conditional on finding selfless and competent rulers (note that I’m not talking about the rest of the population), you think that communism will work?
If we’re talking about a Glorious Post-Singularity Future then presumably the superintelligent AIs are not only ruling the country and making economic decisions but also doing all the work, and they probably have magic nanobot spies everywhere so it’s hard to lie to them effectively. That probably does get rid of the more obvious failure modes of a communist economy.
(If you just put the superintelligent AIs in charge of the top-level economic institutions and leave everything else to be run by the same dishonest and incompetent humans as normal, you’re probably right that that wouldn’t suffice.)
Actually, no, we’re (at least, I am) talking about pre-Singularity situations were you still have to dig in the muck to grow crops and make metal shavings and sawdust to manufacture things.
Viliam said that the main problem with communism is that the people at the top are (a) incompetent; and (b) corrupt. I don’t think that’s true with respect to the economy. That is, I agree that communism leads to incompetent and corrupt people rising to the top, but that is not the primary reason why communist economy isn’t well-functioning.
I think the primary reason is that communism breaks the feedback loop in the economy where prices and profit function as vital dynamic indicators for resource allocation decisions. A communist economy is like a body where the autonomic nervous system is absent and most senses function slowly and badly (but the brain can make the limbs move just fine). Just making the bureaucrats (human-level) competent and honest is not going to improve things much.
Maybe I misunderstood the context, but it looked to me as if Viliam was intending only to say that post-Singularity communism might work out OK on account of being run by superintelligent AIs rather than superstupid meatsacks, and any more general-sounding things he may have said about the problems of communism were directed at that scenario.
(I repeat that I agree that merely replacing the leaders with superintelligent AIs and changing nothing else would most likely not make communism work at all, for reasons essentially the same as yours.)
It seems you agree with Viliam: see the second paragraph below.
For the obvious reasons I don’t think you can find selfless and competent human rulers to make this really work. But conditional on possibility of creating a Friendly superintelligent AI… sure.
Although calling that “communism” is about as much of a central example, as calling the paperclip maximizer scenario “capitalism”.
That is completely irrelevant to debates about AI.
But anyway, I object against the premise being realistic. Humans run on “corrupted hardware”, so even if they start as honest and competent and rational and well-meaning, that usually changes very quickly. In long term, they also get old and die, so what you would actually need is honest and competent elite group, able to raise and filter its next generation that would be at least equally honest, competent, rational, well-meaning, and skilled at raising and filtering the next generation for the same qualities.
In other words, you would need to have a group of rulers enlightened enough that they are able to impartially and precisely judge whether their competitors are equally good or somewhat better in the relevant criteria, and in such case they would voluntarily transfer their power to the competitors. -- Which goes completely against what the evolution taughts us: that if your opponent is better than you, you should use your power to crush him, preferably immediately, while you still have the advantage of power, and before other tribe members notice his superiority and start offering to ally with him against you.
Oh, and this perfect group would also need to be able to overthrow the current power structures and get themselves in the positions of power, without losing any of its qualities in the process. That is, they have to be competent enough to overthrow an opponent with orders of magnitude more power (imagine someone who owns the media and police and army and secret service and can also use illegal methods to kidnap your members, torture them to extract their secrets, and kill them afterwards), without having to compromise on your values. So, in addition, the members of your elite group must have perfect mental resistance against torture and blackmail; and be numerous enough, so they can easily replace their fallen brethren and continue with the original plan.
Well… there doesn’t seem to be a law of physics that would literally prevent this, it just seems very unlikely.
With a less elite group, there are many things that can possibly go wrong, and evolutionary pressures in favor of things going wrong as quickly as possible.
Fair enough; I just wanted to make it explicit that that question has basically nothing to do with anything else in the thread. I mean, Viliam was saying “so it might be a good idea to do such-and-such about superhumanly capable AI” and you came in and said “aha, that kinda pattern-matches to communism. Are you defending communism?” and then said oh, by the way, I’m only interested in communism in the case where there is no superhumanly capable AI.
But, well, trolls gonna troll, and you’ve already said trolling is your preferred mode of political debate.
