1
00:00:04,720 --> 00:00:09,399
Speaker 1: Cybernetics. All right, this is this is me Christopher Wong,

2
00:00:09,640 --> 00:00:12,959
Speaker 1: realizing that I have done like sixteen consecutive actual real

3
00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:15,280
Speaker 1: introductions and that if I keep doing them, everyone's going

4
00:00:15,320 --> 00:00:17,239
Speaker 1: to expect that I do a real introduction every time

5
00:00:17,239 --> 00:00:21,920
Speaker 1: instead of like randomly yelling something. So yeah, well, welcome

6
00:00:21,920 --> 00:00:23,800
Speaker 1: to it could happen here. I am trying to make

7
00:00:23,840 --> 00:00:29,319
Speaker 1: my job function as it should and not professionalize it.

8
00:00:29,840 --> 00:00:33,360
Speaker 1: Um and this is this is a podcast about things

9
00:00:33,400 --> 00:00:37,000
Speaker 1: that are bad, but it's also occasionally a podcast about

10
00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:40,040
Speaker 1: things that are good and how, in fact there can

11
00:00:40,080 --> 00:00:42,920
Speaker 1: be a society beyond this one, and to talk about

12
00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:45,720
Speaker 1: some of the shades of what that could look like.

13
00:00:45,760 --> 00:00:48,240
Speaker 1: I have with me the co host of the General

14
00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:51,080
Speaker 1: Intellect Unit, Kyle and June, which is as a podcast

15
00:00:51,159 --> 00:00:54,160
Speaker 1: on the Emancipation Network. That is so this is the

16
00:00:54,200 --> 00:00:57,160
Speaker 1: tagline the podcast of the Cybernetic Marxists. I am. I

17
00:00:57,200 --> 00:01:02,560
Speaker 1: am very excited. Yeah, it's it's really exciting to be here. Absolutely,

18
00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:06,200
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on. Um yeah, I guess okay,

19
00:01:06,680 --> 00:01:10,000
Speaker 1: you should start at the the very very beginning, because

20
00:01:12,400 --> 00:01:15,440
Speaker 1: I don't think most people know any of this. What

21
00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:22,840
Speaker 1: is cybernetics? Right? Um? So cybernetics is I guess a

22
00:01:22,959 --> 00:01:29,759
Speaker 1: term that comes from what is it the kaibernetes right, steering, uh,

23
00:01:29,840 --> 00:01:34,120
Speaker 1: the idea of steering a boat um, so using your

24
00:01:34,120 --> 00:01:40,920
Speaker 1: ore to navigate the waters um. And so essentially it

25
00:01:41,120 --> 00:01:47,600
Speaker 1: is a science of control. And that sounds really scary,

26
00:01:47,640 --> 00:01:52,400
Speaker 1: but what it means is that it's that kind of

27
00:01:52,640 --> 00:02:01,360
Speaker 1: connection between the steers person, the or the boat, their

28
00:02:01,400 --> 00:02:05,920
Speaker 1: body and the water around them and getting all of

29
00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:11,680
Speaker 1: those things in sync in such a way that the

30
00:02:11,720 --> 00:02:14,280
Speaker 1: steers person is going where they want to go, the

31
00:02:14,320 --> 00:02:18,520
Speaker 1: ship or the boat doesn't capsize and they don't lose

32
00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:23,399
Speaker 1: the ore um. And so that's what control means. It's

33
00:02:23,400 --> 00:02:31,400
Speaker 1: a kind of balancing, a kind of connection between the

34
00:02:31,520 --> 00:02:34,760
Speaker 1: organism and the environment in such a way that it

35
00:02:34,800 --> 00:02:40,520
Speaker 1: can survive and thrive. And that's what cybernex is focused on. Yeah,

36
00:02:40,840 --> 00:02:44,160
Speaker 1: the thing I love about them, the steersman metaphor, is

37
00:02:44,200 --> 00:02:47,520
Speaker 1: that like it's all about it's controlling the sense of regulation.

38
00:02:47,600 --> 00:02:51,080
Speaker 1: But also like very importantly in cybernetics, it's almost always

39
00:02:51,120 --> 00:02:54,960
Speaker 1: self regulation m hmm, because like the one of the

40
00:02:55,000 --> 00:03:00,000
Speaker 1: kind of core principles. Again, like the because the term

41
00:03:00,120 --> 00:03:03,040
Speaker 1: usually calls to mind this like kind of terminator like UM,

42
00:03:03,840 --> 00:03:07,239
Speaker 1: like cyber Gothic kind of domination. It's actually not with

43
00:03:07,639 --> 00:03:10,280
Speaker 1: the field is about at all. It's UM because one

44
00:03:10,320 --> 00:03:12,359
Speaker 1: of the core insights of cybernetics is actually that any

45
00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:16,440
Speaker 1: given system UM, the only thing that can really control

46
00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:19,919
Speaker 1: it is itself because of the sheer complexity of systems.

47
00:03:19,919 --> 00:03:24,600
Speaker 1: So that like UM, like the kind of like top

48
00:03:24,639 --> 00:03:27,520
Speaker 1: down external domination of an organism that we all fear

49
00:03:27,639 --> 00:03:28,799
Speaker 1: is kind of like actually, if you look at the

50
00:03:28,840 --> 00:03:32,920
Speaker 1: cyber sybanetics literature, that's not not actually really possible because

51
00:03:33,040 --> 00:03:35,760
Speaker 1: the the the the external controller would never have enough

52
00:03:35,800 --> 00:03:40,240
Speaker 1: complexity to match what the organism is capable of. UM.

53
00:03:40,280 --> 00:03:45,680
Speaker 1: And you know, organisms are self regulating systems. The steersman

54
00:03:45,720 --> 00:03:47,840
Speaker 1: with his boat is a self regulating system that like

55
00:03:47,920 --> 00:03:51,600
Speaker 1: regulates its upright position in the water and regulates its

56
00:03:51,640 --> 00:03:55,760
Speaker 1: course that's directed towards its goal. UM. So it's it's

57
00:03:56,080 --> 00:03:58,240
Speaker 1: that's why it's so important. I think that's why we

58
00:03:58,240 --> 00:04:01,480
Speaker 1: think it's so important for the left and like people

59
00:04:01,520 --> 00:04:04,280
Speaker 1: who are concerned with these like you know, visions of

60
00:04:04,600 --> 00:04:08,400
Speaker 1: a politics of autonomy and liberation, they really need to

61
00:04:08,440 --> 00:04:10,120
Speaker 1: look at this stuff because it turns out there kind

62
00:04:10,120 --> 00:04:14,240
Speaker 1: of is a science of like autonomous, self guiding organic systems.

63
00:04:14,560 --> 00:04:20,000
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, no terminator here, yes, and yeah, I

64
00:04:20,040 --> 00:04:25,280
Speaker 1: mean you know when you see uh, scary videos of

65
00:04:25,400 --> 00:04:31,680
Speaker 1: militarized robots and they're learning to you know, jump and

66
00:04:31,960 --> 00:04:36,719
Speaker 1: fire weapons and all that kind of stuff. There certainly

67
00:04:36,800 --> 00:04:41,560
Speaker 1: is cybernetics involved there, but that is a kind of

68
00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:47,000
Speaker 1: domain application of cybernetics. Rather than defining what cybernetics is,

69
00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:51,479
Speaker 1: it's really kind of holistic systems thinking in general is

70
00:04:51,520 --> 00:04:55,400
Speaker 1: what cybernetics is. Yeah, yeah, that that's that That's that's

71
00:04:55,400 --> 00:04:59,440
Speaker 1: probably worth emphasizing, right that, Like um, um, cybernetics in

72
00:04:59,440 --> 00:05:01,960
Speaker 1: some ways is a kind of like out of fashion

73
00:05:02,160 --> 00:05:04,680
Speaker 1: these days. Like it it kind of evolved into systems

74
00:05:04,680 --> 00:05:07,560
Speaker 1: thinking and like, um, I guess a lot of its

75
00:05:07,640 --> 00:05:09,960
Speaker 1: lessons got kind of absorbed in general. But we find

76
00:05:10,880 --> 00:05:13,320
Speaker 1: there's great value in going back to them, the kind

77
00:05:13,360 --> 00:05:17,120
Speaker 1: of originators and like focusing on that field. It's like

78
00:05:17,520 --> 00:05:20,400
Speaker 1: we on the show, we got into the cybernetics angle

79
00:05:20,720 --> 00:05:24,680
Speaker 1: by reading Andrew Pickering in his book with the Cybernetic Brain,

80
00:05:25,040 --> 00:05:27,640
Speaker 1: in which um, he kind of acknowledged that like there's

81
00:05:27,760 --> 00:05:29,479
Speaker 1: he kind of split it into two, like there's American

82
00:05:29,520 --> 00:05:33,560
Speaker 1: cybernetics like which had that kind of like um dour

83
00:05:33,720 --> 00:05:36,200
Speaker 1: kind of military domination sort of flavor to it. That

84
00:05:36,279 --> 00:05:39,120
Speaker 1: like it's kind of an earned reputation there. But Pickering

85
00:05:39,160 --> 00:05:41,760
Speaker 1: was more concerned with British cybernetics. Um, it's like a

86
00:05:41,800 --> 00:05:44,080
Speaker 1: lot of British thinkers that and it had a very

87
00:05:44,120 --> 00:05:47,279
Speaker 1: different flavor there where it was more open ended. It

88
00:05:47,320 --> 00:05:48,760
Speaker 1: was kind of had more of a focus on kind

89
00:05:48,760 --> 00:05:51,680
Speaker 1: of liberation than like politics and stuff. And in fact,

90
00:05:51,760 --> 00:05:55,760
Speaker 1: some of those like Gray Walter was like explicitly an anarchist,

91
00:05:55,960 --> 00:05:59,559
Speaker 1: wrote an anarchist um like journals and stuff like that, um.

92
00:05:59,600 --> 00:06:02,520
Speaker 1: And for him, like those two things went tant in

93
00:06:02,560 --> 00:06:08,280
Speaker 1: glove right like that, like um liberatory politics as like um,

94
00:06:08,440 --> 00:06:11,720
Speaker 1: the politics of like human flourishing, like as human human

95
00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:15,320
Speaker 1: beings as autonomous units flourishing in their own contexts, and

96
00:06:15,520 --> 00:06:18,360
Speaker 1: of like social systems that would enable that kind of flourishing.

97
00:06:18,839 --> 00:06:20,760
Speaker 1: To him, that was just hand in glove with cybernetics.

98
00:06:20,800 --> 00:06:22,719
Speaker 1: There was no real distinction there. It was just like

99
00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:26,000
Speaker 1: these these two things fit each other perfectly, which you

100
00:06:26,080 --> 00:06:29,799
Speaker 1: lose later with like general systems theory sort of stuff.

