One-On-One

by Philip Spires

  C But the boffins and nerds who run financial systems are using that data all the time...

  T Indeed they do, Chris, but they don’t have my toolbox.

  C And the toolbox remains firmly shut.

  T Indeed.

  C And it is the tools in the toolbox that make your one to two per cent per day.

  T And now longer-term instruments. As I said earlier, the new tools were essential when growth was the only strategy.

  C And now?

  T Ownership. It’s still capitalism, and as we said earlier, the raw material for the system is capital, itself.

  C And that’s where you are now, isn’t it? Your search for growth still exists, but now you have such significant holdings in major companies that it’s their power and profits that now contribute more to your wealth than mere trading?

  T Sometimes. Sometimes it’s still the trading.

  C But now, in order to protect your interests, you, and those who assist you in the management of your assets, are moving to place your own people on company boards, those who will manage the enterprise, to benefit your and your colleagues’ interests further...

  T Welcome to capitalism. How we operate is precisely the same as any other corporate interest might behave. There is capital to protect and invest for profit.

  C So now it’s just the capital that’s the focus?

  T Once that has been amassed, it becomes its own fuel. I am not the first analyst in the history of thought to point that one out.

  C Marx. You are what might be called a ‘traditional’ or ‘classical’ Marxist, are you not?

  T [shrugs] If you say so.

  C You see, Haji Salleh, this is what those who criticise your tactics are worried about. You are taking significant stakes in companies, holding interests that affect many people’s lives, and ostensibly you operate within a system in which you don’t believe...

  T Belief has nothing to do with it. Most practising capitalists don’t believe in capitalism, they assume it. There are inevitabilities. And if Marx were alive, he would probably be a capitalist in the world as we know it. His ideas merely predicted that, as a system, it would prove unsustainable, that’s all. And it was destined to break down because of what he called ‘contradictions’. It’s what the rest of us call selfishness, or greed.

  C And your activity is aimed at helping it along to the point of becoming unsustainable?

  T That will happen anyway, and I can’t change it.

  C Isn’t that rather, let’s say, deterministic?

  T Actions have consequences. There was no inevitability about the choice of capitalism as our system of economic transaction, but once we had chosen it, the path of its future development was determined. For instance, if the options are a motorbike or a car, and we choose the motorbike, we always have to bear in mind in future that it can fall over.

  C So it’s better to choose the car?

  T Better? No. It’s harder to park.

  C [confused] Sorry, Haji Salleh, are you saying that...

  T [interrupting] All I am saying is that the choices we make have consequences attached, and that those consequences are usually an inherent part of what we choose, not the act of choosing it. Once a choice is made, the consequences pertain.

  C And what about your own interests? What is to stop your companies failing? What is to stop your system falling down?

  T Mathematics is merely a way of explaining the way the world and the universe behave. Someone will eventually come up with a better model than my event theory. When that happens, predictions generated by event theory will still be relevant, but they may no longer be useful, since the better explanation will supersede it.

  C And then?

  T Who knows? I may even be the person who develops the new work.

  C But I still don’t understand how you can be so sure that your success is down to your event theory.

  T I can be sure merely because it works.

  C But what if the playing field is not level? What if your success is merely a front, a convenient fiction that hides away much more conventional capitalist activity derived from the interests and assumptions of those who back you?

  T [thinks] If that were the case, then you wouldn’t be here interviewing me. You would be harassing others.

  C [laughs] Okay, let’s move on, despite the fact that once again you have told us nothing new...

  T ...under the sun... [he offers a broad smile]

  C I mentioned earlier that you are now concentrating on biological systems.

  T Indeed.

  [Both participants seem to relax]

  C I must apologise to our viewers here, because you have not been privileged, as I have been, to accompany Haji Salleh on one of his insane forays into the rain forest. A few days ago, together we trekked over rivers, through swamps, and over a mountain or two, and our sole purpose was to find a flower, just one. [He attempts to interrupt, but she holds up a hand to prevent it.] Now this may seem off topic until I explain that this particular flower is extremely rare, but at the same time is extremely noticeable, is well known to science and much studied. Haji Salleh has been extending his event theory into the biological world and he not only predicted that a particular area might be a good habitat for the host plant, he also predicted the occurrence of a flower, whose blooming is itself a rare event. He took me there to see it and, sure enough, exactly as predicted, there was the flower. How did you do it? Was it a crystal ball?

  T I did not predict the future. I predicted an event. In the system I employ, time is merely a dimension along which the continuum of events is spread. These biological systems are hopelessly more complex than the closed systems of financial markets and I am only just reaching a position where the work is showing results.

  C But the ideas are the same as the event theory that beats the markets...

