Out Of Touch

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 Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing whether it's weird for Prince Andrew to go to Pizza Express. Nick, is it weird for Prince Andrew to go to Pizza Express?

Speaker B: 00:00:28

Well here's a bit of context really. As you're probably aware, Prince Andrew gave an interview recently to respond to various criticisms about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and to put in some sort of defence for the fact that even after Epstein had been convicted he went to visit him. Also talking about these allegations about Prince Andrew being connected with one of the girls in this scandal and sort of crucial to his denial were a few things, one of which bizarrely was that she had claimed he was sweating profusely and he claimed that he couldn't sweat. But the other was that on the day in question, on the day where she claims to have been with him, with Prince Andrew, he was at a Pizza Express in Woking and he said, well why do I remember that so clearly? Because it's very weird for me to be at a Pizza Express in Woking. I don't doubt that is weird for him to do. But there was of course a load of criticism levelled at him on all sorts of levels but one of them that intrigued me was that was how out of touch he was, not just in what he said but just his general sort of manner and what he obviously assumed would work as a set of things to say and a way to present them in an interview, which it seems painfully obvious to any outside observer look terrible. But being out of touch is something people talk about a lot. It's a big thing. You take a character like Jacob Rees-Mogg who's held up by many lefties as sort of the example of an out of touch politician, privately educated, looks like something from the 19th century and speaks like one too. And then obviously Boris Johnson, you've got Eton, Oxford, Bullingdon Club. Is it the case that being out of touch, being from a sort of very niche social class, does that make you a worse politician? Is it something we should

Speaker A: 00:02:40

care about? Well it's interesting you use those examples because there are two elected politicians, one of whom is Prime Minister and so it can't be that bad because enough people think can either get by that or really like that and so vote for them. Peter?

Speaker C: 00:02:55

Yeah, we don't criticise all professionals. We don't demand that they're highly in touch. Obviously people like doctors and nurses and things need to have a connection with the people that they treat and it helps for them to understand the social context in which they come from etc. But other people, lawyers and things, they deal with the world in a much more sort of abstract way and we don't really criticise barristers for being highly educated from a particular social

Speaker B: 00:03:23

class. We want them to be. We want them to be. I want my barrister to be a massive toff next time

Speaker C: 00:03:28

I'm up for murder. Yeah and engineers and computer scientists are often derided for being geeky and a bit sort of in their own social group and not really in touch with people generally and yet we seem to be sort of quite happy for them to be like that. They're not criticised. Maybe the threshold here is people who have a particular social responsibility, a particular social role like our elected officials and our royal family and things. Maybe that's why they need to be men of the people, people of the people.

Speaker A: 00:04:09

Right, well actually that's two very different things actually or are they? But something like the royal family, how in touch do we want the royal family to be? Because what's the point

Speaker B: 00:04:19

of them if they are in touch, right? And also I'm not in touch with the royal family. I don't know what it's like to be Prince Andrew. Is that a failing that I've got? Should I be more empathetic about what it's like to be Prince Andrew? Because if I was maybe I'd understand why he was such a

Speaker A: 00:04:35

dithering moron in his TV interview. Well look, hold on, five minutes in. Yeah, we've answered it. Does it matter? No, it doesn't. Boom, bish boss done, see you next week. Well, I will respond

Speaker B: 00:04:48

to what Peter just said because I think it's a really good point. You would think, actually, even though Peter described what sort of barristers do as abstract, in a sense it's more frontline, it's affecting the lives of real people. And what doctors do as well, they affect people's lives in a very direct way compared to politicians. But whereas I think a doctor, well a body, regardless of the social class of its owner, is still going to, you know, you don't really need to understand, you know, life's much about the owner of that particular body to be able to sort of work out what's wrong with it and to prescribe the correct drugs. But the argument would be, well, politicians are making policies with a set of assumptions about what people care about and what's important and what problems we should fix. And if they're out of touch, if they are insulated from the kinds of problems that real people have, and I don't want to say that as though politicians aren't real people, but, you know, perhaps they are fairly unrepresentative in terms of the kinds of things they care about, that they're likely to be worse at making policies because they will make policies that, you know, tend to be good for people like them and perhaps underestimate how important other policies might be. And, you know, it's plausible. You could look at something like Brexit as a reaction by people against, you know, a political class who certainly take one of the key issues, which was immigration, were either positive or at least not too bothered about levels of immigration. Plausibly, you could say that probably, you know, middle class, upper middle class people are the least, you know, stand to gain the most from immigration and probably, you know, least bothered about what the effects are. And that was true of all politicians on all sides, you know, were very wary of talking about immigration and probably broadly, you know, were kind of in favour of fairly high levels of immigration and weren't bothered at all about immigration from the EU and so on. And, you know, so now you could say that if they had been more in touch, in some sense, you know, that issue might have been dealt with more directly, you know, than having to deal with it through a referendum about something superficially quite different. So, yeah, I mean, so that's the argument. I'm going to also, I've got a bunch of reasons why