101
00:06:29,839 --> 00:06:32,480
Speaker 1: You know, it's like there's there's plenty. I don't know

102
00:06:32,520 --> 00:06:35,839
Speaker 1: who am I thinking of here? Like them that the Tally,

103
00:06:36,279 --> 00:06:38,400
Speaker 1: that guy with the like black Swan sort of stuff,

104
00:06:38,440 --> 00:06:41,240
Speaker 1: like he's biggest system and stuff, but like isn't so

105
00:06:41,320 --> 00:06:44,440
Speaker 1: much um isn't so much into the liberatory politics. I

106
00:06:44,480 --> 00:06:46,320
Speaker 1: guess you know, a lot of that angle is kind

107
00:06:46,320 --> 00:06:48,520
Speaker 1: of lost. Yeah, And I think this is awesome. This

108
00:06:48,600 --> 00:06:50,080
Speaker 1: is you know, this is sort of a product of

109
00:06:50,720 --> 00:06:54,599
Speaker 1: I guess the broader idelogical course that's going on while

110
00:06:54,640 --> 00:06:57,400
Speaker 1: sort of cyberige comes in and out of fashion. I

111
00:06:57,720 --> 00:07:00,320
Speaker 1: think I think we should go back a bit to

112
00:07:00,400 --> 00:07:03,080
Speaker 1: the beginning to sort of situate this because I know,

113
00:07:04,200 --> 00:07:07,080
Speaker 1: like when when I, like before I ever did any reading,

114
00:07:07,160 --> 00:07:09,479
Speaker 1: What's ever next? Like my immediate assumption was that it

115
00:07:09,520 --> 00:07:10,760
Speaker 1: was it was, you know, this, this is the thing

116
00:07:10,760 --> 00:07:13,840
Speaker 1: that was entirely just based off of computers, right that

117
00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:17,920
Speaker 1: this is like this is and that's not really true

118
00:07:18,160 --> 00:07:20,520
Speaker 1: from might understandtanding of us. Can we go back and

119
00:07:20,640 --> 00:07:24,120
Speaker 1: sort of like talk about where this came from a

120
00:07:24,160 --> 00:07:29,360
Speaker 1: bit and how it's sort of moves over this over

121
00:07:29,360 --> 00:07:35,280
Speaker 1: certain sex. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you can kind

122
00:07:35,320 --> 00:07:42,040
Speaker 1: of trace it back in it's sort of European origins

123
00:07:42,640 --> 00:07:49,400
Speaker 1: to UM. You could probably say Hagel Uh, you know

124
00:07:49,560 --> 00:07:55,640
Speaker 1: his his move towards like UM understanding being not just

125
00:07:55,720 --> 00:08:00,480
Speaker 1: as substance but as subject. I think is moved towards

126
00:08:00,560 --> 00:08:05,240
Speaker 1: a kind of cybernetic understanding where you understand the whole

127
00:08:05,320 --> 00:08:13,040
Speaker 1: system as a holistic entity as opposed to just an

128
00:08:13,040 --> 00:08:20,280
Speaker 1: individual interacting with an external environment. UM. And you can

129
00:08:20,360 --> 00:08:25,360
Speaker 1: also see this come up in say there was a

130
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:31,320
Speaker 1: ecologist X skill in the German ecologist in the early

131
00:08:31,680 --> 00:08:36,040
Speaker 1: twentieth century, I believe, who was trying to understand, you know,

132
00:08:36,480 --> 00:08:41,000
Speaker 1: the organism in its environment. The sort of precursors to

133
00:08:41,160 --> 00:08:47,280
Speaker 1: ecology can be seen as precursors to cybernetics UM. And

134
00:08:47,320 --> 00:08:51,600
Speaker 1: then when you get to the kind of development of

135
00:08:51,640 --> 00:08:57,679
Speaker 1: cybernetics as a science or as a discipline UM in

136
00:08:57,720 --> 00:09:06,080
Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century, it's not exactly about computing, it's UM.

137
00:09:06,120 --> 00:09:14,280
Speaker 1: It's more about balancing a machine with its environment. So UM.

138
00:09:14,880 --> 00:09:21,079
Speaker 1: Sort of prototypical UM machine of this kind was the

139
00:09:21,240 --> 00:09:27,880
Speaker 1: servo mechanism, which was used to help guide a like

140
00:09:27,920 --> 00:09:32,520
Speaker 1: an anti aircraft gun in shooting down in any aircraft,

141
00:09:32,640 --> 00:09:35,880
Speaker 1: so making sure it tracks properly with the target and

142
00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:40,760
Speaker 1: doesn't lose the target and is assisting the operator in

143
00:09:40,960 --> 00:09:46,760
Speaker 1: operating the gun instead of just being a inanimate object

144
00:09:47,080 --> 00:09:52,640
Speaker 1: that has trouble tracking what it's a very fast moving target.

145
00:09:52,960 --> 00:09:55,320
Speaker 1: I mean, you can even think back to like the

146
00:09:55,840 --> 00:09:58,719
Speaker 1: you know, in World War One, when they discovered, hey,

147
00:09:58,800 --> 00:10:01,280
Speaker 1: we could actually like sing chronize the timing of the

148
00:10:01,320 --> 00:10:03,920
Speaker 1: propeller and the timing of our gun on the front

149
00:10:03,960 --> 00:10:07,280
Speaker 1: of this plane so that our guns aren't destroying our

150
00:10:07,280 --> 00:10:10,840
Speaker 1: propellers and shooting and we're we're shooting our own planes

151
00:10:10,880 --> 00:10:15,240
Speaker 1: down with our guns when we're dog fighting, right, Like

152
00:10:15,400 --> 00:10:21,199
Speaker 1: it's uh, yeah, that's the system's understanding, right, So that's um,

153
00:10:21,240 --> 00:10:24,280
Speaker 1: that's that's Norbert Leaner, right and working on the automated

154
00:10:24,280 --> 00:10:27,640
Speaker 1: gun turret stuff. And that's he coins the term cybernetics

155
00:10:27,679 --> 00:10:30,599
Speaker 1: to like um given name to the thing he was

156
00:10:30,679 --> 00:10:32,559
Speaker 1: starting to discover. And it's like he was kind of

157
00:10:32,600 --> 00:10:35,160
Speaker 1: pulling together a bunch of rights there, and like one

158
00:10:35,200 --> 00:10:37,600
Speaker 1: of those kind of important insights is that like, um,

159
00:10:38,360 --> 00:10:41,560
Speaker 1: like they couldn't get an improvement in like targeting and

160
00:10:41,559 --> 00:10:45,240
Speaker 1: accuracy without like basically making the gun turret an agent

161
00:10:45,320 --> 00:10:48,080
Speaker 1: of its own that like and the like the turret

162
00:10:48,160 --> 00:10:52,040
Speaker 1: and the gunner would be cooperative agents that in combination

163
00:10:52,200 --> 00:10:56,000
Speaker 1: would achieve their goal. But like there was there was

164
00:10:56,040 --> 00:10:58,160
Speaker 1: there's something strange and spooky about that. And I think

165
00:10:58,200 --> 00:11:01,600
Speaker 1: that then this feedback mechanism in inside the terrist gives

166
00:11:01,600 --> 00:11:04,720
Speaker 1: it a sort of weird agency that UM combines with

167
00:11:04,760 --> 00:11:07,160
Speaker 1: the agency off the gunner to link going to the

168
00:11:07,160 --> 00:11:12,360
Speaker 1: whole system towards it goal. UM. Yes, And what it

169
00:11:12,480 --> 00:11:16,560
Speaker 1: ends up becoming then is a kind of boundary space

170
00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:25,120
Speaker 1: where the distinction between human and machine UH starts to

171
00:11:25,240 --> 00:11:29,920
Speaker 1: become ambiguous because they both start to possess they're both

172
00:11:30,040 --> 00:11:33,679
Speaker 1: understood to have a kind of agency, they're both understood

173
00:11:33,720 --> 00:11:38,920
Speaker 1: to have kinds of like functions, And then you kind

174
00:11:38,920 --> 00:11:43,400
Speaker 1: of get this sort of like a human machine interface idea,

175
00:11:43,640 --> 00:11:46,040
Speaker 1: and you can start to bring in all of these

176
00:11:46,080 --> 00:11:52,319
Speaker 1: different ideas from like anthropology, from physiology, from math, from

177
00:11:52,640 --> 00:11:57,480
Speaker 1: ecology UH, and they all start to interact in this

178
00:11:57,679 --> 00:12:02,520
Speaker 1: domain of cyber addicts. And like the core, the core

179
00:12:02,559 --> 00:12:05,240
Speaker 1: idea of them that kind of ties everything together is

180
00:12:05,240 --> 00:12:09,760
Speaker 1: that of feedback UM. So like weener realizes that what

181
00:12:09,920 --> 00:12:12,040
Speaker 1: he needs to do achieve this goal is is a

182
00:12:12,040 --> 00:12:16,000
Speaker 1: feedback mechanism I am. That would is error correcting feedback, right,

183
00:12:16,000 --> 00:12:17,480
Speaker 1: like if the if the gun is slightly too far

184
00:12:17,600 --> 00:12:20,880
Speaker 1: to the left, it corrects itself right words and so on. Um.

185
00:12:20,920 --> 00:12:22,679
Speaker 1: But that as you said, that that connects across all

186
00:12:22,679 --> 00:12:24,439
Speaker 1: sorts of things, right, Like you start to realize that's

187
00:12:24,440 --> 00:12:30,560
Speaker 1: present everywhere in ecology, in neurology, in UM, like that

188
00:12:30,760 --> 00:12:34,199
Speaker 1: learning is based on feedback, you know. So it's really

189
00:12:34,240 --> 00:12:36,640
Speaker 1: funny to read to read Norburt Wiener like in the

190
00:12:36,679 --> 00:12:40,880
Speaker 1: fifties basically describing what would become machine learning, and he's

191
00:12:40,920 --> 00:12:42,520
Speaker 1: just like he just off the cuff, is like, yeah,

192
00:12:43,040 --> 00:12:45,840
Speaker 1: like if you could, if a machine could like UM,

193
00:12:45,960 --> 00:12:49,119
Speaker 1: or if if any system could just like UM analyze

194
00:12:49,160 --> 00:12:51,800
Speaker 1: its own performance and then feedback onto itself, it would

195
00:12:51,840 --> 00:12:53,440
Speaker 1: it would learn any old pattern you wanted it to.

196
00:12:53,760 --> 00:12:56,280
Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, he turns out he was completely correct.

197
00:12:56,360 --> 00:12:59,360
Speaker 1: And that's that's where kind of like gets into like

198
00:12:59,520 --> 00:13:02,720
Speaker 1: you get a sure thinkers like Ross Ashby who was

199
00:13:03,160 --> 00:13:06,280
Speaker 1: UM and like other folks like were in in and

200
00:13:06,280 --> 00:13:08,959
Speaker 1: around psychiatry. We were like really interested in how the

201
00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:11,760
Speaker 1: brain worked. And that's that's the other thing that feeds

202
00:13:11,760 --> 00:13:16,160
Speaker 1: into like cybernetics is like, um, it's It's why Pickering

203
00:13:16,160 --> 00:13:18,400
Speaker 1: called his book the Cybernetic Brains, because like the brain

204
00:13:18,679 --> 00:13:21,880
Speaker 1: and nervous systems show up so much in that field,

205
00:13:22,040 --> 00:13:25,079
Speaker 1: right that, Like the brain being a kind of learning

206
00:13:25,080 --> 00:13:28,760
Speaker 1: and adapt an adapt adaptation machine attached to the body

207
00:13:28,840 --> 00:13:32,280
Speaker 1: or whatever, and like, um, yeah, I don't know, there's

208
00:13:32,280 --> 00:13:35,559
Speaker 1: there's something fascinating there, and like, um, the I mean

209
00:13:35,640 --> 00:13:37,800
Speaker 1: there's something kind of possibly troubling and kind of melting

210
00:13:37,840 --> 00:13:41,040
Speaker 1: down the distinctions between living organisms and machines or whatever,

211
00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:44,240
Speaker 1: but like there's also something very compelling and just like

212
00:13:44,480 --> 00:13:47,920
Speaker 1: recognizing the same patterns happening at all these different levels,

213
00:13:48,000 --> 00:13:52,200
Speaker 1: right that, Like um, like you get similar behaviors and

214
00:13:52,200 --> 00:13:54,320
Speaker 1: similar kind of outcomes, and then you know, it turns

215
00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:56,040
Speaker 1: out like you can kind of do a science on

216
00:13:56,120 --> 00:13:59,800
Speaker 1: these things and and come up with an even better

217
00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:04,560
Speaker 1: planage my frameworks based on your observations across many fields. Yes,

218
00:14:04,720 --> 00:14:09,520
Speaker 1: and so it is in a sense about computers. But

219
00:14:09,720 --> 00:14:15,280
Speaker 1: the computers are really just understood to act like a

220
00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:20,400
Speaker 1: kind of brain, and that's connected to a nervous system

221
00:14:20,760 --> 00:14:25,080
Speaker 1: which is connected to you know, like actuators of some kinds,

222
00:14:25,160 --> 00:14:28,160
Speaker 1: some kinds of like machines that actually do things in

223
00:14:28,200 --> 00:14:36,400
Speaker 1: the world. So it's not about like say computer science specifically.

224
00:14:36,600 --> 00:14:39,520
Speaker 1: It's more about, like, well, computers are a useful way

225
00:14:40,120 --> 00:14:46,120
Speaker 1: to do cybernetic design because they can act as a

226
00:14:46,160 --> 00:14:50,400
Speaker 1: control system and they're flexible. It's not that this is

227
00:14:50,600 --> 00:14:54,880
Speaker 1: about computers really, yeah, yeah, absolutely, And like the you

228
00:14:54,960 --> 00:14:57,600
Speaker 1: brought you brought up something very important there that like, um,

229
00:14:57,640 --> 00:15:00,480
Speaker 1: in all cases of like cybernetics like thing, the systems

230
00:15:00,480 --> 00:15:03,200
Speaker 1: that we're considering are not like isolated like braining a

231
00:15:03,240 --> 00:15:05,280
Speaker 1: box kind of things. They're all the things that are

232
00:15:05,440 --> 00:15:09,560
Speaker 1: directly engaged with a world, um like. So it's it's

233
00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:13,720
Speaker 1: it's not that kind of like monadic kind of rationalism

234
00:15:13,760 --> 00:15:16,360
Speaker 1: of like computation just happening in a box somewhere and

235
00:15:16,400 --> 00:15:18,520
Speaker 1: like per perfect intelligence, right, that kind of the kind

236
00:15:18,520 --> 00:15:22,040
Speaker 1: of stuff these are always, like the separantations, are always

237
00:15:22,080 --> 00:15:27,480
Speaker 1: working with systems that were engaged in real time emergent situations, UM.

