9 ms·

Project Cybersyn, a 1971-73 Chilean Experiment in Computer-Assisted Economy

129 points by patrickk 14y ago

benologist 14y ago
This was really a fascinating read.
andrewcooke 14y ago
there's a related book come out recently - http://redplenty.com/Front_page.html http://redplenty.com/Front_page.html - that looks very interesting. the author, francis spufford, seems like a very smart guy (he recently wrote a very good (imho, as an atheist) article on being a christian, related to his latest book - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/trouble-with-athiests-defence-of-faith http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/trouble-with-ath...) [but i think this has been posted and discussed here before]
- gwern 14y ago
  _Red Plenty_ was great, although it's not quite what I had expected. Anyway, anyone even remotely interested in central planning must read Cosma Shalizi's http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/ http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimiza... (I'd say that's much more interesting than the Chile stuff, but that's just me.)
  - andrewcooke 14y ago
    that's great, thanks (i think i found out about red plenty from crookedtimber, but i had never seen that post). do you know of any other books that are vaguely connected? i once read "machine dreams" http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Dreams-Economics-Becomes-Science/dp/0521775264 http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Dreams-Economics-Becomes-Scien... and enjoyed it hugely, but have never found anything even remotely similar.
ecmendenhall 14y ago
Here is a short presentation with another perspective on the Cybersyn project which should be of interest to designers and quantitative visualization types: http://compscifi.com/ http://compscifi.com/ It argues that the design of the Presidential control room and its simplified visualizations of economic information created an illusion of omniscience and control over the economy by using visual cues from modernist design and science fiction. But behind the scenes, the project was mostly run by humans exchanging data over teletype machines and hand-pasting information to slides. There's a wonderful example of the project's simplified model of the economy around 7:58. Do you think this captures the complexity of the Chilean economy with enough fidelity that policymakers could have made reliable predictions about the effects of their interventions? (I don't. This is why: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html) I have great hope that agent-based modeling and simulation will become useful tools in economics, but they are only useful when we accept that they are wrong. We should approach synoptic tools like Cybersyn that promise power and control over complex social systems with extreme skepticism.
motters 14y ago
In the last couple of years I've been reading the books of Stafford Beer, and he had some interesting ideas which were way ahead of his time. It's debatable how well Cybersyn and Cyberfolk would have worked in the early 1970s, using a single IBM computer plus telex systems. Today we would call this type of system SCADA, but Beer's ideas extended beyond factory control into the overall economy and political process. At the time Cybersyn was portrayed in the British and some of the Chilean newspapers as a totalitarian "big brother" system, but that wasn't how it was designed to work. Beer saw the economy as a closed loop rather than a top down hierarchy, and he knew about and was hostile towards the Soviet GOSPLAN type economy. If you're interested in Cybersyn then there is a recent book by Eden Medina called "Cybernetic revolutionaries" which describes the system and its development.
mbustamante 14y ago
i'm Chilean and this is a huge problem here in Chile. Allende's government is constantly remembered as "what is what could have happened if US had not intervened?"
- stfu 14y ago
  Even so I usually get shunned by that opinion, I honestly believe that Chile is one of the examples where American interventionism has worked. Sure, there are a lot of question marks about the methods, but the long time effects are astonishing. This is even more amazing taking into consideration its geographical location and the situation of its neighboring countries. Friedman should get another Noble Prize just for being one of the few economists, who were given this fascinating opportunity of putting his economic views at work - and providing evidence that it does. Something like Startup Chile gives me hope that this spirit of unconventionalism stays relevant even today.
  - Zarkonnen 14y ago
    Pinochet was brought to power by a brutal coup displacing a democratically elected government. They rounded up thousands of dissidents and killed them. The reason you get shunned is that you're cheerleading for a mass murderer. What are these "long time effects" that justify the death of thousands, the oppression, the torture? Edit: links: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/807599.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/807599.stm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estadio_Nacional_Julio_Mart%C3%ADnez_Pr%C3%A1danos#Use_as_pseudo-prison_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estadio_Nacional_Julio_Mart%C3%...
    - stfu 14y ago
      I am just taking under consideration the events at that time, i.e. an eminent fear of another Cuba situation in Latin America and the resulting fears. Castro repeated visits to Allende did symbolize this development maybe even more than the increasing nationalization of the Chilean economy. Even considering BBC's numbers and the unaccounted death these are still substantially lower than those of the death count of the Cuban Revolution. Considering the instability of Latin America at that time (e.g. the ongoing battle against armed communist guerrilla infiltrating the country [1]) I am not cheering for a mass murder, but acknowledging that creating stability in a highly instable environment is a painful process. A process that used highly questionable methods, but was never the less the foundation for Chile's success today. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973#Guerrilla_resistance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973#Guerrilla_...
ollieglass 14y ago
Are there any technical details available of how the system functioned? And has anything similar been attempted since?
- fiatmoney 14y ago
  Not well. It was essentially run manually, with humans stitching together telexes and slide projections. There's an interesting video here. http://vimeo.com/8000921 http://vimeo.com/8000921
davidw 14y ago
Related reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
- naturalethic 14y ago
  OP's article reminds me of Molineux's critique of the Venus Project: "Marxism with robots"
sanxiyn 14y ago
