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Technocracy always struck me as weirdly incoherent? If you take the economy, probably the most studied of government policies, it is not 1 number. There are man

Technocracy always struck me as weirdly incoherent? If you take the economy, probably the most studied of government policies, it is not 1 number. There are many questions about what priorities ought to be. There is no 'expert' answer for how many starving poor people are a worthy trade off for a GDP point. Even if there was, there is an economist branch that disagrees with any possible position you might take. The question of which experts to listen to almost entirely subsumes the question of what experts say. More than anything it's a branding strategy. "Putting me, a surveillance investor, in charge of international relations is clearly more rational and scientific than putting the other guy in charge."

engineer_22 6mo ago
My theory It coalesced at a time when science was becoming more accessible to the masses, more educated technicians running around engaging in work and trade. And these technicians were frustrated by bosses who didn't understand the science and technique behind things. So there was great inefficiency because the bosses hadn't caught up to the technicians in their understanding of the world. And so the political idea of "put in charge the people who actually understand the problem" caught hold of the technicians, and they were fired up for a period of time and they called it technocracy.
- whattheheckheck 6mo ago
  Then realized they too didn't understand the complex nature of the world
- bombcar 6mo ago
  It's also the height of real problems being solved relatively simply with technological advances.
- ccppurcell 6mo ago
  Not just that but the 30s was the tail end of a period of reduction and unification in science. If physics and biology (large portions of it) could be reduced to a handful of principles, why not economics and politics. Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein, Hilbert, the Vienna Circle. It must have seemed like science was on track to explain more or less everything.
  - AkelaA 6mo ago
    It’s interesting that the theory of Quantum Mechanics emerged just after this point and threw a wrench in the idea that the universe could be neatly explained through a universal single theory, suddenly there were more questions than answers. And Einstein famously hated quantum physics. There’s something to be said about the cultural impact of quantum mechanics and how it shifted people’s perceptions from a universe that could eventually be explained by a set of fairly simple, understandable laws of physics to one that is much more complex, mysterious and contradictory. Suddenly the laws of the universe were defined by randomness and uncertainty, rather than determinism and easily understood logic.
    - bobson381 6mo ago
      I read and enjoyed the book " what is real" by Adam Becker that talks about this intersection between the philosophy of the day and its impact on what more considered valid interpretations of QM at the time and into the future. The logical positivists had a lot of impact on popular conception of quantum stuff, even to this day. Great read
    - cedilla 6mo ago
      I don't know why it would matter, but Einstein didn't hate quantum mechanics. He literally got his Nobel prize for his role in discovering quantum mechanics. He is one of the earliest people to propose that light exists in quantised packets. He had some strong opinions around interpretations of quantum physics, but that isn't even a question of science, it's a metaphysical discussion. While we're at it, Einstein also wasn't a bad student, and he didn't hate mathematics.
    - ccppurcell 6mo ago
      Around the same time, Gödel proved the incompleteness theorems and Turing gave us the halting problem. These and the uncertainty principle tell us not only that the universe is somehow statistical and not mechanical, but that there are certain unknowable facts. That's got to be a major psychological blow.
  - gwerbin 6mo ago
- j45 6mo ago
  Sounds like early AI..
chermi 6mo ago
Hubris. Is the same mindset that leads to socialism, central planning, social darwinism, etc. The temptation of "theory" without the suffering from pesky reality.
- ehnto 6mo ago
  "All phenomena involved in the functional operation of the social mechanism are measurable" From the article, reminded me that the complexities and nuance of life at the ground level really are lost on some. Even if you genuinely could measure every single detail of life and the forces that move the economy, no committee of experts could ever hope to reason through the data and make coherent solutions that actually survive reality.
- pembrook 6mo ago
  How ironic that you were downvoted. HN is full of left-populists these days and any slightly negative mention of socialism or central planning (their equivalent utopian vision) triggers them. I think this suggests it's more than just hubris, it's religion. These aren't just ideas, they are belief systems and identities for people. Hence why someone would downvote a benign internet comment like yours. The steady decline of traditional religions has left people searching for meaning in other ways, and it has manifested in all sorts of bizarre belief systems and behavior over the past 200ish years, technocracy being one of them.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - AngryData 6mo ago
    I would equate similar values to people who think socialism and central planning are somehow linked and share the same criticisms. Probably 90% of criticism I hear about socialism is complete and utter nonsense. Co-op businesses are socialist ideals in practice and co-ops have consistently gained market share over the last 80+ years, and it is neither linked to or shares any of the problems as central planning. Im all for reading criticism about economic models, but it seems like the vast majority of it has nothing to do with anything Marx proposed or idealized and is just translocated hatred of authoritarian policies which is far more often in opposition to Marxist principles than supporting them. Socialist ideaology far more directly supports democratic workplaces and democratic economic decisions than centralized leadership and control.
martin-t 6mo ago
I don't think so. Ideally, you still have normal people deciding tradeoffs like today, it's just that the reasoning and the suggested solutions to problems have to be scientifically and logically sound. The submission[0] right next to this one shows why. Apparently, in the US, you are now a criminal if you fly drones half a mile from ICE vehicles. Some of which may be unmarked and even if marked, how exactly do you verify no ICE vehicle is in a 0.785 square mile radius? Anybody capable of logical thought sees that this is BS. (Also, anybody who retained primary school knowledge can calculate the area. But ask a person on the street to do it and watch your faith in humanity fall. Ask them to point out the area on a map and estimate how many cars that would be...) --- Even the lawyer who taught intro to law at my uni always said that the people who most often find contradictions in laws are engineers. The problems always start when somebody takes an ideology too far. So let's figure out what is too far instead of rejecting the whole thing. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47633947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47633947
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
picsao 6mo ago
[dead]
steve1977 6mo ago
One issue with economy as a science is that it's a very soft science at best and just pseudoscience at worst. Which then kind of defeats the purpose of experts in the sense of technocracy. As an analogy, you can make a PhD in theology, but that is not proof that God exists.
- TheOtherHobbes 6mo ago
  Economics is very deliberately a pseudo-science. Orthodox economics starts from neoliberal moral beliefs and tries to justify and excuse them. It's about controlling the narrative, not about modelling consequences. Example: the way the supply shocks of the oil crises in the 70s and 80s were converted into a "keep wages low and raise interest rates to prevent inflation" narrative, when the rational solution would have been to move the economy away from dependence on oil as soon as possible.
  - andrekandre 6mo ago
    > economics starts from neoliberal moral beliefs its why in the old days they used to call it "political-economy"... removing the political part does it a big disservice because its now ignoring the biggest influence (politics) on the thing and instead treats it like a machine that just need tooling once in a while.
- throw0101c 6mo ago
  > One issue with economy as a science is that it's a very soft science at best and just pseudoscience at worst. Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once stated “Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings.” There are falsifiable ideas and programs in economics—tax cuts paying for themselves, expansionary austerity, tariffs, etc—that are tried regularly: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansionary_fiscal_contraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansionary_fiscal_contractio... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_Trump_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_Trump_administr... The fact that the results of these experiments are ignored is hardly the fault of the those making correct predictions with correct models.
pembrook 6mo ago
This comment strikes me as weirdly incoherent. It seems to be an assemblage of random political ranting (derived from mainstream US politics) instead of addressing anything about the Technocracy movement of the 1930s.

