Greatness is a tricky subject: it is difficult to pin down yet we know it when we see it. In this week’s podcast, we mark the passing of technology pioneer and Aleph Insights hero Sir Clive Sinclair by discussing what makes greatness.

We discuss objectivity versus subjectivity: can we simply call someone great or is it a title for which unspoken, yet consistent criteria exist? We also look at whether greatness is historically contingent, reliant on being in the right place at the right time, but also whether greatness can be revoked because of changing social mores and revisionary analysis. We address the inherent problem of trying to measure greatness through counterfactuals and examine formal systems that seek to institutionalise the conferment of greatness. Finally, Nick shares his brush with the late Sir Clive and we debate our personal heroes and why we regard them as great figures.

• Sir Clive Sinclair
• Nietzsche on Human Greatness
• The 'lone genius' myth: Why even great minds collaborate

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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 Jordan Fermanis, Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing Sir Clive Sinclair. Nick, lead us in.

Hold on, sorry to stop you. What about before? What do we know a little bit about him before?

He was a sort of engineering kind of guy.

answer. Well, is it though, because... Well, that's the question we want to answer. Well, I don't think I mean... Oh, is it the question? Yeah. Okay. What is it? Is it the question?

No, but is it more that... Let's just run with it. I think you're overthinking it. Maybe. The concept of greatness, does it make sense? Yeah, I think that's a better way to put it. Does the

concept of greatness make sense? Let's go to Chris, please. Yeah, I mean, I think it's quite

national poll about who the greatest... Is it Churchill on top and Lady Di second? She was

third. She was third, but it is that one. Yeah. So the top 10 were Churchill. Did they, sorry, did they have a celebrity sort of champion each one? Right, so they sort of, in some way, they held the poll, but then I think it was a second kind of round where the top 10 had advocates who kind of came forward and then they sort of voted on them in some way. So they were sort of phased in some way. So there was an advocacy element to it. But the top 10 were Churchill, Isambard, Kingdom, Brunel, second, Princess Diana, third, Charles Darwin, fourth, Shakespeare, fifth, Sir Isaac Newton, sixth, Elizabeth I, seventh, Grone, John Lennon, eighth, Nelson, ninth, and Cromwell, tenth, which was a strange one. It's not a bad list. It's not a what do those, what do those, what traits do those people or what events have those people been involved in that, you know, holds them in, that, you know, makes them think of them as great. Exactly. So I think that's quite a sort of interesting starting point. It was actually pretty controversial, that poll, by the way, because there were no Black Britons in it. Yeah. There were 13 women. Out of 100 originally. Out of 100, yes. In the top 100, yeah. In fact, the only sort of, you know, arguably non-British white person was Freddie Mercury. Yeah. So, you know, there's an element about how public consciousness thinks about greatness in, you know, historic figures. To me, the greatest controversy was that Queen Victoria was 18th, just pipping Paul McCartney in 19th place. So there's obviously

a massive recency bias in there, but I was like. But that's a good challenge because you think, well, Queen Victoria didn't really do anything other than being a queen, whereas Paul McCartney did really create some of the most iconic songs. The Frog Chorus, for example. Yes, exactly. And other songs. He was in a band, I don't know if you've heard of them, called The Beatles. He was quite, they, and they really revolutionised pop music. Which one had the greatest impact? Yeah.

Well, look, so hold on. So I think that's an interesting, you know, those sort of 10 figures you mentioned there, that's a good way to hang things off that a little bit, because it immediately starts to raise certain questions. But nonetheless, let's keep going. Greatness,

Jordan. Well, I came across this interesting concept of greatness from the philosopher Nietzsche. And he sort of, his way of thinking about greatness was rather than to define it, to break it down into like internal conditions, the sort of character of a person, and then the external conditions, which is their achievements and the success that they've derived from whatever they've done. And so I think he tries to kind of synthesise those. And then that then produces greatness, which I think is a sort of interesting way to... Is there a recipe? What's the recipe? He doesn't, he doesn't define, he doesn't get to that sort of granular detail. But I think there's something about how, if you just look at one or the other, then it feels like maybe you're missing sort of some of the essential components of greatness. If you just look at someone's achievements, but then in their personal life, or the way they conducted themselves, they weren't great, then this feels like there's something lacking. Paul, even Paul McCartney had to do

modern day might simply be working in office. Exactly. You know, so what do we make? That's a really good point. I think a central actually, what do we make of that? How do we deal with