Speaker A: 00:07:21

we shouldn't care, but... Well, okay, just a couple of things. I mean, with doctors, I don't think it's as much about them being out of touch, it's more about them being a little bit remote from people. But the reason why we want to have that contact with doctors is because you said, well, it doesn't matter about the body, but actually when doctors are speaking to people, either relatives or the patient, there's that emotional side of it that comes into play. And

Speaker C: 00:07:45

that's why we do want to have that kind of human connection. I was actually suggesting the doctors and nurses are another exception to the rule. Yeah. Actually, they gain a lot of diagnostic information from knowing the patients and the sorts of people that they are and the sorts of places that they live and et cetera, et cetera. But I think going back to the policy makers, I think, you know, as we've discussed quite a lot on these podcasts is we would require, we would like our policy makers to be fairly dispassionate about how they go about doing the analysis and policies ideally are based on objective data rather than sort of personal views and heuristics. And we'd hope that the analysts and the support, the policy makers and the policy makers themselves are able to distance themselves from, to ignore their own personal biases when they're making.

Speaker A: 00:08:42

I mean, whilst that's true, I think maybe or maybe not it's the case because all of you come from, or both of you come from a policy making background where you're in the civil service. On one level, you do want that. But I think, again, a politician is an unusual example. You want to make them to be able to make those dispassionate decisions, but you don't want them to be communicated to the electorate dispassionately necessarily. You've got to be able to, you know, you've got to have, I don't know, what would you want to call it? A certain amount of personability about you and, you know, charisma or whatever you and I know, just it's a really crude analogy. But I mean, just looking at the difference, let's say between the current Prime Minister, the most recent Prime Minister, Theresa May, I personally think one of the issues of Theresa May was that she wasn't able to communicate with people. What was she called? The Maybot, right? And so she might be making really dispassionate decisions. And as might Boris Johnson, but like him or not, I do think he is able to connect with people. And so, yes, I think it's a bit murky with politicians. I think they're really

Speaker B: 00:09:46

interesting example. Well, and I, perhaps, I mean, the problem is that the model people have of what, what it means to be in touch or out of touch or whether or not you can empathise with people is just too simplistic. This idea that, you know, you cannot understand what it's like to be, you know, say living in a council flat or whatever, unless you're from, you know, a working class background. And I think the examples you've used, you know, that sort of gives the lie to that a bit, because actually, you know, you can be, well, I don't, I don't see why that, why your socioeconomic status is, is, I mean, people differ along all kinds of different dimensions. And, you know, you can be in touch with someone on one of those dimensions and a long way away on others. And the question is, can, can, do we, the fact that Boris Johnson went to private school, extremely posh private school, doesn't necessarily mean that actually he's not still closer to, you know, the concerns and interests of a lot of voters. The idea that socioeconomic status is somehow the be all and end all is, is probably, is probably wrong and yet extremely prevalent. And in fact, I mean, it is wrong in the sense that if you look at the extent to which social class determines people's view about things, I mean, it is a predictor of attitudes, but not, I mean, it ranks alongside things like, you know, your housing tenure. So whether or not you, you know, whether you own a house, which, you know, even controlling for sort of social background and other class indicators, whether you've got a house actually makes a significant difference. And, you know, things like age, the level of education you've had, what religion you are, and particularly ethnicity, ethnicity has at least as significant an impact on people's views as, you know, class or, you know, class indicators. So, you know, you might well, you might find yourself thinking, well, okay, well, in that case, Boris Johnson cannot possibly because he's not, you know, he's not black either. So he can't possibly represent the interests of black people. And you might think, well, that's probably not true. I don't see like that shouldn't be a consideration. So yeah, I mean, social and economic status is but one of many dimensions on which people can be considered in or out of touch. And it probably isn't a particular, it's not a hugely significant one. So where are we then? Well, we're where we are.

