, there we are. And how does it, how does a computer know what to do when you turn it on? The turning on. That's turning it off. What does the.

Turning it on, how does it know.

Peter Coghill: 00:03:47

In broad strokes, it gets told that the system knows to look at a particular memory location on its disk or its flash drive or something and then it starts to read instructions into the CPU which then load other instructions, which then load other instructions.

Nick Hare: 00:04:01

So does this mean we could use that to work out when turning it off and on won't work this schema. Right.

Peter Coghill: 00:04:09

Presumably in computer systems.

Nick Hare: 00:04:10

Yeah, yeah. So what, what does that. How can you get a computer into a state where that. Where it won't work? Turning off and on.

Like can you corrupt the initial, the good state?

Peter Coghill: 00:04:23

Yeah, that's a common failure. If you break something in your C drive, if you delete Windows EXE or something.

Nick Hare: 00:04:29

Because it's tempting, because it takes up.

Peter Coghill: 00:04:30

So much space, it'll get so far with its boot up and then it will fail. It'll go into an unusual state.

Nick Hare: 00:04:36

So it has a little pathway of things that it goes through and, and you know, we know that. So it's actually getting into quite a complicated state when you turn it on.

Peter Coghill: 00:04:44

Yeah, yeah. It's going through quite. Going through multiple steps.

Nick Hare: 00:04:47

So is it. It makes me think of like soft locking in computer games, which is where you're. The game itself is running fine.

It hasn't crashed or anything, but you have somehow got stuck inside like a boulder or something where you shouldn't have got in there or you've got a situation where like there's a key that you need to get out of the room that you're in, but the key is in a place outside the room. And the game has somehow not considered the possibility that this could happen. So you're unable to make further progress.

Fraser McGruer: 00:05:16

It was like a stalemate kind of thing, right?

Nick Hare: 00:05:18

Exactly. I think stalemate is another good. It seems like another sort of good analogy for this.

Peter Coghill: 00:05:23

For.

Nick Hare: 00:05:23

For this kind of situation. But.

So presumably on that pathway, that sort of complicated pathway of just when you turn it on and it goes through all these steps, one of those goes wrong, you're toast.

Peter Coghill: 00:05:34

Yeah. And the computer should be completely deterministic. But there are things like cosmic rays which introduce external randomness to the system.

But there are processes within computers which rely on randomness to operate, like cryptography and things. So as soon as they become part of the thing that determines what state it's in, you can get yourself into. Into these situations.

Nick Hare: 00:05:59

Yeah.

Fraser McGruer: 00:05:59

I've got a question. It's not. It's sort of, do we turn it on and off again?

And I think it's something I'm probably not meant to do, but if I get this sort of stalemate, glitch type thing, I think you probably know what I do. What do I do?

Nick Hare: 00:06:11

Rage.

Fraser McGruer: 00:06:12

Well, of course, rage is always flush.

Peter Coghill: 00:06:14

It down the loo.

Fraser McGruer: 00:06:15

Well, rage is always first. First. Yeah. And then second, third.

Nick Hare: 00:06:18

Oh, do you want Chat GPT? What to do?

Fraser McGruer: 00:06:20

Nah.

Nick Hare: 00:06:20

Oh, okay.

Fraser McGruer: 00:06:21

I'm too enraged for that. And I might even be annoyed with Chat GPT. At that point, I unplug it.

Nick Hare: 00:06:27

Right. Is that. Is that Peter, Is that more powerful than just turning it off?

Peter Coghill: 00:06:31

Yeah, it depends what it is, but.

Fraser McGruer: 00:06:33

Well, let's say we're talking about a computer, and let's say I want to turn it off. I can't. It won't turn off. And so I will just unplug it and teach it. Yeah, And I love the danger of that.

Peter Coghill: 00:06:45

It depends on the computer.

Fraser McGruer: 00:06:46

Sometimes I'm not getting. Right. So I just want you to say no. Fraser, this is a terrible.

Peter Coghill: 00:06:49

If it's a laptop, it won't make any difference. Cause it's got a battery.

Nick Hare: 00:06:52

Oh, actually, Peter, since you're there, not dissimilar. Whenever I do a hard reset cause the computer's crashed, I always count to 10.

Peter Coghill: 00:07:01

Should we take these? IT help desk?

Nick Hare: 00:07:02

No, no, no, this is relevant. I always count to 10 before turning it on again. And I think I was told to do that by an IT guy in the 80s who my mum worked with.

He said, you know, no, don't leave it for a bit. So I've Always done that. Does that do anything.

Peter Coghill: 00:07:19

I've heard of that. It matters in some things because you want. You want to make sure that the. Any resemblance, any sort of remainder of the state is cleared.

