Greatest philosopher, you would not know
Climate: last calls for Chris Stark event, 7 June. Philosophy: Biography of one greatest moral philosophers, autism. American Born Chinese: meta story form, diverse story telling. Incentives, prizes.
Philosophy: Biography of one greatest moral philosophers, autism
American Born Chinese: meta story form, diverse story telling
Incentives: Alex Edmans notes on incentives (Andrew Page, PWC, lecture)
Climate, Pandemic: Market shaping prize
Theatre Games, Climate: Chatham House, Design Biennale
Theatre: Dickie Beau, lip-sync arts
Short hits: Disability, A letter to… my daughter who has 47 chromosomes; AI writing; War. On keeping your humanity; On what a cost-beneift analysis might get round. Looking at HIV drugs; On having a creative life (Tift Merritt)
Last calls, climate event: My event coming up next week is my conversation with Chris Stark. If you are at all interested in climate policy or you’d like to come and say hello, you should come. 5.30pm for 6pm start,7 June at Chatham House, London. Invite and Details here. We will tackle questions like: what corporates and investors should be doing (and not doing) on their net-zero transitions?
I made some blog notes on my reading about Derek Parfit. The most famous philosopher, you didn’t know. His life (like his philosophy) has many extraordinary aspects to it. One part I dwell on - is how much of an autistic thinker he is - and whether that matters. And what the institution of Oxford University’s All Souls College did for him - helped or hindered - is it still a force for good, or could it be so much better?
Here are some aspects to Parfit’s life that I’m pondering:
The role of All Souls and institutions, in general
Autism. The implications of an autistic cognitive profile.
Emotions. Beauty (what did Parfit make of the sublime, and beauty. A seeming lack of jealousy.)
Was Parfit mostly happy ? Did that matter at all ?
Would Parfit also have been one of his generations best economists or historians? What do I make of his broad interests and start and this steady narrowing down. (Does this intersect with an autistic thinking profile, face-blindness; mimicking)
Young talent, extraordinary talent, elite talent and what we might lose in focus
Long termism
The role of your friends / colleagues / conversations (the Amryta Sen panels (with Cohen, Dworkin, Parfit) seem to me now as foundational in thinking about eg Sen’s capabilities approach to inequality
Was his greatest contribution as an enabler ? Why was his second book so awry?
And I also thought:
Perhaps - and I have Amit Ghosh echoing here on the “plausibility challenge” of fiction - that if you made Derek Parfit a character in a story or a play, you would find the character implausible.
But, as we know these events happened, we know that Parfit obsessively took photographs of a building in Venice, he was responsible for the street lamps we have in Oxford; he was responsible for formulating a problem in philosophy (non-identity) and paradoxes (repugnant conclusion amongst others) that had been missed or undiscovered by the the world's great thinkers so far; and his first book, Reasons and Persons, went off like a “neutron bomb” of ideas to so many other - Derek Parfit lived a singular life in modern British (and American) philosophy Academia.
More in these blog notes here.
American Born Chinese: seeing people who look like you on TV and meta-structure. I rarely watch Netflix or Disney but made an exception for my distant cousin Michelle Yeoh. She is part of the cast of American Born Chinese, which is an 8-part adaptation of the graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang.
The TV departs significantly in plot (and in part in characterization) from the novel but stays true to the themes of identity and coming of age while adding in some different complexities. Judging the whole of a work of art is complex and, as I’ve written before, one of the important functions of these types of story is through increasing narrative plenitude. The 1800s was (mostly) men writing stories. 1980s and 1990s Hollywood had few Asian diaspora films. More recently we’ve seen a brilliant explosion of women writing (non-fiction) stories. Understanding our humanity by the stories we tell ourselves - seems to me - an important aspect of who we are.
Think about the stories we are telling ourselves now about AI.
So, rather than judge the whole of the series - and I think the series is worth watching - I wanted to dwell on two aspects: meta-structure dramaturgy and identity narrative plenitude.