Speaker C: 00:12:18

Okay. We're a bit out of touch with ourselves. Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:12:21

I would, well, I think, I think, you know, let's take the question of whether or not politicians are going to make better decisions. Does socioeconomic status and your empathy with other people from other, you know, socioeconomic classes, does that affect how good your decisions are? Does that affect how good your policies are? See, what I would want to say. I think it does, doesn't it? Well, I feel like the policies which have impoverished the most people were those made out of a much more direct empathy with the working class than those which were made without any consideration towards them at all. So, you know, communism, I'm referring, of course, to communism, which was an idea really in sort of which was designed to be in the direct interest of the working class, has ended up impoverishing more people than, you know, kind of the economic freedom that you have in capitalist countries. So, so I'm, yeah, I, you know, what I'm saying is I want my politicians to be privately educated toffs because I feel like they're going to make better decisions. Peter.

Speaker C: 00:13:35

To relate this back to the individual a bit, and Fraser, there's an opportunity here to learn a new meme.

Speaker A: 00:13:44

Oh, God. Okay, good. Great, great, great.

Speaker C: 00:13:46

Yeah. So there's a couple, there's a specific one. It's a great one that's, that's been around for a while though. Principal Skinner of the Simpsons has a quote, which obviously something's happened with the kids. And he asked himself, am I so out of touch? No, it's the children that are wrong. But you should look that one up. But there's a, to go along with Fumo, the fear of missing out, there's also the fear of not knowing. Isn't it Fomo? Fomo, Fumo, either way. There's one called Fonk, which is the fear of not knowing. So this is, this is the fear of, at a sort of micro level, being out of touch with your friends and not knowing what's going on on social media. So it's related to nomophobia, which is the fear of not being connected and not having a phone and not being on the internet and things like that. So, so worth, worth, worth bearing that in mind. If you're feeling out of touch, then you are suffering from Fonk.

Speaker B: 00:14:39

Okay. And I wonder if, you know, when we're thinking about the extent to which you understand other people, whether or not, you know, the micro cultures are flourishing more now in, because we have the ability to connect with like minded people online. I mean, most notably, and we've talked about this before, is, you know, political polarisation, the fact that people are able to sort of cluster into, into politically like minded groups and, and really avoid the kind of challenge you would have had in the past where you didn't really have much choice over who you socialised with and who you met up with and who your friends were. You certainly had a lot less choice. And it would, it was harder for people to become, you know, extreme or become polarised. And I wonder now if actually there's, I mean, you know, if you take something as simple as pop music, go back 30 years, there was a pop music by and large. You know, there were a few really niche things, seeing the, you know, the indie scene was coming out, coming about. But by and large, if you know, there was, there was one, one charts that everyone listened to, and kind of much more of a sense of shared culture. And now that's, that doesn't, I've got no idea what is going on. And you won't get an idea from listening to the charts, because music seems to have bifurcated into all these different subcultures. And I, and I, I feel like, well, it was almost impossible now to be in touch with music as a whole. Your best bet is to know a bit about one or two genres. Yeah, so I wonder if it's going to become increasingly hard for politicians to be in touch. But also I'm just thinking about, I don't know if it's too crude to

Speaker A: 00:16:25

talk about it in socioeconomic terms about, you know, where does, because you could be, you could be from the elite, let's say, but be a very empathetic person, where you could be very knowing and, and sort of making sure that you're ticking all the right boxes and that you do know the price of milk and what's number one. So you basically are faking it. Yeah, Tony Blair and his football. Yeah, totally artificial football. Yeah, exactly. And just bear with me one moment.