Nick Hare: 00:07:32

But I feel like it takes a little bit of time for the electricity to come out of the computer. Yeah, yeah, that's what I think is going on.

Fraser McGruer: 00:07:39

And also, I've not heard back from you on ticket 364, but. And anyway, let's crack on. So we're here with the computer engineering podcast. So, yeah, anyway, yeah, sorry, Peter, go on. Where are we?

Peter Coghill: 00:07:52

Well, I think, I conclude. I think I concluded. So. Yes. So complicated things like computers get in weird states for lots of different reasons.

Turning it off and turning it on again gets it back into a known good state.

Nick Hare: 00:08:05

So if we use that as a framework, that means we need to find things with states, meaningful states. So that. That is basic. I think the way to think about what a state is is if I ask you how something will behave when I do something to it.

If you need to know something about that thing first, then it has a state. So in other words, if I say what would happen if I press this plus button on my oven? You would need to know, well, is the oven on?

Is what number is it showing already? Because if you press the plus button and it's on 5, it goes to 6, but it's different if it starts on 8.

So if the answer to how is this thing going to behave in response to some input depends on something about it you need to know, then it has a state. So that's basically what a state is. So lots of things are like that.

Fraser McGruer: 00:08:54

Yeah, I mean, we're at the moment. So we're defining. I hadn't quite. I didn't know we were going to be talking about cosmic rays or states, but here we are.

So at the moment, we're in the business defining what a state is, and then we want to know what a good state is.

Nick Hare: 00:09:06

Yeah, well. And whether or not. Is there a process for getting back to it?

Fraser McGruer: 00:09:10

Yeah, so we need. Yeah, okay, that's.

Nick Hare: 00:09:12

Yeah, yeah. So the. So you know, things. So a board game is. Is a brilliant analogy.

I mean, it almost isn't really an analogy, but, you know, chess starts in the same position. You can. You mentioned stalemates. You know, you get into a sort of stalemate.

Now, I know chess says, well, that's actually the end of the game, but you can imagine being that being the equivalent of the game crashing if they didn't have a rule for stalemate yeah.

Fraser McGruer: 00:09:35

What do you do?

Nick Hare: 00:09:35

Well, you just reset the thing to the. To the starting configuration again and. And you know the, the answer to well, what can I do in this game and what will happen if I do? It is always.

Well, it depends what's going on in the game. Yeah. So. So that's a very sort of stateful kind of system. And normally. So normally a state will have information about what has happened in the past.

So the state contains some information about what has. What that thing has experienced and what it's done and it affects the future. I think that's any. I mean, is that a state? You happy with that?

Peter Coghill: 00:10:08

Yes, yes. It's sort of it bullets kind of like it's the current status of the system. So it's like any kind of dynamic part of the system.

What value has it is its state.

Nick Hare: 00:10:19

Yeah. Are there variables that characterize the condition it's in? Yeah, you know, I guess things that don't have a bowl.

Peter Coghill: 00:10:27

Anything always the same. Any dynamic system will have state which could be arbitrarily have an arbitrary number of dimensions to it.

Fraser McGruer: 00:10:35

Yes. That we either want or don't want.

Peter Coghill: 00:10:38

Right. Yes. So I will come probably dig more into this, but I've been working on a theory of rebootability.

Nick Hare: 00:10:44

Nice.

Peter Coghill: 00:10:45

And one of the key things is the state, but not just the state, it's where that state is. So if the state is external to the system, it's written down in some form that's outside of the system. Then the system is more rebootable.

For example. Right.

So your router, the how to be a router instruction set is on a memory which is a separate memory from the working memory and all the registers inside the processor of the router.

Nick Hare: 00:11:20

Right. Which means that you can't be edited.

Peter Coghill: 00:11:22

That can't be edited. It's sort of when it boots up, it only reads that memory. And this is the how to be a router instruction set. It's separate from the other memory.

So you can clear the other memory with all the current state stuff and reread your instructions and get back to the good state where things where that contrasts the systems where there is no sort of rom. There is no like external memory that you can read from things like the climate. Right. The. The weather is the system. There is no.

There is nothing you can read from to reboot the climate. So you can't turn the climate on and off again and make it better. There are no. There's no backup of glacier exe that you can reload once it Melts.

So that's. So it's not only with the state principle.

Nick Hare: 00:12:12

No, this. I'm. Yeah, you, you can't intervene. I was just thinking, well, could we somehow just sort of freeze everything and then restart it?

But no, because freezing it is going to have an effect on the climate. Yeah, it's like literally nothing. Yeah, I see what you mean.

Peter Coghill: 00:12:27

Yeah.

Another word sort of from the social political example, like the written constitution, or a constitution that's derived from written law is rebeatable.