I found this: http://code.google.com/p/albastryde/ http://code.google.com/p/albastryde/ ALBAstryde takes its name in part from the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). The second part of the name is linked to its historic root, Cyberstryde, which was the software behind Cybersyn, the cybernetic network which was set up under Salvador Allende in Chile 1971-73 to make information about industrial production instantly available to workers and government. ALBAstryde is being developed to be first used as a base for the software of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Nicaragua.
- fitoria 14y ago
  I collaborated in this one, more information here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nicaragua-builds-innovative-agricultural-information-system-using-open-source-software http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nicaragua-builds-innovat...
  - andrewcooke 14y ago
    how did it turn out? was it used / reused / spur on something else? what lessons can be learned from what happened? (thanks).
    - fitoria 14y ago
      I just checked and they have no data for this year sadly :-( but they did used it for 2 years, I don't work for the ministry but I did worked for the NGO that made it so I don't know how well did they use it.
neoyagami 14y ago
Sometime i hate being in the backyard of EEUU
jorgeleo 14y ago
I am Chilean and there is a minor correction to the article: "He attempted to phone the general of the Air Force and the new commander-in-chief General Pinochet, but they declined to answer" Pinochet was not the commander in chief of the Air Force, but of the military. The Air force was part of the Junta, and as such supported their leader Pinochet. Otherwise excellent article.
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  it's poorly written, but because it says "they declined to answer" it's likely that the author means "the general of the Air Force and the new commander-in-chief General Pinochet" to be a list of two people. (but still, your english is better than my shameful spanish, and i have lived in chile for many years...)
  - jorgeleo 14y ago
    I stand corrected
jipumarino 14y ago
As an aside, I can recommend the alternate history novel Synco, from author Jorge Baradit, based on the Cybersyn project. http://www.amazon.com/Synco-Jorge-Baradit/dp/9563040562 http://www.amazon.com/Synco-Jorge-Baradit/dp/9563040562
JVIDEL 14y ago
The biggest problem every communist country had was indeed coordination. The USSR was famous for this, in fact the Nazi invasion was a success at first partly because of Soviet disarray: you had spies warning about the impending attack for months while factories churned tanks but not supply trucks, and the army trained soldiers but didn't make enough rifles for all of them. And this happened on a day-to-day basis: you had factories making 10,000 units when only 1,000 were needed, or worse when the demand was of 100,000. Food supply was always a problem and still is in countries like Cuba and NK. I have friends a bit older than me that lived under such conditions and still remember having to wake up at 4AM to grab a nice spot at the store line. "Show up late and there was no food left" they said. This Chilean system was without a doubt the right solution for the problem, too bad that it was destroyed before it could do what it was meant to do.
- demian 14y ago
  But Chile was not a communist country. The dream of a "mechanical centralized control" was shared by a lot of people in the XX century. It's strongly featured in positivistic SciFi literature of the time, for example I, Robot from Asimov.
  - Kadin 14y ago
    While Allende's formal affiliation was with the Socialist party, he was also endorsed by the Communist party at the time of his election. (WP says it was as an alternate, their primary choice being Pablo Neruda, but he then turned around and supported Allende.) And Allende's government was apparently perceived by some as being to the left of the Socialist party after the election. Exactly where the government was on the spectrum is open to debate, but I don't think you can say that they "weren't Communist" as though that's a boolean flag that's either true or false. But I think arguing over where exactly they were politically misses the point; you can have varying political philosophies alongside different economic ones. I'd argue that the two are basically orthogonal. Regardless of where the Allende government falls on the political-philosophy spectrum, they certainly had a fascination with national industries, economies of scale, and central planning.
vpeters25 14y ago
"General Augusto Pinochet remained the de facto dictator in Chile until 1988, when he acquiesced to pressure from the citizenry, the UN, and the Catholic church to reform the constitution and hold a new presidential election. The Chilean people declined to re-elect him. He stepped down in 1990 and left the country" This is inaccurate. Pinochet had a new constitution written and it was passed on the 1980 national referendum (see http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebiscito_nacional_de_Chile_de_1980 http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebiscito_nacional_de_Chile_de...). The Chilean constitution of 1980 included a "transitional" amendment stating that, if passed, Pinochet would be president for the next 8 years after which another referendum would be called with the following options: - Yes: Pinochet would rule for yet another 8 years with the "junta" remaining as the legislature. - No: Pinochet would stay for 1 year after which a democratically elected president and congress will take over the executive and legislative branches of government. "NO" won that referendum (I was just old enough to vote NO). So Pinochet, respecting the terms of the Constitution he wrote, called for democratic elections for President and Congress. Also, Pinochet could not run for the 1989 presidential election because his own constitution prohibited consecutive presidential terms. One interesting note: Pinochet was so confident he would win the referendum they didn't think they would need a building for Congress. They had to rush design and construction of the Congress building to the point only the main chamber was completed on time for the new president's oath ceremony.
draggnar 14y ago
Stafford Beer, the architect and excellent storyteller, presenting the cybernetic paradigm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O09FPHuCQQ&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O09FPHuCQQ&feature=youtu... Also, a quick explanation of the viable system model: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpX7T_sZWMc&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpX7T_sZWMc&feature=youtu...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
shaunxcode 14y ago
I have been obsessed with this ever since I read an article in the guardian (uk) circa 2003 of all places. If you want a better picture of the political situation check out "a promise to the dead" (by ariel dorfman http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1097260/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1097260/). You can also read designing freedom (written right after the coupe) to get a solid idea of what stafford beer was driving at http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/beer/book.pdf http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/beer/book....

