Preposterous protocols, nonsensical norms, and peculiar policies: what makes a rule weird?

In this podcast, Nick, Ben, Leon, and Fraser discuss the British army's recent dropping of the ban against beards: the history behind the ban, what motivated the recent change, and what the whole affair can tell us about 'weird' rules more generally.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• British Army May Lift Beards Ban After 300-plus Years
• Crimean Heroes
• 130 Years of Facial Hair Trends, in One Chart
• Did Van Halen's Concert Contract Require the Removal of Brown M&Ms?

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGrure, for Aleph. 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 Leon Debnath, Ben Fawkes and Nick Hare of Aleph and this week we're discussing beards in the British Army. Nick, lead us in. Well, you can have them now. Yes. Yeah, I don't know if listeners might not be aware that until very recently, until the last few months, you couldn't. You were not allowed to have a beard. Me and Leon are fine. We're going to be okay. Just for listeners benefits, we've got two beardy people, one stubbly person, that's me, and Mr Fawkes, he's always clean shaven. So they have been banned, as far as I understand it, for about the last 100 years, although moustaches were okay. But now they're allowed. So I think we want to talk about, okay, we mean narrowly, what actually is this about? What is this business with beards in the Army? Kind of weird. And in general, is there a good reason for that? But then perhaps look at, you know, rules in general. What is the point of rules like this? What do they do? Do they serve a purpose other than being silly? And, you know, and do we actually, should we have more of them? Yeah, rules. What's that all about? Yeah, you love rules, don't you? Oh, yeah. We couldn't live without rules. Yeah, I love them. Love them. Look, to lead us in further still, into this prickly bush. Leon, I believe you've got some skin in this game. Yes, well, skin and a little bit of hair.

There's such a thing as a pioneer sergeant. We had a pioneer sergeant. What's the name mean?

The pioneers are kind of like a light version of combat engineers. Right. And they would do odd jobs like disassembling and assembling defensive positions. That's very cool. Digging,

maintenance, things like that. And their dress uniform includes an apron and an axe. It did up until very recently. Oh, sad. Sorry, and maybe you said this, Leon, but we want to talk to you about this because one, you were in the army and two, you have a beard. I'm sure there are other reasons

as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, keep going or wax lyrical. What have you got? Yeah. So also the Royal Welsh Goat Major, who was actually a corporal, would also wear a beard as well as the Goat. The Goat Major is another real thing. And is their job to look after the goat? Yes. Right.

And the goat's job is just... The goat is the mascot of the Royal Welsh. Right. And they do

that out of respect for their goats. It seems to be, yeah. Right, got it. A lot of archaic, weird rules that exist in this military sphere. This is way better than I imagined. But there's a concept within the British Army where a lot of rules are overrided for operational reasons. And so you see, like in the jungle, you wouldn't shave and you still don't shave in the jungle because of medical reasons and in the desert quite often. So like if you get a cut or something. The long range desert group, yeah, would not shave their beards because they're out and conserving water. So there are a lot of times in the military where you wear a beard.

Hmm. So actually, something you touched on there, and actually, especially the British Army is really good at this kind of thing, which is lots of weird rules and tradition, and sometimes seeming quite arbitrary stuff. But sometimes for good reason, it ties into maybe what we might be talking about later, which is like, why that rule and weird rules and all that kind of stuff. So anything we want to develop there? I don't know if Ben wants to talk about this. But of course, just to contrast with the Navy, where you're not allowed a moustache, but you're allowed a beard.

Yeah, but you've got to get permission. Well, the Army's going to be the same. Why, are you a Navy guy? No, I was Air Force. But if you're in the Navy...

Why are you talking about the Navy then, then point to it, Ben? We don't have someone who's in the Navy. Someone's got to represent them, okay? I'm worried of all three, but anyway. Wherever we are, go for it, Ben.