that? Well, I think I think there's an element as well, which is not just, you know, what, what in environment was the person existing, what time and you know, what events were going on, but also, you know, what, what, what were their own sort of personal conditions, because, you know, it's like the Twelfth Night quote, you know, some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them. There's an element, you know, like the some are born great, you know, Louis the 14th was a very influential, you know, monarch, the Sun King, the Sun King, exactly. But, you know, unless you're born, you know, King of France or heir to the throne, you're going to limit your options. It's going to limit your options. Exactly. Whereas, you know, you've then you've got this idea. If they'd have interviewed for the job, would he have got it? He certainly had the right attitude. Yeah, but, but, you know, we, I think we view those who achieve greatness as being in some way, more, more worthy, you know, than those who are born great, you know, and, and so they're greater, I suppose. But then there's also, you know, this idea of having greatness thrust upon you, which is even like a reluctant, you know, I suppose a little bit like Churchill, you know, suddenly finding himself having to be in this role. But then, you know, lots of people would argue that Churchill, you know, his lineage going back to the Duke of Marlborough, and, you know, the fact he was actually politically active and seeking that opportunity. I mean, he was a major figure in the, in the first world war. Exactly. And, you know, political opportunist and so on and so forth. But, but the idea that somebody not only, you know, so you've got the people who go out and seek greatness, the, the achievers, but then you get these people who reluctantly take on the mantle of greatness because of, you know, the circumstances around them that, you know, that's even more sort of great, I suppose. Yeah. I, you know, as always, Shakespeare has, you know, distilled a lot of complex things down into, you know, a couple of lines. Yeah, yeah, quite. Look,

Well, yeah, the only thing I had to do with circumstances was more about. So there's this idea of like the lone genius myth. And I think you can kind of transpose this to the like the lone greatness sort of myth, where this idea that maybe great people also require great people around them to do these magnificent things. And maybe the idea of just focusing on one individual instead of looking at the team behind them or the collaborative environment they are in or the sort of cumulative effect of all their achievements that then lead to greatness. That's a better way of sort of looking at greatness rather than focusing on

just one person. I mean, I agree, but it would never catch on in a way because it's so much more attractive and simple as a narrative. Yeah. To sort of put it on one person. Chris?

Yeah, well, I was just going to say, I mean, I think that this idea that, you know, greatness is subjective. You know, when Jordan was sort of talking about, you know, you've got the individual and their behaviour and you've got the environment around them and that we ascribe value to greatness. And I think if you look at, you know, if you look at figures like someone like Cecil Rhodes, right, who historically was, you know, became prime minister in his 30s, you know, he founded this massive business empire and, you know, had this kind of... Basically took over Africa. Basically took over Africa, you know, through, you know, undoubtedly through some form of force of personality. But, you know, clearly his actions are, you know, today are viewed very differently from the way he was viewed, say, towards the end of the Victorian era or the Edwardian era, you know, when people were looking back on him, you know, as recent history. And similarly, you know, someone like Nelson Mandela was at time, you know, founded effectively an armed, you know, group that, you know, went on to conduct terrorist attacks against civilians. And yet, you know, you look at the, you know, two figures pivotal in African history and the way their perceptions have shifted over time.

At some point, we will come to regard Nelson Mandela in the same bracket as, say, Stalin or Hitler.

What I'm saying is that, you know, we might, exactly, that greatness is not some objective feature. It has a moral dimension to it, which I guess is what I'm coming back to with the Nietzsche aspect, which is, you know, nobody says, you know, Hitler was great or

Stalin was great. Well, you have to, I think you'd have to acknowledge that they were at the very

least influential and, you know, created. We don't want more of them, thanks. No, you know, exactly. But the, you know, so there is, you know, greatness is not just about influence and power and impact on the world. There is also an element where you subscribe, you know, a morality to it. And that changes over time. So, you know, figures we regard as being great today may not be the figures we

