11–20 of 124 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Allende tried something similar in Chile with project Cybersyn. Not AI yet but it shows how the economy could be centrally planned using technology. Shame that Pinochet's coup ended the experiment.
There's no reason to think it would have produced better results than a free market economy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Allende tried something similar in Chile with project Cybersyn. Not AI yet but it shows how the economy could be centrally planned using technology. Shame that Pinochet's coup ended the experiment.
There's no reason to think it would have produced better results than a free market economy.
But central planning is insanely hard, so it's not easy.
That said, the USSR which literally used pen and paper for planning was the #2 economy in the world, so it clearly has some potential.
Now there can be other reasons to not want planning.
Would the communist central price-fixing have benefited from AI? I mean, could the fixing of consumer prices have been automated by an AI system? Maybe using machine learning?
They tried computer-assisted central planning and it mostly failed because of data quality. There were a lot of incentives to lie and not a lot of reasons to be honest. When my grandma was in last class of school they were sent to help force farmers to use publicly funded artificial fertilizers. Farmers didn't wanted to because "their fathers didn't used them and it was fine". So communists had school kids with some…
The computer planning system that was suggested, GAS, in the 50s, included an internet that would automatically gather/collect and send data. The most that was ever done was to apply the algorithm manually to a few industries and see if it outperformed manual planning (it did).
The planners weren't stupid. They were aware of the data quality issues. That's why they basically wanted to build the internet in the 1950s to avoid that. Even Lenin knew this well hence the NEP.
The issue is that this threatened the bureaucrats so they invented problems to stick to the old ways of doing things that were easier to fraud.
It's worth to mention that there were Soviet attempts to build such systems, see OGAS [1] which was led by mathematician Victor Glushkov [2]. The remarkable fact is that those attempts have failed due to bureaucrats fighting for their own power. It looks like the human nature and socialism are incompatible things – individuals in charge are just consumed by their ego. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS [2] https:…
After the October Revolution, the CPSU were so open to change and so far from being ossified and giving up power that they basically implemented Keynesian capitalism until Stalin came about.
But the longer you wait until after the revolution, the longer bureaucrats and egomaniac get to consolidate power, and the more difficult it is to change things. That's one of the major issues with Marxist-Leninist government structures.
Aside: Lem is great, he has books as quirky as Philip K. Dick, as hard sci-fi as Clark and as funny and weird as Douglas Adams. If you like sci-fi and haven't tried Lem check out Solaris or Futorogical Congress (quirky), Invincible (hard sci-fi) and Cyberiad (funny and very weird). And on top of that Lem published nonfiction books about philosophy of science and futurology. Dick even thought Lem was in reality a coll…
https://donhopkins.medium.com/gpt-3-riffs-on-stanislaw-lems-...
TLDR: Trurl built an evil machine that would look at all the websites on the Internet, and then it’d take all the information and compress it into a single website!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no reason to think it would have produced better results than a free market economy.
There are dozens of reasons. Free markets have deduplication of labour, concepts like patents and IP that are inefficient are necessary, there are economic crises that wreck compound growth in the long term, there are issues of inequality, humans may be lazy and not attempt to allocate their capital in the most appropriate way (see index funds), socially useful endeavors may not be profitable, etc... But central plan…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are dozens of reasons. Free markets have deduplication of labour, concepts like patents and IP that are inefficient are necessary, there are economic crises that wreck compound growth in the long term, there are issues of inequality, humans may be lazy and not attempt to allocate their capital in the most appropriate way (see index funds), socially useful endeavors may not be profitable, etc... But central plan…
#2 economy per capita, or in absolute numbers? I'm quite sure western nations had better economies when you adjust for each country's size.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Allende tried something similar in Chile with project Cybersyn. Not AI yet but it shows how the economy could be centrally planned using technology. Shame that Pinochet's coup ended the experiment.
There's no reason to think it would have produced better results than a free market economy.
Would the communist central price-fixing have benefited from AI? I mean, could the fixing of consumer prices have been automated by an AI system? Maybe using machine learning?
Allende tried something similar in Chile with project Cybersyn. Not AI yet but it shows how the economy could be centrally planned using technology. Shame that Pinochet's coup ended the experiment.
Aside: Lem is great, he has books as quirky as Philip K. Dick, as hard sci-fi as Clark and as funny and weird as Douglas Adams. If you like sci-fi and haven't tried Lem check out Solaris or Futorogical Congress (quirky), Invincible (hard sci-fi) and Cyberiad (funny and very weird). And on top of that Lem published nonfiction books about philosophy of science and futurology. Dick even thought Lem was in reality a coll…
I would also add Fiasco to the list of great Lem works.