You could, you could wipe out the government and then re elect a bunch of people and then start the government again just by getting all to read the constitution and start off.

Chris Wragg: 00:12:44

Yeah, almost like an election.

Peter Coghill: 00:12:46

Almost like.

Nick Hare: 00:12:47

But I mean, obviously it feels like there are, you know, we were talking about this. That's actually a pathway of different stages you go through on a booting up process for a computer, you know, so the, if Windows gets corrupted.

Well, actually there are things, you know, there's like a safe mode, so there's certain other bits. And the earlier the thing that goes wrong is the kind of more fundamental the reboot needs to be.

And I was just thinking, well, the American Constitution kind of says in a minimal way how to be America. Yeah, that's how you.

Peter Coghill: 00:13:19

Bios for America.

Nick Hare: 00:13:20

Exactly.

f that. You could say, right,: 1776

We're just going to go back to that. And these are the principles from which.

Peter Coghill: 00:13:40

We'll derive the: 1776

Fraser McGruer: 00:13:42

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:13:43

I mean, and that feels kind of. Well, I mean, who could you. I mean, I think you could do that, right?

Peter Coghill: 00:13:49

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:13:50

use what they actually did in: 1776

But now we're, we're forking it in a different direction and we're going to add our own crazy laws like jaywalking and not being able to drink in public. But you know, essentially it reset.

to go back to English law in: 1776

Peter Coghill: 00:14:20

Yeah. This, this brings me to my third criteria. So rebootable system.

Nick Hare: 00:14:26

So we've got states. We've got a known good state.

Peter Coghill: 00:14:28

We've got states.

Fraser McGruer: 00:14:29

Yeah.

Peter Coghill: 00:14:31

Having an external versus an internal state. So like some sort of preserved external good state that you can return to. Principle three is consensus versus reality.

So a system is rebootable if you could gain consensus that that's what you want to do. Or like a social system in social system. So things. A good example of a rebootable system. Right. Is how money works in an economy.

There's a sort of shared myth that money is useful and valuable thing.

Nick Hare: 00:15:07

Peter, tell no one that it isn't.

Peter Coghill: 00:15:09

Yeah, yeah. But there are examples in history where the monetary system was rebooted to address things like inflation.

So when Germany introduced the Deutsche mark, the previous currency, I don't want to call it the predecessor to it, the Reichsmark. The Reichsmark. That's it. It was having runaway inflation was just a total mess.

It was basically abandoned and people were using cigarettes and things as a sort of makeshift currency. Basically they decided no, this doesn't work. So they introduced the Deutsche mark. And one Sunday it was not there, not a thing.

And the next Monday it was a thing and everyone had some Deutsche marks to use. So they rebooted the economy. But that required everyone to agree that this is the new shared myth from all going to work with.

Nick Hare: 00:15:57

Yeah, it's interesting that because it feels like the state, like the actual money in circulation at any given time is a, is just a static feature. Yeah, but actually it is path dependent as you say. Like actually there's lots of path dependency about the way that we use money.

Peter Coghill: 00:16:13

And particularly dependency is my, my criteria number four.

Nick Hare: 00:16:17

Oh, okay.

Well, I think criteria being sort of embodied in the state in some way that you go, you know, things like the fact that there's been lots of inflation then has this self reinforcing kind of quality where, where people just put their prizes up every day anyway. And now you're kind of stuck in that.

And, and when you reboot the money that goes, you get rid of the fact that we now expect this money to go up all the time. People go, well that was the previous, that was yesterday's money. Now we've got this new money, we've wiped out the memory somehow.

Now whether that will work. I mean, I think that's fundamentally what you're trying to do. Right.

Fraser McGruer: 00:16:52

So sorry Peter, before you continue, can you remind me. So let's go through these.

Peter Coghill: 00:16:55

My criteria.

Fraser McGruer: 00:16:56

Yeah, your criteria. So just give me the headline for them. 1, 2, 3, 4, 3.

Peter Coghill: 00:16:59

Well, we haven't done two, we've skipped over two.

Fraser McGruer: 00:17:00

Oh, we didn't do two. No wonder.

Peter Coghill: 00:17:02

So number one is the external versus internal state. So yeah, number two, which we'll come back to is the bootstrap problem.

Fraser McGruer: 00:17:12

Okay.

Peter Coghill: 00:17:13

Number three is the consensus versus reality.

And just to finish around that one off, a non bootable example or an example of a reboot that failed was the French Revolution trying to introduce the 10 day. Working the 10 day calendar week basically government tried to introduce a software update. Nobody downloaded it, nobody applied it and.

And everyone just kept on the seven day week. So that, that's where. That's an example of a reboot that kind of failed. It's just stretching my computer.