regard as being great in the future. I think there is a kind of, this whole question is dogged by the problem that really we're talking about counterfactuals. We're talking about, you know, what would happen if this person didn't exist? And of course, that's a nightmare if you're trying to study anything because there's no data on the alternative world. And so you sort of think, well, you know, is, how much, how much would things have been the same without this person? How much would, you know, if we didn't, hadn't had a, you know, Napoleon, well, was there another Napoleon just waiting behind him who would have filled the same sort of role? Or, you know, is he really a one off and has, you know, we really wouldn't have seen another Napoleon for a thousand years. We just have no way of knowing. I mean, there are a few little nuggets of evidence that we can bring in there, which are, for example, this issue of multiple discovery, for instance. So this is the fact that actually in many cases, the same invention is created. I see what you mean. Like Darwin, you know. Darwin and Wallace, yeah, who both kind of came up with the same idea. Of course, calculus is a very famous example, invented almost in the same year by Newton and Leibniz. Oxygen was discovered by three people, Sheila Priestley and Lavoisier. The blast furnace was invented in almost all over the world, but in Africa, China and in Europe. The crossbow was invented in lots of different places. There was no, it wasn't transmitted. It was simultaneously invented. And magnetism, similar going back to the ancient world, you know. So, you know, you sort of think, well, maybe it is the case, actually, that we do, we pin a tag on these people who appear, who are perhaps, you know, a centimetre higher than their contemporaries, but remove them and you have another person, almost as great, who we would have pinned that tag on instead. And I don't think we have a way of, you know, getting around that. I don't think we can ever really know.

Which kind of means you just have to go with what you've got, right? And the fact that they actually did do these things.

We can be aware of it, you know, we can say, well, you know, Churchill is the guy who actually happened to be in that position. Yeah. And there were other people around. And there could have been Churchill. Yeah, exactly. As long as we're aware of that, so we're not sort of saying, we're not necessarily jumping to the conclusion that the guy who was there, you know, who gets that, who gets, you know, your number one, it doesn't mean that number two was a long way away. Just, I sort of, I mean, we need

to sort of finish soon-ish. But just talking about that makes me think of something. I've got a mate who just somehow, there is something about this guy. He just somehow always seems to be in the right place at the right time, right? But more than, I'm not talking about you, by the way, Nick. Oh, I was going to say that. You were looking hopeful there. You were staring at my blushes. Yeah. And he just seems to, I have been in the same situation as him a number of times. And yet he's the one that he's got a force of personality, right? I remember once just seeing him get backstage at a concert, and he didn't even speak the same language as the bouncer.

Is that young man's name? Boris Johnson?

Well, exactly. It is that phenomenon that you're talking about. Yeah. And also, I mean, and I remember once he wrote a book. He was really, he was a, he is and was a journalist. And he was- And, well, actually, there is an overlap here. There is an overlap here because they went to the same school. They went to the same school. And there's a lot in that, I think, you know, that kind of person sometimes. But anyway, he was sort of in the Second World Gulf War. He was meant to be embedded. Remember, they embedded people with that one. He was meant to be embedded with this unit that was going to be quite far back, but managed to sort of, half by accident, but half by purpose, got himself embedded with the frontline unit. And off the back of that, wrote a really great book. And this happens again and again in his life. Now, I'm not saying he's a great person. But I think he's somewhere within that, those, these kind of people somehow. It's that, it is that kind of potent mixture of the kind of person and the circumstances. I think there is something in this greatness thing. Anyway, where do we want to go? We need to wrap up soon-ish. Chris? Yeah, I was just gonna say, I'm quite interested in

systems that try and objectively assess greatness. And so, if you look at, like, the canonization process within the Catholic Church, you know, they have a process whereby, albeit that, you know, greatness has a particular, you know, sainthood has a particular set of criteria around it. But nevertheless, you know, they have this process where you sort of, you go through, you know, local investigation. It has to be five years, you know, after the person's died. So there's an element of objectivity about it, although that was famously waived for Mother Teresa. And then you have, you know, sort of the requirements to establish posthumous miracles and so on. But famously, the phrase, you may know this as a theologist, Fraser, but the term devil's advocate is actually part of the canonization process whereby, you know, they would appoint, you know, a legal scholar to basically set a character assassinate the person who's, you know, in line for sainthood. And I think that sort of, you know, that idea of, you know, the UK Honours system as well is another kind of system where you try and, you know, separate out things. And, you know, inevitably, it becomes a subjective process, you know, there are no hard and fast criteria for establishing greatness, you know, and all you can do is really have some sort of form of soliciting public opinion, you know, seeing what stands the test of time. But in the case of Sir Clive Sinclair, they got it right. They got it right. Yes, yes, yes, yes, his honour was well deserved, unlike, perhaps, Philip Green, for example. But that's the thing, you know, this idea of, you know, as history moves and events change, can greatness be revoked in some way? Yeah.

Right. I want to stop there. Anything anyone wants to add before I do? No. I've got a question. Well, I was about to say I've got a question. I don't have a question. All right. But I want to ask a question. I just don't know what the question is.