  T Indeed they are. The techniques are the same, but they are applied to a much greater, far more complex and challenging set of problems.

  C So what else have you studied besides your giant flower?

  T Well, as you know, because you have witnessed my lifestyle over the last couple of weeks, the sea is a very big interest of mine. And I have become particularly interested in turtles. Some time ago, I constructed a model based on details of the known habits and lifestyle of loggerhead turtles in an attempt to research the population dynamic in the South China Sea. Since then I have extended the model and applied event theory to a substantial set of data from previous research.

  C And just for the benefit of our viewers, I’d like to confirm that when you say you have constructed a model, we are not talking about balsa wood, papier mâché and glue.

  T No, of course this is a mathematical model made dynamic via a computer program.

  C And...?

  T And nothing, yet. The work is at a developed, but not yet advanced stage.

  C And the purpose?

  T Primarily to increase our knowledge and understanding, but that in itself will assist in conservation. If we can accurately predict the usage of particular nest sites, and even the kinds of usage the sites will get, in terms of frequency and numbers at least, we can then target our conservation efforts more effectively.

  C Good news for turtles, then?

  T It certainly is. But potentially it goes much further than that.

  C To other species of turtle?

  T [laughs] No, to humans as well.

  C So tell us how event theory applied to biological systems can benefit human beings.

  T Human beings are biological systems, so any better overall understanding we have is automatically beneficial. But it goes much further than that. Let’s consider, for example, epidemiology. We already have masses of data about the occurrence and progress of various diseases of
all types - viral, bacterial, et cetera. We have some in depth observations about pathology, prognosis, treatment, cause and effect. It’s patchy, to be sure, but it’s still very good. We also have good summary data on many diseases, so we can already predict many of the characteristics of epidemics. But everything we know is highly particularistic, in other words it deals with a specific case, or it is probabilistic. Our work, until recent research on genes, has been largely correlative, finding links without explanation or theory.

  C Meaning?

  T Meaning that we know how the disease manifests itself within a population as a whole, without being able to say anything about where or when it might next appear. It also means that when a sufferer seeks treatment, diagnosis will lead down a path which is determined by the probability that a given approach may apply. The most common treatments will generally be tried first. Sometimes, for a particular individual, that might be an inappropriate approach.

  C ...and event theory offers something different?

  T I hope so. One can never be sure, but it may be able to predict more accurately what will work for a given individual, after, of course, we have a full DNA profile as well as analysed data about the condition.

  C [appearing interested, raising her hands to take control of proceedings, a pen held between the cupped fingers of the right hand prods at the points she makes] So let’s be clear about this. You claim that your systems will help to diagnose diseases or conditions, help predict where outbreaks will occur, map out the likely progress of the epidemic and even recommend the specifics of optimal treatments.

  T [thinks for a moment] That’s about it, Christine.

  C It’s hard to believe.

  T Christine, let me suggest a scenario, so your viewers can more easily appreciate just how significant a change event theory might make to the practice of medicine.

  C [fumbling with her notes] It will have to be quite short, because we don’t have much time left.

  T No problem. Christine, and viewers as well, for that matter, please imagine a hospital waiting room. There are two families waiting to see a specialist. There is a sick girl in one family and a boy in the other. They are both in their early teens and have cancer, bone tumours on the knee to be precise. Their conditions are generically similar, but of course they are different individuals with different metabolisms. And there are also superficial differences, such as the boy’s tumour being on the right knee, while the girl’s is on the left. Now bone cancer in teenagers tends to be virulent and is usually fatal. Even now, more than half the of the individuals who develop the disease die before they reach twenty. Now the boy and girl are not different merely by virtue of being of different sexes: they have different DNA. One may benefit from treatment A, and the other from treatment B. But the specialist can’t work like that, because these are the only two individuals with their own particular DNA that have ever been treated. The specialist has to approach treatment probabilistically, meaning that after assessing how far each tumour has progressed, then a treatment will be recommended based on the adjudged success or otherwise of treatments that have been offered to others in the past, each of which was allocated in a particularistic manner.

  [CG is listening intently. There is a significant pause. She waits.]

  T Now if event theory works in the way I believe it will, the specialist of the future will be able to do more than this. Using my techniques, it might be possible for the specialist to allocate treatments specifically, based on a more predictable prognosis of the development of the tumour. Secondly, knowing that prognosis and the genetic characteristics of the individuals, the specialist will be able to target the treatment, perhaps using a combination of techniques, drugs and procedures. This boy and girl, who in the past were both subjected to a one-size-fits-all approach, might now have individual programmes tailored to their needs, different and yet both effective in treating what might appear to be similar conditions. It might even be possible to say to one of them, “The other guy has to have an amputation, but the prognosis for you is that we might just save the leg.”