Speaker B: 00:16:57

David Cameron, didn't he get his football club confused? No, so yeah, it was David Cameron,

Speaker A: 00:17:01

who was talking about flying over and seeing Aston Villa and getting Aston Villa mixed up with West Ham, because he claimed he was a big fan of one of them. Yeah, but I was going to say there was that recently, you know, Rory, what's his chops? The, he had been, was he international development or something like that? Oh yeah, Rory Stewart, the guy who ran for leadership. Yeah, it was the sort of dark horse. Exactly. And who came from a very, very similar background as the eventual prime minister, Boris Johnson went to Eton and Oxford and all that business. But he sort of became famous for sort of going out whilst campaigning onto the streets of London and on a kind of shaky mobile phone, like being real with the kids and meeting all these kind of people and was sort of on one level was kind of laughed at for it because it was just so awkward these exchanges. But on the other hand, people say, Hey, well, look, he posted it and he's can laugh at himself. And he kind of recognises that. But he did refer to some, but he then later got

Speaker C: 00:17:55

into more trouble for it by referring to them as gangsters. Or borderline gangsters or something.

Speaker B: 00:18:01

Yeah. So I don't know. Yeah. Because I think there, I think there's an element. And I think, I think this could be that what we're talking about the distinction between Boris and Theresa May. And I know people will balk at the idea that there's something that Boris Johnson is authentic. But I think there is a sense in which he's more authentic, right? More kind of actually himself than than Theresa May. And I feel like being in touch perhaps isn't really what's going on. What we really mean is that someone is authentic. It's sort of. Yeah. And I think certainly if you looked at the Prince Andrew interview, there is this sense of, well, he's saying things because he wants something to happen in the viewer and not because he really believes them. Yeah. And I feel like that seems like a bigger predictor of whether someone's going to be successful as a politician. And Boris does put, he is authentic, whatever you say. I think, I mean, I know, you know, a lot of people point to his kind of backstabbing and a lot of the bizarre things that he said in the past. But I'm more inclined to think that those things are not being produced by a focus group somewhere. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you've hit

Speaker A: 00:19:13

upon it. It's authenticity. And I think people generally understand that we can't all be all things to all people. Well, look, I mean, there is a question I want to ask. But I still don't. I don't know if we've rounded this off or not. Or is there some anything further here we want

Speaker B: 00:19:28

to delve into? Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, I think I think because it's, it's difficult to define

Speaker A: 00:19:34

what it means. Yeah. Well, or is it? So actually, this is why I want to come on. Okay, you've got some proposal. Yeah. So I mean, what, how can we measure, you know, how in touch someone is? And let's keep it to the UK. And let's just keep it to, let's say, what we want from a member of the royal family or politician, right? So the classic one that is always asked is what is the price of milk? Okay. Are you going to ask us? Yeah, I am in a minute. So because we're going to go on to our, our in touchness a meter in a minute amongst us and see how in touch we are. Okay. So but but what else is there? So there's the price of milk, you could say, what's number one in in the hit parade? You could say, I'm still using the sheet music chart. All right. Yes, of course. Yeah. What else could we have? Oh, okay. Good one. Yeah. Well, what's, what's the latest

Speaker C: 00:20:27

big computer game for 15 year olds? Okay, good one. Good. I think what's the latest box set that everyone is good. What's the what's the latest chat app that people use? Yes. Let's slow it

Speaker B: 00:20:42

down. What do you mean? What new memes are trending? Is someone noting these we need to

Speaker A: 00:20:45

because we need to be able to remember these. Okay. So let's sort of recap. So go go there again. So I said price of milk. What is number one in the charts? What is the latest game computer game that 15 year olds are playing? What's the latest chat type app thing? Yeah, yeah. There

Speaker B: 00:21:04

was one other there. I said the latest meme that is trending on latest meme is trending and one

Speaker A: 00:21:09

more. What is the let's what's the average salary in let's say what's the average salary, one in the UK and two in the London area? Okay. So those are our seven things we unfortunately, the average

Speaker B: 00:21:22

salary among the work full time working population? Yes, yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. In the London in the