So yeah, I mean, I think Leon sort of picked up on the fact that there's been a lot of... It's not been a hard and fast rule. And so for example, there was a soldier I worked with who had some skin issue. This was five years ago. I don't know what it was exactly, but shaving every day irritated it. So he just had what was called a chit. So basically a note from the doctor saying the soldier should not shave, sort of thing, for medical reasons, that's fine. But I mean, the history of beards in the military is quite varied and long. And the one thing we haven't talked about here is that the Navy's never, as far as I'm aware, had a ban on beards. And that was what always, I guess, set them apart a bit was they wore beards. But being sort of, I guess, what always used to amuse people when I tell them about this is X sailor wants to grow a beard, they then have to write what we call a minute. So a request to their commanding officer to get permission. And then they'll give it a time frame to grow said beard. So because it has to be neat and tidy. So if you're like me, who can't really grow sort of much facial hair, and it's sort of awful and patchy and all over the place, they'll be told to shave. I think a lot of this kind of reflects sort of social customs and mores as well. So until early Victorian era, beards were quite common in society, but also in the British Army. But during that time, if you weren't, someone being clean shaven was seen as, sorry, someone having a beard was often seen as a sign of poverty, because you couldn't afford to go to the barber two or three times a week to be shaved. So that sort of just crept into military life as well. Leon talked about moustaches. We might have different sources. The source I read said it was officers were told they had to basically grow a moustache. And then having a moustache and not a beard became a sort of a status symbol. In terms of this sort of current rule that's been overturned. When I was sort of in the Air Force, and there was talk about beards and why they banned and things like that, because beards have gone quite popular in the last 20 years or 15 years.

Okay, yeah. So the Navy's been miles out ahead on this, and the other two services have been quite

very cultural, because if you look at other countries, India, back then, everyone had a

So I mean, this is interesting. So when I joined the military, and you're told all the rules about facial hair, the reason it was always given was it's because you can't wear a gas mask properly, it doesn't fit. Now, that goes back to World War One, when I don't think any gas mask really fitted properly. So, you know, technology has come a long way. I mean, I always felt that, particularly in World War One, it was a hygiene issue. So, you know, they were living in pretty revolting conditions. And as Leon knows, the first thing you do is try and get people to maintain themselves properly in the field. And, you know, it's often thought that, you know, making sure people are as well turned out as possible and looking after themselves sort of helps with morale and all that sort of thing. So that's how I interpret it.

And another common idea is the idea of discipline, everybody looks the same. Yeah, that's the very commonly used argument against beards. Yeah. So what changed?

obviously have to grow his beard. It might not be the right organisation for you. Exactly. Yeah.

they're the same regulations as for men with long hair. But you're not allowed long hair, as it happens with men. But I mean, if it were the case, for example, that we were having the same rule for everyone, presumably, actually, women would just have to have short hair. That would be the only hairstyle they're allowed. So there's already a kind of, I don't want to say a concession, but there's a different rule. Two stages. Yeah, but is there only a sub, like, as a man, the hairstyles that are available to you, is there only, is it just it's got to be short, and from then you can do anything?

Off the back of the collar, it needs to be short and not touching the ears.

Can't... Right, not touching the ears. Can't male soldiers asked to have cornrows or dreadlocks for cultural reasons?

You'll be delighted to know, Nick, that the British Army does have restrictions on length of the beard. I can't remember what they are, but yeah.

So I think, yeah, so I think those are how weird rules can appear. And I think the thing we should worry about when we think about removing a rule is, has it outlived its utility, or is it still useful? And how can we tell? Yeah. I know that's a beautiful lead into Leon, but just what you do, you know me pretty well, Nick, by now, just as you were going through all that, I have a little insight into me. I was just sitting here, I think my pulse rate was quickening, my nostrils were flaring, my eyes were probably dilating, because I just, it's just all this talk of rules. And it just makes me, I just get really, I'm doing very well to calm myself and hold myself, manage it. Don't worry, we won't be measuring your beard any time soon.

You can sort of relocate into Germany.

Right, don't stop. No, but that leads in perfectly to the idea of Chesterton's fence, which is the idea that one shouldn't be hasty in dismantling the rules, because you don't know their origin. So the kind of story goes, if you find a fence across the road, you shouldn't, a fool would dismantle it quickly. Well, really, you should go and think, why is this fence here, before dismantling it, because it could be providing some purpose, like keeping cows in and such. And it's quite often used as an example, or as a reason not to very quickly remove the rules, because, well, you don't know what it's going to cause. Now, I personally, really don't like the argument. I think it's a bit of a fallacy.