  [CG remains silent, as does TC. CG shifts her weight in her chair, which creaks through the quiet]

  C So what are you waiting for?

  T [laughs] I can’t do it yet, but I am getting there. And that’s why I need my hermit’s shack on the rock. I still need to concentrate.

  C So you can work on your turtles.

  T [smiles] The turtles are a start. I have to get that right first.

  C And, I believe, you are going off straight after this programme to do some field work on your theories.

  T That’s right. I’m off to an archipelago in the Celebes Sea.

  [CG is silent for a few seconds. She tries to speak a few times, and seems agitated.]

  C Do you know, I think One-On-One should go there with you, perhaps even conduct another interview, a follow-up, as you do your field work...

  T You would be welcome.

  C Haji Salleh Abdullah, thank you for agreeing to do these three One-On-One interviews. I came here to quiz you on the ethics of your trading, the veracity of your claims of having invented new mathematics and the sincerity of your motives. I came here, perhaps, with a brief to label you as a crook, a conspirator, a subversive or financial terrorist. Here, at the end of our programmes, you have turned that agenda on its head and I for one do not now doubt any of your claims. Thanks, Tom.

  [CG leans forward with the offer of a handshake. TC responds. Cut to white]

  The Green papers (continued)

  Dear Tony

  By the time you read this, there will be no point in pursuing us. We will be long gone. You will have noticed during the third interview that I was not fitted with any ancillary devices. All you have to work on is what the cameras recorded. I am currently uploading the material as I write, so you may get to see it in a couple of days, once the technical people have finished with it and you can have your own copy. In any case, you will see the programme before this letter reaches you, because I am not going to send it for a couple of days.

  You will of course have noted the change in approach. I began this One-On-One assignment with a quite specific brief to take this man apart. Our line was that he was a predator, bent on achieving a megalomaniac’s domination of the free world. Or words to that effect... Sorry if I sound cynical, or if the words are hackneyed. Perhaps we have all become mere hacks without realising it. I was to demonstrate how his methods violated personal privacy. I was to stress the possibility, nay probability that his claims about developing new theories and methods of operation were spurious. I was to establish in the public mind the belief that his trading success was as a result of either good fortune or conspiracy or both.

  I was to create the belief that he was a mere front for other powerful individuals, whose mission was to change the world by imposing their foreign values on it, values that were neither ‘Western’ nor ‘democratic’. Basically, Tony, I was to destroy the man by ridiculing him, branding him a liar and exposing him as a puppet. This would legitimise the calls to control him, tax him, even bar him, rein him in, some way or other...

  I have done this before, of course. This is no Damascus moment that changes my attitude to everything that went before. I have interviewed and thus pilloried heads of state, politicians, celebrities, upstarts and psychopaths. I have met ordinary people, business leaders, capitalists, communists, the twice-born, the once-burned and the twice-shy. Over the last forty years I have dealt with Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Bahais, Shintos, animists, theists, atheists, polytheists, monotheists, Catholics, protestants, Shiites, Sunis, Adventists, Scientologists, even seismologists! And in most of my work - no let’s say all of my work - I have followed my journalistic instincts and, as a result of a firm belief in my own consistency of judgment and sincerity of approach, I have rarely looked back
on any assignment with anything other than satisfaction at having got some way towards something called truth, a concept I still hold dear, respect and obviously idealise. On those occasions when I have worked to a brief, I have always stuck to that brief and sought to achieve precisely what I was contracted to do and commissioned to deliver. Never have I experienced any conflict between my principles, my sense of right, and my experience with an assignment. Until now.

  You must have known there were risks. You also had no choice. You have lived a lifetime of being ordered. Cartwright was a subject who would deal with no-one else. He was not interested in media contact, apparently uninterested in what the media could do for him. And he cared not two hoots for his own image. But your task was to nail him, and nail him to the shape you and your paymasters had drawn. My problem was that he did not resemble the ogre you wanted me to find, and no matter how much I tried to reshape what I found, he simply refused to be anything other than sincere, probably harmless and certainly not threatening. You wanted him demonised, but my programmes may even have sanctified him. But you had no choice. He was willing to talk to me and none other, and so you have the material I have sent and nothing else, other than what you had collected or invented before my contribution began.

  But that willingness to talk to me and to me alone, you knew from the start was a danger. It may just have been the case that his game was simple, sincere and humble: politically motivated, perhaps; idealistic, certainly. If he were to prove as unthreatening and even benign as his own pronouncements - however few and sparing in content - had claimed, then you would be in double trouble, because not only would your mission have failed, but also your entire analysis and its underpinning assumptions would be revealed to be specious, even malicious. Then where would you go?