I think cybernetics the practice / math is alive and well, even if cybernetics the name is mostly discarded. Take a look at Wiener’s wiki page:
Wiener is considered the originator of cybernetics, a formalization of the notion of feedback, with implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the organization of society.
The right way to read that is that it’s used in seven fields, not zero.
Cybernetics is alive but I think it’s misleading to call it well.
When talking about an issue like weight loss the dominating paradigm is “calories in, calories out” and not a cybernetics inspired paradigm.
We don’t live in a world where any scale on the market allows automatic calculating of the moving averages of the hacker diet.
Quantified Self as movement is based on Cybernetics. At first European conference Gary spoke about how cybernetics is not well.
I had an old professor in university who taught physiology based on regulation system thinking (cybernetics but he didn’t use the word cybernetics). According to him there’s was no textbook that presents that perspective we could use for the course.
So it seems like cybernetics was dissected and some of its parts were digested by various disciplines, but the original spirit which connected those parts together was lost.
An analogy for the rationality movement would be if in a few decades some of the CFAR or MIRI lessons will become accepted material in pedagogics, physics, or maybe even AI research, but the whole spirit of “tsuyoku naritai” will be forgotten.
Some parts that I guess are likely to survive, because they can fit in the existing education:
treating emotions as rational or irrational depending on whether they relate to facts (psychology)
planning fallacy (management)
illusion of transparency (pedagogics)
Some parts that I guess are likely to be ignored, because they seem too trivial, and don’t fit to the existing educational system. They may be mentioned as a footnote in philosophy, but they will not be noticed, because philosophy already contains millions of mostly useless ideas:
making beliefs pay rent
noticing confusion
fake explanations
mysterious answers
affective spirals
fallacy of grey
dissolving the question
tsuyoku naritai
rationality as a common cause of many causes
EDIT: Reading my lists again, seems like the main difference is between things you can describe and things you have to do. The focus of academia is to describe stuff, not to train people. Which makes sense, sure. Except for the paradoxical part where you have to train people to become better at correctly describing stuff.
I haven’t read the book, but looking at the reviews on the page you linked...
First, it’s funny what once passed for pop science. (...) at least 10% of the pages are devoted to difficult equations and proofs, and I had to skip a couple of chapters because the math was way, way over my head.
Wiener was both philosopher and scientist. As a scientist he was evidently peerless at the time; as a philosopher he reads as … quirky. But at least he’s trying. (...) his assertion that the body is a machine—a wonderfully complex machine, but a machine nevertheless—apparently had not been so internalized by his intended audience (again, a mathematically literate lay audience) that it was unnecessary to make the point.
(Wiener) was clearly committed to a program of ethical research and development. He warned of the danger of developing dangerous computing applications, and dismissed the idea that we can always “turn off” machines that we don’t like, since it isn’t always clear that the danger exists until after the damage is done.
That’s like Eliezer from a parallel universe, except that in this parallel universe the alternative Eliezer was a professor of mathematics at MIT.
I had a comparable impression from reading Cybernetics (at least the parts I got to so far) and other books on system theory.
I think cybernetics the practice / math is alive and well, even if cybernetics the name is mostly discarded. Take a look at Wiener’s wiki page:
The right way to read that is that it’s used in seven fields, not zero.
Cybernetics is alive but I think it’s misleading to call it well. When talking about an issue like weight loss the dominating paradigm is “calories in, calories out” and not a cybernetics inspired paradigm.
We don’t live in a world where any scale on the market allows automatic calculating of the moving averages of the hacker diet.
Quantified Self as movement is based on Cybernetics. At first European conference Gary spoke about how cybernetics is not well.
I had an old professor in university who taught physiology based on regulation system thinking (cybernetics but he didn’t use the word cybernetics). According to him there’s was no textbook that presents that perspective we could use for the course.
So it seems like cybernetics was dissected and some of its parts were digested by various disciplines, but the original spirit which connected those parts together was lost.
An analogy for the rationality movement would be if in a few decades some of the CFAR or MIRI lessons will become accepted material in pedagogics, physics, or maybe even AI research, but the whole spirit of “tsuyoku naritai” will be forgotten.
Some parts that I guess are likely to survive, because they can fit in the existing education:
treating emotions as rational or irrational depending on whether they relate to facts (psychology)
planning fallacy (management)
illusion of transparency (pedagogics)
Some parts that I guess are likely to be ignored, because they seem too trivial, and don’t fit to the existing educational system. They may be mentioned as a footnote in philosophy, but they will not be noticed, because philosophy already contains millions of mostly useless ideas:
making beliefs pay rent
noticing confusion
fake explanations
mysterious answers
affective spirals
fallacy of grey
dissolving the question
tsuyoku naritai
rationality as a common cause of many causes
EDIT: Reading my lists again, seems like the main difference is between things you can describe and things you have to do. The focus of academia is to describe stuff, not to train people. Which makes sense, sure. Except for the paradoxical part where you have to train people to become better at correctly describing stuff.
I haven’t read the book, but looking at the reviews on the page you linked...
That’s like Eliezer from a parallel universe, except that in this parallel universe the alternative Eliezer was a professor of mathematics at MIT.