In our family’s music collection is a well-loved classic composition by the old time Trinidadian calypsonian Mighty Spoiler about the magistrate who tries himself for speeding.
The post-war hilarious hit by Spoiler or Theophilus Philip narrates the farcical tale of the one-assigned magistrate forced to hear his own minor traffic case in the small district’s lone courthouse, drawing crowds of the curious. In Creolese, the calypsonian choruses, “Heself tell heself, “You are charged for speeding. Heself start to shout, ‘The policeman lying!’ Heself tell heself, ‘Doh shout!’ He said, ‘No sport! ‘And he charge himself for contempt of court.”
Likened to the infamous ‘ole’talk’ of the region’s much-frequented rumshops and bars, “Magistrate Try Himself” is considered a cutting commentary on West Indian politics and judiciary by the hard-drinking Spoiler who succumbed to alcohol-induced illness, but is admired for his stinging strains and ability to sound as sober as a judge, even in a society that celebrates stories of ‘auto-litigation.’ The courtroom conundrum features the magistrate who is “serious, sometime laughing,” picking up a looking glass and asking himself, “Is it true you were driving too fast?” while threatening, “Look, I have a great mind to take ‘way your license book.”
Finally, the magistrate fines himself, but turns again to the mirror and begs, “Give me chance, ah want a lil time to pay.” He departs with the unforgettable line, “Ah giving you five years to pay the fine.”
A critic on the online “Shadowlingo” dedicated to the music of another great artiste, Dr. Winston Bailey, the Mighty Shadow, points out that “the audience is invited to consider the absurdity of government officials who find themselves charged with interrogating, investigating, reviewing or trying themselves for an offence or violation. We see how the inevitable conflicts of interest predictably end in either acquittal or very lenient convictions.”
I thought about Spoiler’s humorous lines given Guyana’s impasse that widened in the anti-climax of the recent consequential rulings by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) on the December 21, 2018 controversial no confidence motion and related matters. It is obvious that the findings of the country’s highest court cannot be enforced, with the implacable insistence of the Executive President and his coalition Government to continue in office in contravention of the Constitution. Add to this the unwillingness of the ruling and Opposition leaders to compromise even as they bicker and cast blame in unresolved consultations on the still non-selection of a new Elections Commission (GECOM) Chairman, and the launch of a fresh house-to-house registration exercise that predictably is being challenged in court.
While we may again see the unilateral appointment of a GECOM Chairman, along the lines of “himself tell himself” contrary to the CCJ’s recommendations but without any chances of charges of contempt of court, it seems as if compromise is relegated to a dirty word in the local dictionary of power, although it is ten rather than four letters long.
In an ethnically divided nation as complex as ours, compromise does not appear to be a desired virtue of great leadership. Yet scientists know that our well-designed brains are constantly compromising while collating information, often ignoring or downplaying small visual changes that do not fit with expectations. Far from being flawed, this shows that our brains function optimally, they argue.
A University of Toronto study found that the brain takes in raw data from its surroundings through sensors, using prior knowledge to reject interpretations that it considers unlikely. The brain gauges probabilities from real life to guide these perceptions, but we can be fooled by optical illusions, sleight of hand or as Spoiler sang, a basic mirror.
The project used a theory presented in the 1800s by Hermann von Helmholtz, a German physiologist. who stated that perception is a matter of unconscious inference. “The brain makes the best possible use of the flawed data it gets from sensors like the eyes or ears, piecing together bits of information until a final picture is obtained, much like the process involved in solving a jigsaw puzzle,” a researcher said. “The sensors react even to unlikely or unexpected events but the brain disregards some of these signals to form one coherent picture. The brain is always compromising.”
Prussian statesman Otto van Bismarck wryly observed, “Politics is the art of the possible.” Before he became America’s current President, Donald Trump declared in a 1989 interview with Life Magazine, “I’m not big on compromise. I understand compromise. Sometimes compromise is the right answer, but oftentimes compromise is the equivalent of defeat, and I don’t like being defeated.”
Businessman turned philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie felt that “strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.”
This year, researchers at Brigham Young University in the United States developed an algorithm that teaches machines not just to win games like chess, but to cooperate and compromise. The gadgets ended up being more effective than humans.
“The end goal is that we understand the mathematics behind cooperation with people and what attributes artificial intelligence needs, to develop social skills,” said Computer Science Professor, Jacob Crandall, whose study was recently published in Nature Communications. “AI needs to be able to respond to us and articulate what it’s doing. It has to be able to interact with other people.”
For the study, researchers programmed machines with an algorithm called S# and ran them through a variety of two-player games to see how well they would cooperate in certain relationships. The team tested machine-machine, human-machine and human-human interactions. In most instances, machines programmed with S# outperformed humans in finding compromises that benefit both parties.
“Two humans, if they were honest with each other and loyal, would have done as well as two machines,” Crandall said. “As it is, about half of the humans lied at some point. So essentially, this particular algorithm is learning that moral characteristics are good. It’s programmed to not lie, and it also learns to maintain cooperation once it emerges.”
The machines’ ability to work together, improved through programming with so called “cheap talk” phrases. Regardless of the game or pairing, this doubled the amount of cooperation. When machines resorted to “cheap talk” their human counterparts were often unable to tell whether they were playing a human or machine.
“In society, relationships break down all the time,” Crandall recognised, adding, “Because the machine is often actually better at reaching these compromises than we are, it can potentially teach us how to do this better.” In tests, if participants cooperated with the machine, it might respond with a “Sweet. We are getting rich!” or “I accept your last proposal.” If the participants tried to betray the machine or back out of a deal with them, they might be met with a belligerent “Curse you!,” “You will pay for that!” or even an “In your face!”
Ironically, the world’s only deadlocked Cooperative Republic needs to immediately order a few, given too many of the latter expressions in all the costly “cheap talk” that taxpayers have been forced to fund, the much anticipated and optimistic “Sweet. We are getting rich from oil someday soon” and the still elusive “I accept your last proposal.”
ID celebrates calypso’s holy ghost in Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott’s poem, “The Return of the Spoiler.” Walcott bawled, “Ay, Spoiler, boy! when you come back?” Spoiler retorted, “Tell Desperadoes when you reach the hill, I decompose, but I composing still.”