238
00:15:27,520 --> 00:15:30,480
Speaker 1: And because of that, they rapidly kind of like acknowledge

239
00:15:30,520 --> 00:15:34,320
Speaker 1: that for so many of these important like systems, the

240
00:15:34,360 --> 00:15:35,960
Speaker 1: only way to figure out what it's going to do

241
00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:39,480
Speaker 1: is to let it do it UM because you can't

242
00:15:39,560 --> 00:15:42,640
Speaker 1: like pre compute all the possible outcomes. You know, of

243
00:15:42,680 --> 00:15:47,200
Speaker 1: these like very sticky and complex real world situations, the

244
00:15:47,840 --> 00:15:49,240
Speaker 1: best way to figure out what it's going to do

245
00:15:49,320 --> 00:15:52,320
Speaker 1: is to let it do it and watch yes. And

246
00:15:52,360 --> 00:15:54,320
Speaker 1: I think I think that's an interesting sort of like

247
00:15:55,000 --> 00:15:56,200
Speaker 1: if if you look at where a lot of the

248
00:15:56,240 --> 00:16:02,840
Speaker 1: sort of like techno fetishist like social attempts to sort

249
00:16:02,840 --> 00:16:05,880
Speaker 1: of like manipulate so side the technology have gone, it's like, yeah,

250
00:16:05,920 --> 00:16:09,040
Speaker 1: you get like like blockchain smart contracts, and it's like

251
00:16:09,440 --> 00:16:13,040
Speaker 1: the blockchain smart contract is like, Okay, we are going

252
00:16:13,080 --> 00:16:16,280
Speaker 1: to think of literally everything that could possibly happen an

253
00:16:16,280 --> 00:16:18,680
Speaker 1: attempt to put it in like a very small amount

254
00:16:18,720 --> 00:16:22,520
Speaker 1: of code, and if anything like literally anything at all happens,

255
00:16:23,160 --> 00:16:27,280
Speaker 1: that uh, you know that we didn't expect where now

256
00:16:27,320 --> 00:16:29,640
Speaker 1: everyone is now screwed because we have just made this

257
00:16:29,680 --> 00:16:31,040
Speaker 1: thing im beautable and put it in such a way

258
00:16:31,080 --> 00:16:33,440
Speaker 1: that we can't change it. So I think that, yeah,

259
00:16:33,480 --> 00:16:35,680
Speaker 1: that's a I think this is a useful sort of

260
00:16:36,640 --> 00:16:39,480
Speaker 1: I mean corrective just just in the way that we've

261
00:16:39,680 --> 00:16:41,880
Speaker 1: we've we've now like like we've gone backwards, like we've

262
00:16:41,880 --> 00:16:43,840
Speaker 1: we've gotten into this place where you instead of like

263
00:16:44,240 --> 00:16:45,640
Speaker 1: we need to let these systems play out, we need

264
00:16:45,680 --> 00:16:50,000
Speaker 1: to let them control themselves. Have gotten to like we

265
00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:53,520
Speaker 1: think that we can actually just sort of like you know,

266
00:16:54,080 --> 00:16:57,800
Speaker 1: turn turn the entire system into code that we can

267
00:16:57,800 --> 00:17:01,240
Speaker 1: predict ahead of time and have the basis of some

268
00:17:01,280 --> 00:17:04,080
Speaker 1: sort of social system off of Yeah, I mean it's

269
00:17:04,119 --> 00:17:06,119
Speaker 1: I think it's something that like the serpetitions and like

270
00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:09,639
Speaker 1: maybe Pickering would describe as like a kind of perversity

271
00:17:09,680 --> 00:17:13,240
Speaker 1: of modern thought, like the modern mindset like that that

272
00:17:13,280 --> 00:17:17,679
Speaker 1: kind of like rational like um kind of mindset right

273
00:17:17,720 --> 00:17:20,520
Speaker 1: like um, and like to the serpenetitions that that whole

274
00:17:20,520 --> 00:17:23,000
Speaker 1: thing with like the blockchain stuff, will be just truly

275
00:17:23,080 --> 00:17:26,320
Speaker 1: laughable because it's immediate, it's immediately obvious to them that

276
00:17:27,600 --> 00:17:30,280
Speaker 1: the problem there is like okay, proposing we're going to

277
00:17:30,400 --> 00:17:32,480
Speaker 1: use a blockchain to regulate some sort of social process

278
00:17:32,560 --> 00:17:34,880
Speaker 1: or whatever, smart contracts, whatever, and it's like that thing

279
00:17:34,920 --> 00:17:38,400
Speaker 1: has nowhere near the fidelity required to regulate social processes.

280
00:17:38,400 --> 00:17:43,440
Speaker 1: Because social processes are unimaginably complex and have just incredible variety.

281
00:17:43,720 --> 00:17:45,639
Speaker 1: There's a there's a there's like a law that's at

282
00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:48,920
Speaker 1: the house of cybernatics called Ashby's law of requisite variety.

283
00:17:49,440 --> 00:17:54,120
Speaker 1: And in short, it basically states that given a system, um,

284
00:17:54,160 --> 00:17:57,240
Speaker 1: the only thing that's really capable of regulating is regulating

285
00:17:57,240 --> 00:18:01,520
Speaker 1: it is itself, because a regulator knee needs as much

286
00:18:01,600 --> 00:18:04,080
Speaker 1: variety as the thing it's regulating if it's gonna like

287
00:18:04,119 --> 00:18:08,000
Speaker 1: actually succeeded it um. And so that's that's the kind

288
00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:11,480
Speaker 1: of thing that nudges everyone towards, like like when you

289
00:18:11,480 --> 00:18:13,840
Speaker 1: get to someone like Stafford Beer is his whole model

290
00:18:13,920 --> 00:18:17,919
Speaker 1: of like organization pushes all a lot of the intelligence

291
00:18:17,920 --> 00:18:20,480
Speaker 1: downwards to the to the bottom layers, because there is

292
00:18:20,480 --> 00:18:23,040
Speaker 1: basically the people on the ground on the shop floor

293
00:18:23,400 --> 00:18:25,520
Speaker 1: are the people who are best informed to actually deal

294
00:18:25,520 --> 00:18:27,720
Speaker 1: with their own situation. And that's that sounds like a

295
00:18:27,760 --> 00:18:30,560
Speaker 1: banal observation, but like it for Beer that was actually

296
00:18:30,600 --> 00:18:32,639
Speaker 1: quite a step forward to like just admit that like

297
00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:36,480
Speaker 1: trying to trying to like in his context, it was

298
00:18:36,520 --> 00:18:40,040
Speaker 1: like often the organization of a firm, like at our company,

299
00:18:40,359 --> 00:18:43,000
Speaker 1: like trying to manage a company from the boardroom is

300
00:18:43,040 --> 00:18:47,240
Speaker 1: just fucking ludicrous, Like no nobody there has enough information

301
00:18:47,280 --> 00:18:50,560
Speaker 1: to act on They're all dumbasses anyway. So for Beer,

302
00:18:50,600 --> 00:18:52,159
Speaker 1: it was just like this is where it starts to

303
00:18:52,160 --> 00:18:54,439
Speaker 1: get interesting, and it connects to the politics, right that

304
00:18:54,480 --> 00:18:57,879
Speaker 1: like for one of these scientists just observing reality and

305
00:18:57,960 --> 00:19:01,080
Speaker 1: like you know, using you know, pretty pretty good stray

306
00:19:01,119 --> 00:19:03,919
Speaker 1: intuitions and like scientific frameworks, just looking at it and

307
00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:06,199
Speaker 1: going like, oh, it is obviously the case that the

308
00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:11,480
Speaker 1: best way for society to organize his bottom up self organization. Um,

309
00:19:11,520 --> 00:19:14,080
Speaker 1: And that like it's not just a moral point, it's

310
00:19:14,080 --> 00:19:17,480
Speaker 1: actually a technical point as well. Then like, um, these

311
00:19:17,520 --> 00:19:21,520
Speaker 1: these top down, bureaucratic kind of micro tyrannies are not

312
00:19:21,600 --> 00:19:24,840
Speaker 1: only morally objectionable, they're also technically inferior to the kind

313
00:19:24,840 --> 00:19:28,040
Speaker 1: of like cyber communism we want to institute. Yeah, and

314
00:19:28,119 --> 00:19:30,840
Speaker 1: I have like one off one of my what if

315
00:19:30,880 --> 00:19:33,399
Speaker 1: one of my favorite stories about So I worked as

316
00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:36,080
Speaker 1: a maintenance worker for a while and one day my

317
00:19:36,160 --> 00:19:37,879
Speaker 1: boss was like, there was some problem with a sink.

318
00:19:38,440 --> 00:19:40,200
Speaker 1: And my boss was like, no, we don't need the plumbers.

319
00:19:40,200 --> 00:19:42,360
Speaker 1: I can do this. And so he goes in there

320
00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:43,879
Speaker 1: and it's it's what it's like, It's it's like a

321
00:19:43,920 --> 00:19:45,600
Speaker 1: sink in like a building, right, So it's it's just

322
00:19:45,680 --> 00:19:47,119
Speaker 1: one of those things where there's like a pipe that

323
00:19:47,160 --> 00:19:49,280
Speaker 1: connects to the top of the sink to like the wall,

324
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:51,960
Speaker 1: and he goes, Okay, here, look at this. I'm gonna

325
00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:53,720
Speaker 1: I'm gonna turn this valve and this is gonna turn

326
00:19:53,760 --> 00:19:56,280
Speaker 1: the water off. And what he instead does is he

327
00:19:56,359 --> 00:20:00,520
Speaker 1: take he takes the pipe off of the wall, and

328
00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:03,760
Speaker 1: just like a torrent of water is just now shooting

329
00:20:03,760 --> 00:20:05,960
Speaker 1: out of this pipe because he has removed the thing. Yeah,

330
00:20:05,960 --> 00:20:09,879
Speaker 1: he's removed the pipe from the wall. This is you know,

331
00:20:10,880 --> 00:20:13,800
Speaker 1: this is this is why I think like, yeah, go

332
00:20:14,240 --> 00:20:15,919
Speaker 1: this this, this, this this, you know this this is

333
00:20:16,640 --> 00:20:20,119
Speaker 1: like a particularly funny example of how these sort of

334
00:20:20,119 --> 00:20:23,000
Speaker 1: top down management systems. And this guy like like used

335
00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:24,680
Speaker 1: to be a maintenance guy, right, but he just like

336
00:20:24,960 --> 00:20:28,120
Speaker 1: must a plumber, and so you know, and he accepts

337
00:20:28,119 --> 00:20:29,320
Speaker 1: into it and he's like, oh no, no, no no, no, no no,

338
00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:31,200
Speaker 1: hold on, I know, I know how this system works.

339
00:20:31,240 --> 00:20:33,879
Speaker 1: It's going to be fine. And it just there's a guys,

340
00:20:34,160 --> 00:20:36,040
Speaker 1: the guys are of water has so much force. It's

341
00:20:36,040 --> 00:20:38,680
Speaker 1: like it's like pushing our tool cart across the room.