Nick Hare: 00:17:41

I mean I think the French Revolution as a whole was an interesting example of a sort of attempted reboot that probably. Yeah, it didn't really go back to a good state, I would say.

Peter Coghill: 00:17:51

And then to pick up the path dependency bit. Some systems have histories.

Fraser McGruer: 00:17:56

Sorry, I'm not. What does path dependency mean?

Peter Coghill: 00:17:59

So the way you got to a place, the path you went through to get to a place is important. It's not the states, each step in your path, they're not independent. Sure.

Nick Hare: 00:18:12

I mean if you treat the path, path that you took as part of the state, then. Yeah, then it disappears.

But yeah, I mean basically it's a system where you might say, well the variables in this system have the same value but it's going to behave differently because somehow the way you got to state A which looks identical is different to the way you got it. Yeah, yeah.

Peter Coghill: 00:18:31

I've called it hysteresis in my criteria, but it's the same sort of thing. But a system will be unrebootable if there's no clear way back from state. So you've gone state 1, 2, 3, but there's no way back to state to state 1.

You have to go back through via state 5 or something to get there.

Fraser McGruer: 00:18:50

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:18:50

And that makes me think of, you know, the sort of classic dictatorship comes to power with an election and then abolishes elections.

Peter Coghill: 00:18:58

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:18:58

And it's like, well, we've now got rid of this kind of restore point or whatever. We've got rid of our ability to reset.

Fraser McGruer: 00:19:04

Okay.

So this reminds me of, you know, when I'm editing, when I'm editing video and because the way I do it and the way I save it, I don't know if it's the same thing or not. But you're leaving it. I don't know if it's a breadcrumb thing, but I. You have to sort of.

It's kind of non destructive and I have to save A state as I go along. Because if I don't, if I have to be careful, if I don't save the previous one or I know. To give you a way back basically.

Peter Coghill: 00:19:25

Yeah, yeah. Like your undo cue. You can sort of at some point you can say I'll save it now and then I'll save up, free up the memory to being used by the undouky.

Fraser McGruer: 00:19:36

Are these the four criteria? Is there more to say?

Peter Coghill: 00:19:38

Sorry, there's more to say on that one. An example of a non rebootable system might be the rainforest. Right. So the crash, the crash of a rainforest will be all the trees die out.

That causes the soil to degrade and dust to get the soil to get blown away as dust, leaving you with a savannah. Now that you can't go back to having trees very easily because there's no trees there to plant more trees.

So you end up with a sort of runaway situation where you go into a different state, you can't go back to your good state. Yeah, so sometimes these are called tipping points.

So the climatologists sometimes mention tipping points in the climate but there are other tipping points in more socioeconomic systems where banks fail or governments fail and there's no easy way back to a good state. Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:20:36

So.

Well, Peter talked about a good state and then he actually mentioned the French Revolution and I think revolutions and those sort of things like the Cultural Revolution in China and attempts to reboot society as it were. I think that brings up this question of well actually you do kind of need an idea of what a good state is.

And, and it made me think of during the French Revolution, you know, the distinction between the sort of Hobbesian viewpoint which is that people are the kind of state of nature, the hunter gatherer stage of society is really horrible. Everyone kills each other and dies of disease. Versus the kind of Russo viewpoint which was more inspiring. The French Revolution of.

Well actually you know, we, we need.

If the freer we are, the more things we can take, you know, the more laws and oppression we can remove, the nicer humanity will be, you know, if we can bring us back to. And I sort of think, well actually the distinction between the kind of conservatism versus the radical viewpoint.

They're both going in different directions. A sort of progressive radical viewpoint is we need to reboot the system, you know, completely. We need to go right back, get rid of everything and.

But you know, start again versus the conservative viewpoint which is sort of like essentially saying that. But it's like actually there was a good Point in the past that we need to get back to. But actually the last basics. Yeah, exactly.

The last few commits have been terrible and we want to, you know, rewind back to there.

Fraser McGruer: 00:22:06

There's definitely some, some things I want to pick up on there and develop further, but I think we need to bring in Chris as well.

Chris Wragg: 00:22:12

Yeah, I was just going to sort of expand on that point about conservatism and the, the idea of sort of fundamentalist ideologies which are not only should you revert to the original, you should never have changed from it in the first place.

So if you think about a literal and historic reading of the Quran, for example, and the requirement to not deviate from that, so to not have any further states to essentially, you know, kind of freeze things in aspic. And you think, why, generally fundamentalism, I guess historically has been shown not to be a terribly successful system.

You know, it doesn't allow you to, to evolve, innovate, all those kinds of things. But why, if that was a good state, is it the case that you shouldn't preserve it? And I guess because we would hope you would get a better state.

Right. And we would, we would evolve towards that.