129 points by patrickk 14y ago

This was really a fascinating read.

there's a related book come out recently - http://redplenty.com/Front_page.html http://redplenty.com/Front_page.html - that looks very interesting. the author, francis spufford, seems like a very smart guy (he recently wrote a very good (imho, as an atheist) article on being a christian, related to his latest book - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/trouble-with-athiests-defence-of-faith http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/31/trouble-with-ath...) [but i think this has been posted and discussed here before]

gwern 14y ago
_Red Plenty_ was great, although it's not quite what I had expected. Anyway, anyone even remotely interested in central planning must read Cosma Shalizi's http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/ http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimiza... (I'd say that's much more interesting than the Chile stuff, but that's just me.)
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  that's great, thanks (i think i found out about red plenty from crookedtimber, but i had never seen that post). do you know of any other books that are vaguely connected? i once read "machine dreams" http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Dreams-Economics-Becomes-Science/dp/0521775264 http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Dreams-Economics-Becomes-Scien... and enjoyed it hugely, but have never found anything even remotely similar.

ecmendenhall 14y ago

Here is a short presentation with another perspective on the Cybersyn project which should be of interest to designers and quantitative visualization types: http://compscifi.com/ http://compscifi.com/ It argues that the design of the Presidential control room and its simplified visualizations of economic information created an illusion of omniscience and control over the economy by using visual cues from modernist design and science fiction. But behind the scenes, the project was mostly run by humans exchanging data over teletype machines and hand-pasting information to slides. There's a wonderful example of the project's simplified model of the economy around 7:58. Do you think this captures the complexity of the Chilean economy with enough fidelity that policymakers could have made reliable predictions about the effects of their interventions? (I don't. This is why: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html) I have great hope that agent-based modeling and simulation will become useful tools in economics, but they are only useful when we accept that they are wrong. We should approach synoptic tools like Cybersyn that promise power and control over complex social systems with extreme skepticism.

