Mastodawn

Patricia Aas Jun 17, 2024

I started reading “The Unaccountability Machine” which is actually quite interesting. I don’t know what I think about the subject matter, but it touches on a lot of things I’ve thought about over the years. It seems to describe a different economic model, not capitalism and not communism, but a systems theory field called “Cybernetics”. For some reason it’s like I asked someone: explain economics to me like I’m a programmer. And now my brain is slowly reworking itself to understand economics like I would understand a program. It feels very unnatural as a human having grown up in this *waves vaguely at the world* but it is the first time I am starting to feel that it makes sense. It’s still completely wrong, of course. I fundamentally disagree with some extremely axiomic parts of capitalism, but I suddenly might not end up with a parse error.
https://social.vivaldi.net/@Patricia/112626658364328553

Patricia Aas (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image @[email protected] oh well, I needed a new book 🤣🤓

Vivaldi Social

Patricia Aas Jun 17, 2024

Thanks to @vaurora for pointing me in this direction 🤓

Patricia Aas Jun 17, 2024

I guess everyone probably needs to get stuff explained in a way that ties in with the things they already know. I’m sure this probably is a whole field in pedagogy.

Patricia Aas Jun 18, 2024

I have been sidetracked into what is a side quest in the book. A strange electronic system set up in Chile under Allende before the dictatorship. I was looking on Wikipedia and found this podcast: https://the-santiago-boys.com/ imagine grafana dashboards and data driven decisions meets socialism and… Star Trek aesthetics.

The Santiago Boys

This is a podcast about a continent that dared to dream big - and challenge the power of Big Tech before Big Tech was a thing.

The Santiago Boys

Patricia Aas Jun 18, 2024

This thing is wild “Project Cybersyn”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

Project Cybersyn - Wikipedia

Patricia Aas Jun 18, 2024

Also, even if I kind of grew up in this, I hadn’t really thought about it for years. But one of the big things Latin America saw in this period were dictatorships brought about by large international corporations (often backed by the US) that preferred a “strong leader” so that they could extract the country’s resources in peace without being bothered by the pesky people who lived there. Ref the expression Banana Republic.

Patricia Aas Jun 18, 2024

This scholarship might be progressively more relevant for the rest of the world going forward.

Patricia Aas Jun 18, 2024

The US had their hand in pretty much every single military dictatorship in Latin America, this included money (remember Iran-Contras?), military training and supplies (everything to equip your friendly military dictatorship) and running disinformation campaigns.

Patricia Aas Jun 18, 2024

And the US is still doing this BS apparently: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

Patricia Aas Jun 18, 2024

Finished first read, but now I need to reread the beginning. Current impression is that I find the arguments individually interesting. I’m not sure the underlying logical argument they are a part of is logical or if the conclusion is a logical result. But I still found the book very interesting. Especially the first 3/4ths. The basic logical argument he seems to present is that current capitalism has constructed a mechanism that forces managers of publicly traded companies to serve shortterm goals. And that this makes it impossible for companies to adapt sufficiently to accommodate looming crises like climate change. When leadership has to deliver on quarterly numbers they cannot steer according to any other metrics. I think his idea is that if we can somehow break that mechanism then… and this part I’m unclear on and I’m not sure I find it very interesting either.
Basically I don’t know how I feel about the broader logical argument, but I found the discussion to get there very interesting.

Patricia Aas Jun 18, 2024

He also seems to think that the international tendency to elect populist wannabe dictators is a cry for help. That seems a bit… infantilizing?

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

I think I need to have lunch with an economist. I have questions.

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

I think the people for which Cybernetics will make the most sense are people who work in vulnerability research and exploit development. This systems theory fits very well with a lot of their findings and methodology.

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

Possibly also folks working in machine learning

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

And people in distributed systems tbh

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

Basically any field where you have acknowledged that the systems you are concerned with are complex and might never be fully understood, but where you still have stuff to do and you work with the knowledge that these systems are adaptive and might have emergent behavior. And that poking in one place might have unknown consequences. Where the primary tools are around monitoring and feedback to detect and diagnose new behaviors. And to manipulate these complex networks of stuff to do the thing you want, all the while knowing that it might very well also do something completely different and probably not desired.

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

Oh shit, this fits with medicine too, doesn’t it, @siljelb ?