Nick Hare: 00:23:14

But yeah, I think the Great Flood is a good example here where it's like, well, humanity is fundamentally flawed, goes completely off the rails, horrible, corrupt, violent world. God says, made a bit of a mistake creating these guys, completely deletes the world.

There's a sort of little tiny seed, you know, the kind of rebooting guy, Noah and of course all those lovely animals and. But the question is, well, if humanity is flawed, what's going to stop us just going along the same path, you know, is it is.

Is the flaw, the error state or the apparent error state you get into actually more deeply embodied in the system itself that actually, you know, this system is going to end up in that bad state again, whether you like it or not. Which feels like that, you know, it's a bit, I suppose, a bit. I'll tell you what it is. It's a thing called save locking.

There's a thing called save locking in, in, you know, computer games where you save at a point where unbeknownst to you, you actually can't win now. So there's a game called Alien Isolation and there's not really any save points and you kind of only get one save.

Fraser McGruer: 00:24:22

Did you say if you save it,.

Nick Hare: 00:24:24

Then you save it and then you. But it turns out that you can't, so.

So you save, let's say you save your game and and just after saving it turns out the alien was just behind you and it kills you.

Fraser McGruer: 00:24:35

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:24:35

And every time you go back to that save, the same thing happens. And I'm just thinking, you know, is humanity save locked? Because every time we try and reset things, hey presto, it goes wrong again.

Fraser McGruer: 00:24:45

Well, this starts to get close to things like I think there's an existential thing here which is essentially we're talking possibly to have a state you need a system, let's say, if that's the thing.

But also how do you know when you've got that and also what was before that and what might come after that and how sort of different systems bump up against each other.

Chris Wragg: 00:25:06

I was just gonna say, I think one of the things that is problematic about this idea of returning to a good is the things which you believe are the variables associated with that good state that you, you. So you look back on some halcyon period and you go well that, that was great, let's recreate that.

So what we now need to do is, you know, wear buckled shoes or that was the thing, wasn't it? But actually it turns out it had nothing to do with the buckled shoes. It was a series of other, you know, socio cultural conditions. Right.

So often the call to reset things is based on a misreading of what it was that was good about that, that time. And because we're not terribly good at. It's such a complex system, you can't really say. So that's why populist conservatism is very often. Right.

You know, we need to re. Establish these three things, you know, religion, you know, the institution of marriage, blah, blah, blah, and then everything will be, will be fine.

Yeah, and actually it wasn't that stuff. It was actually the, the banking system at the time and you know. Right, exactly.

Nick Hare: 00:26:24

Yeah. And post war something or other. And. Yeah, but, but, but even then, you know, there's the problem that.

Well in the 50s, the 50s implied the 60s and you know, are we going to get back.

Chris Wragg: 00:26:34

Right.

Nick Hare: 00:26:34

So have we, we got, you know.

Fraser McGruer: 00:26:36

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:26:36

Even if we do sort of successfully reset, do we actually know that we're not going to. Yeah, can we get it right this time?

Fraser McGruer: 00:26:41

But, but sorry, before you go on, I don't want to bring you in, but it sounds like. So, but you need to sort of agreement on definition on, on, on what a good state is. Right.

Yeah, but also potentially agreement on what the actual system is. Maybe. I don't know, I suppose just, just.

Chris Wragg: 00:26:56

To add to that, I suppose what I'M saying is in most of these systems it's, it's probably impossible to know what the good state actually was, what the good things about the good state were.

Fraser McGruer: 00:27:07

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:27:08

However, there have been examples of really successful reboots and I'm thinking particularly of like post war Germany and Japan where you know, they got themselves, I don't know if you remember your history books, but they got themselves into something of a, of a funk, hadn't they? The Germans and the Japanese, they'd gone in, I think we can agree they're into a bad state.

A bad state, a kind of error state where they were essentially trying to take over the entire world and oppress everyone.

And, and you know, you might think, I think my assumption would be, well, this, there's so much, you know, think of all the, the culture in Germany and the, how deeply rooted Nazism was and all this is going to be impossible to reset all that. Lo and behold, you know, 20 years later, they're all a bunch of long haired, pot smoking hippies supporting, you know, socialism.

And same with the Japanese. You know, one minute they're taking over the entire world, next minute they're all working in factories, making.

Chris Wragg: 00:28:02

And they're the nicest people in the.

Nick Hare: 00:28:03

World, incredibly nice people. So, so actually somehow rebooting those two countries, actually it wasn't as hard as it looked.

And then we, so then we go, well, I see, what Iraq, get rid of sale of Hussein, we'll do the same, we'll reboot Iraq. Turns out that was not as easy as it looked.

Fraser McGruer: 00:28:20

But I think that's fascinating.

Nick Hare: 00:28:21

Reboot Afghanistan, Forget it.