Speaker A: 00:21:29

London area and in the UK. So let's go through these to see how in touch we are. We've got the answers. Yeah, well, that's the thing because we're not able to measure how, how, you know, so how much surprise how much is a pint of milk? I mean, first of all, milk doesn't come in pints anymore. I'm gonna I'm gonna let's all think for a moment. So I'm gonna have a stab we already I think and let's translate it to a litre. Okay. Yeah. Why? Because we're already European. Please

Speaker B: 00:21:52

not do that. Well, I'm gonna say what's the price of a pint of milk? I'm gonna say pounds per litre

Speaker A: 00:21:56

because no one bloody buys pints of milk anymore. Yeah. So that's how out of touch you are. Well, I still think of it. Yeah. Well, that's your problem. This is why you're gonna end up as Prime Minister. So I'm gonna I'm gonna say a pound. What about you guys pound a litre? Yeah,

Speaker C: 00:22:09

I think it's just over a pound. I think I bought a litre of milk for pound nine pence. But I also occasionally buy lactose free milk, which is about twice the price. Yeah, it is.

Speaker B: 00:22:20

That's right. Yeah. Well, I Nick, I question this because I think we buy four pint containers. So those big jug thing. Yeah. So well, what is I think we're about one pound 50. Okay, divide that by four. It's about 35, 40p a pint. Yeah, well, that's per pint. Now you guys are doing per litre, right? Yeah. So it's not far off. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, who knows what

Speaker A: 00:22:41

the answer is? Okay. What was the second thing? What's number one? I have zero idea. No idea.

Speaker C: 00:22:45

No idea. Big trouble here. Okay. Latest game? I wouldn't even know what the official chart is

Speaker B: 00:22:51

these days. Yeah. Who runs it? Is it a grime song? Is it one of them? Maybe. I don't know.

Speaker A: 00:22:58

One of them hip hop fellows. Hippity hoppity thing. Yeah. So let's say we draw a blank on that one. It's probably Elton John. Actually, that's a that's a Yeah, that's a question. Actually, I've seen asked for two politicians. What are you listening to at the moment on your

Speaker B: 00:23:13

iPod? And and they always make something up. Well, for me, it's Brahms is 90 Brahms 99. The cello piano sonata. I can see you're going to get a call. You're going to get the call from

Speaker A: 00:23:23

Torrey Central. I'm learning it you see. So I've been listening to it a lot. Right. Third one was computer games that's trending amongst 15 year olds. Anyone? I'm gonna have a stab here. Okay. And I'm gonna say it well, it's got to be Fortnite. Well, it is still

Speaker C: 00:23:39

big. But kids are moving away from Fortnite. It's become too corporatized. I really too professionalized. Whereas big, you know, big people making loads of money on it. So yeah, they're moving away from it. I'm not sure what they're doing. Right. We know the movement from

Speaker B: 00:23:51

it. But we don't know. Well, yes, but minecraft became cool again. Oh, right. Minecraft was everyone started playing Fortnite. Yeah, what a year or so ago. Yeah. And then and then Minecraft sort of somehow staged a resurgence as people realized that Fortnite was really a one trick pony. Yeah. And so Minecraft became cool again. Okay. I struggle. I would struggle apart from that. I only know about indie games because they're the ones that pop up on my sort of Steam.

Speaker A: 00:24:17

. No, I think that was in the: 1980

Speaker C: 00:24:28

Snapchat. I mean, that's still quite big. But WhatsApp is still holding firm as a sort of go to even amongst the kids, even well, even amongst the kids, but they were the kids are using other ones. So there are the sort of challenges to WhatsApp. The name has completely escaped me. But the there is a an alternative, which is very similar idea that it's okay, group chat, and it's secure. And it's simple to use. Also, just letting you know, I've been using

Speaker A: 00:24:51

Instagram lately to communicate with message with people as well. I use that message with kids.