engineer_22 6mo ago

My theory It coalesced at a time when science was becoming more accessible to the masses, more educated technicians running around engaging in work and trade. And these technicians were frustrated by bosses who didn't understand the science and technique behind things. So there was great inefficiency because the bosses hadn't caught up to the technicians in their understanding of the world. And so the political idea of "put in charge the people who actually understand the problem" caught hold of the technicians, and they were fired up for a period of time and they called it technocracy.

whattheheckheck 6mo ago
Then realized they too didn't understand the complex nature of the world
bombcar 6mo ago
It's also the height of real problems being solved relatively simply with technological advances.
ccppurcell 6mo ago
Not just that but the 30s was the tail end of a period of reduction and unification in science. If physics and biology (large portions of it) could be reduced to a handful of principles, why not economics and politics. Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein, Hilbert, the Vienna Circle. It must have seemed like science was on track to explain more or less everything.
- AkelaA 6mo ago
  It’s interesting that the theory of Quantum Mechanics emerged just after this point and threw a wrench in the idea that the universe could be neatly explained through a universal single theory, suddenly there were more questions than answers. And Einstein famously hated quantum physics. There’s something to be said about the cultural impact of quantum mechanics and how it shifted people’s perceptions from a universe that could eventually be explained by a set of fairly simple, understandable laws of physics to one that is much more complex, mysterious and contradictory. Suddenly the laws of the universe were defined by randomness and uncertainty, rather than determinism and easily understood logic.
  - bobson381 6mo ago
    I read and enjoyed the book " what is real" by Adam Becker that talks about this intersection between the philosophy of the day and its impact on what more considered valid interpretations of QM at the time and into the future. The logical positivists had a lot of impact on popular conception of quantum stuff, even to this day. Great read
  - cedilla 6mo ago
    I don't know why it would matter, but Einstein didn't hate quantum mechanics. He literally got his Nobel prize for his role in discovering quantum mechanics. He is one of the earliest people to propose that light exists in quantised packets. He had some strong opinions around interpretations of quantum physics, but that isn't even a question of science, it's a metaphysical discussion. While we're at it, Einstein also wasn't a bad student, and he didn't hate mathematics.
  - ccppurcell 6mo ago
    Around the same time, Gödel proved the incompleteness theorems and Turing gave us the halting problem. These and the uncertainty principle tell us not only that the universe is somehow statistical and not mechanical, but that there are certain unknowable facts. That's got to be a major psychological blow.
- gwerbin 6mo ago
j45 6mo ago
Sounds like early AI..