Fraser McGruer: 00:28:23

But that's fascinating. So far, almost the way we've talked about it is like as an internal thing which we have control of.

But essentially what you've got there is almost literally, if we think about, in terms of international relations and the organizing principle of international relations, which is the state. And you've got a state, whichever way you want to take that word, interacting with another state. I think that's fascinating.

Chris Wragg: 00:28:46

Well, I think one of the issues there is the imposition of a good state from one system onto another system. Right. So you go, well, we've got these.

Nick Hare: 00:28:58

Things like one of those USB drives.

Peter Coghill: 00:29:00

With the operating system that segues into my point. Sorry, brilliant.

Fraser McGruer: 00:29:04

Let's go on with Chris. And then. So Chris, you finish your point?

Chris Wragg: 00:29:07

Yeah, well, just simply that you, you, you, you, you have a system that works somewhere you see something that looks a bit like that system and, and you assume all you need to do is set up the good state from system A and system B and all will be fine. But you fundamentally imposed something on that system that doesn't work within that actual system.

Fraser McGruer: 00:29:31

Yeah, okay, nice, Peter, make your. I think we're missing one of your criteria.

Peter Coghill: 00:29:35

Yeah, that leads nicely into my, into the bootstrap problem. So a system can only be rebootable by something outside of itself.

So for example, your broken computer, if the operating system is truly corrupt, you need an external. You need your Windows 311 CD ROM to boot it up again and reinstall Windows A car.

Every time you start your car, it's the starter motor and the battery operating independent of the rest of the engine to get the engine running running Non rebootable things like the global economy, you can't reboot it because there's no other global economy outside of it to sort of stimulate cash and get trade going again. If everyone stopped trading for 30 days, nobody would have any resources to start trading with each other again.

So political West Germany after the war was essentially rebooted by the Allies outside.

Chris Wragg: 00:30:34

By sort of steaming the Marshall Plan.

Peter Coghill: 00:30:36

Yeah, but the Marshall Plan. So, yeah, so that's the bootstrap problem.

And a really good technical example that these national grid people are petrified of is what's called a black start, where if everything dies, so all of the substations, all of the backup generators, everything goes. It's incredibly difficult to get everything started up again. It could take, could take weeks or months to get the entire national grid back.

Fraser McGruer: 00:31:10

Everything's broken.

Peter Coghill: 00:31:10

Everything's broken because power stations cannot start without power. Yeah, so you're in trouble.

Fraser McGruer: 00:31:16

Okay.

I mean, what I like about this, what's encouraging and makes me feel optimistic is fortunately, and there's historical evidence for this, if the world breaks down, if humanity goes wrong, if the environment, et cetera, the Great Flood and Noah's Ark, as you said, that shows that we've got that external actor who can help us with that. So that's good. So. Well, actually, speaking of which, Go on.

Nick Hare: 00:31:41

Then there's obvious, there's flood myths, aren't there in every. Everyone's got the flood myths, everyone's got this idea of a reboot and we have the good.

We've also, in Christianity, you've got the good, the kind of good state Eden. And we've got, you know, the ability to reboot with, with floods or whatever every so often.

And it occurs to me that, okay, well, it's an important idea, you know, that we obviously it really works as an idea. The idea of retest resetting stuff. But I also think we really like it. I think there's something really pleasing about a reboot. And I don't, I'm.

I can only guess as to what makes it so satisfying, but my feeling is there's something very sort of high entropy about a state that has gone wrong. Right. There's a lot of memory in it, there's a lot of history in it. There's a lot of stuff you need to kind of keep track of.

You know, you've got a lot of complexity and pathway and when you reboot, that's all gone. It's a blank page again. And there is a quite nice fit almost of like, well, I can delete that from my brain and you know, we're back to.

We're literally back to square one, which is the same concept.

Fraser McGruer: 00:32:49

You know, I can see where you're going with this. We're going to pivot on our podcast. We're going to be a new health and well being podcast, the new you, because God knows you need it.

And so, okay, look, we need to sort of.

Peter Coghill: 00:33:03

There is a reboot that we all do every day, which is having a sleep.

So when you sleep, your body, your brains get, your brain gets rid of chemicals which sort of build up during the day that prevent you from doing various things and ultimately can lead you to start hallucinating and going a bit off the rails. So when you sleep, your brain clears these out and you can sort of start fresh the next day.

Nick Hare: 00:33:31

I think part of what makes sleeping so nice is I know sleep is a literally a biological and psychological phenomenon, but I think it has a psychological association as well, outside of the physical effects, which is that sense of like, yesterday is gone. Delete, like whatever, wherever you were at half eleven last night. Well, we can kind of draw a line under that.

