We have figured out how to run everything, absolutely everything, in the 1950s.
The original computer “AI” craze was started by “cybernetic systems” and for good reason. You probably only know of the bastardizations of “cyber-” that don’t have anything in common with the original concept.
The original concept goes like this:
- set a goal
- perform an action
- measure how much impact that had, did it get you closer to your goal or not?
- If you are at your goal, you’re done,
- otherwise adjust your actions, got to 2. (This is “feedback” and the reason that word is now so common. People at the time knew)
The faster you go through the loop, the faster you will figure out what works.
You can measure anything you want, as vague is you want. Happiness, money, productivity. It’s the way democracy is designed to work, in which case the feedback is vague and the cycle time is measured in years. It runs your thermostats, in your home, big national power grid power plants. It’s how autopilots autopilot.
The idea that “nobody could have predicted…” or “nobody responsible” is a myth. We have the science. We know how it works.
Every failure we still experience is a failure we allow to happen. Because of profit, politics, or whatever.
Didn’t catch something “going on for years”, maybe someone should check more often. “Crazy single individual causing a tragedy”? No, that’s a person at risk, probably with social or mental problems you didn’t take care of before, didn’t flag, and didn’t stop in time.
“Nobody wants to work on our open source project” Really, how is your onboarding? Do people take a look at the docs/culture and run away screaming? Yeah?
Are you refering to this?
A bit, but not really. The key is to understand that it can be applied to very small scale and very simple processes as well. But that it’s still the same concept.
E.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_(device)
Or not getting enough sleep by noticing you’re tired and changing your daily routine to change it.
People have tried to run economies with it and that… failed. I think it could be interesting to try it again now that we have seriously wide spread internet access and fast, cheap communication. But forcing it on everyone is probably a bad idea and it’s not even necessary. For example, if the data is just easy to access, big companies should do it themselves. That’s their entire purpose. We’re just hindering efforts that way, because the data interfaces are usually not designed to make it this easy. Like, we don’t have a common standard to order material online, or to watch those prices.
So when a fast food chain orders potatoes for their fries and steel mill orders coal and iron, they’re using different systems that have to be maintained.
And the reason I’m writing it here, is that people don’t know about it. Therefore they don’t demand it from their democratic leaders or unions and therefore we don’t have it.
I’m not saying anything new.
It’s the same kind of voting, negotiation, discussion system we already use everyday. Those just look different when they are the same thing. We are 95% there, we’re just missing one or two last steps.
Got it.
- Remind people that climate change is an issue
- Run around my city spraying corn starch in kids faces and screaming “STOP POLLUTING” at their parents. Deflate some tires while I’m at it.
- People everywhere are more aware of the issue
- Success, people remember that climate change is serious issue and in order to fix it we need awareness. More people are aware and progress is made
- I have no job so lots of time to plan next actions. As a heavily active user on social media, zines and local flyer group I have interacted with lots people I never met who love giving me money and advice for next projects. Just found out they’re willing to bank roll me to go to England next!
Your premise relies on two false pretenses:
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That we have time to calculate how everything works. We don’t.
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The system doing the calculations is affected by doing the calculations. This creates infinite recursion, which by definition means we can’t actually compute everything
If our universe exists within another universe, the outer universe could calculate and predict everything in our universe, but we cannot do it from within the confines of our own universe.
Having this problem can also be managed by going through the loop. If you original goal was “calculate stuff to prevent bad things”, and you can’t do it because you’re choosing too much accuracy, you can experiment with the accuracy until you find a good middle ground.
We can use super detailed FEM, CFD what not sophisticated science, but sometimes the stuff from the 1800s is just fine.
