The past, after all, is not just a graveyard of disasters. It is also a reservoir of hope. I have always been fascinated by those small groups of stubborn people who change the course of history. Sometimes for the worse, think of the Bolsheviks, but also, gloriously, for the better. Florence Nightingale and the nurses who pioneered evidence-based medicine. Emmeline Pankhurst and the suffragettes who won the vote for women. Norman Borlaug and the inventors whose Green Revolution saved millions from famine. What all these people had in common was a clear vision, a scalable strategy, and the unflagging persistence to pursue their goals. In the immortal words of Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
The Margaret Mead quote is perfect. It captures that exact moment in the forest in Las Kabaty. The Polish mathematicians were the definition of a committed group, but their power came from their willingness to work in total obscurity. Unlike Florence Nightingale or Emmeline Pankhurst, whose work required a public stage, the Cipher Bureau had to be invisible to be effective. It is heartening to think of history not just as a series of grand events, but as a collection of these quiet, persistent rooms where the world is actually redirected.
By the way an absolute heroine of mine is Florence Nightingale, I use her as a case study at university whenever I teach.
Yes Wendy, the shift from theory to action is the only thing that actually moves the needle. It is easy to look back and critique the style of these historical figures, but the durability of their work is what remains. It proves your point perfectly: real virtue is found in the persistence of the work itself.
The final point of this post really stayed with me. I don’t claim to understand the nature or pace of AI development, but it leaves me wondering whether our understanding of these systems is keeping up with how quickly we’re building and using them.
I had the same thought while looking into Rejewski's work. The Germans were convinced of Enigma's safety because they looked at the sheer scale of the numbers and assumed no human could keep up. They were right, in a way, no human could. But the Polish breakthrough happened because they stopped looking at the scale and started looking at the logic. Perhaps that is the lesson for us now: as AI moves faster than we can track, we have to look less at the outputs and more at the underlying relations or structures, just as those three mathematicians did in the forest.
Your post reminded me of the following:
The past, after all, is not just a graveyard of disasters. It is also a reservoir of hope. I have always been fascinated by those small groups of stubborn people who change the course of history. Sometimes for the worse, think of the Bolsheviks, but also, gloriously, for the better. Florence Nightingale and the nurses who pioneered evidence-based medicine. Emmeline Pankhurst and the suffragettes who won the vote for women. Norman Borlaug and the inventors whose Green Revolution saved millions from famine. What all these people had in common was a clear vision, a scalable strategy, and the unflagging persistence to pursue their goals. In the immortal words of Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2025/Reith_2_R4_2025_Transcript.pdf
The Margaret Mead quote is perfect. It captures that exact moment in the forest in Las Kabaty. The Polish mathematicians were the definition of a committed group, but their power came from their willingness to work in total obscurity. Unlike Florence Nightingale or Emmeline Pankhurst, whose work required a public stage, the Cipher Bureau had to be invisible to be effective. It is heartening to think of history not just as a series of grand events, but as a collection of these quiet, persistent rooms where the world is actually redirected.
By the way an absolute heroine of mine is Florence Nightingale, I use her as a case study at university whenever I teach.
You could list for pages how one small group changed the world when they had a clear vision and were committed to take action towards that change.
Thanks for the link. I noted this :
Clarkson could see himself as the hero who would take down the
slave trade. A few weeks later, at a dinner with a few other abolitionists, he rose and
solemnly spoke the words, "I am ready to devote myself to the cause."
This may sound a tad performative. And yes, reading Clarkson's memoirs
today, you can't help rolling your eyes sometimes. But in the real world, actions
outweigh intentions. And what matters is that the ambitious student kept his word.
Call it virtue signalling, if you like. But it was real virtue.
Real virtue and a real commitment to action to making change happen is what changes the world.
Yes Wendy, the shift from theory to action is the only thing that actually moves the needle. It is easy to look back and critique the style of these historical figures, but the durability of their work is what remains. It proves your point perfectly: real virtue is found in the persistence of the work itself.
This is beautiful, a “reservoir of hope”. May hope remain our beacon always.
The final point of this post really stayed with me. I don’t claim to understand the nature or pace of AI development, but it leaves me wondering whether our understanding of these systems is keeping up with how quickly we’re building and using them.
I had the same thought while looking into Rejewski's work. The Germans were convinced of Enigma's safety because they looked at the sheer scale of the numbers and assumed no human could keep up. They were right, in a way, no human could. But the Polish breakthrough happened because they stopped looking at the scale and started looking at the logic. Perhaps that is the lesson for us now: as AI moves faster than we can track, we have to look less at the outputs and more at the underlying relations or structures, just as those three mathematicians did in the forest.
That's an extraordinary story. Wow.
Thank you Winston