You know, never let the sun go down on an argument, as they say. You know, it's like the next. Tomorrow's another day, a new day is a kind of like a reboot, isn't it?

Every day you get this reboot and you get up and you're like, well, all of those fuck ups I did yesterday off the red, off the ledger, you know, a bit like sort of getting, you know, clear when you clear your criminal record after however long. Exactly like that. Yeah.

Fraser McGruer: 00:34:16

So look, we do need to wrap up a couple of things.

First of all, I, you know, I thought this would be an interesting topic, but then when we started talking about it, I thought, no, it's not very interesting. Because I just didn't understand what Peter was talking about.

But I can't help feel that that might be my problem rather than Peter's or anyone else's. And then, lo and behold, I think we've gone some really interesting places with this, which I didn't expect. We've brought in so much.

Second thing question. What's your favorite reset? Now take that in whichever way you want. It could be personal, it could be history, could be fictional, whatever you want.

Nick Hare: 00:34:47

Well, I suppose, you know, this is one we did all experience. Covid the lockdowns. Now, I know that isn't quite the same as a reset, but actually it did.

So it's almost like we sort of all said, well, we're going to reinvent the rules a little bit now. We're going to go back, you know, nobody goes to work, nobody goes out, nobody interacts. And it's like, well, we.

And then when that came, when the world kind of came back online, I think there was a bit of a sense of let's do it properly this time. We didn't, but it felt like we could.

Peter Coghill: 00:35:18

Covid was like a two year long Saturnalia.

Fraser McGruer: 00:35:21

What does Saturnalia mean?

Peter Coghill: 00:35:23

There was a Roman festival where the rules got reversed.

Fraser McGruer: 00:35:25

Ah, okay.

And I'm sure something you also, you wanted to say there, which was, you know, even though it was a sad time and bad things happened, but there was some elements of it that were a nice reset.

Nick Hare: 00:35:36

Yeah. I mean, a lot of sympathy to all these sufferers out there.

Chris Wragg: 00:35:40

Yeah. Nick's not suggesting that we should do it again. It was a purge of all the worst elements of society.

Nick Hare: 00:35:46

Yeah.

Fraser McGruer: 00:35:47

Okay, guys.

Chris Wragg: 00:35:48

Well, I wouldn't say it was a great reset, but the one that was, that is most striking for me in my, my life was when I was about 14 and I'd grown about 4 inches in a year and I sort of swung up off the sofa to walk into the conservatory or something and suddenly, suddenly fainted. Right. And I think it's the only time I've lost consciousness. And the reset after it was. It's the most bizarre thing.

I don't know whether this is standard when people faint, but essentially it was like a complete reset. Not, you know, not the waking up from sleep and thinking, oh, here I am. But almost like a rebirth. Like I had died and come back alive again.

And I had that, this, this incredible sense of, of literally my brain being rebooted. It was.

Peter Coghill: 00:36:51

And was it. It wasn't unpleasant?

Chris Wragg: 00:36:54

It wasn't unpleasant. It was very shocking, especially as like a 14 year old, you know, it was like,.

Fraser McGruer: 00:37:01

What.

Chris Wragg: 00:37:01

What just happened. But yeah, yeah, I wouldn't say, you know, I woke up and found God. But no.

Peter Coghill: 00:37:07

Have you ever been under general anesthetic? No, because the effect is very similar. You kind of. You kind of suddenly. Well, not suddenly. It takes a little while to come round, but it's.

On some level, it's a bit like having the best night's sleep you've ever had.

Nick Hare: 00:37:21

Yeah.

Peter Coghill: 00:37:21

You feel really kind of, apart from the. Any pain of surgery, you feel quite sort of refreshed.

Chris Wragg: 00:37:27

Yeah, Fraser's really not.

Nick Hare: 00:37:30

Fraser's done that millions of times, constantly falling off things.

Fraser McGruer: 00:37:33

Yeah, yeah. I've been under general anesthetic more times than I would, you know, have liked, and every time I've come around, it's bloody horrible.

Peter Coghill: 00:37:40

Oh, yeah, no, no, once you get.

Fraser McGruer: 00:37:41

Because your throat really hurts because you've had like a breathing.

Peter Coghill: 00:37:44

Yeah.

Fraser McGruer: 00:37:44

Once you get over those and you're groggy and nauseous.

Peter Coghill: 00:37:47

Yeah, maybe these things get over those sort of physiological problems. But the, the cognitively it feels like. Oh, actually, yeah. Feel really kind of really, really, you know, refreshed.

Fraser McGruer: 00:37:56

Okay, this is. I've gone wrong somewhere then. Okay, good. Chris. Yeah. I mean, the more I think about it, my whole life has been turning off and on again. Right. Yeah.

You know, with my sort of mental affliction of adhd.