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

I guess the fundamental difference from modeling is that even though you might try on occasion to reduce things to a formal model and reason about things in that formal model, you don’t really believe in it. You know the real thing is “alive” and that the information that is removed to model whatever process you are concerned with, will contain data that is essential and even more importantly: you know that there is essential data that has been removed that you don’t even know is essential.

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

As a programmer, it’s funny to read about people believing in their models. It’s a very junior developer thing to do. Senior folks don’t. They do their best and then they observe. And even more interestingly: if they don’t see unintended consequences of significant changes, they become suspicious.

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

The more I think about this, the more I need an economist to tell me this isn’t how they actually work and what they actually believe. Because that’s just bananas. First let’s “simplify” a complex system into a formal model and then you reason in it, maybe run some simulations and then… you believe it? And this idea of believing in a “market” as some sort of entity that will not only stabilize into a state, but that that state is somehow “good”, or even “optimal”. That’s bananas. That’s a fucking religion.

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

I’m sorry, but that’s on level with worshiping kubernetes. That’s fucking mind boggling.

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

I guess I have to read Piketty’s Capital book now. Because this is blowing my mind.
https://social.vivaldi.net/@Patricia/112644094554478633

Patricia Aas (@[email protected])

@[email protected] the “market” isn’t an entity. It’s a distributed system, and a distributed system isn’t a moral thing. It’s a thing that is serving the purpose it’s supposed to serve or not, and usually somewhere between those. And we try to keep it on that path, we don’t sit back and… wait for it to do its thing? And believe it’s Good because… I don’t even know. This is a religion. This isn’t something that can be taken seriously.

Vivaldi Social

pelavarre Jun 19, 2024

> > this idea of believing in a “market” as ...
> > stabilize into a state ... “good”, or even “optimal”
> > That’s bananas ...
>
> that’s on level with worshiping kubernetes

have you looked at how cash works?

why do you agree to take just money to work for hours, not demanding something more substantial?

from where comes your faith that that same money will still be worth anything tomorrow, when you get around to spending it?

why does our whole world pay a tax to the States by pricing money with prices that say the States' promise to have their money buy things tomorrow is a more trustworthy promise than everyone else's, even China's? presently, the US Dollar is our globalized "reserve currency", same as the British Pound Sterling was two centuries ago

( me, all i know of economics is a small subset of what the NPR Podcast > Planet Money teaches, and i've particularly enjoyed their explanations of the role of faith in how cash works ) ( i haven't read Piketty )

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

@pelavarre there is an awesome book that I really recommend called Money by Jacob Goldstein, it’s basically the biography of money and it’s super interesting (it’s on audible and works great as an audiobook). It convinced me that money is a useful abstraction, but that it tends to also lead to weird behaviors and things that are susceptible to collapse unless those bits are reigned in (and tbh even then). But it allows societies to evolve into more advanced ones, by allowing specializations. But it is a construct and can collapse. Even just by losing faith in it.

pelavarre Jun 19, 2024

> Money is a construct and can collapse. Even just by losing faith in it

yes!!

thank you for catching me up on your thinking, i was curious!

yes indeed, my weekly book club onsite at work did walk in your footsteps, it was in Sep/2023 that we read the "Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing" by Jacob Goldstein from Jan/2020

i would say we never nutshelled this book so well as you here now : -)

ouch i slipped into overstating how very little i know - i should've said i only know what i learned from THIS BOOK, from the NPR Podcast > Planet Money podcasts, and from the Freakonomics Podcasts)

Patricia Aas Jun 19, 2024

@pelavarre oh the Freakanomics books blew my mind back in the day. I read two, wonder if there are more now…

pelavarre Jun 19, 2024

Apple iBooks today sells only "Freakonomics Rev Ed" and "SuperFreakonomics"

i gather you recommend both?

i never thought to read the books, as yet i've only taken the podcasts free-of-separate-charge and moved on

p.s.

in economics generally, my attention goes first to how tremendously ignorant i feel about whether i'm collecting fitting wages for my work for hire or not - like have i made my deal proportionally unfair to everyone who doesn't hold my privileges, or is my employer getting my time for too cheap of a price

i guess those books don't much address that question

i am close to soon sharing my wages with two friends offline - they let me listen in while they shared with each other, i'm working up the courage to join in

@pelavarre I have washed dishes full time so I am definitely “overpaid” in the sense that others deserve the same or more. But that doesn’t mean that your employer doesn’t still get more out of the relationship than you, and possibly orders of magnitude. Both can be true at the same time. But we have to eat and this is the system we live in.