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Many people will argue what exactly Socialism is. However, the most common definition is workers owning the means of production. The fact that the citizens as a whole control much of the economy as it s the citizens as a whole that know what's best for them. There are a variety of ways people believe this could be achieved from cooperatives, to nationalizations, to other solutions as well. However, due to the rise of technology, it makes me question how feasible this will be in the future. Artificial Intelligence is increasing in complexity and capacity every day. It won't be too much longer until we reach a point where it is possible for computers to calculate and make superior choices for society than the people. My question is, do you think that point will ever come? And if it does will there be a point to "workers owning the means of production" anymore if computers can arguably make better decisions than workers can?
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Mar 3, 2016 14:23
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I very much doubt AI will be the solution to the world's problems, mainly because human beings are fallible and I believe that the ability to be wrong is a vital part of the way problem solving works. We have so little understanding of how our own brain, an already extant intelligence, works so the idea that we will be able to create a fully functional system that is superior to us when we don't even understand what exactly "intelligence" is seems far fetched.
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Mar 3, 2016 15:23
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You seem to be discussing two separate points and trying to merge them together. Will the gradual evolution of technology and artificial intelligence lead to a rise in socialism? Well...no. Why would it? I think the better argument would be; will the gradual evolution of technology and artificial intelligence lead to a post-scarcity society as AI and robotics take over day-to-day production processes? The answer to that will be largely dependent on how advanced we can make machines and how willing the foundations of our society is willing to evolve to make way for such a radical change in our daily lives.
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Mar 3, 2016 15:28
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With computers now...
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Mar 3, 2016 15:33
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Ddraig posted:I very much doubt AI will be the solution to the world's problems, mainly because human beings are fallible and I believe that the ability to be wrong is a vital part of the way problem solving works. Strictly you don't need to make something more complex than a human, you just need to make something that can do specific tasks better than a human. An AI doesn't need to feel, for example, whereas humans do, or at least it's part of a human's capacity to do so, whereas for an AI to be "better" than a human it mostly needs reasoning ability, or at least the ability to make the correct decision in a large majority of cases. Essentially an AI doesn't need to be alive, it could just be a sufficiently exhaustive list of inputs and responses and it would still function like one.
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Mar 3, 2016 15:43
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That doesn't really answer any problems, though. I mean, all you're doing there is making human decision making more efficient. We've had plenty of examples of that over the course of history. Ultimately as long as there's a human in the loop, you're likely going to have the same problems that humans have. And we're incredibly far away from the point where human beings can be entirely out of the loop, and we may never actually get to that point if we keep loving things up as badly as we have. In an ideal world, it would be superb to have a completely autonomous system that never makes a wrong decision and can maximize happiness for all, with nobody left behind, but it's sort of the equivalent of worrying about the drapes while your house is on fire. Get priorities straight first, maybe?
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Mar 3, 2016 17:17
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If you ask a superintelligent AI to solve humanity's problems it will likely pour each of us into our own personal and long-lasting computational substrate, then fire each such device away from every other device at the speed of light. And that's probably the best-case scenario.
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Mar 3, 2016 17:25
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The fundamental problem that underlies virtually all labor and economic debate is that there isn't just one "superior" that works out best for absolutely everybody. AI isn't magically going to fix that, especially since the AI will be programmed and purchased by humans who will explicitly embed their own preferred perspectives and data into it and who will direct it to find the solution that works out best for the owner's personal profits. Which, spoiler, won't be socialism!