motters 14y ago

In the last couple of years I've been reading the books of Stafford Beer, and he had some interesting ideas which were way ahead of his time. It's debatable how well Cybersyn and Cyberfolk would have worked in the early 1970s, using a single IBM computer plus telex systems. Today we would call this type of system SCADA, but Beer's ideas extended beyond factory control into the overall economy and political process. At the time Cybersyn was portrayed in the British and some of the Chilean newspapers as a totalitarian "big brother" system, but that wasn't how it was designed to work. Beer saw the economy as a closed loop rather than a top down hierarchy, and he knew about and was hostile towards the Soviet GOSPLAN type economy. If you're interested in Cybersyn then there is a recent book by Eden Medina called "Cybernetic revolutionaries" which describes the system and its development.

mbustamante 14y ago

i'm Chilean and this is a huge problem here in Chile. Allende's government is constantly remembered as "what is what could have happened if US had not intervened?"

stfu 14y ago
Even so I usually get shunned by that opinion, I honestly believe that Chile is one of the examples where American interventionism has worked. Sure, there are a lot of question marks about the methods, but the long time effects are astonishing. This is even more amazing taking into consideration its geographical location and the situation of its neighboring countries. Friedman should get another Noble Prize just for being one of the few economists, who were given this fascinating opportunity of putting his economic views at work - and providing evidence that it does. Something like Startup Chile gives me hope that this spirit of unconventionalism stays relevant even today.
- Zarkonnen 14y ago
  Pinochet was brought to power by a brutal coup displacing a democratically elected government. They rounded up thousands of dissidents and killed them. The reason you get shunned is that you're cheerleading for a mass murderer. What are these "long time effects" that justify the death of thousands, the oppression, the torture? Edit: links: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/807599.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/807599.stm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estadio_Nacional_Julio_Mart%C3%ADnez_Pr%C3%A1danos#Use_as_pseudo-prison_camp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estadio_Nacional_Julio_Mart%C3%...
  - stfu 14y ago
    I am just taking under consideration the events at that time, i.e. an eminent fear of another Cuba situation in Latin America and the resulting fears. Castro repeated visits to Allende did symbolize this development maybe even more than the increasing nationalization of the Chilean economy. Even considering BBC's numbers and the unaccounted death these are still substantially lower than those of the death count of the Cuban Revolution. Considering the instability of Latin America at that time (e.g. the ongoing battle against armed communist guerrilla infiltrating the country [1]) I am not cheering for a mass murder, but acknowledging that creating stability in a highly instable environment is a painful process. A process that used highly questionable methods, but was never the less the foundation for Chile's success today. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973#Guerrilla_resistance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_coup_of_1973#Guerrilla_...

ollieglass 14y ago

Are there any technical details available of how the system functioned? And has anything similar been attempted since?

fiatmoney 14y ago
Not well. It was essentially run manually, with humans stitching together telexes and slide projections. There's an interesting video here. http://vimeo.com/8000921 http://vimeo.com/8000921

davidw 14y ago

Related reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

naturalethic 14y ago
OP's article reminds me of Molineux's critique of the Venus Project: "Marxism with robots"

sanxiyn 14y ago

I found this: http://code.google.com/p/albastryde/ http://code.google.com/p/albastryde/ ALBAstryde takes its name in part from the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). The second part of the name is linked to its historic root, Cyberstryde, which was the software behind Cybersyn, the cybernetic network which was set up under Salvador Allende in Chile 1971-73 to make information about industrial production instantly available to workers and government. ALBAstryde is being developed to be first used as a base for the software of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Nicaragua.

fitoria 14y ago
I collaborated in this one, more information here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nicaragua-builds-innovative-agricultural-information-system-using-open-source-software http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nicaragua-builds-innovat...
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  how did it turn out? was it used / reused / spur on something else? what lessons can be learned from what happened? (thanks).
  - fitoria 14y ago
    I just checked and they have no data for this year sadly :-( but they did used it for 2 years, I don't work for the ministry but I did worked for the NGO that made it so I don't know how well did they use it.

neoyagami 14y ago

Sometime i hate being in the backyard of EEUU

jorgeleo 14y ago

I am Chilean and there is a minor correction to the article: "He attempted to phone the general of the Air Force and the new commander-in-chief General Pinochet, but they declined to answer" Pinochet was not the commander in chief of the Air Force, but of the military. The Air force was part of the Junta, and as such supported their leader Pinochet. Otherwise excellent article.