342
00:20:40,880 --> 00:20:56,399
Speaker 1: It's like a fighter hydrants coming out this wall. I

343
00:20:56,440 --> 00:20:59,720
Speaker 1: wanted to I guess beers is an interesting way to

344
00:20:59,720 --> 00:21:02,280
Speaker 1: go to go into the sort of the politics of

345
00:21:02,280 --> 00:21:03,840
Speaker 1: what this actually looks like do you want to talk

346
00:21:03,880 --> 00:21:07,239
Speaker 1: about and I know I briefly talked about this in

347
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:10,119
Speaker 1: an episode in The Liberalism a while back, but do

348
00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:12,200
Speaker 1: you want to go into sort of more detail into

349
00:21:12,240 --> 00:21:17,760
Speaker 1: what Beers was up to and the eventually failed attempt

350
00:21:17,880 --> 00:21:21,639
Speaker 1: because of military coup, to try to implement like a

351
00:21:21,680 --> 00:21:29,920
Speaker 1: cybernetic system for organizing essentially an economy. Yeah, sure, um. Yeah,

352
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:38,600
Speaker 1: So Stafford Beer was a UM management consultant UM he

353
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:43,359
Speaker 1: and a cyberneticition. He got his start sort of doing

354
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:51,119
Speaker 1: operations research UM, which is kind of a precursor to

355
00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:58,879
Speaker 1: cybernetics UM that is kind of like interested in logistics

356
00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:05,879
Speaker 1: and organizing systems UM in the British military UM in

357
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:09,520
Speaker 1: World War Two. And then he came out of that

358
00:22:10,040 --> 00:22:16,480
Speaker 1: and became a corporate UH consultant for operations research and

359
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:25,240
Speaker 1: management UM. And so in working in the corporate world UM,

360
00:22:25,400 --> 00:22:30,360
Speaker 1: he saw all of the things that were really screwed

361
00:22:30,480 --> 00:22:36,680
Speaker 1: up with the status quo UM way of doing business

362
00:22:36,880 --> 00:22:41,440
Speaker 1: and of organizing things, you know, the way that autocratic

363
00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:48,040
Speaker 1: power of management creates all kinds of ridiculous problems, the

364
00:22:48,119 --> 00:22:52,880
Speaker 1: way that managing organizations, according to ORG charts which are

365
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:57,320
Speaker 1: there to assign blame more than anything else, creates all

366
00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:04,960
Speaker 1: kinds of perversities, the way that organizations fail to adapt

367
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:08,520
Speaker 1: to their environments because they get into these kinds of

368
00:23:08,600 --> 00:23:13,480
Speaker 1: strange neuroses. Um. And you know, just sort of going

369
00:23:13,520 --> 00:23:19,840
Speaker 1: through all of that and more often than not being

370
00:23:19,960 --> 00:23:26,560
Speaker 1: unable to intervene in an effective way uh to um

371
00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:31,200
Speaker 1: address these problems and just sort of like seeing how

372
00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:37,720
Speaker 1: these little instances of perverse corporate culture are indicative of

373
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:43,280
Speaker 1: the broader problems of our society as a whole and

374
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:50,040
Speaker 1: of capitalism, right. Um. And so you know, he had

375
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:53,879
Speaker 1: a basis from his time in India during the Second

376
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:59,040
Speaker 1: World War in uh kind of like contra uh kind

377
00:23:59,040 --> 00:24:06,160
Speaker 1: of like you know, Eastern or specifically Indian um, spirituality, yoga,

378
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. So he kind of had

379
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 1: a cult countercultural side to his personality. UM. And he

380
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:18,080
Speaker 1: was always doing tinkering strange experiments with cybernetics. He wasn't

381
00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:22,800
Speaker 1: just the straight laced corporate guy. Uh. But it was

382
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:29,439
Speaker 1: a combination of that sort of countercultural background with his

383
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:35,159
Speaker 1: growing frustration with corporate systems that led him to start

384
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 1: to develop ideas about how things could be different. And

385
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:43,200
Speaker 1: this kind of meshed up with the thoughts that were

386
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:50,959
Speaker 1: happening in Chile during the Chilean Revolution in the early seventies. Um, So,

387
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:55,200
Speaker 1: they reached out to him to come and help out

388
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:59,959
Speaker 1: with organizing their economy as they were undergoing this revolutionary

389
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:05,960
Speaker 1: process of trying to sort of throw off the shackles

390
00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:12,879
Speaker 1: of imperialist dependency and create a society that was focused

391
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:17,800
Speaker 1: on the flourishing of workers, uh, and of society as

392
00:25:17,840 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: a whole, as opposed to one that was based on

393
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:23,879
Speaker 1: sort of you know, resource extraction where everything flows to

394
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: the top. Yeah, do you want to explain some more

395
00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 1: about how that went well? So? Um, yeah, it it

396
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:35,879
Speaker 1: went well and then it went badly, I guess. Um.

397
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: But from from from the reading we've done and from

398
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:43,240
Speaker 1: our research, it seems like if basically, if the if

399
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:47,200
Speaker 1: the US hadn't sent in the fascists to kill them all, um,

400
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:49,560
Speaker 1: this this would have worked like it was working, and

401
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:51,720
Speaker 1: it was that the project was actually going pretty well.

402
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:55,640
Speaker 1: Explained briefly, what like I think it becomes it's called

403
00:25:55,680 --> 00:26:01,080
Speaker 1: product Cyberson, But what exactly like what was it doing? So? Um? So,

404
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 1: like Beer's big kind of innovation is what we call

405
00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:07,879
Speaker 1: the viable system model, or VSM and it's a model

406
00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:11,440
Speaker 1: that's um it's a model for these like autonomous social

407
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:14,520
Speaker 1: systems that is kind of taking it's I wouldn't say

408
00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:17,240
Speaker 1: it's entirely based on like the structure of the human body,

409
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:19,560
Speaker 1: but it's like taking a lot of lessons from biology

410
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:24,199
Speaker 1: and neurology and neuroscience and and cybernetics and just kind

411
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 1: of meshing them all together. Um So, basically like it's

412
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 1: like if your body is basically a bunch of autonomous

413
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:32,040
Speaker 1: organs that all take care of their own business, plus

414
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:35,560
Speaker 1: a nervous system that synchronizes them and unifies them into

415
00:26:35,560 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 1: a workable hole, then you can kind of see the

416
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 1: whole system as having this kind of mixture of vertical

417
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:45,199
Speaker 1: and horizontal aspects. Like on the one hand, it has

418
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 1: this horizontal aspect where the autonomous like system one units

419
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:52,639
Speaker 1: are are well autonomous, more or less like the harror

420
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 1: takes harsh takes care of its own thing. The lungs

421
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:56,439
Speaker 1: take care of their own thing. But then the nervous

422
00:26:56,480 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 1: system meshes them together in layers so that it can say, oh,

423
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 1: hold on too much oxygen, dial it down a bit,

424
00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:08,359
Speaker 1: and then the organs responds dynamically to those those signals, right,

425
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:11,280
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like up down feedback loops, right,

426
00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:14,119
Speaker 1: where then the lower levels of the system are the

427
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 1: smart bits that are doing all the important work. But

428
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:20,600
Speaker 1: there's this supporting infrastructure of the nervous system in the

429
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 1: brain that unifies the whole thing and keeps it all

430
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:27,639
Speaker 1: on the rails. Um So, and importantly it's a kind

431
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:30,159
Speaker 1: of recursive model. So like a human being is an

432
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:34,160
Speaker 1: autonomous unit, and then that it's that unit is composed

433
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:36,920
Speaker 1: of more autonomous units, like the organs and the muscles,

434
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:39,000
Speaker 1: and then each of those is composed of cells which

435
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:41,760
Speaker 1: are autonomous units, and then you know, so on. But

436
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:44,159
Speaker 1: like that latter goes upwards as well, so that like

437
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:47,840
Speaker 1: a team is an autonomous unit composed of human beings,

438
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:52,160
Speaker 1: a firm, or like a department, is a autonomous unit

439
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:56,119
Speaker 1: composed of teams. A firm is composed of departments, like

440
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:59,040
Speaker 1: a secretor is composed of firms. And it's the same

441
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 1: kind of struct or at each layer. Um. So that

442
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 1: the kind of upside there is that like, um, you

443
00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 1: don't like you kind of have a unit fairly unifying

444
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 1: like set of principles and like a science for doing

445
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:17,119
Speaker 1: this kind of like coordination of autonomous units at every level,

446
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 1: at every every layer of society. So like in principle,

447
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:23,480
Speaker 1: the sort of like the serbonetic principles that get applied

448
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: to cohering members of a team are the same story

449
00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:32,240
Speaker 1: principles that get applied to like sectors in an economy. Um,

450
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:34,720
Speaker 1: with the same kind of you know, bottom up kind

451
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 1: of feedback going on as well. Um. So Stafford was

452
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 1: invited to Chile to by the all end A government

453
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: in so that was like nineteen seventy, right, Um, that

454
00:28:46,720 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 1: that that election happens. So he arrived in late nineteen

455
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 1: seventy I think, Um, I mean certain on the timeline,

456
00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: but we're looking at those those first few years of

457
00:28:57,840 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: the seventies as as the time when this is happening. Yeah, yeah,

458
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:04,480
Speaker 1: I d like it in setting negativity. Yeah. So it's

459
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 1: towards the end of that year that he's he's invited

460
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:09,240
Speaker 1: and he's basically kind of given the task of like, hey,

461
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 1: do all this stuff but with this entire economy, and

462
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, I'm sure cool. Um so puts together

463
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 1: Project cybersen Um and there's kind of long story there

464
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:20,920
Speaker 1: of like and them building out this kind of infrastructure

465
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:25,560
Speaker 1: and like it's it's all highly experimental UM and highly tensive.

466
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 1: Like they one of the big problems they run into

467
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 1: is that like they don't have very much in the

468
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 1: way of like hardware, especially because they're under embargo. So

469
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: they had like UM a pretty what what at the

470
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 1: time was a pretty crafty old mainframe that they ran

471
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: the around the software on UM. But like step step

472
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:46,840
Speaker 1: one was like UM installing this like huge communications network

473
00:29:46,840 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 1: amongst all the factories and UM like setting like the

474
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:51,800
Speaker 1: workers committees and stuff would feed information into it and

475
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 1: it would kind of again this like feedback thing where

476
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:58,959
Speaker 1: you kind of take signals from the economy, integrate them,

477
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:02,120
Speaker 1: and then go, oh, you're producing too much steel, route

478
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:04,800
Speaker 1: some of your product over to this this factory and

479
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: it will be better used there. And then you know,

480
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: you guys over there turn up this dial. You've turned

481
00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 1: down this dial. So and then if that plan doesn't

482
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:15,600
Speaker 1: quite work out, then you've got another layer of feedback

483
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: tomorrow to say, Okay, that plan didn't quite work here's

484
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 1: an adjusted plan. So it's it's just like both bottom

485
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: up and top down sort of loop of feedback. That's

486
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:29,680
Speaker 1: like I think the phrase pickering is is reciprocal adaptation,

487
00:30:30,280 --> 00:30:34,640
Speaker 1: where at the economy and its firms and its workers

488
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: are all kind of adapting to each other in real

489
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:44,520
Speaker 1: time in a kind of in a in a full system. Um. Uh, yes, anything, no,

490
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:48,440
Speaker 1: that I mean, that's that's essentially what Cyber said was

491
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: it was a system designed too largely I think at

492
00:30:56,160 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: first supplement the mare kit, although Beer later realizes that like, actually,

493
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:08,320
Speaker 1: if you have a good system of this kind, you

494
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 1: probably don't need a market. Um. But essentially it was like, Okay,

495
00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 1: our economy has been one that has been built around

496
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: dependence two uh, you know, especially the United States, and

497
00:31:28,040 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 1: it's been organized in that way, and we need to

498
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: reorganize the economy both to promote the well being of

499
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: the workers, the autonomy of the workers, realized the ideals

500
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:41,880
Speaker 1: of socialism in that way, and also to create a

501
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:48,400
Speaker 1: system that is less dependent on those existing structures of imperialism.