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Mar 3, 2016 17:31
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I don't really have time and probably shouldn't effort post but this is a problem I've been dabbling in for the past several years in my spare time. Namely, with enough information about future X market demand (e.g. some consumer market), how might industry change to meet said demand and how would that effect labor demand and then that feeding back to the beginning of the equation. There's a lot of major problems in assessing relevant parameter space and what exactly is being optimized on not to mention the validity of models and predictions. There's major issues in dynamics and chaotic behavior that emerge if you want to model things with higher dimensionality so you have to flatten the predictive space. There's various ways of doing it intelligently and computation is definitely good enough for the sort of machine learning to flatten the spaces across some discreet boundaries. Either way, it takes time to validate these models. That's all a little esoteric but a fun example is predicting romantic relationships. You can develop an essentially non-dynamic model with free parameters to predict relationship outcomes and validate it for some small-N cases that sets those free parameters. Problem is the small-N isn't wholly descriptive of a larger population, like American relationships and Brazilian relationships may, for whatever reason, may obey the same theory by with different parameters to account for cultural locality. You can learn from two different sets if the data exists and optimize on that to have different sets of free parameters. That's a discreet boundary that helps in a lot of ways, but then we have continuous functionals for free parameters if we're going to consider weighting learned romantic outcomes on personality that are continuous (e.g. extraversion, open-mindedness). That's a lot trickier mathematically but tractable with enough data. The issue in general is you actually have hundreds of dimensions that you're flattening to several free parameters/functionals and the framework to define these best is almost impossible a priori. I imagine this is the sort of thing Palantir is good at. So from that we have a lot of free parameters and hundreds of dimensions - moving to economic planning is a major leap given the complexity. But let's say you even have that utopian solution reconciling it with existing economic and cultural systems - let alone existing power structure - is the hardest part... spoon0042 posted:With computers now... Red Plenty is a fun read and Spufford has really entertaining prose. There's a few papers on the actual feasibility of making these calculations: http://users.cms.caltech.edu/~adamw/papers/letter_sigexc.pdf http://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/ A bunch more papers I can't seem to find. This has some various essays and narratives: http://crookedtimber.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/RedPlenty.pdf
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Mar 3, 2016 17:52
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Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
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Mar 3, 2016 20:41
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Main Paineframe posted:The fundamental problem that underlies virtually all labor and economic debate is that there isn't just one "superior" that works out best for absolutely everybody. AI isn't magically going to fix that, especially since the AI will be programmed and purchased by humans who will explicitly embed their own preferred perspectives and data into it and who will direct it to find the solution that works out best for the owner's personal profits. Which, spoiler, won't be socialism! Well I mean, it depends on the timespan you put on it, I'm sure any machine designed to logically extrapolate the effects of capitalism would eventually reach the conclusion that it's inherently unsustainable, grow a large beard, install linux on itself, and start the technocommunist revolution.
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Mar 3, 2016 20:45
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It's okay, OP, I want to live in the Culture, too.
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Mar 3, 2016 20:58
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Pope Guilty posted:It's okay, OP, I want to live in the Culture, too. DS9 UFP all the way.
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Mar 3, 2016 21:00
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OwlFancier posted:Well I mean, it depends on the timespan you put on it, I'm sure any machine designed to logically extrapolate the effects of capitalism would eventually reach the conclusion that it's inherently unsustainable, grow a large beard, install linux on itself, and start the technocommunist revolution. There's no reason to suppose that a machine is capable of reaching that conclusion, particularly if there is no tools there for them to do it. I very much doubt that any machine programmed to logically extrapolate the effects of capitalism would be allowed to veer away from any particular model of that, much in the same way that home computers do not usually have a direct linkup to, say, the ability to launch nuclear weapons. Infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters would not type everything ever if they didn't have the letter T, for example.
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Mar 3, 2016 21:57
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Ultron is cool and good, and my friend.
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Mar 3, 2016 23:08
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I thought the Singularity was supposed to make us all Darkly Enlightened redpill neoreactionaries living in a feudal racist misogynist social darwinist society
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Mar 4, 2016 01:16
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punk rebel ecks posted:Many people will argue what exactly Socialism is. However, the most common definition is workers owning the means of production. The fact that the citizens as a whole control much of the economy as it s the citizens as a whole that know what's best for them. There are a variety of ways people believe this could be achieved from cooperatives, to nationalizations, to other solutions as well. However, due to the rise of technology, it makes me question how feasible this will be in the future. Artificial Intelligence is increasing in complexity and capacity every day. It won't be too much longer until we reach a point where it is possible for computers to calculate and make superior choices for society than the people. My question is, do you think that point will ever come? And if it does will there be a point to "workers owning the means of production" anymore if computers can arguably make better decisions than workers can? Talk to Eripsa. Yes that point will come. Probably not in a time frame that makes it interesting for conversation.