You're a bit of a fence smasher.

I'm a fence smasher, yes. Both in my day job, while writing code, I'm very happy to dismantle someone else's and rewrite it to find out that's caused a terrible bug. But also, just generally, I think rules should be questioned. Because only in questioning rules can we actually make a better system. Make a better rule. Or make a better rule, even. Because I think taking the Chesterton's fence to add absurd and keep going to the nth degree, well, we can't ever change anything. Because if we ask, well, you know, beards in the army, there's probably a reason for that. Well, we don't want to change it too quickly, because there might be a reason that we've completely overlooked. We'd never change the rule. And then actually, if it does have a large effect on recruiting, for example, well, we've just lost out on that.

This is the classic slippery slope fallacy. Yeah.

Right. I think that's interesting in itself. But yeah, it'd be quite interesting to ask the question of how could this lead to some kind of catastrophe? Which I suppose is partly the process you want to go through. You know, let's get rid of this rule. Let's red team it. Let's think of the worst thing that could happen. What is the worst? So in the case of Chesterton's Fence, you know, maybe there is a field full of randy bulls around the corner and they're going to come and, you know, wreak havoc. Trying to kind of red team the rule, trying to say, well, what might have been the motivation for putting this in place? You know, what's the worst that could happen by doing this? I think it is a good start.

But I think one of the interesting questions posed by Chesterton's Fence, or at least when it's used as an argument to not do something, is it puts all the onus on the person who is proposing the change rather than putting the onus on the person who is resisting the change to provide good arguments of why that should still be there.

It does. And I think people would say that's a feature, not a bug. Like, that's the point. And that's the motivation for a kind of conservatism is to say, look, we should have a good, we need to have overwhelming evidence that some change is good because mostly they're not. Like most changes to things make them worse. So I feel like that's, you're right. You're absolutely right. That is exactly what it does. But I think that's a good thing.

No, I think it's, for me, it's the importance of justifying the reason for something. And I mean, I know personally that often I see rules which I don't really understand or like or whatever. But if I understand why they're there and I accept that, then that's, so I would be more on sort of Leon's camp. It's, you know, it's justify why when, why this, why X needs to be there. Sometimes it's really simple. Like, you know, you can't drive 100 miles an hour because, you know, you're more likely to kill someone or yourself if you hit something. I mean, I always think when I was a kid, we lived in Germany who are, they're very focused on, sorry, not wanting to nationally stereotype, but rural adherence is more so I think in Germany than in the UK. My mum had to pick me up from school early. So it was quite quiet middle of the day. We left the railway station and there's nothing on the street. If you fired a cannon down it, you wouldn't hit anything. And so mum was like, okay, let's cross the road. The little man was red. And she had a very angry German woman come up and confront her about why was she breaking the law, basically.

Why was she wanting to kill her own child?

Yeah, yeah. Which at that point, mum sort of pretended she couldn't speak any German at all and we bustled off home. But it's, you know.

The classic British way of dealing with it.

Yeah, you just could get that balance of, I guess, pragmatism to it.

Yeah, that's all right. Well, I have a ton of experience in pointless rules from the time Her Majesty's Army. I think that the worst one I came... I thought you were going to say residing at Her Majesty's Pleasure. No, I think the worst one that I railed against was every battalion in the army will have an orderly officer at every point in time. Okay. This is the officer who's kind of in charge of being the eyes and ears of the commanding officer while things are happening.

Well, I don't like the sound of this person straight away.

No, well, everybody has a go, which is the fantastic thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the orderly officer at the end of the day, or the end of his shift, which might be a 24-hour period or 48-hour period, will write a report. Now, within that report, there are, you know, the soldiers who have been sanctioned during that period, any events that have happened, things, notable things that need to be flagged up to the adjutant and commanding officer. While I was in the army, the adjutant required, and this had been going for decades, if not centuries, that every report was written, handwritten in fountain pen that was black and handed to him every morning with a crisp salute. I hated this. Not only did I hate this for having to own a black fountain pen and make sure that it was fully stocked when my turn of orderly officer came around, I definitely had and didn't have to go around the officer's mess finding one. But also every time the unit moved- You obviously weren't in the guards. No, I wasn't. Every time the unit moved, which was every two years, we had to move this stack of papers from place to place, making sure that all this evidence was kept in case something happened. In the previous years, and we had to bring it forward. So I ended up writing a couple of pages of documents, proving that it would be better to be a PDF that we could save and store on our battalion server and then move instantly wherever we were. Was this accepted, this proposal? Strangely, it was. But only when I went over the head of the adjutant to the commanding officer directly and handed him the paper.