Speaker B: 00:24:56

Well, yeah, that's me. This, you know, like when a thing happens, and you just realize quite how out of touch you are, yeah, is there's something called Tick Tock, never heard, which seems to be just like a video sharing app or something. I can't see why it's different to something like YouTube. But for some reason, Tick Tock is all the rage, right? And, you know, YouTube is ever

Speaker C: 00:25:19

is yes, yesterday's news. I don't know. Well, for what I pick up from the YouTube creators that I regularly follow, the changes in the continual changes in YouTube terms of service in terms of reference, plus also, quite a sort of draconian demonetization approach, right, is turning a lot of people off. And actually, so a lot of a lot of video game streamers and tech, tech bloggers, they they tend to use things like Twitch, as well as YouTube. So release content on YouTube, which is for all for all for everybody. And then they'll have exclusive channels on another on

Speaker A: 00:26:00

other platforms for their subscribers. Okay, let's zip this along. I think there was a fifth, but I can't remember that. Let's go on to the salaries. Yeah. I remember reading there was there was a you know, the answer? Well, hold on. A couple years ago, there was a series of articles in the Guardian, which was about bankers, and what's life like as a banker, and, and so on. And they were kind of undercover cover bankers saying this is what it's really like, because, you know, we're vilified, especially by the the reason that this newspaper, and one of them was much ridiculed, because it was she was a banker, and she was asked to guess how much a teacher gets paid. Like a primary school teacher, I think she said it was something like 40 to 50 grand a year. And, and people just like, you know, you have no idea you're so out of touch. So average salary in the UK, I'm sorry, in among smoking people in in the London area, and in the UK, I'm gonna take a guess and say across the UK, I reckon it's low 20s across the UK. And in London, I'm going to say it's sort of low 30s. That's my feeling. It's I read really fairly recently,

Speaker C: 00:27:00

average household earning in the London area. Yeah, it was 25. household. So that has to be

Speaker B: 00:27:07

the hard, upper ceiling. Yeah, I don't think it'll be that much different to that. I know median earnings haven't moved much in about the last 10 years. And I think 10 years ago, average earnings were 20 20 something. So yeah, right. So we're okay. And we all sort of think the same. But I bet if you ask people how much bankers earn, they'd say, I'll probably earn, you know, half a million quid a year. And they probably earn a 10th of that. Yeah, you know, most your average person who works in the banking industry. Yeah. So you know, I bet people,

Speaker A: 00:27:38

this being out of touch works both ways. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. So look, on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being totally with it and in touch and with the kids, and, and, and one being re smog. Where'd we I think I'm probably about a five or a six, maybe a five, let's say.

Speaker C: 00:27:56

I'm gonna give you a four. You still can't get memes. You just don't get memes. I defer. You're

Speaker A: 00:28:02

absolutely right. I'm about four, three and a half, maybe. Nick's a weird one. He's quite techy.

Speaker B: 00:28:08

Real life low. Yeah, two or three. Okay. I just, I just see real life moves far quicker than I care about. Yeah. So I do. I'm really in tune with if you like the tides, but not the waves of real life. And it means that, you know, I do like I like, I like, I'll like the pop music from now in about 10 years time, if it's survived. There's some of yeah, good point. But online, no one knows famously with that you're a dog. And an online I'm I kind of hang around to see what see what trendy people are doing a lot more because they can't stop you. Yeah, I can't tell you that you're wearing embarrassing clothes and stuff. Yeah. So I feel like a bit more in tune with online trends than I am in real life. Yeah. Peter, where do you fit on this? Yeah.

Speaker C: 00:28:55

Popular culture. Totally out of touch. Probably re smog. He and I would have a lot not to talk about. Current affairs, what's going on in the world? Pretty good. I'm always on the news. But what about the common man? But the common man? Yeah, I'm often I'm often having to check my privilege and update my heuristics about how people really live. So I probably likewise, I could probably make a Nick's Chancellor. I think we could probably double up on that. I

Speaker B: 00:29:21

reckon. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, and of course, we have a an election coming up, which is gonna, you know, where there's maybe an issue. Of course, one of the candidates is, you know, privately educated, grew up in the countryside, brother called peers that grew up in a house called you tree manor. And the other is Boris Johnson. Boom, twist. I like twist at the end. I like that. I like Jeremy Corbyn is is no more in certainly no more in touch in terms of his background than Boris Johnson. It's really degrees of how posh your private school was.

Speaker A: 00:29:50

Yeah, yeah, there we go. Okay, Jasmine. Yeah, I enjoyed that. We'll wrap up there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. I've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.