502
00:31:48,440 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: And so having this reciprocal adaptation um, having systems in

503
00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:59,560
Speaker 1: place to connect things that were previously disconnected would allow

504
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:02,960
Speaker 1: you to move in that way of increasing autonomy and

505
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:07,239
Speaker 1: increasing freedom. Um. And that was generally the idea of

506
00:32:07,320 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: Cyber sin Um. Yes, yeah, and there was something very interesting,

507
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:16,680
Speaker 1: Like when we were reading the reissue of his book

508
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:18,080
Speaker 1: Brain of the Firm, where he has a section the

509
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:22,240
Speaker 1: end that that documents this whole experience in Chile. Um,

510
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting parts where towards the end of

511
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: it he's like and this is like getting up towards

512
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: the coupe where he's like, um, he and the other

513
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 1: cyber sin operatives like on the people are putting this together,

514
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 1: realize that like the workers and like people in towns

515
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:40,040
Speaker 1: are are like just on their own just like using

516
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 1: this stuff and these kind of principles to just like

517
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:48,960
Speaker 1: abolish the value form basically like but notably without the

518
00:32:49,040 --> 00:32:52,680
Speaker 1: involvement from above, like as in Beer and Company stumble

519
00:32:52,800 --> 00:32:55,520
Speaker 1: upon this just happening where they're like, oh my god,

520
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:57,760
Speaker 1: they're just they're just dismantling the market, and it's like

521
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: it's all just kind of happening. And that's that there

522
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:04,000
Speaker 1: was something really wonderful to that. Then, Like it it

523
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: indicated like there was there really wants something to it

524
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: that like you could like as in people working, people

525
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:14,920
Speaker 1: could use these tools and this like new way of

526
00:33:15,000 --> 00:33:20,840
Speaker 1: organizing themselves. Two just like liquidate market relations and and

527
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 1: wage relations like spun spontaneously. But it's it's a spontaneity

528
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: that's that's not really it does. It's it feels very

529
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:30,640
Speaker 1: different from the kind of spontaneity you often get in

530
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:33,520
Speaker 1: like the way Left to sort of like anarchists talk

531
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,120
Speaker 1: about it often like the kind of spontaneity is like

532
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:37,880
Speaker 1: a magical sort of thing that is like where freedom

533
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:39,560
Speaker 1: just arrives from out of nowhere. But this this was

534
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 1: like installing infrastructure to enable freedom and then it actually

535
00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:46,680
Speaker 1: kind of happening until the fascists showed up. You know. Yeah,

536
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 1: what I think is really interesting about it is that

537
00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:52,000
Speaker 1: so you know, you have you have like you have

538
00:33:52,040 --> 00:33:54,239
Speaker 1: this sort of central control center from which a lot

539
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 1: of stuff is being run. But you know, yeah, it's

540
00:33:56,800 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a weird system because it's try to

541
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:04,560
Speaker 1: link together like a lot of different kinds of firms.

542
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: Like you have something saying in private firms, but you

543
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 1: have a lot of you have a lot of state

544
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:10,360
Speaker 1: run firms. You also have firms that throughout this whole process,

545
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 1: people like workers just taking over factories. They're setting up

546
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:16,359
Speaker 1: these sort of like call them industrial cordons. I think

547
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:20,759
Speaker 1: I'm remembering my Spanish rights, like yeah, they they you know,

548
00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 1: they start sitting up their own institutions and it's it's

549
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:25,480
Speaker 1: this becomes this way is sort of like networking these

550
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 1: groups together. And the thing that's the other thing is

551
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 1: it's interesting is you know, so you have you have

552
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:32,880
Speaker 1: them on the one hand, like just getting rid of

553
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:34,800
Speaker 1: markets and going like okay, well we can just coordinate

554
00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:38,359
Speaker 1: production through this and like not have markets. And then

555
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:40,840
Speaker 1: the second thing they do is it's the freedom immediately

556
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 1: becomes political in the sense that like, yeah, like one

557
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:45,560
Speaker 1: of one of the things they do they there that

558
00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: that's what's going on in this period is that and

559
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:52,160
Speaker 1: there's Chile has a very very right wing like it's

560
00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: basically like the even today it's like it's like really

561
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:56,680
Speaker 1: like one of the only like union like huge unions

562
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 1: left in Chile is the truckers unions, and those guys

563
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: are extremely right wing. There in this period of being

564
00:35:01,640 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 1: backed by the CIA, they're being trained by f l

565
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: c i O as I say like every episode, but

566
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:11,960
Speaker 1: like yeah, and and they're you know, they're intentionally doing strikes,

567
00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 1: trying to oversaw the government by blocking production, and you know,

568
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:17,879
Speaker 1: like the workers are like, okay, hold on, we can

569
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,480
Speaker 1: just use this symenetic system to figure out where these

570
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: blocks are, figure out where materials need to move through,

571
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 1: and we can just you know, we can just stop

572
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:29,319
Speaker 1: the kind of revolution. We can just sort of like

573
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:31,719
Speaker 1: we can we can just we can just fight our

574
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:34,920
Speaker 1: way through it. And and it's interesting, is like this happens,

575
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 1: and so then that that like the original plan of

576
00:35:38,640 --> 00:35:40,719
Speaker 1: using sort of of using these truckers is like the

577
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 1: sort of right wing like the first attempt fails, and

578
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:46,200
Speaker 1: once that fails, it's like they have to go to

579
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:51,879
Speaker 1: the military and the coup eventually works. It's it's hard.

580
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:55,160
Speaker 1: It's hard to resist a coup outbrans, isn't Yeah. Yeah,

581
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:57,640
Speaker 1: the thing with the trucker strike is not like yeah,

582
00:35:57,640 --> 00:35:59,600
Speaker 1: it's you can very well imagine like the CIA and

583
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:01,520
Speaker 1: stuff into a thinking that this is what will do.

584
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:04,400
Speaker 1: That's right, this will sell it up, but not realizing

585
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:07,840
Speaker 1: that the workers actually had in their hands a like

586
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:12,399
Speaker 1: vastly more sophisticated system for out maneuvering them. Yeah, and

587
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:15,359
Speaker 1: that system works like a charm, like like clockwork, just

588
00:36:15,440 --> 00:36:18,120
Speaker 1: like and even like you read the accounts from this thing,

589
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:21,360
Speaker 1: like both in eating Medina's cybernetic revelation areas and in

590
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:23,840
Speaker 1: Beer's on account, and there's like the sense that was

591
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: actually kind of spooky and weird. But I'm like even

592
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 1: the people involved didn't quite expect it to work out

593
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:30,359
Speaker 1: that way, and that like they were surprised at how

594
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 1: effective it is, but that it gets back to the

595
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 1: core of cyberneticsent like feedback is weirdly effective at getting

596
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:40,400
Speaker 1: things done. You know, these like highly tuned feedback systems,

597
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:43,640
Speaker 1: they give you a lot of power to out maneuver

598
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:46,959
Speaker 1: this comebacks, you know. Yeah, And I think in some sense,

599
00:36:47,000 --> 00:36:50,319
Speaker 1: like this is like people talk a lot about Chile

600
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 1: is sort of like the sort of foreclosed future of

601
00:36:52,480 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 1: like antellectual and archetic socialism, But like, I don't think

602
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 1: that was the potential of the moment. The potential of

603
00:36:57,080 --> 00:37:00,400
Speaker 1: the moment was this. And it's interesting thing to me

604
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:04,720
Speaker 1: that well, because Beers kind of traces out a political

605
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 1: history that never quite happened, which is so okay. One

606
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:11,600
Speaker 1: of the one of the sort of big political trends

607
00:37:11,719 --> 00:37:13,520
Speaker 1: over the course of the twentie century is you have

608
00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: all these people who were sort of like they they

609
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: basically got turned into planning bureaucrats during June World War two,

610
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:22,320
Speaker 1: because every government basically turns into a giant planning engine,

611
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:25,279
Speaker 1: and then you know, some of them go into some

612
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:27,040
Speaker 1: of them, you know, essentially stay on in the government

613
00:37:27,120 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: during planning stuff. Beers like goes into corporate world, and

614
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:31,759
Speaker 1: the corporations are also you know, they start doing they

615
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:35,480
Speaker 1: also start doing this planning stuff. And you know, but

616
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:38,840
Speaker 1: Beers is interesting because he he pivots, like he pivots

617
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 1: in a direction that the world doesn't, which is he

618
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: pivots towards. Okay, the solution to sort of you know,

619
00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:51,480
Speaker 1: the kind of like decay of these like authoritarian planning systems,

620
00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: whether whether they be like the corporate versions of it

621
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:58,920
Speaker 1: or the sort of like state administered like total economic

622
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:01,879
Speaker 1: planning from the top up down versions is oh well, okay,

623
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 1: we need to have planning from the bottom up and

624
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 1: distributed planning. Yeah. Yeah. And he, like everyone involved with

625
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: Iverson gets murdered. The only reason Beer survives because he

626
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:15,520
Speaker 1: wasn't in the country. And it's it's just really interesting,

627
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:20,279
Speaker 1: like like it's just kind of not a story. Everybody

628
00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:23,600
Speaker 1: got murdered, but some of them did, and some of

629
00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:27,839
Speaker 1: them were in exile Uh, some of them were imprisoned. Yeah,

630
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: it was, it was, it was, you know, it was

631
00:38:30,239 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 1: not a good time. Beer got out early and he

632
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:35,520
Speaker 1: knew things that we're getting we're getting bad, and everybody

633
00:38:35,600 --> 00:38:38,960
Speaker 1: around him knew things were getting bad. Um. Yeah, like

634
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:40,400
Speaker 1: he was on him. He was on like a kind

635
00:38:40,400 --> 00:38:43,080
Speaker 1: of I guess, like it's almost diplomatic mission to like

636
00:38:43,200 --> 00:38:45,120
Speaker 1: try and get some of the blockade stuff. Like he

637
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:46,799
Speaker 1: was trying to. I think he was trying to flog

638
00:38:46,960 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 1: like a container ship full of iron or something. You know,

639
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: it was shopping shopping it around to try and trying

640
00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:55,200
Speaker 1: to help out the likely in mine to the world.

641
00:38:55,719 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 1: That's what it was. Yeah. But um, yeah, it's m

642
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:04,120
Speaker 1: hold on, I had a thought there. Um. And then

643
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:06,799
Speaker 1: like after afterwards, um, like Beer spent a fair bit

644
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:09,279
Speaker 1: of time like trying to catch his his comrades out

645
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:11,040
Speaker 1: of out of Chile and get them out of prison

646
00:39:11,920 --> 00:39:14,759
Speaker 1: and got the Gottam resettled in um in the UK

647
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 1: and so on and yeah America as well. M hum.

648
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that Um, this is like that's

649
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:31,400
Speaker 1: a very interesting point about the the you know, the

650
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: sort of the real value of this moment being that

651
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 1: movement towards autonomy, that that reorganization of society, not towards

652
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 1: UH neoliberal engineering of markets and UH sort of reinforcement

653
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:57,160
Speaker 1: of private dictatorships, um, but towards a kind of like

654
00:39:57,280 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 1: holistic control system that is still informed by you know,

655
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 1: the principles of autonomy and UH and and and science. UM.

656
00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:11,840
Speaker 1: It's it's definitely like an answer to the crisis of

657
00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 1: the seventies which was not taken up. And in that

658
00:40:17,280 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 1: sense it is a foreclosed future, but of course one

659
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:22,960
Speaker 1: that we can take lessons from now. Yeah, I think

660
00:40:23,080 --> 00:40:25,640
Speaker 1: there's something else. It's very interesting me about this because

661
00:40:27,120 --> 00:40:30,680
Speaker 1: you know, if if you look at how like if

662
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:32,480
Speaker 1: if you look at how the socialist block sort of

663
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:36,279
Speaker 1: responds to the crisis and seventies, and you know, they're

664
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 1: sort of decaying the eighties, like they have this option

665
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: available to them, right, they have they have they have

666
00:40:42,719 --> 00:40:43,839
Speaker 1: made a lot of ways, They have a lot they

667
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:45,719
Speaker 1: have a lot better technology than with the lands are

668
00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 1: using that have more resources, and every single one of

669
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 1: them goes no and instead just sort of like transitions,

670
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: you know, instead of I think it has to do

671
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,800
Speaker 1: with there there there's a line. This this is this

672
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:05,319
Speaker 1: is like Slightly before this, there's a line in um

673
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 1: a debate Maw and Joe and Li are having in

674
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:10,920
Speaker 1: I think it's seven. This is like the peak of

675
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 1: the sort of workers led part of the culture revolution,

676
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:17,759
Speaker 1: like the works have taken Shanghai, and Maw and Joe

677
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:21,440
Speaker 1: and I are talking and they're they're trying to figure out,

678
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:24,840
Speaker 1: like what are they gonna do? You know, they they've

679
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:29,000
Speaker 1: set off this force. It's now become uncontrollable. And there's

680
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:31,839
Speaker 1: there's this line where they're talking about, Okay, well, if

681
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:33,279
Speaker 1: if we give if they give them, if we give

682
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:37,040
Speaker 1: them a commune, they have to have free elections, and

683
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:39,279
Speaker 1: Joe and l is like, well, that would be anarchism.

