Project Cybersyn (2022)

ccassepipe about 3 hours ago 22 commentsRead Article on bactra.org

FR version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

83% Positive

Analyzed from 857 words in the discussion.

Discussion (22 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

dipanshuhappy•about 1 hour ago

If anyone wants to dive into Cybernetic metaphysics. Checkout Nick Land earlier work during his Cybernetics club days. Mark Fisher was also part of it

TimorousBestie•about 1 hour ago

Yeah, I don’t think Land is a great recommendation.

The CCRU produced a lot of talented philosopher/writer/artists but Land definitely went a bit far out there and never came back.

The connection between what the CCRU did and Wiener-style cybernetics is also a little strained. I don’t think a layperson would be all that interested in the former if they were looking for more of the latter.

lukifer•about 1 hour ago

I personally think Land is worth reading (critically), but to say he cooked his brain with methamphetamines is a vast understatement. I agree that there's not much to learn from him on cybernetics specifically: he's sort of "post-cyber" (in the same sense as post-Marxist), musing on the philosophical implications of cyber-positive feedback loops (including but not limited to Capital/AI), before veering off into explicitly anti-human negentropy-maxing (accelerationism). Whether shrugging off potential human extinction is more or less vile than his far-right political turn and extremely naked racism, you can decide for yourself.

For similar ideas on cyber-positivity without the insanity, I'd recommend Michael Downs' "Capital vs Timenergy" (soon to be republished as "Capital vs Subjectivity"), and Poliks & Trillo's "Expocapitalism" [0].

[0] https://becoming.press/exocapitalism

TimorousBestie•35 minutes ago

> I personally think Land is worth reading (critically)

I agree, perhaps... I think I got something out of slogging my way through Fanged Noumena (although I did throw in the towel near the end--there's an essay written entirely LiKe ThIs and I just bounced off of it, DNF).

If we are talking about accelerationism(s) instead of cybernetics, I much preferred Gruppo Di Nun's Revolutionary Demonology. It's at least written in a human register.

chermi•about 2 hours ago

I will always upvote shalizi.

obligatory https://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/

kingraoul•about 1 hour ago

I think commentators here are missing what is really exciting about this. Back in the 70s it was impossible to calculate all the labour inputs to product, so socialist economies had to refer to capitalist economy pricing. This doomed Cybersyn and any other attempt to use the LTV to work backwards.

That problem is now solved.

chermi•about 1 hour ago

Are you claiming the pricing problem is solved? That you can set prices without the information gained from market?

vrganj•about 1 hour ago

Yes, if you can fully track labor input, you can use LTV (Labor Theory of Value) to determine how much work went into a product and price it accordingly - that's what the poster above was referring to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

chermi•15 minutes ago

But why would you base anything on an incorrect theory? If you value things by LTV, you're not going to like the results.

Bratmon•about 2 hours ago

This project is funny because the outcome was so inevitable:

1. Every large corporation in the world has tried a similar "Let's get a bunch of statisticians to quantify our business and we'll manage the company by looking at the graphs" experiment at least once, and it always explodes in a combination of manipulated metrics and Goodharts's Law

2. Every centrally-planned economy in the world that makes plans based on data from individual factories has been massively impacted by a combination of falsified metrics and Goodharts's Law

But because it was destroyed in a CIA-backed revolution, we don't actually know how it would have turned out, so modern Communists can convince themselves that it would have ushered in Utopia!

tech_ken•about 2 hours ago

Back when I read "Cybernetic Revolutionaries" I followed it up with "People's Republic of Walmart" and came away with a bit of a different conclusion to your point 1. IMO lots of US-based hyperscalars are managing what are effectively command economies, and it's allowed them to ex. scale their infrastructure so aggressively these last ~2 years.

p_l•about 2 hours ago

FMCGs work very much like command economies, including specialized tooling to shift production between customers when orders fall through.

Unlike USSR they simply do it on shorter timescales, too, and with better customer feedback. Something Cybersyn actually targeted, as it's closer to Toyota Production System (as much done at lowest level in small decision loops) than centrally managed GOSPLAN or large american FMCG giants

redhed•about 2 hours ago

Yeah, the economy is basically a bunch of oligarchical/dictatorial command economies, or what we like to call companies. It's funny, a lot of leftist people use them as examples of how a larger command economy could work (usually the reaction a lot of leftists I know had to People's Republic of Walmart), whereas it makes me wonder what more democratic, free market companies would be like.

tech_ken•about 2 hours ago

> it makes me wonder what more democratic, free market companies would be like.

I was wondering the same after PRW lol. Recently I had the chance to ask a friend of mine who worked in Google Infra (years ago) if they had ever tried to 'liberalize' their infrastructure planning; something like having internal business units bid on space, power, and compute instead of distributing it top-down. He said that yes, this was actually something like their original operating model, and the outcome was that YouTube basically bought up every piece of hardware in the company and then leased them out to other verticals at a profit.

mitthrowaway2•28 minutes ago

I imagine it might look something like a company-internal gig economy; someone puts out a request for a code review and a bunch of fellow employees bid on doing the job, and the requester provides a tip for good service at the end, etc.

TimorousBestie•about 1 hour ago

> whereas it makes me wonder what more democratic, free market companies would be like.

There are a few small examples that come to mind (co-ops and communes mostly), but I can’t think of any that have been successful at scale. Running an internal market would be almost pure overhead, so if it worked it would really have to be efficient to be worthwhile.

lobf•about 2 hours ago

Please elaborate.

altruios•about 2 hours ago

> But because it was destroyed in a CIA-backed revolution

How many times has that actually happened in real life (opens history book) (oh-no.gif)...

stephen_cagle•about 2 hours ago

So, seems like the logical way to run a business would be to create a bunch of internal metrics but never let any of your reportees know what they are.

Or even better, "leak" that there might be metrics (that are in reality false), and then see who allocates resources towards maximizing them. Favor allocating resources to those who hit your internal metrics, favor de-allocating resources towards those that hit your "honeypot" metrics.

This all kind of depends on having direct reportees who have a great degree of latitude in how they spend their resources I suppose.