Well, the kinda-sorta OP phrased the issue this way:
If the choice is between giving each human a 1⁄7000000000 of the universe, or giving the whole universe to Elon Musk (or some other person) and letting everyone else starve
...and that set the tone for the entire subthread :-P
If we’re talking about a Glorious Post-Singularity Future then presumably the superintelligent AIs are not only ruling the country and making economic decisions but also doing all the work, and they probably have magic nanobot spies everywhere so it’s hard to lie to them effectively. That probably does get rid of the more obvious failure modes of a communist economy.
(If you just put the superintelligent AIs in charge of the top-level economic institutions and leave everything else to be run by the same dishonest and incompetent humans as normal, you’re probably right that that wouldn’t suffice.)
Actually, no, we’re (at least, I am) talking about pre-Singularity situations were you still have to dig in the muck to grow crops and make metal shavings and sawdust to manufacture things.
Viliam said that the main problem with communism is that the people at the top are (a) incompetent; and (b) corrupt. I don’t think that’s true with respect to the economy. That is, I agree that communism leads to incompetent and corrupt people rising to the top, but that is not the primary reason why communist economy isn’t well-functioning.
I think the primary reason is that communism breaks the feedback loop in the economy where prices and profit function as vital dynamic indicators for resource allocation decisions. A communist economy is like a body where the autonomic nervous system is absent and most senses function slowly and badly (but the brain can make the limbs move just fine). Just making the bureaucrats (human-level) competent and honest is not going to improve things much.
Maybe I misunderstood the context, but it looked to me as if Viliam was intending only to say that post-Singularity communism might work out OK on account of being run by superintelligent AIs rather than superstupid meatsacks, and any more general-sounding things he may have said about the problems of communism were directed at that scenario.
(I repeat that I agree that merely replacing the leaders with superintelligent AIs and changing nothing else would most likely not make communism work at all, for reasons essentially the same as yours.)
I have no idea what this means.
It seems you agree with Viliam: see the second paragraph below.
Right, but I am specifically interested in Viliam’s views about the scenario where there is no AI, but we do have honest and competent rulers.
That is completely irrelevant to debates about AI.
But anyway, I object against the premise being realistic. Humans run on “corrupted hardware”, so even if they start as honest and competent and rational and well-meaning, that usually changes very quickly. In long term, they also get old and die, so what you would actually need is honest and competent elite group, able to raise and filter its next generation that would be at least equally honest, competent, rational, well-meaning, and skilled at raising and filtering the next generation for the same qualities.
In other words, you would need to have a group of rulers enlightened enough that they are able to impartially and precisely judge whether their competitors are equally good or somewhat better in the relevant criteria, and in such case they would voluntarily transfer their power to the competitors. -- Which goes completely against what the evolution taughts us: that if your opponent is better than you, you should use your power to crush him, preferably immediately, while you still have the advantage of power, and before other tribe members notice his superiority and start offering to ally with him against you.
Oh, and this perfect group would also need to be able to overthrow the current power structures and get themselves in the positions of power, without losing any of its qualities in the process. That is, they have to be competent enough to overthrow an opponent with orders of magnitude more power (imagine someone who owns the media and police and army and secret service and can also use illegal methods to kidnap your members, torture them to extract their secrets, and kill them afterwards), without having to compromise on your values. So, in addition, the members of your elite group must have perfect mental resistance against torture and blackmail; and be numerous enough, so they can easily replace their fallen brethren and continue with the original plan.
Well… there doesn’t seem to be a law of physics that would literally prevent this, it just seems very unlikely.
With a less elite group, there are many things that can possibly go wrong, and evolutionary pressures in favor of things going wrong as quickly as possible.
Fair enough; I just wanted to make it explicit that that question has basically nothing to do with anything else in the thread. I mean, Viliam was saying “so it might be a good idea to do such-and-such about superhumanly capable AI” and you came in and said “aha, that kinda pattern-matches to communism. Are you defending communism?” and then said oh, by the way, I’m only interested in communism in the case where there is no superhumanly capable AI.
But, well, trolls gonna troll, and you’ve already said trolling is your preferred mode of political debate.
Well, the kinda-sorta OP phrased the issue this way:
...and that set the tone for the entire subthread :-P