Nick Hare: 00:38:08

It's not mental affliction, society's disease.

Fraser McGruer: 00:38:11

It is.

Nick Hare: 00:38:12

Yeah, it is.

Fraser McGruer: 00:38:12

There we go. Yeah. I'm always sort of rebooting constantly. My whole life is that.

But I think the best reboot, the best off and on again was not long after we met each other, nick going back 17, 18 years now, which is when my daughter was born, which is how we know each other through our kids, et cetera. As you know, I was working as an analyst and my reboot was to leave the. Quit my job, leave the country, go to Honduras and become a dive master.

And the reboot in itself was fun, but actually that set me on a path where I'd always been interested in photography, but a combination of, you know, that sort of freeing oneself new environment but amazing light and having fun with family, but also wanting to document, I guess, this new part of my life. All that put me on a path which I think has been a good one, a fruitful one and a happy one of.

Yeah, basically film, photography, documentary, which also.

Chris Wragg: 00:39:10

Not much diving, though.

Fraser McGruer: 00:39:11

No, very little diving.

Nick Hare: 00:39:12

I mean, next week it'll be skateboarding or something.

Fraser McGruer: 00:39:14

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually did loads of diving during that time.

Peter Coghill: 00:39:17

Yeah.

Fraser McGruer: 00:39:18

As one might imagine being a dive master.

Nick Hare: 00:39:20

Yeah.

Fraser McGruer: 00:39:20

But I have not dived once since then.

Nick Hare: 00:39:24

There's not much cool for it in Lincolnshire, to be fair.

Fraser McGruer: 00:39:26

Not really, but, you know, it doesn't matter. And, yeah, it gave me so many other things. Yeah. So that's that. That's my on off or off on Peter.

Peter Coghill: 00:39:37

Well, being the IT guy, my favorite reboot is whenever somebody does a reboot before asking me if there's a fix for a problem that they've got, that's my favorite reboot.

Nick Hare: 00:39:47

Because you don't have to tell them to turn it off because they've already tried.

Peter Coghill: 00:39:50

I've already tried that. Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:39:52

Have you tried power? Yes, I have.

Peter Coghill: 00:39:54

Yeah. Yeah. You're good. Other people aren't so good.

Chris Wragg: 00:39:59

Well, I never turn my computer off, so.

Fraser McGruer: 00:40:02

Are you meant to turn your computer off a lot?

Peter Coghill: 00:40:05

It doesn't do any harm. It's usually quite good to fix problems because as we've been discussing.

Fraser McGruer: 00:40:10

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Peter Coghill: 00:40:12

I refer you to this episode.

Fraser McGruer: 00:40:15

There's a good podcast episode.

Chris Wragg: 00:40:17

The problem with turning something off, though, is that you have to turn it back on again and then wait for it to turn itself on.

Fraser McGruer: 00:40:22

Yeah.

Chris Wragg: 00:40:23

And, yeah, I'd just rather have multiple computers that I.

Nick Hare: 00:40:27

It's exactly the same with him and, like, his. His browser tabs and icons on his desktop.

But even then, you have to confess your strategy of selecting everything on a desktop and putting it in a folder, and then eventually, when there's so many folders, you put all of those into a folder, but you're doing the same with computers. Your. Your desktop is getting too full.

Chris Wragg: 00:40:44

Yeah.

Nick Hare: 00:40:44

So you move on to the next computer. That's the best way to do it.

Fraser McGruer: 00:40:48

Yeah. Maybe that's like. Maybe that's like, God. Strategy is the same thing that goes on.

Chris Wragg: 00:40:53

He's got plenty of planets on the go.

Fraser McGruer: 00:40:55

Yeah, exactly.

Peter Coghill: 00:40:55

Yeah. Sorry, PT but it's not really a favorite, but it's one that I see tens or hundreds of times a day is when.

When you open a new chat session with ChatGPT or Gemini or something, and it doesn't know anything about you and what you've previously been talking about. It's good and bad. It's good because you can sort of go back to a known state and you can start again.

But it's bad because, like, you've invested lots of effort in building up the context and. But when it starts going off the rails a bit or the context got so big it can't deal with it anymore. It's a bit. It's a pain. So, yeah, that's.

Nick Hare: 00:41:31

Rebooting is more of a feature of everyday life than I think I'd previously considered. Far more of one.

Fraser McGruer: 00:41:37

Yeah, yeah, Nice. Sum up. I really enjoyed this. That was brilliant. Okay, we're going to stop there.

You've been listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast brought to you by Aleph Insights and produced by me, Fraser McGrewer. If you haven't already, please like and subscribe. We try to release an episode every week or two.

If there are any topics you'd like us to cover, please email us@podcastlefinsights.com thanks, as always, for listening. Until next time, goodbye.