andrewcooke 14y ago
it's poorly written, but because it says "they declined to answer" it's likely that the author means "the general of the Air Force and the new commander-in-chief General Pinochet" to be a list of two people. (but still, your english is better than my shameful spanish, and i have lived in chile for many years...)
- jorgeleo 14y ago
  I stand corrected

jipumarino 14y ago

As an aside, I can recommend the alternate history novel Synco, from author Jorge Baradit, based on the Cybersyn project. http://www.amazon.com/Synco-Jorge-Baradit/dp/9563040562 http://www.amazon.com/Synco-Jorge-Baradit/dp/9563040562

JVIDEL 14y ago

The biggest problem every communist country had was indeed coordination. The USSR was famous for this, in fact the Nazi invasion was a success at first partly because of Soviet disarray: you had spies warning about the impending attack for months while factories churned tanks but not supply trucks, and the army trained soldiers but didn't make enough rifles for all of them. And this happened on a day-to-day basis: you had factories making 10,000 units when only 1,000 were needed, or worse when the demand was of 100,000. Food supply was always a problem and still is in countries like Cuba and NK. I have friends a bit older than me that lived under such conditions and still remember having to wake up at 4AM to grab a nice spot at the store line. "Show up late and there was no food left" they said. This Chilean system was without a doubt the right solution for the problem, too bad that it was destroyed before it could do what it was meant to do.

demian 14y ago
But Chile was not a communist country. The dream of a "mechanical centralized control" was shared by a lot of people in the XX century. It's strongly featured in positivistic SciFi literature of the time, for example I, Robot from Asimov.
- Kadin 14y ago
  While Allende's formal affiliation was with the Socialist party, he was also endorsed by the Communist party at the time of his election. (WP says it was as an alternate, their primary choice being Pablo Neruda, but he then turned around and supported Allende.) And Allende's government was apparently perceived by some as being to the left of the Socialist party after the election. Exactly where the government was on the spectrum is open to debate, but I don't think you can say that they "weren't Communist" as though that's a boolean flag that's either true or false. But I think arguing over where exactly they were politically misses the point; you can have varying political philosophies alongside different economic ones. I'd argue that the two are basically orthogonal. Regardless of where the Allende government falls on the political-philosophy spectrum, they certainly had a fascination with national industries, economies of scale, and central planning.

vpeters25 14y ago

"General Augusto Pinochet remained the de facto dictator in Chile until 1988, when he acquiesced to pressure from the citizenry, the UN, and the Catholic church to reform the constitution and hold a new presidential election. The Chilean people declined to re-elect him. He stepped down in 1990 and left the country" This is inaccurate. Pinochet had a new constitution written and it was passed on the 1980 national referendum (see http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebiscito_nacional_de_Chile_de_1980 http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebiscito_nacional_de_Chile_de...). The Chilean constitution of 1980 included a "transitional" amendment stating that, if passed, Pinochet would be president for the next 8 years after which another referendum would be called with the following options: - Yes: Pinochet would rule for yet another 8 years with the "junta" remaining as the legislature. - No: Pinochet would stay for 1 year after which a democratically elected president and congress will take over the executive and legislative branches of government. "NO" won that referendum (I was just old enough to vote NO). So Pinochet, respecting the terms of the Constitution he wrote, called for democratic elections for President and Congress. Also, Pinochet could not run for the 1989 presidential election because his own constitution prohibited consecutive presidential terms. One interesting note: Pinochet was so confident he would win the referendum they didn't think they would need a building for Congress. They had to rush design and construction of the Congress building to the point only the main chamber was completed on time for the new president's oath ceremony.

draggnar 14y ago

Stafford Beer, the architect and excellent storyteller, presenting the cybernetic paradigm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O09FPHuCQQ&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O09FPHuCQQ&feature=youtu... Also, a quick explanation of the viable system model: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpX7T_sZWMc&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpX7T_sZWMc&feature=youtu...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

shaunxcode 14y ago

I have been obsessed with this ever since I read an article in the guardian (uk) circa 2003 of all places. If you want a better picture of the political situation check out "a promise to the dead" (by ariel dorfman http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1097260/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1097260/). You can also read designing freedom (written right after the coupe) to get a solid idea of what stafford beer was driving at http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/beer/book.pdf http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/beer/book....