By meta-structure dramaturgy I mean where a creative work is self-referential either to its own work, or to some aspects of its own structure, an acknowledgement of aspects of the work that might be fiction or authored. You observe this more obviously in films like Being John Malkovic, or in performance theatre which plays with unreliable narrators or the nature of theatre and performance itself. The so-called breaking of the 4th wall, where performers speak direct to audience as a technique (metalepsis) often plays with this. I am interested as I rely on meta-structure and ideas through some of my own performance-lecture work.
As its worst, meta-structure is inward-looking, obscure and unrevealing. But, at its best it elucidates commentary which is impossible by a straight telling. This is because a performer or a character acknowledging the fictions we tell ourselves or asking an audience to think about that can bring a nuance that a straight telling or a metaphor does not.
I think meta-structure may be useful in unpicking some of the complexity or “wickedness” of the climate challenge. The same for systems impact and thinking. This is because - we the people - are a part of the problem and the solution, and the system interacts with us, as we interact with the system. When a performer comments, or an audience influences the direction of the work, this echoes - in part - the interactive nature of the system.
These thoughts do not directly pass through most people’s minds when viewing art, but I think there is impact. In American Born Chinese, there is repetition of a racist meme epitomised by a dated, fictional sitcom, Beyond Repair. The fictional TV show is an analogy or metaphor for similar shows in our own world. Ke Huy Quan plays Jamie Yao, a former actor known for playing the accident prone Freddy Wong in the aforementioned sitcom. There is then an arguably self-conscious scene where Quan as Yao addresses the (studio) sitcom audience directly, commenting on Wong, which is also an address to us all.
This meta-structural scene demonstrates to me how far Disney have come in thinking about these issues. One can argue that much of the series has been “Disney-fied” in that this is American teenage life, and the ability to be the hero in your own story is one of the longest running myths / ideas that Disney narrates. The original novel did not make as much of this as the ABC series does.
Many recent series - She-Hulk, for instance - have contained these meta-structure elements, but to the extent ABC argues for the agency of being our own heroes and the self-reference to know we make our own myths and influence our own systems, then I find this intriguing.
The blog on these thoughts here.
Prof. Alex Edmans made some LinkedIn notes on incentives from a lecture by Andrew Page, PWC. Page is on the frontline on advising companies on incentives and is paid to do this, so I find the perspective interesting to note, as Edmans contrasts some of the thinking with pure economic rationality models.
Edmans writes:
1. Incentives are actually not just for incentivisation. Economic models of incentivisation argue that they operate ex ante: a CEO will only work hard if she expects a sufficiently large bonus to make it worthwhile. But incentives play many other roles:
(a) Alignment: ensure the CEO experiences similar outcomes to shareholders
(b) Recognition: CEOs are rewarded ex post for a job well done, even if their intrinsic motivation was strong enough that they didn’t need to be incentivised ex ante
(c) Fairness: the rewards CEOs receive for performance are seen as fair by shareholders and society
(d) Signalling: both internally and externally what the firm values
2. Economic models argue that incentives should be long-term to encourage long-term behaviour – we shouldn't have annual bonuses. In practice, it is much easier to set one-year targets; setting long-term targets might lead to unfairness if they end up being too easy or too hard to hit. In addition, like any other form of feedback, rewards are most effective when given promptly after performance.
3. It's not obvious that companies should benchmark performance against an industry index, even though this removes the effect of industry conditions outside the CEO's control. Firms compete for capital with all other firms in the broader market, so sometimes a market index is appropriate.
4. Executive incentives need to take into account the broader firm context. You might argue that CEOs should need no incentives - intrinsic motivation is enough. But some companies (e.g. fast-moving consumer goods) have incentives throughout the firm, such as sales commissions. It would seem unfair for the wider workforce’s pay to be subject to performance but CEO pay to be guaranteed. In addition, a CEO who’s grown up through the firm will be used to a culture of being incentivised to hit targets. A utility, with a public sector ethos, might have less high-powered incentives.
