4 ms·

The greatest technology humans have invented and the one that currently needs most investment is bureaucratic collective action.

• abeppu 2y ago
  Can you expand on the "greatest technology" half of your comment? I can see plenty of clear reasons why bureaucratic collective action is in need of investment, but I'm predisposed to suspect that's because currently it's pretty bad.
  • throwanem 2y ago
    I believe the claim is that we have no more powerful technology for the coordination of human action at very large scales. If so, I wouldn't disagree.
    • padjo 2y ago
      Yeah pretty much. If an extinction level asteroid pops up tomorrow it’s not going to be rugged individualism and entrepreneurial spirit that saves the day, it’s going to be the ability to efficiently coordinate millions of people to achieve a goal.
      • chasd00 2y ago
        in that particular scenario i'm sure SpaceX will be a big part of the solution so... probably a mix of both. A weapon of mass destruction developed by a nation and a space vehicle developed privately by an individual tired of the status quo.
        • throwanem 2y ago
          Developed "privately" only in the rather facile sense this can be said of anything done with the necessary support of massive federal funding, yes. It's bureaucracy that allocates and disburses that money.
  • padjo 2y ago
    I suppose by greatest I mean: increasingly important as we scale.
• hansonkd 2y ago
  It's astonishing to me that people do not see the correlation between AI and as you call it "bureaucratic collective action". I have considered corporations, nation states, etc as forms of artificial intelligence that long predates computers. Just because the intelligence is collective doesn't make it less artificial. and just because the "code" that makes up these collective intelligences are written as laws and governance documents doesn't change the fact that it is an agent that can make "decisions". I suppose it is hard for people to feel a connection with a group or org as intelligence opposed to an personified "individual" like ChatGPT. Kind of like how it is hard to see an anthill as an organism when we are so much more related to the ant. However just because its hard for us to relate to an anthill, it doesn't make it any less of an organism that behaves like an individual. In order to advance AI, it is imperative to study and understand how our current "super intelligences" of nation-states and mega-corporations behave and how they interact with others and govern themselves.
  • cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    We're swimming in a dominant ideology which barely recognizes the existence of "society" (the Margaret Thatcher "there's no such thing as society" vibe) and frames most of reality in terms of individualism, individuals, and the self. It should come as no surprise how little understanding there is of the social framing of technology and tools. From chipping flint to writing code, it's a huge mass of inherited and circulated technique-knowledge.
  • kristiandupont 2y ago
    I have been fascinated by this thought experiment for many years as well. >I suppose it is hard for people to feel a connection with a group or org as intelligence In theory (one theory, at least), we should have as much chance to understand what such an intelligence thinks as a single brain cell would have of understanding what goes on in a human mind.
• xyzzy123 2y ago
  What worries me is that in many industries (health & education particularly) there doesn't seem to be any actual limit to admin demand. Like; admin demands increase until the system barely functions and compliance is just barely possible. BUT administrators would always like more data, controls and process. So one possible outcome of AI is that computers magically pick up our admin burdens, freeing us to do our jobs in peace. The _other_ possible outcome is that AI increases our capacity for admin and therefore generates way more admin. A particular risk is where AI generates asymmetric leverage for administrators. An example of this would be admin requiring lengthy forms to do such-and-such. If a human administrator no longer needs to spend their time validating or checking the forms, there's less pushback on making the forms longer or producing even more of them.
  • hansonkd 2y ago
    > AI increases the capacity for admin and therefore generates way more admin This is the most likely scenario. The original sales pitch for Computers were originally to free doctors and nurses and admins by making things easier. But instead the administrative work exponentially grew.
    • _wire_ 2y ago
      Work goes to where it can get done.
• cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Exactly this. We need to heavily (re)invest in processes, tools, ethics, technology that boost human social power and our ability to work together. There are 8 billion people on the planet. So much potential.
  • SoftTalker 2y ago
    Every attempt to organize people bureaucratically ends in failure or war. We don't seem to learn this lesson as we keep trying. No bureaucracy will ever care for individual goals, needs, desires as much as you will for yourself and your family. We need some rules of the road and limits. History also proves that. But it's a fools errand to think that we can organize 8 billion people to work together, other than within some fairly loose rules that prohibit undesirable extremes of behavior.
    • si1entstill 2y ago
      I think both can be true. Most liberal western economies are highly individualistic in terms of form and law, but large firms naturally come into being and thrive. I guess one could argue that this isn't due to the need for "bureaucracy" but instead "labor" and that the bureaucracy is an unavoidable side-effect, but there is undeniably large-scale organization. Context seems like the most interesting thing to consider. I suspect the attitude and outlook of the individuals toward the organization is the key component (and their capacity to undermine the organization in some manner). All of this is to say that I don't believe organization is inherently against the human sentiment, it just needs to be seen as justified, sensible, and a net-positive to those involved.
      • SoftTalker 2y ago
        I would agree, a bureaucracy that one chooses to enter (employment) as a means to earn income is different from living under an all-controlling government that dictates most aspects of your life. Still, people in highly bureaucratic jobs tend to burn out and quit, or endure a certain level of misery.
• throwaway13337 2y ago
  I agree that effective human organization is, by far, our largest problem today. All of our contemporary problems are, at their core, organizational problems. However, we actually lack an understanding of how large systems are organized. In the human body, each cell performs its task without a centralized authority but as an individual agent. The cells are selfish and just try to survive. But emergent in this behavior is a human that thinks itself the master of all the cells. Michael Levin has done surprising things that fall from studying cells of animal bodies and how they can act independently. We really need a science of agent based systems. I don't know of something that captures it entirely. What I do know is that top-down hierarchical organizations are fragile and will corrupt with time. Agent based systems are the only way nature will allow to progress much.
  • WillAdams 2y ago
    >We really need a science of agent based systems. I don't know of something that captures it entirely. Wasn't that Stephen Wolfram's _A New Kind of Science_?
    • chaosist 2y ago
      No, this is the field of complex systems. We already have this field. It is just too new though. We seem to conflate the sciences with the efficient market hypothesis instead of the reality of progressing one funeral at a time. We may even have structures now that keep things in place after the funeral and stall progress even further. I study complex systems on my own but if I was a PhD student I am not sure it would be a great career move.