What about great people who ask us to pick the greatest, our greatest?

Okay. I mean, that's what I mean, that's the obvious thing, right? So, all right. So let's have the question. Yeah. Who's your personal hero? Who do you think is great? And you're not allowed to say one of us here. You're not allowed to say the other person. And you're not allowed to say yourself either. So, yeah. Who's your personal hero? Who do you think is great? Anyone? Jordan?

I think Shakespeare's hard to go past for me. I guess someone who loves literature as well. Just the amount of his output and his enduring influence and legacy and just how he's still read in schools, still read all around the world. I think it's pretty amazing.

And it does feel like every single flipping line is like a nugget of wisdom.

Has anything ever been... Could you think of anything and say anything that hasn't already been said by Shakespeare? And by the way, and said in a much more eloquent fashion. Yeah. Good shout out. Chris?

Yeah. Well, I think looking at people who carry the epithets, the greats, is not a bad way. It's a good start. And for me, the two that really stand out, partly because of my own sort of interest. So Alfred the Great, arguably the founder of the notion of the English state and Englishness. Did burn the cakes though. Did burn the cakes, exactly. But his sort of endurance at maintaining that kernel of Englishness in the face of sort of Viking onslaught. So I think he's great. And then Alexander the Great, in terms of... You want to talk about force of personality, some random guy from some backwater of the sort of, you know, Greek kind of people. And just literally, you know, on personal kind of animal magnetism, you know, forging this huge land empire. I just think is, you know, sort of incredible, you know, whether it's a worthwhile achievement and it didn't last for that long, but just simply for, you know, sheer kind of gumption. He's right up there for me.

Yeah, nice. Nick? Sorry, yes. I'm just looking up that quote by Sid Waddell, who said, when Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer. Eric Bristow is only 27. There you have it. Two great men in the same... Well, yeah, I would... For years, my answer has always been Garibaldi. He's a fabulous, you know, figure who, you know, really does feel like it wouldn't have happened. You know, the unification of Italy wouldn't have happened without someone like that. He just had this vision, you know, Italy could be united again. And a preposterous idea that you could wrest Italy from the hands of the imperial powers who were currently owning it. With just a neckerchief. Exactly. And a biscuit. And a red shirt. And a tasty biscuit, which was unleavened, of course, because he was always on the move. And just with this wonderful story of, you know, having to abandon... His wife died and he had to abandon her because, you know, he was on the run from the Austrians or something. It's just absolutely, you know, a textbook example of how to, you know, realise your vision and to go for it, you know, not to be put off by the fact that it seems impossible. So, yeah.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of something more original, imaginative, but I can't. I'm torn between... This greatness is probably, when you look at someone like Alexander the Great, this is probably on a slightly smaller scale, really. But Nelson, you know, and even the Duke of Wellington. Nelson Mandela? Yeah, no, Horatio Nelson. And I think it's probably tied in with, you know, I do quite like the sort of 19th century history and battles and that kind of thing. And apparently Nelson had a certain sort of magnetism about him and, you know, quite a slight man. I've seen his uniform with the hole in it, I think, at Greenwich Maritime Museum. And just this very slight, quiet man.

Sizzler with the ladies, of course.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I think it also is all tied in with that sort of, especially if we're talking Nelson with that sort of, you know, the power, you know...

If you go to North Creek, where he was born up in Norfolk, lovely little village. Right, no, I've not been there. Very, you know, a couple of mentions of Nelson, but it's not like it's his, Nelson's birthplace. He has got a whole square to...

To be fair, yeah. But I think also what I like about him is that I think that sort of personality is quite a quiet person. And I kind of like that sort of, the unassuming side of it. But you know, charging off to beat the French. Yes, there we go. Well, look, let's stop there. As always, thanks for listening. If you've got any thoughts or suggestions for topics, you can email us at podcast at alephinsights.com. We'd love to hear from you. If you've enjoyed the podcast, Nick, what should you, what should you do?

Well, help us on our path to greatness by liking and subscribing.

Yeah, please do. Although if we were really great, we would just kind of somehow make that happen without asking. Did Alexander Asby, you know, I think, yeah.

Well, if his dad hadn't been Philip of Macedon, is that correct? Yes. He probably wouldn't have made it.

Fair enough. You've got a helping hand there. All right. Well, thanks as always for listening. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare, Chris Wragg and Jordan Fermanis of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.