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by tsunamifury 971 days ago
You might really enjoy All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. He wasn’t the first to try this, and many failed before him. Most people don’t know that the entire concept of the “ecosystem” comes from a computational view of ecology.

It’s bigger problem than just to this. It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society and it’s all failed. But we haven’t figured out another way. So climate change, politics, democracy and marketing all continue to try to figure out the computational stable state of society.

2 comments

figure out the computational stable state of society

Hahahaha!! That's so "psychohistory" ... it suggests such, almost 'individual'-like intention.

Also, none of it has failed. That's an absurd interpretation of where we are. The real problem is that everything we do ... all the day-to-day problems we solve, all the systems we build that fit and do a 'good job' helping us, say, in some respect, ... set us up to need even more of the same basically. As you wrote elsewhere ... increasingly complex etc.

I'd flesh out more, but, must run now.

The reality is simply that we WON'T outrun reality. There is no failure, nor is there success ... that dualistic thinking really tends to obscure rather than clarify ... by anchoring some 'conclusion' based on some specific perspective and cutting off wider views. We will follow 'the laws' of other organisms ... our own specific path, but the same basic fundamental arc ... game theoretic and in less ... abstract framings.

It’s failed if it doesn’t accomplish its stated goal. Don’t get lost in deconstructionism then declare all goals meaningless. It failed to create a stable state. That’s all.
> It’s that we’ve based everything off the Club of Rome style mindset of society

What is this supposed to be a reference to?

Possibly the "Limits to Growth" report (1972) by Meadows, et al. They used a simple model of resources, population, economy, pollution, etc. Some would say an over-simplified model. The report sparked a lot of controversy. I am not aware of significant changes to their World3 model that might be useful trying to integrate climate change models with economic-resource and population models.
I am very aware of what the Club of Rome is/was. I don't understand what the sentence means.
The last sentence said something about a computationally stable (model/state) of society. I suppose such stability would be helpful in looking for a sustainable economy or society. But I'm not clear either, on what that sentence means.
We keep trying to measure, calculate, forecast, then offset our world by building increasingly complex system to keep it “stable state” which we then errantly call “natural.”
What a fantastic one sentence summary of taoism and certain schools of anarchism.