684
00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 1: And then they're just like, oh god, we can't do that,

685
00:41:42,200 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: and they never do in the end, you know, the

686
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 1: end result of this whole sort of that whole sort

687
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 1: of processes that trying to like instead of doing, instead

688
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 1: of sort of like devolving any level of control down

689
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:58,759
Speaker 1: to like any of the workers who are doing things,

690
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, well we'll just try to we'll just

691
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 1: you know, we'll we'll we'll do capitalism instead, Well, will

692
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 1: you will? You know, we'll create markets, will sort of

693
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:12,360
Speaker 1: like maintain our firm structure, but you know, the party

694
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,680
Speaker 1: countries into it. Yeah, yeah, and it's it's this, it's

695
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 1: it's a very interesting thing to me too, because like

696
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 1: there have been other like you know, like they're like

697
00:42:21,800 --> 00:42:25,880
Speaker 1: lots of socialist parties have sort of various like degrees

698
00:42:26,000 --> 00:42:29,759
Speaker 1: of radicalness have come to power like since nineteen seventy three,

699
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:33,160
Speaker 1: and to my knowledge, not a single one of them

700
00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 1: has ever picked any of this stuff back up, like

701
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:38,080
Speaker 1: even even you know, like like the most radical sort

702
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: of like like you know, like like like early Chavas

703
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:45,600
Speaker 1: never like touches this, like even like I don't like

704
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 1: I I don't I don't think like I don't think

705
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: the easy Lends ever done it, Like I mean, they

706
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,120
Speaker 1: have fatological issues there, but like it's it's it's it's

707
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:59,799
Speaker 1: interesting to me that like basically no one who's ever

708
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:04,320
Speaker 1: taken power sense has ever attempted it again m h.

709
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:08,960
Speaker 1: Which again is changed because this is you know, one

710
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:11,399
Speaker 1: of one of the sort of like this you would think,

711
00:43:11,560 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: this is like this is at least a potential solution

712
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 1: to sort of this this this this problem of the

713
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:22,440
Speaker 1: stagnation and sort of collapse of the old sort of adults.

714
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 1: There's a plenty of economies, but no one takes it up.

715
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:27,759
Speaker 1: And I'm just to think what you too think about that?

716
00:43:27,880 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: Like why this doesn't happen? Yeah, there's a I think

717
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 1: there's an interesting dimension of Beer's work in Chile that

718
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:40,440
Speaker 1: kind of I think um might provide some answers to that,

719
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: which is that you know, he he was in charge

720
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:51,680
Speaker 1: of setting up Cyberson, and Cyberson was kind of a

721
00:43:52,239 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 1: system for optimizing the economy, but he had other concerns

722
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:03,800
Speaker 1: and other briefs that he was working on at the

723
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:06,840
Speaker 1: same time. And what he came to realize was that

724
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 1: there was a layer of management and experts in the

725
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:22,839
Speaker 1: organization of the economy that were happy enough to sort

726
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:28,880
Speaker 1: of work on a Cyberson that was designed to improve

727
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:35,280
Speaker 1: production numbers, but they had real resistance to the idea

728
00:44:35,600 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 1: of worker autonomy because of the because of of of

729
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 1: wanting to maintain their their job privileges, and because of

730
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: the prejudices of their their habitats. I guess you could

731
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:54,000
Speaker 1: say that what they learned when they were educated as

732
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 1: engineers or managers or whatever, and you know, where the

733
00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:00,200
Speaker 1: people who know things the workers don't know things, they

734
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 1: shouldn't be in charge that kind of thing. And so

735
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:07,799
Speaker 1: he starts to he starts to realize that in order

736
00:45:07,960 --> 00:45:12,799
Speaker 1: to really make cybersen effective as an engine for autonomy,

737
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: what needs to happen is that um, sort of what

738
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: you are describing with the Shanghai commune Uh, the the

739
00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:30,839
Speaker 1: workers need to learn the cybernetic principles themselves and implement

740
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:36,800
Speaker 1: them through autonomous action. UM. And so he starts to

741
00:45:36,920 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 1: try to kind of like right up, like right pamphlets

742
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:44,560
Speaker 1: that can be distributed to the workers so that the

743
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:50,560
Speaker 1: information that he has as theory is not being filtered

744
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:55,360
Speaker 1: through a bureaucracy but is instead, like you know, involved

745
00:45:55,440 --> 00:46:00,440
Speaker 1: in an educational process of self mode mobilization in among

746
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:06,080
Speaker 1: the workers. UM. And so you know this really uh

747
00:46:06,760 --> 00:46:09,799
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that expert knowledge is irrelevant, but it does

748
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 1: mean that it does imply threatening the social privileges of

749
00:46:17,160 --> 00:46:23,640
Speaker 1: management and expert knowledge, because in Beer's conception of management,

750
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:27,759
Speaker 1: management is something that is done by anyone who has

751
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 1: the power to affect an organization or change an organization.

752
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:36,839
Speaker 1: So if the workers are able to change their organizations,

753
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: they are also managers. That's not something exclusive to experts.

754
00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: For beer, management is a function. It's not a person.

755
00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 1: In Beer's ideal world, like management would just be these

756
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:54,160
Speaker 1: like decision nodes that emerge among among workers. I can

757
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 1: like the management. A manager would never be a person.

758
00:46:57,600 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 1: A manager would be like a kind of structural information

759
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:06,879
Speaker 1: processing like, um, think that happens among people. Um. Yeah,

760
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: and so like when you see in for example, the

761
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:16,880
Speaker 1: USS are the option of creating a planning network, a

762
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:25,439
Speaker 1: computerized telecommunications planning network throughout the whole union. Um, it's

763
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: basically shot down for two reasons. One, it would be

764
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 1: very very expensive for them to develop. It would be

765
00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: on the order of of doing you know, their nuclear

766
00:47:37,440 --> 00:47:43,600
Speaker 1: weapons development, perhaps more expensive than that. Uh. And two

767
00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:53,120
Speaker 1: it is simply at odds with the system of like planning,

768
00:47:54,360 --> 00:47:57,520
Speaker 1: the command economy that had that had grown up in

769
00:47:57,680 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 1: the wake of the revolution. Right, it's simply at odds

770
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:06,080
Speaker 1: with the power of all of the factory managers, the planners,

771
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:09,040
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. It just kind of makes

772
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:13,400
Speaker 1: it threatens their identity and it threatens their position of power.

773
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: And so I think that when you look at the

774
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:21,880
Speaker 1: socialist countries and why they didn't adopt this system, I

775
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:24,520
Speaker 1: think it's because they it would require the people in

776
00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:31,600
Speaker 1: power to really rethink their entire role and identity as

777
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 1: members of society. Um. Yeah, and then there's a kind

778
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 1: of there's a dreadful irony really and that like it's

779
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:42,759
Speaker 1: it's Stafford me or somebody who comes out of like

780
00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:47,080
Speaker 1: bourgeois like management stuff and is deep in the pocket

781
00:48:47,120 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 1: for that he's the one who actually sincerely pursues the

782
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:55,279
Speaker 1: most radical projects in like the socialist history that we've

783
00:48:55,320 --> 00:48:58,480
Speaker 1: ever seen, vastly more radical in its intent, and it's

784
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:01,080
Speaker 1: like kind of it's the beginnings, it's impact than anything

785
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:03,759
Speaker 1: any Leninist has ever done, and it's basically because he

786
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:08,799
Speaker 1: actually did want real freedom and autonomy for working people,

787
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: and your average Leninist just doesn't, you know, like again

788
00:49:12,120 --> 00:49:13,759
Speaker 1: like to go back to the example from earlier, right

789
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 1: that like when when under pressure, they will they'll do

790
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:22,480
Speaker 1: capitalism before they'll do anything that even resembles um autonomy

791
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:25,600
Speaker 1: for workers. They'll take that path rather than doing the

792
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:28,320
Speaker 1: right thing. You know. That does speak to the character

793
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:30,359
Speaker 1: of the thing, and it's it's it's it's it's it's

794
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:33,640
Speaker 1: that class interest basically off those kind of functionaries, right, like,

795
00:49:33,719 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: and the thing that makes Beery different is that he

796
00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:38,520
Speaker 1: sincerely actually wanted to do it, you know, and the

797
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:41,759
Speaker 1: worker's autonomy thing wasn't just a smoke screen for him,

798
00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:44,200
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and when when he starts to come

799
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 1: up with these ideas of like thinking like, okay, like

800
00:49:47,120 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 1: an economic planning system is not adequate, we need to

801
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:54,400
Speaker 1: go beyond that to thinking about the constitution of the

802
00:49:54,520 --> 00:49:59,800
Speaker 1: social body, he he quickly finds that he's being marginal

803
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:05,560
Speaker 1: iised within those circles of planners in the Chilean government

804
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:10,760
Speaker 1: because this is not something that they are enthusiastic about.

805
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:14,640
Speaker 1: They're actually quite concerned about this idea. Even if I

806
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:17,840
Speaker 1: end would be, you know, all for it, right, because

807
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:21,719
Speaker 1: he was he was very sincere about his interest in

808
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:26,600
Speaker 1: an autonomy. UM, there were still many people around beer

809
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:31,560
Speaker 1: who did not particularly like the idea. UM. Yeah, absolutely.

810
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:34,880
Speaker 1: And I think if we look at it, you know,

811
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:39,160
Speaker 1: in terms of why hasn't it happened since then, in

812
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 1: in all of these intervening decades, I think you also

813
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:50,040
Speaker 1: have to look at, um the international system and the

814
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:54,359
Speaker 1: way that countries figure into it, because we have all

815
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:59,840
Speaker 1: of these UM neoliberal structures of management and organization that

816
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: were created in the eighties and nineties and early odds uh,

817
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:10,799
Speaker 1: that a socialist government has to contend with if they

818
00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:15,399
Speaker 1: are to embark on a program like this, which isn't

819
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 1: to say it's impossible, but what it does mean is

820
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:24,359
Speaker 1: that there are all these sort of um, highly complex

821
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: regulatory and organizational structures that have roots deep in our

822
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:35,960
Speaker 1: societies right now, and it is the path of least

823
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:40,279
Speaker 1: resistance to not attempt to engage in a in in

824
00:51:40,560 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 1: uh an effort to kind of you know, let the

825
00:51:45,640 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 1: market atrophy as you develop an alternative structure for social organization, um,

826
00:51:51,960 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 1: because all of these structures are there and you have

827
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:57,960
Speaker 1: to kind of like root them out and replace them

828
00:51:58,000 --> 00:52:01,000
Speaker 1: with something new, as opposed to having all these ready

829
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 1: mades of what's already there, the market centered solutions, the

830
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 1: the the kind of autocratic solutions, um, you know, all

831
00:52:13,160 --> 00:52:17,040
Speaker 1: of the management systems that have been developed with an

832
00:52:17,080 --> 00:52:20,200
Speaker 1: auto cracy in mind instead of something that is truly

833
00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:24,719
Speaker 1: democratic and uh kind of self just dating mm hmm.

834
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:27,120
Speaker 1: And I think as well, and there's there's a kind

835
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:32,600
Speaker 1: of other thing that like, um, like the left has

836
00:52:32,640 --> 00:52:35,160
Speaker 1: been kind of in a very weak position for quite

837
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:37,759
Speaker 1: a while now, like since then, since the seventies, right,

838
00:52:37,800 --> 00:52:43,640
Speaker 1: and like, um, yes, like we're we're just we're just

839
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:47,440
Speaker 1: starting to come around to maybe being on possibly an upswing.

840
00:52:48,000 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 1: But also like I think there was this kind of

841
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:52,560
Speaker 1: long depressive phase at the end of them, at the

842
00:52:52,600 --> 00:52:55,520
Speaker 1: crossing in the centuries right, where a lot of the

843
00:52:55,640 --> 00:52:58,080
Speaker 1: like left is kind of and this this this actually

844
00:52:58,120 --> 00:53:00,239
Speaker 1: gets into like why some of the reasons why we

845
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:03,360
Speaker 1: started general into lat unit that like we felt like

846
00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:05,520
Speaker 1: we needed to bring this kind of like systems thinking

847
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:10,200
Speaker 1: and like technical seriousness back to the table after the

848
00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:13,239
Speaker 1: kind of weird depressive phases where like you know, like

849
00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:16,799
Speaker 1: say the alter globalization stuff for the occupy stuff, where

850
00:53:17,200 --> 00:53:20,319
Speaker 1: people kind of take an almost explicitly anti strategic kind

851
00:53:20,360 --> 00:53:22,799
Speaker 1: of turn and like a kind of anti technical turn.

