Antonym: Underestimating Reality Edition
Five minutes to realise that it's never a five-minute read, and have to use the sunk cost fallacy to get you through to the other side. Plus links!
…we underestimate the colour and quality of reality.
— Mike Pitts
Dear Reader
METAVERSE CREDIBILITY STUNT
It’s been the Cannes Festival of Advertising Creativity this week. While Greenpeace unsettled the green-washers on the beach, Publicis embarrassed itself by making an avatar of its logo and giving it a C-level role, apparently forcing perfectly decent journalists to report on the story without screaming out loud.
Then again, why not? I bet LaMBDA —the chatbot Google insists is not sentient— could do an adequate job of most invented-for-PR CXO roles. Much more interesting would be for Publicis to have leaked that an AI has been in post for six months and no one has noticed and its direct reports are all happier than they were under the previous human supervision. And then deny it.
: : For a 45-minute ramble through web3 and metaverse hype—take a look at this video (ahem):
A RACE OF DRUIDS
Experts on Stonehenge, like experts on wonders such as the Pyramids, Macha Pichu and mass-vaccination programmes, have to put up with a lot of lunatic fringe theories.
I imagine many a public talk for the Stonehenge scholar ends with a girding of their intellectual loins for the several sensible questions followed inevitably one along the lines—possibly ley-lines—of possible alien/World Government/magical explanations for one thing or another.
This week Mike Pitts, author of How To Build Stonehenge talking on The Rest is History podcast about just this issue, and an side-effect: in trying to distance themselves from weirdos, real experts try to stay within the bounds of the plausible to the point where “we underestimate the colour and quality of reality”.
A lovely phrase and a provocation to us all: slow down, look closely at reality, be it the past, present or underlying laws of the universe and things so often turn out to be stranger, more wonderfully complex and unexpected than our assumptions about them.
In the context of Stonehenge, Mike Pitts was thinking about our struggle to explain the construction of this deeply strange monument. (This is a wonderful example of framing and re-framing.) For many years, he says, engineers have delighted in coming up with pet theories of how the megaliths were moved from Wales to Somerset in the Neolithic age. With engineering frame this problem was one of how to achieve this with as few people as possible, as efficiently as possible.
A different frame on the problem is anthropological: looking at how societies work. There are still some societies left that build similar structures without modern technology. What we see there is that efficiency isn’t the point: they involve as many people as possible. The monoliths are the output of a process of which the outcome is social cohesion, identity and power. Getting the stone from Wales to Somerset was not the problem the neolithic people were trying to solve, this theory has it.
The builders of Stonehenge were trying to build political and social cohesion over great distances. To do spectacular things that their people would bond over and brag about. The difference between us and those idiots in Hampshire? They haven’t built stonehenge… Who knows, maybe Hampshire outdid them by building a skyscraper made out of wood, but it left no trace. Oops — I’ve drifted out to the lunatic fringe now, haven’t I?
READING LIST TSUNAMI
I’ve been given an enormous quantity of books to read as birthday gifts. It’s exciting to the point of slightly overwhelming. To add to the huge amount of choices, it’s time for the FT Summer Books round up—always a great place to find recommendations for your next read. I’ve added about 20 to my Goodreads list. There are a lot of book round-ups at this time of year, but no one—bar, perhaps the New York Times Books—does it as forensically and joyously as the FT.
Also this week, I read a LitHub article noting some amazing books coming out this autumn, including Cormac McCarthy’s first work in a decade, and Murakami’s reflections on reading and writing which is an irresistible proposition for me. His What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is as much about writing as running, and he is a wonderful author.
APOCOLLI BROCAPLYPSE
Nuclear explosión broccoli
THIS WEEK I HAVE BEEN…
Watching
Glastonbury Festival 2022 | BBC TV Live Coverage
The BBC doing a public broadcaster’s work and then some with its Glastonbury coverage. Going on the iPlayer service (if you’re not in the UK, then you can find a VPN way, I’m sure) brings and embarrassment of riches — live coverage from each stage, and highlights packages. The sheer variety of artists I’ve seen in a couple of days is wonderful, from the pop-tastic Olivia Rodrigo to the transcendent majesty of the increasingly brilliant Celeste, Haim, Little Simz and then new-to-me artists like Pa Salieu and Confidence Man. If you’re going to dive in, my advice is to go randomly forth and see what you find in the streams.
The White Lotus (Now TV).
A second viewing this week — I watched it when it came out last year—confirmed six-part limited series as a modern classic for me. The production is immaculate—the dark goings on at a high-end Hawaiian resort hotel (filmed at the Four Seasons Maui during lockdown) are sumptuously photographed and the intro titles are so gorgeous I forwent the “skip” option and watched them all the way through. In fact here they are:
Incidentally, Paramount+ launched this week. A new subscription streaming service. As needed as another coffee shop in Brighton, but you probably have to try it just in case it’s “the one”. As Stephen Fry said of smartphones in the pre-iPhone era: “I’ve never seen a smartphone I haven’t bought.” It’s the same for me with streaming service and to a certain extent with paper notebooks. But still, I’m fighting the urge… If there’s a Paramount+ series in this section next week you’ll know I am on the seven-day free trial. If there’s one two week’s later you’ll know I have no self control whatsoever.
Listening…
“Stonehenge”: The Rest Is History podcast. I mentioned it above, but it's worth saying “listen to it” twice…
Reading…
Look, I’ve mainly been reading The Crux by Richard Rumelt.
Lastly…
FIVE-OH! FIVE-OH!
Yesterday I turned 50. I came across a lovely passage from Virgina Woolf’s correspondence that she wrote about getting older:
Odder still how possessed I am with the feeling that now, aged 50, I’m just poised to shoot forth quite free straight and undeflected my bolts whatever they are. Therefore all this flitter flutter of weekly newspapers interests me not at all. These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism. And to alter now, cleanly and sanely, I want to shuffle off this loose living randomness: people; reviews; fame; all the glittering scales; and be withdrawn, and concentrated.
See you next week. And if you do enjoy the newsletter please forward to a friend and subscribe for future issues.
Antony
P.S.
So many things to share — these are the bookmarks I wish i had time to talk about:
AI teaching itself how to play Minecraft by watching videos.
Mark Ritson on preparing for a recession
Futurology is actually about trying to understand the weird present, says Ezra Klein
