Are the British stuck in the past? Why do we keep going on about old victories and defeats? Do we look back more than other nations?

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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 Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing, are we Brits stuck in the past?

Chris, are we Brits stuck in the past? Well, the thing that made me think so, really, was the recent World Cup performance and the sort of, you know, renaissance of the Three Lions football song, which effectively, you know, is a sort of a run through our kind of tragic but heroic, you know, set of failures in the past. And we have always, as the England football team, we've always been haunted by past failures, particularly in penalty shootouts. And it got me thinking about this notion of why on earth do one set of people who are totally detached from having been involved in a previous set of events, why do they feel this millstone, this historical millstone around their neck? And, you know, are we as a nation, you know, we constantly hark back to particular historic events, which we can talk about in a minute. And that is the reason why the team, when they did win a penalty shootout, finally, why there was this huge sort of moment of national catharsis of having, you know, broken this, you know, hoodoo that we've had.

Also, I think just to define slightly more carefully, I think we probably agree that we're talking also about nostalgia here. So I think there's a positive element to it. So it is looking back on previous setbacks and failures and defeats and things like that. But there's a certain, as I say, nostalgia, a certain longing for it.

Yeah, it's part of our, you know, our national mythos.

Yeah. So that being the case, I'd like to go straight into it by broadening it out, but still staying within Britain to talk about some other examples. So we've talked about football. What else?

Yeah. So, well, obviously, our whole national identity or a large part of it is shaped on our experience through the Second World War in particular, but also the, you know, the First World War and this notion of us kind of struggling alone, an island nation, you know, going on against superior external powers. And there's a, you know, a lot of that identity has driven the debate around our current politics, you know, related to things like Brexit. You see that come through a lot. So I think a lot of our political discourse is driven by sort of, you know, imagery around conflict and conflict with an external power and us being, you know, the whole very well alone, you know, mentality of us striving against an external superior opposition.

I mean, just thinking back to, let's say, military defeat stroke, maybe near misses almost, but it's often part of a wider campaign or war that was a success. So things like Dunkirk, for example, or thinking about the charge of the Light Brigade, Rourke's Drift, which not exactly a defeat, but still. And I'm sure there are many, many, many others that I've not mentioned. Nick, do you think we're right in defining it like this? And do you think we're different from other cultures, countries?

I don't think I've got enough experience of other countries to say definitively. But I think, you know, there's certainly no evidence as far as I can tell from my interaction with Europeans that they're less stuck in the past. But they may be more inclined to focus on things that are sort of good aspects of the history. There are the bad ones. So, you know, there's obviously going to be a self-serving element in the things that you cling to. So, you know, in fact, I had occasion to visit Napoleon's tomb when I was in Paris last year. And, you know, they're certainly not shy about Napoleon. You know, he was, I suppose, in many ways, the high point of France as an empire. In the same way that we perhaps look back to our performance in the Second World War. So, I don't know. And the Americans certainly aren't, you know, they're not, they're the story of America and particularly where it came from and how, you know, and how it, you know, the defining sort of principles of, you know, the manifest destiny, you know, and the idea that, you know, that they have uniquely kind of good, great culture that they have managed to develop in their breaking away from, you know, Britain and forging this new nation. Everyone's got that, right? So, I don't know. I'm not going to, I don't think that we, I know we cling to the idea that we're particularly focused on history, but I don't think we are. The question is, okay, so what's good and bad about thinking about, you know, your history? There's lots of questions here. I think there's a kind of less interesting question, which is, you know, history is information, right? Obviously, that's good. You can't have enough information. History gives you information about the present. It's insane to ignore history. And, you know, history might give you, so, you know, things like the fact that we, you know, people look at Donald Trump and go, oh, he's, you know, it's a new Hitler type situation. And he's, you know, what he's doing to illegal immigrants is, you know, a bit like what Hitler did to the, what the Germans did to the Jews. And, you know, it's, we've got to kind of inure ourselves against this Nazis, the Nazis rising up again. It is, you know, hugely, that's really leaning far too heavily on indicators of potential future Nazism. But it's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing that we look back and go, well, okay, why did the Nazis succeed? Let's, let's seek out indicators of, you know, early indicators of Nazism and try and nip it in the bud. You know, Nazism was bad. So we should try our best to stop, to stop it if we see it happening. You know, so the debate really is not, should we be looking at history and guiding our future behavior by that, but, you know, the extent to which we should and the extent to which things are different now. So that's, you know, learning from the past, right? So learning, understanding the world and understanding humanity and the kinds of things that makes it do one thing or another, and adapting accordingly. That's fine. I think the interesting thing, which is what Chris is alluding to, I think, is this issue of history almost as a guide to preferences. And I'm thinking particularly, there are several questions here, but, you know, the fact that we have, you know, let's say lost a whole bunch of penalty shootouts, and then suddenly we win one, is, you know, makes us feel exultant in the same way that watching a film which has the three-act structure is good. There is the sense of a historical imbalance that needs to be corrected, an injustice that needs to be corrected. You know, just like in every, in the three-act structure of a, you know, a standard kind of screenplay or book, you know, you introduce the heroes, they get given a challenge, they fail, and then they work out some way of succeeding, and then in the end they succeed. And that's, we love that. It seems to be very universal behind almost every story. And I feel like that's part of, you know, that's why we like it when things turn out that way, you know, when you're presented with this impossible challenge which you eventually overcome. But there's all sorts of philosophical questions there, like particularly, where does, why do we identify with, you know, people who are living in this particular geographical area, you know, a thousand years ago? Why do we identify with the Anglo-Saxons, you know, against the French? I mean, we're just as French as, you know, the, I mean, we might as well identify with the French, with the Normans. I was interested a few, watching Ainsley Harriot on Who Do You Think You Are? a few years ago, and he discovered, when they looked back at his family history, that he was descended from both slaves and a slave owner. But, of course, he, you know, identified with the slave side of that, and almost felt abhorrence at the slave owner part of him, which is weird, really. I mean, why wouldn't he, he's just as, he's got just as much right to say, gosh, my family was a, you know, slave owners. Isn't that terrible? So, you know, this question of where we get the sense of identity from, because we're a whole, whole different bunch of people than we were, you know, even 150 years ago. What, why, we have no more right to see ourselves as the, you know, the inheritance of, inheritors of a Victorian legacy, or to take part in any narrative that might have started then as, you know, the modern day Germans, or people from, you know, Inuits,