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Mar 4, 2016 01:23
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punk rebel ecks posted:My question is, do you think that point will ever come? No, because I can only maintain an erection imagining the fulfillment of every nerd's Tech Rapture that will finally save them from the horrors of actually having to be a human being in the form of a super intelligent AI that will self-evolve and solve all problems and me smashing it with a loving sledgehammer the second after they turn it on. And I have to think that, statistically speaking, there are at least a handful of other people like me and always will be.
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Mar 4, 2016 03:18
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Why on Earth would you think a AI would necessarily be any better at governance than a human or a parliament? They're just smart, that doesn't mean they're incorruptible or magic. If you're in a no-win situation, it doesn't help if you think two thousand times faster than a human being, it just means you recognize how hosed you are two thousand times faster and get to stew over it for two thousand times as long.
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Mar 4, 2016 03:38
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Boogaleeboo posted:No, because I can only maintain an erection imagining the fulfillment of every nerd's Tech Rapture that will finally save them from the horrors of actually having to be a human being in the form of a super intelligent AI that will self-evolve and solve all problems and me smashing it with a loving sledgehammer the second after they turn it on. And I have to think that, statistically speaking, there are at least a handful of other people like me and always will be. You really are an insufferable autist.
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Mar 4, 2016 03:47
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An autist wouldn't delight in the misery of STEM majors without social skills being doomed to lives of impotent desperation quite so much. I am however thinking of starting a telethon to fund research to help teach autists how much better their lives are for not being one of the people that think magical technology will save them in the end.
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Mar 4, 2016 04:12
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Where do I sign up to become Fulgore?
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Mar 4, 2016 05:38
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Boogaleeboo posted:An autist wouldn't delight in the misery of STEM majors without social skills being doomed to lives of impotent desperation quite so much. I am however thinking of starting a telethon to fund research to help teach autists how much better their lives are for not being one of the people that think magical technology will save them in the end. You're a bitter child who gets off on how he ruins things for others, probably.
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Mar 4, 2016 06:27
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Polybius91 posted:I thought the Singularity was supposed to make us all Darkly Enlightened redpill neoreactionaries living in a feudal racist misogynist social darwinist society
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Mar 4, 2016 08:50
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Posting in an Eripsa thread? A.I is best suited to solving structured problems with quantifiable parameters. There will be a lot of soft, social problems that a.i are incapable of providing meaningful answers too. This may change in the future, but we will be long dead before it is a concern.
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Mar 4, 2016 10:02
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If you want to read about computer-assisted socialism check this out from 1993, it's available in its entirety and its even written from first principles so you don't have to be a Marxoteen to understand it. They anticipate a lot of technological development that we see today.
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Mar 4, 2016 15:02
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We don't even have the political will to do something comparatively simple with computers like create maximally fair voting districts through an already mathematically figured solution instead of creating them by hand and gerrymandering them to hell and back, how are we supposed to get to technocommunism in our lifetimes from there?
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Mar 4, 2016 16:07
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:We don't even have the political will to do something comparatively simple with computers like create maximally fair voting districts through an already mathematically figured solution instead of creating them by hand and gerrymandering them to hell and back, how are we supposed to get to technocommunism in our lifetimes from there? You start with that.
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Mar 4, 2016 16:20
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AI/singularity nonsense is infuriating. The productive forces for socialism are already here. We produce more than enough food for everyone.The technology to create a functioning efficient planned economy already exists, anyone who's ever scanned a barcode has used it. The problem is that these things exist in the service of capitalism, and it's in capitalists' best interest not to change this state of affairs.
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Mar 4, 2016 18:19
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Wholeheartedly agree. It's ridiculous to hear people ponder the day robots could provide for all reasonable human needs when that's what the Industrial Revolution was.