Yeah. Okay, nice. Yeah, until they wiped the server. And then, you know, in 10 years time, they realised they'd lost all their records. Yeah. It's totally gonna happen.

Yeah. Unlike the fire that never could happen. Well, I feel like it's less likely.

It could be more likely with the pile of papers.

If necessary, do you have in your possession a black fountain pen that you could rustle up within 20 or four hours notice?

I could, yes.

There we go. So something. Is that a positive outcome? I don't know. Okay, nice. Ben?

I mean, I've been told that in the Royal Navy, only officers ranked captain above can write in green pen or green ink. I mean, that's rather... But have you come up and passed up against this rule yourself? Well, no. Well, actually, I did. I did because I had one of those pens that's got like four... Love them. Yeah. And the others were broken. I don't want to do it in red, because that looks a bit aggressive. So I signed something in green that got sent back. The other, yeah.

But you were in the Air Force, not the Navy. So why would the Navy sort of...

Yeah, but if you had a boss who was a Navy officer, then they got a bit funny. Okay, okay, okay. Which I did from time to time.

It goes to the highest ranking member, doesn't it?

If his boss isn't allowed to write in green pen, he's not allowed to write. Which he wasn't, yeah. I think that was the problem, yeah. Wow, okay, yeah. Nice, I like that.

I didn't fight it, I just wandered back and...

Oh, yeah, I forgot to ask, how did you react to this? So your reaction was, hey, how strongly worded piece of paper. Yeah. Your reaction was, what did you say was...

Well, I thought it was a joke at first. And then that made it rather less popular. Yeah. So I decided just to be pragmatic and go borrow a pen from someone. Okay, okay. And just print it off.

Okay, kind of work with it and... I guess you've got to figure out what battles to fight in life and that's probably not one. Yeah, yeah. And your reaction was to have a think about it and go, actually, it's not a bad rule, okay. So going to Brazil recently on purpose, and I start to do this now when I go there, I say to myself, right, there are going to be a million frustrations over the next few weeks. I'm not going to be frustrated. So I decide to adopt that. And sure enough, there are just so many rules that are just so absurd when one is there. And anyway, on exiting the country, I'm having successfully navigated this in a new peaceful, you know, state of calm. Liquids, airport, going through the machine and so on. I didn't have a bag with me, a plastic bag, I thought it wouldn't be a problem. Because they'd have one there. And they didn't have any bags there. And so I had it in like a canvas bag and my sort of three liquids, one of them was toothpaste and I don't know, go through and at the end they says, no, no, sorry, you can't do that. And I was saying, well, why not? Because, and they said, well, you don't have a plastic bag. And I said, but isn't the plastic bag so that it can go through the machine? And they said, well, yeah, but you now can't go into the airport because they've gone through. And you can kind of see where this is going. So the three, they're not allowed to be loose. Right. It was an incredibly thin plastic bag that was virtually invisible.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, so airport scanners is a completely different topic, isn't it?

But what I couldn't understand was I thought I'd just gone through the thing that that's why I needed to have a bag and it didn't have a bag and it's just gone through. But I couldn't quite really understand what the rule, why I was having trouble understanding why the rule existed.

You'd be happy to know that's changing soon.

Well, not really. What was the upshot? It makes me more angry. Why? Because you've lost your toothpaste. Because this has already happened. Yeah, I lost a whole quarter thing of toothpaste.

I think that's a misunderstanding of the rule. Leon, we haven't got time for this.

So, yeah, maybe, maybe not. But anyway, confronted by this weird rule, because I'm the new, you know, full of equanimity, I just sort of went, OK, chuck it away. And that was it. Good. Good for you. That feels like a growth moment. Your character development. You said it. Yeah, you said it. Right. We're going to stop there. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare, Ben Fawkes and Leon Debnath. Thanks, as always. And until the next time, goodbye.