Sadly, governments are almost always procrustean in their nature because they are bureaucratic. That doesn't have to be the case; the superior alterative being cybernetic governance, but we just don't see that and I don't suspect we ever will.
I've often observed the same thing with a different machine. It's a great metaphor for many things.
There is something about cybernetics and control theory, that, if applied to governance would be of enormous value, but I've never seen a real world application. I wonder if we'll get to see such a thing in our lifetimes.
In the cyberpunk Pyscho-Pass there exists a nice fictional account of such a system.
> You probably just need both.
Yes, today. My complaint is that this is a very crude algorithm! There has got to be a better way that represents people's true interests. My own hypothesis is that in the year 20XX there will exist a <country> with a combination of intelligence agency with a vastly expanded remit and a computer system which produces most central governance.
Did you believe/think/feel X today? Your inputs have been factored and there are Y resolution proposals! The resolution you have chosen shall be weighted against counterproposals and if selected shall be converted into contracts for activities that a new arm of the State shall spring into existence to deal with. Government functions can scale backwards and forwards in an orderly and consistent fashion with the desires/knowledge of the citizenry.
I think it can only work by illustrating trade-offs in order to keep stakeholders in the loop. As long as the system is comprehensible it should work. Pray we never fork.
We should try experiments like these on a Seastead first before we kill everybody.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri "Cybernetic" government type?
Not a particularly useful line of inquiry unless you're willing to get full political and legal realist with a dash of Mao, and ask: how is the cybernetic government kept in power? Who's pulling its strings?
We need either A) competent, highly technologically sophisticated government (which seems very far away obviously) or B) something really similar to take it's place.
So much of what government does (aside from the bombings etc.) is really about providing and enforcing a framework for people to work together. And in this era that needs to be a high tech framework.
Actually, it needs to not only be very high tech, but also very cutting edge, decentralized, sufficiently holistic but also flexible enough to evolve.
Which is incredibly hard, and we probably will not get due to greed, stupidity and politics, and that may be the actual reason that human civilization is superceded by AI civilization.
Yes I have. I don't know much about it though. In my imagination I see crates of Cybersyn machines being shuttled away for good measure like the Ark of the Covenant into that warehouse. I can see them thinking, "ah, let's revisit this in, say, a century or two".
It is high time these kinds of projects were revisited, not as an attempt to provide a new economic system per se as some envisioned in the past, but to change central government.
As you probably already know many governments in the West are approaching half of the real economy. Things are starting to get weird, which is normal when the territory has evolved beyond the map. I think there shall be a phase change sooner rather than later in how government is managed. I mean a deep structural change in how administration works and not an ideological one.
The question is not so much how and why, since there are lots of productive lines of inquiry and the value proposition is endless, but what must be done to accomplish political decision making moving from a network of men to one partly/wholly composed of machines making autonomous decisions?
My guess is that governance does not require an AGI. It is already a slow moving narrow AI that lives partly in the legal realm and partly in the human realm. I suspect the technology to do this existed decades ago and the real reason the idea has not been developed is inertia. That and it's slightly scary. It is like fiddling with the boot sector! Better recreate a backup...
There is a sort of government like that, it's called technocracy, "scientific government". That is where bureacracy comes from, you know, nowadays it's a term of contempt but once, it was the pinnacle of scientific management and government. The EU is a good example of a technocracy, while there is an elected component, all the real power is in the hands of appointed officials. China is another technocracy. Judge for yourself how well that works.
it's important to note, (western) government decisions already are algorithmic. We simply aren't privy to many of the steps involved, and our ability to influence outcomes is limited by the elitism of representative democracy and the stifling regressive nature of bureaucracy.
Edit: that isn't "regressive" as leftists confusingly redefine it, it's the dictionary definition. Might be important to note in a political comment.
Surely you're creative enough to imagine a system of government less imposing than an unaccountable executive bureaucracy but more functional than gangs of warlords.
Since democracy seems incapable of progressing with changes in the world, would it ever be possible to have a bureaucratic technocracy? Something where technocrats write up and implement legislation rather than people who have no understanding?
It's interesting how many parallels the US government shares with other governments around the world, like Turkey. There is an existence of a "deep state", or "state within a state". I often wonder if a sufficiently sophisticated AI would do a better job of running our government than the system that we have in place.
If you think about it, having AI run our government is the next logical step, and a natural evolution. All governmental systems are inhuman systems that self-correct.
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying your comment, but it seems like a very good thing that the government continues to be people/organization centric and doesn't embrace a future where "reality is determined by computer code and people are a bit players". We should hope our democratic institutions continue to operate this way.
I've been trying to think about "rethinking" government for quite a while. The idea of a web based governance system seems really appealing, in the sense that I think the greatest strength of the web is how quickly ideas can go from concept to execution. Its about the closest thing to a meritocracy as we've ever come, and that's simply because the gate keeper is thrown away. Think about how many great things have sprung out of places like Reddit. Ordinary people who have a quick flash of a good idea can take 30 minutes to type something up... and sometimes it gets traction. Getting things done in our current system requires an inhuman like persistence, and the luck of making a relevant connection. Even if you have a good idea, its a difficult thing to execute.
I have this image of a framework/protocol in my head around allowing various policies to be created, and built on top of each other. As a programmer I pretty much used object oriented programming as an inspiration. Though I guess even OOP had its inspiration from biology. Its a way for an organic system to grow and adapt robustly. I think just like computer programs, government needs that too.
Added to that, if the web has a decent self regulation mechanism, that makes the justification of regulating the web even harder.
The one problem is, the advantage "physical" governments have is they have sovereignty. If Amazon starts doing illegal things, the FBI can arrest Jeff Bezos. The internet doesn't have an equivlent means.
However I think there is away to have the essence of sovereignty, and that is through a new crypto-currency like bitcoin. Imagine if to be a part, and to receive the benefits of this online sovereign nation you had to register your receive address. If the sovereign entity had a way to embargo your ability to accept payments in the currency, it might be enough penalty to fall back inline with whatever regulations were created. I think it also provides another means to give legitamicy to a crypto-currency.
An example of something that would be cool is this. You want to create an open source space program, so you propose the idea on your local netizen forum. The idea has overwhelming support, so someone creates a new policy component, and gives permissions to suction tax funds. I can imagine something like that happening in hours. Imagine initiating a public effort going from idea to reality in hours.
It doesn't have to be, it can also become a heavily centralized, carefully monitored system thanks to the intrinsic immutability of the underlying technology.
You should read up on cybernetics for what I mean regarding mass collection of data leading to undemocratic outcomes, my guess is you haven’t ran into it. But, large area of research.
Exciting tales; however this dynamism needs to learn how not to accidentally capture Governmental duties and generality. Government is of the people, by the people, for the people. Not for the 90% userbase that can be implemented easily in a minimum viable service with lacklustre customer support.
(I don't claim to have any magic ideas about how to make that straightforward in software; it's hard work, really hard - and that is in fact why those same legacy systems move so slowly: they account for the details. a truly visionary, egalitarian approach to technological governance must account for them too, or it may be a false carrot)
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