852
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:25,880
Speaker 1: You know, there's that kind of depressive hangover of like

853
00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:28,840
Speaker 1: oh my god, like capital and it's it's it's technology,

854
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:30,640
Speaker 1: is is hegemonic? Like how the fund are we ever

855
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:32,440
Speaker 1: going to get out of this? Like it would have

856
00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:37,080
Speaker 1: been heard to make an argument for a scientific and

857
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:41,120
Speaker 1: like technical kind of fusion with um with the humanist

858
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:45,239
Speaker 1: kind of impulses of socialism, But that's I think we're

859
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 1: getting to a point where we can start actually having

860
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:49,719
Speaker 1: that conversation again, like we're we're seeing a bit more

861
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:51,759
Speaker 1: of a turn towards that, and it kind of turn

862
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:55,080
Speaker 1: towards like this kind of serious kind of like more

863
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:57,880
Speaker 1: and more serious kind of discussion of like hey, like okay,

864
00:53:58,040 --> 00:54:00,919
Speaker 1: like okay, like we we we we fucking the current

865
00:54:01,080 --> 00:54:02,960
Speaker 1: order of things. We want to we want to see

866
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:05,759
Speaker 1: it gotten rid of what would we actually replace it with?

867
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 1: Like functionally, how would things actually work? Like I think

868
00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 1: those kind of conversations are coming back on the table

869
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:12,480
Speaker 1: in a way that those were just impossible in the nineties,

870
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:15,920
Speaker 1: like after the Berlin Wall came down or whatever. They

871
00:54:15,960 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 1: were impossible a couple of years ago. You know, Yeah,

872
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:25,160
Speaker 1: the the market as the fundament of society basically seemed

873
00:54:25,160 --> 00:54:30,880
Speaker 1: to be invincible at that time. Um, and there was

874
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:38,200
Speaker 1: a lot of just sort of wrongheaded assumptions about what

875
00:54:38,600 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 1: was and wasn't true about it and about society as

876
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:45,320
Speaker 1: a whole. And you know, we've had a lot of

877
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:51,440
Speaker 1: chaos in the years since then. That was um that

878
00:54:51,560 --> 00:54:55,239
Speaker 1: affected not just the countries that we were you know,

879
00:54:55,920 --> 00:55:00,239
Speaker 1: being restructured by the I m F, but actually really

880
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:05,359
Speaker 1: came in affected the core of the world. Economy as well. Uh,

881
00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:08,880
Speaker 1: And I think that that that's sort of like, you know,

882
00:55:09,000 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 1: in the same way that World War One kind of

883
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:15,960
Speaker 1: disproved the idea of the white man's invincibility and superiority.

884
00:55:16,520 --> 00:55:21,880
Speaker 1: Like having those like market chaos dynamics come home to

885
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:26,080
Speaker 1: roost in the core of the world system has has

886
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:30,160
Speaker 1: undermined that invincibility, That that that idea that oh, the

887
00:55:30,239 --> 00:55:32,640
Speaker 1: market is just naturally the best and there's nothing that

888
00:55:32,719 --> 00:55:35,279
Speaker 1: could possibly be better. At the same time that we

889
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:39,640
Speaker 1: have all of this technological development that's happening, um, you

890
00:55:39,719 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 1: know in our economy that could be used for something

891
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:46,080
Speaker 1: different as opposed to you know, I don't know, making

892
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:49,520
Speaker 1: n f T s or something. Yeah. Absolutely, that that's

893
00:55:49,520 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 1: all super important. I think that that kind of refines,

894
00:55:51,719 --> 00:55:54,440
Speaker 1: like my previous point is refining in my head now

895
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 1: like that like right now, Um that that kind of

896
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:01,640
Speaker 1: market chaos and especially even the chaos of like the

897
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:07,080
Speaker 1: system's response to COVID and stuff really puts um like

898
00:56:07,239 --> 00:56:09,520
Speaker 1: in general, and for the left in particularly, puts like

899
00:56:09,600 --> 00:56:11,480
Speaker 1: the question of governance back on the table in a

900
00:56:11,520 --> 00:56:12,879
Speaker 1: way that it had kind of been off the table

901
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:14,520
Speaker 1: for a while. Like I think there was a there

902
00:56:14,560 --> 00:56:17,840
Speaker 1: was a period on the left where like left activity

903
00:56:18,080 --> 00:56:20,680
Speaker 1: was kind of like railing against governance. Like it was

904
00:56:20,719 --> 00:56:23,120
Speaker 1: like we we want freedom from governance and that sort

905
00:56:23,160 --> 00:56:24,839
Speaker 1: of thing. Right, And I'm not going to say those

906
00:56:24,840 --> 00:56:27,360
Speaker 1: are necessarily bad impulses, right, but I think they're also

907
00:56:27,480 --> 00:56:29,120
Speaker 1: kind of a bit wrong headed as well. Right, But

908
00:56:29,239 --> 00:56:32,920
Speaker 1: like the kind of reality is that, like, for for

909
00:56:33,040 --> 00:56:35,080
Speaker 1: human life to flourish and for our lives to flourish,

910
00:56:35,120 --> 00:56:38,320
Speaker 1: we need governance. And like because like governance actually like

911
00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:40,920
Speaker 1: as a word has the same route as cybernetics does.

912
00:56:41,280 --> 00:56:46,279
Speaker 1: So kaibernetes, the Greek word becomes kubernetti, has becomes cybernetics, right,

913
00:56:46,800 --> 00:56:50,719
Speaker 1: but that's also the root of governor, so kuberner, kubernator,

914
00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:53,799
Speaker 1: those are the roots of governance. So governance and cybernetics

915
00:56:53,880 --> 00:56:56,759
Speaker 1: are one and the same kind of concept. Um And

916
00:56:56,840 --> 00:56:59,920
Speaker 1: this question of like if we intend to create a

917
00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 1: world of self governance, um that is effective, it's viable

918
00:57:03,600 --> 00:57:07,680
Speaker 1: in Beer's terminology, like viable self governance, that what we're

919
00:57:07,719 --> 00:57:13,000
Speaker 1: proposing is opposed to the chaotic vortex of nonsense that

920
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:15,439
Speaker 1: we have to put up with right now. And that's

921
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:17,240
Speaker 1: back on the table in a big way that like,

922
00:57:17,560 --> 00:57:19,640
Speaker 1: because I think especially with with COVID, people look at

923
00:57:19,680 --> 00:57:24,160
Speaker 1: like just the sheer idiocy and ineptitude and chaos of

924
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:29,600
Speaker 1: our governments and realizing like, oh, those are decrepit, completely

925
00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:32,840
Speaker 1: screwed up systems and in parhats because their goal is

926
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:36,360
Speaker 1: the maintenance of capital accumulation. So this gets us back

927
00:57:36,360 --> 00:57:39,680
Speaker 1: to the goal directed behavior cybernetics, right, Like the steersman

928
00:57:40,040 --> 00:57:43,080
Speaker 1: steers the boat towards a goal, right, and it's it's

929
00:57:43,080 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 1: always about or like a you know, a cybernetic device

930
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:47,960
Speaker 1: like a thermostat has a goal temperature that is trying

931
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:51,920
Speaker 1: to regulate the temperature of the water towards um You know,

932
00:57:52,200 --> 00:57:55,960
Speaker 1: we have these governance systems that are completely awful. They're

933
00:57:56,040 --> 00:57:59,439
Speaker 1: just like not suitable for like the regulation of human life,

934
00:57:59,480 --> 00:58:03,200
Speaker 1: for flower shy, They're only suitable for the regulation of

935
00:58:03,280 --> 00:58:07,080
Speaker 1: this insane system that just keeps capital accumulation going, like

936
00:58:07,200 --> 00:58:10,760
Speaker 1: that's the control variable that it regulates. And we're now

937
00:58:10,800 --> 00:58:12,480
Speaker 1: in a position, we're on the left, Like more and

938
00:58:12,520 --> 00:58:14,920
Speaker 1: more of us are saying, like what we're proposing is

939
00:58:14,960 --> 00:58:17,720
Speaker 1: not like a sort of magical escape from governance. We're

940
00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 1: proposing really, you know, we should have sane governance. And

941
00:58:22,160 --> 00:58:24,520
Speaker 1: it turns out that same governance is bottom up self

942
00:58:24,640 --> 00:58:28,840
Speaker 1: organized governance. Um. And that's that's both the moral position

943
00:58:28,880 --> 00:58:31,520
Speaker 1: and a technical position, and I think they're both of those.

944
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:35,600
Speaker 1: The moral and technical valences feed off each other. Like

945
00:58:35,760 --> 00:58:38,400
Speaker 1: we're we're we're able to be the serious people in

946
00:58:38,440 --> 00:58:40,400
Speaker 1: the room. This this is a very big change of

947
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 1: pace right for us, because like for a while we

948
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:45,400
Speaker 1: were railing against like the very serious people of like

949
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:47,440
Speaker 1: the Centrists and like the fucking Blair rights and the

950
00:58:47,720 --> 00:58:51,560
Speaker 1: Clintonite sort of people. We're the serious people now saying

951
00:58:52,760 --> 00:58:55,440
Speaker 1: what what this what this system actually does is absurd

952
00:58:55,880 --> 00:58:59,160
Speaker 1: and ludicrous, and it needs to be dismantled and rebuilt

953
00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:03,400
Speaker 1: a totally different like feedback snarcus, a different kind of

954
00:59:03,520 --> 00:59:07,800
Speaker 1: goal orientation, um. And it needs to be oriented towards

955
00:59:08,040 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 1: human flourishing. And that's it turns out there's a science

956
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 1: of doing that, and it's called cybernetics, you know. Well,

957
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:18,360
Speaker 1: and we also have a runaway ecological crisis where we

958
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:27,000
Speaker 1: learn about we see that you know, like the capitalist

959
00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:32,560
Speaker 1: market system is absolutely leading us all to death and

960
00:59:32,720 --> 00:59:37,200
Speaker 1: the earth to death, and so it is human flourishing.

961
00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:40,720
Speaker 1: But we also are concerned with the flourishing of life

962
00:59:40,800 --> 00:59:44,600
Speaker 1: in general. Right, Um, So I think that that that

963
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:49,200
Speaker 1: is something that wasn't as much on the horizon in

964
00:59:49,280 --> 00:59:52,640
Speaker 1: the seventies. You know, I certainly think you know, people

965
00:59:52,720 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 1: were thinking about it. But breaking down this barrier between

966
00:59:56,960 --> 01:00:03,080
Speaker 1: economics uh and uh ecology, I think is a very

967
01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:06,120
Speaker 1: cybernetic impulse and I think one that you know, we

968
01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:10,080
Speaker 1: need to keep working at because, like you know, whenever

969
01:00:10,360 --> 01:00:14,480
Speaker 1: you think about these things as separate domains, were already uh,

970
01:00:15,720 --> 01:00:22,160
Speaker 1: we're already engendering more destruction of the environment. Yeah, yeah,

971
01:00:22,560 --> 01:00:24,840
Speaker 1: I think cybernetics and also help us in that kind

972
01:00:24,880 --> 01:00:28,400
Speaker 1: of like um on a kind of for left projects,

973
01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:31,400
Speaker 1: like on an aggressive footing of like if we recognize

974
01:00:31,440 --> 01:00:34,160
Speaker 1: that like the capital and its kind of government system,

975
01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: is it is cybernetic, like it has its own feedback

976
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:41,160
Speaker 1: circuits and like saying that the explosive feedback circuit that

977
01:00:41,200 --> 01:00:43,280
Speaker 1: we're on with with ecology, right, Like, how do you

978
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:46,680
Speaker 1: intervene in a system to halt and disrupt those circuits

979
01:00:46,720 --> 01:00:49,840
Speaker 1: so as to so as to disintegrate the system? Is?

980
01:00:50,000 --> 01:00:51,680
Speaker 1: Um is something like you can you can learn a

981
01:00:51,720 --> 01:00:53,720
Speaker 1: lot from cyberennics to to get lessons on how to

982
01:00:54,560 --> 01:01:06,640
Speaker 1: intervene there. The last thing I want to talk about

983
01:01:07,360 --> 01:01:12,480
Speaker 1: is just what is the society that is non capitalist

984
01:01:12,560 --> 01:01:15,240
Speaker 1: and based off of sort of cybernetic government's principles. What

985
01:01:15,320 --> 01:01:19,280
Speaker 1: does that look like for just a person? Because I

986
01:01:19,360 --> 01:01:21,040
Speaker 1: think you know this, this has been one of the

987
01:01:21,120 --> 01:01:26,560
Speaker 1: big sort of like political challenges of the last you know,

988
01:01:26,680 --> 01:01:29,080
Speaker 1: fifty years. It's just the complete foreclosure of the ability

989
01:01:29,080 --> 01:01:31,400
Speaker 1: to even just sort of imagine assistant that's not this

990
01:01:32,520 --> 01:01:41,120
Speaker 1: mm hmm, yeah, I think it. It means UM In

991
01:01:41,240 --> 01:01:47,080
Speaker 1: the first instance, it means a different orientation to your

992
01:01:47,360 --> 01:01:56,000
Speaker 1: workplace and your community, right, because when you grow up

993
01:01:56,200 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 1: in a society where um power is exercise autocratically, it

994
01:02:03,880 --> 01:02:08,360
Speaker 1: has an infantilizing effect on on you as an individual. UM.