5. My work [Edmans, see Purposeful Company papers etc] has consistently argued for long-term shares, to ensure long-term behaviour and avoid the difficulty of setting long-term targets. But one concern is that it achieves alignment but not incentivisation; it may not drive the CEO’s daily decisions as powerfully as short-term incentives.
6. ESG-linked pay is increasingly popular. Investors are unwilling to pay for G – it’s taken as a given that a company should have good governance. Some investors are starting to take the same view for S: any CEO should, e.g., improve DEI; this is business as usual and you shouldn't be rewarded for just doing your job. That said, S measures are frequently seen as part of listed company incentives. However, most investors are willing to pay for E, as they see it as part of the critical path for companies.
Incentive frameworks drive a large amount of human behaviour across all facets of life: from love to children, from eating to what we watch; across all of animal behaviour - so worth thinking upon.
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I’ve mentioned this before because AMCs (Advanced Market Commitments) have worked reasonably well in some aspects of healthcare access and R&D, and I think they might be useful mechanisms to solve some challenges in eg Climate Change.
This would be good for some uni students or others who have a little bit of time to put some thoughts together.
My friend and collaborator David Finnigan has helped create some climate games as part of the London Design Bienale: 7 to 14 June, tickets also include a visit to the festival.
“On a small peninsula, five towns are preparing to make a comeback. Unjustly forgotten by the world, the community is about to launch a major cultural festival to revitalise the area.
In the hours before the opening ceremony, a tropical storm strengthens into one of the strongest storms in the decade, heading straight for the town.
Now, in the face of a world-changing climate shock, the leaders of these sleepy peninsula need to put on the show of their lives…
'The Future for Beginners’ is a hands-on simulation for up to 30 players. Working together over 80 minutes, players negotiate challenges and make decisions to create an unforgettable cultural event in the face of disaster.
Details here. London.
A short note on watching Dickie Beau - a “physical performer and intrepid drag fabulist”. Beau is re-staging his 2017 performance piece - Re-member Me - meditating on Hamlet, playing Hamlet, the transmission of acting knowledge, the start of Stonewall and queer rights (and some of its history); and death (and how HIV impacted this community); also running (is life a race?), mortality, regret (on not playing Hamlet, or Lear); and the fleeting nature that is performance arts (or human life).
All this through a meta-structure (see what I did there, with ellipsis in my own newsletter) where Beau lipsyncs the interviews of those who have played, or watched various Hamlets over the years. His personification of these interviews is astonishing.
(The 2017 piece was at the Almeida on the set of the mainstage’s version of Hamlet adding an extra layer of meta-structure that the Hampstead staging perhaps lacks.)
I saw Beau perform in New York (Blackouts, 2017). I find his performances extraordinary. I am not fully conversant with the tropes and traditions of drag and related arts but I find the performance arts aspect compelling. Now I find myself playing versions of myself in my performance lectures, I pay more attention to this.
There are elements which will resonate more strongly the closer you are to theatre arts. I recognise the conflicted push-pull of gaining a critics review and being immortalized in such a review as Ian Charleson so wished for, and gained, from John Peters. In fact, I have learned that Peters established an Ian Charleson award partly in response to Charleson’s Hamlet performed as Charleson was dying and in the last few weeks of life.
We are our stories. We are others’ stories, too.
At Hampstead theatre until 17 June, London. And blog version here.
Links:
Disability.
A letter to… my daughter who has 47 chromosomes. ‘You say little, but your presence is immense. You reinforce the essential simplicities of life’ (Guardian)
AI writing.
We used to consider writing an indication of time and effort spent on a task. That isn't true anymore. (Ethan Mollick)
War. On keeping your humanity. https://twitter.com/PatrickBury/status/1664188900917538819?s=20
On what a cost-beneift analysis might get round. Looking at HIV drugs.
Thoughts on having a creative life. God Bless Non-Linear Narrative & A Few Other Things Written On My Studio Wall. MFA in Experimental & Documentary Arts, Duke University, Commencement Address 2021 (Tift Merritt).