for that matter. Yeah, I mean, you're, I think you're right. You got to the heart of it there. I think this is about identity, which reminds me of, I once knew this American girl. I got into a big argument with her about why she's so sort of, you know, proud of American exceptionalism, and the revolution, all that kind of business. Because although she was born up, born and brought up in the States, both her parents were English. And so I was, I was calling her out on this, and we never really fully resolved it. But it's that assuming, or what's the word? It's the... Adoption. Adoption. Assimilation. Yeah, assimilation. There we go, into an attractive

narrative. Chris? Yeah, well, I was just gonna say, I think, you know, there are, there are elements of harking back to the history, you know, if it is about identity, and you know, we are largely formed into nation states. And, you know, one of the key ways of, of giving us loyalty and an association with that state is to create a story about it. And, you know, that story has to be in the past and historic. So that's obviously a key factor. And that's, that's a good thing. It means, you know, people will do positive things on behalf of this entity, the state, because of, because of the history. So I think, you know, it has positive benefits. I think where, you know, where we, where we, where we need to guard against history and, and, is when nationalism comes into it, and you have things like, you know, historical enmities that you can't, that you can't get, get past. So, you know, it's not a terribly attractive trait in English national psyche, that we are so anti-German, for example, or anti-French, or a whole range of other nations, you might care to pick. But that inability to step outside of our history and say, yes, okay, you know, here are the positive aspects of a historical identity. But, you know, we no longer need to feel a sense of animosity towards countries who we've had, you know, conflicts with in the past. Well, that's an interesting one, because

we probably don't really need to cover in any detail the detail why it is that Germans don't, modern day Germans don't hold an animosity towards the UK, you know, that in any sense relates to the Second World War, because they don't really want to have to think about it, right. So, but you look at the English and the French. Now, I go to France most years, and the French love it just as much as we do, the fact that the two nations hate each other. They're loving Brexit. They love to see us twisting on the knife, you know, and I'm not sure that's really a terribly bad thing anymore. I mean, you could draw an analogy between, you know, the rivalry between two football teams or something, which, you know, personally, I sort of would rather went away. And I think in a way, I find it a bit irritating, because it always feels like it's something you've got to cover off whenever you're interacting with the French. But it's not, you know, it's not that harmful. It's a bit of fun.

Yeah, I love a bit of anti-Frenchness. And I revel in it as well. And I'm a big fan of the Sharp novels by Bernard Cornwall. I love them, absolutely love them. But equally, I've got a number of French fans. And, you know, I think on a personal level, it's, you know, I think they're lovely people, or lovely individuals. But I think the danger is if, let's say, on a wider sense, societal sense, and let's say with sort of national press, and I think it is exactly the kind of thing that can move towards things like Brexit, you know.