chermi 6mo ago

Hubris. Is the same mindset that leads to socialism, central planning, social darwinism, etc. The temptation of "theory" without the suffering from pesky reality.

ehnto 6mo ago
"All phenomena involved in the functional operation of the social mechanism are measurable" From the article, reminded me that the complexities and nuance of life at the ground level really are lost on some. Even if you genuinely could measure every single detail of life and the forces that move the economy, no committee of experts could ever hope to reason through the data and make coherent solutions that actually survive reality.
pembrook 6mo ago
How ironic that you were downvoted. HN is full of left-populists these days and any slightly negative mention of socialism or central planning (their equivalent utopian vision) triggers them. I think this suggests it's more than just hubris, it's religion. These aren't just ideas, they are belief systems and identities for people. Hence why someone would downvote a benign internet comment like yours. The steady decline of traditional religions has left people searching for meaning in other ways, and it has manifested in all sorts of bizarre belief systems and behavior over the past 200ish years, technocracy being one of them.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- AngryData 6mo ago
  I would equate similar values to people who think socialism and central planning are somehow linked and share the same criticisms. Probably 90% of criticism I hear about socialism is complete and utter nonsense. Co-op businesses are socialist ideals in practice and co-ops have consistently gained market share over the last 80+ years, and it is neither linked to or shares any of the problems as central planning. Im all for reading criticism about economic models, but it seems like the vast majority of it has nothing to do with anything Marx proposed or idealized and is just translocated hatred of authoritarian policies which is far more often in opposition to Marxist principles than supporting them. Socialist ideaology far more directly supports democratic workplaces and democratic economic decisions than centralized leadership and control.

martin-t 6mo ago

I don't think so. Ideally, you still have normal people deciding tradeoffs like today, it's just that the reasoning and the suggested solutions to problems have to be scientifically and logically sound. The submission[0] right next to this one shows why. Apparently, in the US, you are now a criminal if you fly drones half a mile from ICE vehicles. Some of which may be unmarked and even if marked, how exactly do you verify no ICE vehicle is in a 0.785 square mile radius? Anybody capable of logical thought sees that this is BS. (Also, anybody who retained primary school knowledge can calculate the area. But ask a person on the street to do it and watch your faith in humanity fall. Ask them to point out the area on a map and estimate how many cars that would be...) --- Even the lawyer who taught intro to law at my uni always said that the people who most often find contradictions in laws are engineers. The problems always start when somebody takes an ideology too far. So let's figure out what is too far instead of rejecting the whole thing. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47633947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47633947

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]

picsao 6mo ago

[dead]

steve1977 6mo ago

One issue with economy as a science is that it's a very soft science at best and just pseudoscience at worst. Which then kind of defeats the purpose of experts in the sense of technocracy. As an analogy, you can make a PhD in theology, but that is not proof that God exists.

TheOtherHobbes 6mo ago
Economics is very deliberately a pseudo-science. Orthodox economics starts from neoliberal moral beliefs and tries to justify and excuse them. It's about controlling the narrative, not about modelling consequences. Example: the way the supply shocks of the oil crises in the 70s and 80s were converted into a "keep wages low and raise interest rates to prevent inflation" narrative, when the rational solution would have been to move the economy away from dependence on oil as soon as possible.
- andrekandre 6mo ago
  > economics starts from neoliberal moral beliefs its why in the old days they used to call it "political-economy"... removing the political part does it a big disservice because its now ignoring the biggest influence (politics) on the thing and instead treats it like a machine that just need tooling once in a while.
throw0101c 6mo ago
> One issue with economy as a science is that it's a very soft science at best and just pseudoscience at worst. Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once stated “Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings.” There are falsifiable ideas and programs in economics—tax cuts paying for themselves, expansionary austerity, tariffs, etc—that are tried regularly: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansionary_fiscal_contraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansionary_fiscal_contractio... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_Trump_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_Trump_administr... The fact that the results of these experiments are ignored is hardly the fault of the those making correct predictions with correct models.

pembrook 6mo ago

This comment strikes me as weirdly incoherent. It seems to be an assemblage of random political ranting (derived from mainstream US politics) instead of addressing anything about the Technocracy movement of the 1930s.