
The Problem of Scale and the Case for Cybernetic Communism [pdf] - pizza
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~matilde/ScaleAnarchy.pdf
======
memexy
One thing I've been thinking about recently is what would happen if government
was automated. We now have better automation and computational capabilities so
creating a government with programmed agents instead of politicians is a
legitimate possibility.

Turns out Soviet mathematicians had similar ideas

> Economic reform became a pressing need in the mid ’50s, after Stalin’s rule
> had left the country in shambles, the chain of supply and the agricultural
> sector nearing collapse and a serious risk of another major famine looming.
> Amidst a very rapid expansion of the techno-scientific sector, from the
> early successes of the Soviet space program to the first large developments
> of computer systems and automation, several competing proposals for economic
> reforms were presented that promoted the idea of a “computational solution”
> to the severe mismanagements of the planned economy.

> The original plan of the cybernetics approach was to implement a
> decentralized computational system, capable of processing feedbacks in real
> time and handle the simulation of complex dynamics. In terms of providing a
> scalable computational model, they mostly focused on Kantorovich’s linear
> programming, which seemed the most promising mathematical tool at the time.
> As we mentioned, the scalability of Kantorovich’s valuations is subtle, and
> we will discuss a possible more modern approach to scalability in the next
> section of this paper. However, the most important aspect of this proposal
> was the main idea of a cybernetic computational network and its role at
> implementing a decentralized autonomous computational mechanism for a
> communist economic system that would not require any centralized planning.

~~~
est31
I believe that giving final say to computers is the only way to ensure
survival of humans on large timescales (tens to hundreds of thousands of
years).

Since we've built up large storage of nuclear weapons, the clock is ticking.
Even if the chance of one crazy guy coming to power in one of the governments
that can nuke the planet is 0.01% per year, after a few thousand years it will
approach dangerous levels...

And I'm not just talking about nukes, but about other potentially mankind
ending threats like superviruses, hauling large asteroids onto earth, etc. The
more technology we discover, the more methods to end each other's existence.
Also, as technological progress continues, so does the spread of these
technologies over the world. Smaller and smaller groups get access to them and
with the larger number of groups, the likelihood that one of them wants to end
all life on earth increases.

Preventing us from inventing these things would require halting and reversing
progress in most scientific domains, a pretty sad idea. You can't have nuclear
reactors without the danger that someone uses the knowledge of the people who
built it to build nukes (I know the two are not the same but so often you hear
countries claiming their nuclear program is civilian while in reality it
isn't). You can't build rockets without the danger that they might be
converted into ICBMs. You can't do advanced biology without understanding
infection well enough to know which changes might make an infectious agent
more easy to spread, more deadly, etc. You can't do asteroid mining without
giving the mining company the power to misdirect the asteroid from an assigned
target area to inhabited areas.

So one should rather manage the existence of these technologies instead. No
organization ran by humans can reduce the chance of one of these fermi filters
from going off well enough to stop them being a threat over extremely long
time scales. Only computers can achieve that. I imagine building a computer
that is tasked to prevent humans from intentionally destroying large
subpopulations of their own. One would have to give it absolute power so that
it can ensure this, but one should instruct it to otherwise let humans figure
out their governance on their own.

Structures where humans are involved are simply too fragile over the long
term.

~~~
memexy
I don't share the same viewpoint nor do I fear technological advancement. We
need more powerful technology as widely spread as possible to empower people
to achieve their goals. Only way to fight tyranny is to make sure every
individual is capable of resisting whatever control others might want to
impose upon them. By empowering each individual with technology we give them
the best chance of doing so.

We don't solve the problem of nukes by limiting who has access to them. We
solve the problem of nukes by moving beyond them and making them obsolete,
e.g.

> A defensive shield, commonly referred to as simply a shield and sometimes as
> a Holtzman shield, was a protective energy field that could surround the
> person who wore it. [0]

We can start by making bullets obsolete and then slowly move up to nukes.

\--

[0]:
[https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Shield](https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Shield)

------
LargoLasskhyfv
[1]
[https://www.rand.org/search.html?query=Cybernetics](https://www.rand.org/search.html?query=Cybernetics)

------
LargoLasskhyfv
So I read this until the parts with the formulas, could have used some of the
2-dimensional visualisations she wrote of.

Am I making a category error(as in not even wrong!) when i miss mentions of

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model)
and

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation)
?

Furthermore: Just because some countries have absurd health-scare systems,
doesn't mean it has to be so. That is _one_ single aspect, many other
countries with 'markets' have implented in better, less scary ways.

Also: Instead of electing smooth talkers, horror clowns and other sociopaths
one could opt for a mandatory lottery akin to jury duty/lay assessors/judges,
thereby denying them planned paths to power, and simply less wasted energy
because lack of campaining. IMO it couldn't be worse than it is now.

Anyways, this is all way above the realities of real life(TM), human nature,
and the disruption/distributed denial of service by advertisment, disinfo and
outright fraud our minds are.

I'll tick this off with [3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(I_Can't_Get_No)_Satisfaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/\(I_Can't_Get_No\)_Satisfaction)

