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"policy decision making based on ... statistical measuring" is > 2000 years old. The modern version based on a mathematical understanding of statistics & sampl
by fiatmoney 12y ago
"policy decision making based on ... statistical measuring" is > 2000 years old. The modern version based on a mathematical understanding of statistics & sampling, as opposed to collecting aggregates large enough that you can just treat the error as 0, is ~80 years old.
- mbrock 12y agoYeah, it's quite fascinating. Like the "Cybersyn Project" in Chile. [0] Project Cybersyn was a Chilean project from 1971–1973 (during the government of President Salvador Allende) aimed at constructing a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy. The project consisted of four modules: an economic simulator, custom software to check factory performance, an operations room, and a national network of telex machines that were linked to one mainframe computer. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
- fiatmoney 12y agoCybersyn was kind of a joke; it was a Star Trek set hooked up to telexes where aides manually aggregated information in the same way leaders get their briefings the world over.
- natch 12y agoIt's old, but that doesn't invalidate the comment, which I found insightful... odd that it's getting downvoted. Machines get greater and greater amounts of control, and humans correspondingly less, over time. Even if the trend has been happening for thousands of years, it's still worthwhile to think about the end game that could come when things go to an extreme.