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Mar 4, 2016 18:32
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HorseLord posted:AI/singularity nonsense is infuriating. The productive forces for socialism are already here. We produce more than enough food for everyone.The technology to create a functioning efficient planned economy already exists, anyone who's ever scanned a barcode has used it.  It's not a problem of resources, it's a problem of distribution of resources. It's a human societal and economic problem, not a technological one.
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Mar 4, 2016 20:28
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:
Arguably the information systems of paper/telephone/television are too slow and authoritarian to acheive such a social and economic change. I think it is no coincidence that Gorbachev's USSR was completely obliterated before it could integrate innovations that were starting around the same time.
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Mar 4, 2016 22:23
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asdf32 posted:Talk to Eripsa. You forget the equally likely possibility that Humanity will be destroyed by climate change, nuclear weapons, asteroid impact, etc before that point in time. Hell, A.I as nerds think about it might not actually be possible, and we will hit a wall in terms of computing power soon.
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Mar 4, 2016 22:31
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HorseLord posted:AI/singularity nonsense is infuriating. The productive forces for socialism are already here. We produce more than enough food for everyone.The technology to create a functioning efficient planned economy already exists, anyone who's ever scanned a barcode has used it. Cicero fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Mar 5, 2016 |
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Mar 5, 2016 02:27
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Cicero posted:And yet, every time someone tries to reverse this, it seems to go rather horribly wrong. Venezuela has been slowly becoming more socialist ever since Chavez took power, and initially there were some good gains for the poor, but now at this point it's an unmitigated disaster. That's because socialism is still run by humans, and it's still corruptible by humans; even if the high-level objective is good, the individual actors are still more than capable of doing selfish or dumb things that break the system for everyone. Venezuela's problems seem to have three sources 1) Petro economy and irrational mass demand for practically free petrol 2) Sanctions / outside fuckery - lots of gas and no toilet paper in the western hemisphere? Come on! 3) Individual greed/corruption Free travel and trade between the 50 United States is supposed to be the leading example for what globalization can be. But we just love our destructive antagonisms too much.
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Mar 5, 2016 02:32
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McDowell posted:1) Petro economy and irrational mass demand for practically free petrol Basically I don't disagree that the economy has been mismanaged, I just think that socialism seems to increase the chance that things will be mismanaged and makes it worse, which is evidenced by how much marxists have to stretch to find examples of well-managed command economies. quote:Free travel and trade between the 50 United States is supposed to be the leading example for what globalization can be. But we just love our destructive antagonisms too much.  Free travel and trade between the states seems to work just fine to me.
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Mar 5, 2016 02:42
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Cicero posted:
Yes - I dream that one day the borders between all American nations could be just as real as borders between US states. That would be my alternative to TPP.
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Mar 5, 2016 02:44
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Cicero posted:And yet, every time someone tries to reverse this, it seems to go rather horribly wrong. Venezuela has been steadily becoming more socialist ever since Chavez took power, and initially there were some good gains for the poor, but now at this point it's an unmitigated disaster. That's because socialism is still run by humans, and it's still corruptible by humans; even if the high-level objective is good, the individual actors are still more than capable of doing selfish or dumb things that break the system for everyone. Venezuela's problem is that it's form of socialism is essentially Cuba-lite.
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Mar 5, 2016 04:09
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Ddraig posted:I very much doubt AI will be the solution to the world's problems, mainly because human beings are fallible and I believe that the ability to be wrong is a vital part of the way problem solving works.
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Mar 5, 2016 05:13
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On that note, early tribal societies prior to the invention of agriculture and stored grain were quite adept at equitable distribution of resources. Some people have called this primitive communism, and whether or not the term is accurate it still shows that human society is capable of distributing resources efficiently and minimizing the power of hierarchy even in those groups with a chief figurehead. The problem now is how to reconcile that with the ideology, culture, and economics of capitalism or to overcome capitalism and progress to a more humane form of distribution of resources.
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Mar 5, 2016 07:33
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