setting. But my point is, if you don't, you know, look at the British Admiralty's response to submarines, you know, this notion, here along came an innovation, you know, and at the turn of the 20th century, you know, there's this key naval innovation. And there was this sense, in fact, there's a quote by whoever the first Lord of the Admiralty was at the time, saying, you know, these are these are sort of tools of the weaker nation, i.e. it's, you know, it's just not British to have a submarine. And, and, you know, obviously, we did, you know, adopt them later on, but that there's obviously a happy medium somewhere between, you know, complete rigidity and adherence to historical tradition, and innovation and the abandonment of historical tradition. And somewhere in the middle, there's a sweet spot, which is don't throw everything. Yeah,

but I think, I mean, I feel like we have to operate the base on the basis of heuristics here. So I think I don't, I don't think we can come up, we can apply, we can really apply, I mean, I think you could in an ideal world, where everyone was capable of doing this, say, well, we're going to work it out, we're going to work out exactly how much weight we should put on the past. And, and the fact that this system has worked well, to, you know, and how much we're going to wait, we're going to put on our new model, which we think ought to be better. And how we, you know, how we try it, try something new without really breaking the stuff that we know is working. I think you could do that. But in real life, that isn't just isn't how change happens, you know, change happens very incrementally. And it happens because of, you know, the odd person with a bit of an idea that seems to take off, and, you know, attempts to impose it from the top down attempts to be overly kind of technocratic, are always doomed to failure. Yeah, so so I sort of think, actually, we just need, I think that a battle of

try and change that too much. We need to finish shortly. Is there anything anyone wants to say before there's something I want us to round up on? Just a little, I mean, you know, you could,

there's a cognitive analogy here, which is, you know, about, about, we know, we know that, you know, humans don't operate as you, if you were to design an ideal thinker, an ideal, you know, belief former, someone who learned from the way the world works, in a, in an idealized sort of Bayesian way, it wouldn't really look very much like the way that humans learn, right? So, you know, when artificial intelligence comes along, it's not going to be, it's not going to, it's not going to reason about the world in a way that, you know, that humans do. So when, sorry, general artificial intelligence comes along. But we've evolved these really robust heuristics. So, you know, if you get bitten by a snake, it makes you more likely to run away from a sock that resembles a snake because you've learned, first of all, that there are snakes nearby. And secondly, that getting bitten by a snake is, is unpleasant, right? So, you know, you've now got this heuristic runaway from long tubular shaped things. And that'll do, that's fine, right? I mean, that's, that works. Unless you've got cold feet. You know, and then, then presumably, if you lived in an Arctic environment where there, where there were no snakes at all, you'd be inclined to run towards socks. I don't know. But the point is that we've evolved these heuristics for reasoning about the world, which do a good enough job that there's no reasonable reason to try and, you know, it's not cost effective to try and ditch them all and spend your entire life thinking before you do everything, well, what's my expected utility? And I guess, you know, as a society, it's the same, right? The past is there. It's not, you can't do anything about it. You don't want, you don't want to get rid of it. And yeah, so I mean, there you go. What's the sort of, what are the best ways of

handling it? Okay. Just to finish off, I just want to take us in a different tack for a moment. Thinking about history, thinking about nostalgia. You've got six months to go back to any point in global history. Where and when would you go?

Yeah, well, I think you've got to go a long way to beat sort of, you know... The olden days? The olden days. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Oh, Halcyon days. The sort of medieval period of knights and castles. I think that is, you know, obviously, at the time, it was probably pretty unpleasant. But, you know, that romanticism, the chivalry, the, yeah, just the dynamics of society at the time. The crusades. I'd love to go on a crusade. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of thing.

Okay. Nick? I think I'd... Victoria and London. I'd love that. If I didn't come back with syphilis, I'd consider it a failure. All of every, all of the world that Dickens inhabited, you know, I might even go and meet him. It'd be great. And then seeing, you know, seeing the Queen Victoria going into all the pubs and the, you know, seeing the steam ships and the steam trains, you know, for changing the world. And yeah, that would have been just brilliant.

I mean, I often play this game with myself and I, with my children as well, ask exactly the same question. And sometimes I think I'd like to go back, actually make it more personal, go back to a time when my father was alive and go and see him early on in his life.

Have you seen Back to the Future?

Yeah. The great music.

Yeah. And like, not so much violence, you know. And, but, and also Egyptians, maybe, or given that I've got an interest in religion, going back to Palestine around the year zero AD or 33 AD. Yeah, but have you seen The Life of Brian? However, I think for me, what sort of probably trumps all of those is actually pretty close to what Nick said, which is high Victorian Britain. And again, I mentioned the Sharp novels, which a little bit earlier, but which I said in the Napoleonic era, but I'm a big fan of, I think his name is George Macdonald Fraser and The Flashman Diaries, essentially a Victorian rogue adventurer going around all sorts of different hotspots in the world. And yeah, I'd quite like, I'm slightly sort of ashamed to say it, but sort of, I'd like to be a British imperialist and a soldier and, you know, off in Africa or Asia or somewhere.

So we've got Chris on the Crusades, you're off, you're off conquering, conquering the world. Yeah. And Nick's got syphilis. Yeah. I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a bordello somewhere in Southwark.

Okay, chaps. Thank you very much. Let's wrap up there. Thank you to our audience as always for listening. This has been the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer, been here with Chris Wragg and Nick here of Aleph Insights. Thank you. And until next time, goodbye.