995
01:02:08,720 --> 01:02:15,320
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, maybe your relationship to work, is

996
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:19,640
Speaker 1: your workplace is one of sort of emotional detachment or

997
01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:24,800
Speaker 1: of tantrum throwing, right, because these are these are reactions,

998
01:02:24,880 --> 01:02:29,840
Speaker 1: These are natural reactions to being in an abusive environment. UM.

999
01:02:31,080 --> 01:02:39,600
Speaker 1: But if you are in a system where the work

1000
01:02:39,800 --> 01:02:44,600
Speaker 1: of management is not only open to you but expected

1001
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:48,840
Speaker 1: of you, you have a different orientation to that workplace,

1002
01:02:49,120 --> 01:02:53,640
Speaker 1: to the community you're in because it's your responsibility. If

1003
01:02:53,720 --> 01:02:58,440
Speaker 1: you don't do it, you know, you're going to lose

1004
01:02:59,000 --> 01:03:02,560
Speaker 1: your autonomy. And also you're going to have real problems

1005
01:03:02,680 --> 01:03:05,480
Speaker 1: that you have to grapple with as an individual. So

1006
01:03:05,640 --> 01:03:09,160
Speaker 1: there is a responsibility that comes there. But also like

1007
01:03:09,640 --> 01:03:13,200
Speaker 1: that means an opening up of horizons in terms of well,

1008
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:16,640
Speaker 1: things don't always have to be the same, Things don't

1009
01:03:16,680 --> 01:03:19,240
Speaker 1: always have to be handed down to you for management

1010
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:23,720
Speaker 1: on high. They can actually change, Like you can see

1011
01:03:24,760 --> 01:03:27,440
Speaker 1: the possibilities in front of you, You can plan for

1012
01:03:27,520 --> 01:03:31,080
Speaker 1: the future in your context, and you can have that

1013
01:03:31,520 --> 01:03:35,120
Speaker 1: meaningful freedom in your life and be you know, a

1014
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:40,080
Speaker 1: a full human being in that sense, right, um, And

1015
01:03:40,240 --> 01:03:44,480
Speaker 1: so I think that that's a very core every day

1016
01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:50,280
Speaker 1: change that you could see, um in terms of you know,

1017
01:03:50,480 --> 01:03:54,240
Speaker 1: sort of your horizons of where you might work or

1018
01:03:54,400 --> 01:03:57,640
Speaker 1: what you might do. You know, you could expect that

1019
01:03:57,760 --> 01:04:03,120
Speaker 1: there would be more pause abilities for each person to

1020
01:04:03,360 --> 01:04:07,960
Speaker 1: be like quote unquote entrepreneurial, right to to have initiative

1021
01:04:08,080 --> 01:04:11,920
Speaker 1: in their life and be able to envision and create

1022
01:04:12,000 --> 01:04:16,560
Speaker 1: things around them that uh, you know they can't do

1023
01:04:16,800 --> 01:04:20,919
Speaker 1: right now because they either are stuck in a job

1024
01:04:21,080 --> 01:04:25,640
Speaker 1: that doesn't give them that freedom or they are actually

1025
01:04:26,200 --> 01:04:29,400
Speaker 1: not even able to have a job right now where

1026
01:04:29,600 --> 01:04:34,160
Speaker 1: they can have a reasonable expectation of survival because their

1027
01:04:34,200 --> 01:04:39,560
Speaker 1: workplace is oriented around just making sure the work gets

1028
01:04:39,680 --> 01:04:44,280
Speaker 1: done and you know, the consequences be damned. UM. So

1029
01:04:44,600 --> 01:04:50,040
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, that is another area that's important. UM.

1030
01:04:50,560 --> 01:04:57,560
Speaker 1: And that sort of freedom of management um extends all

1031
01:04:57,600 --> 01:05:02,080
Speaker 1: the way up to uh, you know, working in different

1032
01:05:02,240 --> 01:05:05,200
Speaker 1: kinds of capacities or jobs. Like some people in kind

1033
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:09,080
Speaker 1: of a middle middle ranking area in a corporation these

1034
01:05:09,160 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 1: days might get shuffled around from department to department to

1035
01:05:13,160 --> 01:05:17,240
Speaker 1: try to kind of get a well rounded understanding of

1036
01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:22,600
Speaker 1: what the corporation is uh and how it functions. But

1037
01:05:23,920 --> 01:05:26,680
Speaker 1: you know, we can kind of expect that these roles

1038
01:05:27,600 --> 01:05:32,760
Speaker 1: would be more open to everybody because again, you know,

1039
01:05:32,920 --> 01:05:35,640
Speaker 1: a system in the v s M is not a person.

1040
01:05:36,720 --> 01:05:39,560
Speaker 1: A system is a function, and that function should be

1041
01:05:39,680 --> 01:05:45,240
Speaker 1: fulfilled in a way that is as flexible as possible. UM.

1042
01:05:45,440 --> 01:05:48,080
Speaker 1: So there's a lot less kind of well, I'm stuck

1043
01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:50,640
Speaker 1: in accounting and that's my life now, and that's all

1044
01:05:50,680 --> 01:05:53,320
Speaker 1: there that will ever be. Of course, there are limits

1045
01:05:53,360 --> 01:05:56,800
Speaker 1: to education, their limits to specialization, all of that kind

1046
01:05:56,840 --> 01:05:59,600
Speaker 1: of stuff. Like, you know, it takes time to learn

1047
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:02,680
Speaker 1: these things, but you could expect some more flexibility there

1048
01:06:02,960 --> 01:06:06,600
Speaker 1: without having that terror of oh yeah, you know, in

1049
01:06:06,680 --> 01:06:10,080
Speaker 1: the neroliberal era, everybody is expected to have like fifteen

1050
01:06:10,160 --> 01:06:12,880
Speaker 1: jobs in the course of their quote unquote career. But

1051
01:06:13,120 --> 01:06:16,160
Speaker 1: also each of those jobs is going to be interspersed

1052
01:06:16,200 --> 01:06:19,480
Speaker 1: with a period of absolute terror as they live with

1053
01:06:19,720 --> 01:06:23,920
Speaker 1: unemployed in a society without a safety net. Right, Um,

1054
01:06:24,200 --> 01:06:27,080
Speaker 1: I think that that's that's you know, those are real

1055
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:34,560
Speaker 1: consequences for everybody's life. I think, yeah, yeah, absolutely, And

1056
01:06:34,680 --> 01:06:36,800
Speaker 1: I think like at a very very high level, the

1057
01:06:36,840 --> 01:06:40,040
Speaker 1: way Beer puts that is that we are trapped in

1058
01:06:40,080 --> 01:06:43,920
Speaker 1: this kind of crazy system that like its control variable

1059
01:06:43,920 --> 01:06:46,800
Speaker 1: as profits, like that's the little variable that it's it's

1060
01:06:46,840 --> 01:06:52,680
Speaker 1: like doing feedback onto to maintain um. Whereas what we're

1061
01:06:52,720 --> 01:06:56,120
Speaker 1: proposing is like that the sort of cybernetic future will

1062
01:06:56,160 --> 01:07:01,560
Speaker 1: be a society that's optimizing flourishing Like what what beer Beer?

1063
01:07:01,640 --> 01:07:03,520
Speaker 1: The word he used as a u demony, which is

1064
01:07:03,560 --> 01:07:08,640
Speaker 1: borrowing from Aristotle, just like flourishing um. And yeah, a

1065
01:07:08,720 --> 01:07:10,560
Speaker 1: lot a lot of stuff flows out from that, Like

1066
01:07:10,640 --> 01:07:14,680
Speaker 1: to imagine a world where because we we all feel it,

1067
01:07:14,800 --> 01:07:17,480
Speaker 1: right that like everything around us is kind of like

1068
01:07:17,760 --> 01:07:20,840
Speaker 1: micro tuned as like a little feedback loop to keep

1069
01:07:21,000 --> 01:07:24,880
Speaker 1: money and profit flowing and to keep capital accumulating. Just

1070
01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:28,120
Speaker 1: imagine a world where that's just not true anymore, and

1071
01:07:28,400 --> 01:07:32,280
Speaker 1: the the sort of social infrastructure that you grow up

1072
01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:35,720
Speaker 1: in is an infrastructure that instead optimizes for the flourishing

1073
01:07:35,760 --> 01:07:41,840
Speaker 1: of life. Yeah. Um, and I I think you know,

1074
01:07:42,040 --> 01:07:44,080
Speaker 1: when we we we look at sort of the broader

1075
01:07:44,160 --> 01:07:46,840
Speaker 1: patterns of society today, we see all of these hair

1076
01:07:46,960 --> 01:07:52,520
Speaker 1: brained schemes that you know, very rich men are embarking

1077
01:07:52,600 --> 01:07:55,800
Speaker 1: on and they're they're setting the agenda for society. You know,

1078
01:07:55,960 --> 01:07:59,280
Speaker 1: we're that you know, Mark Zuckerberg is telling us that

1079
01:07:59,440 --> 01:08:02,040
Speaker 1: the metaver this is the future, and you just have

1080
01:08:02,200 --> 01:08:04,480
Speaker 1: to get on board with this, even though anyone can

1081
01:08:04,520 --> 01:08:10,200
Speaker 1: see that this idea is patently ridiculous. Um. And in

1082
01:08:10,320 --> 01:08:15,360
Speaker 1: a society where that kind of management, that kind of

1083
01:08:15,600 --> 01:08:20,800
Speaker 1: money power doesn't exist anymore, Like you don't have to

1084
01:08:21,040 --> 01:08:24,760
Speaker 1: live under that kind of future horizon anymore, where it's

1085
01:08:24,840 --> 01:08:28,519
Speaker 1: like eight men with absurd amounts of money cook up,

1086
01:08:29,720 --> 01:08:32,880
Speaker 1: you know, ridiculous schemes and everybody has to follow them,

1087
01:08:33,000 --> 01:08:35,439
Speaker 1: just like they were following the orders of pharaoh back

1088
01:08:35,520 --> 01:08:38,960
Speaker 1: in the day. I think, do not be ruled by

1089
01:08:39,040 --> 01:08:42,519
Speaker 1: pharaohs is as kinda places and eat to leave off

1090
01:08:42,600 --> 01:08:44,040
Speaker 1: unless you tell if anything else do you want to

1091
01:08:44,040 --> 01:08:47,719
Speaker 1: get to? Okay, There's there's one little line from Beer's

1092
01:08:47,720 --> 01:08:49,479
Speaker 1: book at what it's actually a set of presentation. It's

1093
01:08:49,479 --> 01:08:51,960
Speaker 1: called designing Freedom that I absolutely love. It cracks me

1094
01:08:52,040 --> 01:08:53,200
Speaker 1: up every time I read it, So I'm just gonna

1095
01:08:53,200 --> 01:08:55,000
Speaker 1: read that for the listeners. It gives you a sense

1096
01:08:55,040 --> 01:08:58,240
Speaker 1: of his absolute like ridiculous radicalism, like these off the

1097
01:08:58,320 --> 01:09:01,880
Speaker 1: fucking chats with this stuff. Um. At some point he says,

1098
01:09:02,240 --> 01:09:05,080
Speaker 1: I'm quoting here, every time we hear that a proposal

1099
01:09:05,120 --> 01:09:07,200
Speaker 1: will destroy society, has we know us, we should have

1100
01:09:07,280 --> 01:09:13,680
Speaker 1: the courage to say, thank god at last. Yeah, a

1101
01:09:13,840 --> 01:09:19,840
Speaker 1: real maniac. Yeah. And and and he had this this

1102
01:09:20,040 --> 01:09:24,160
Speaker 1: dictum of if it works, it's out of date. So

1103
01:09:24,680 --> 01:09:28,280
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like like, yeah, don't be complacent,

1104
01:09:28,720 --> 01:09:33,920
Speaker 1: you know, don't be a traditionalist. I think also that

1105
01:09:34,000 --> 01:09:36,479
Speaker 1: there's been there's been really horrific consequences of sort of

1106
01:09:36,760 --> 01:09:39,760
Speaker 1: the right being the ones to like take the urge

1107
01:09:39,800 --> 01:09:43,439
Speaker 1: for creative destruction. Just like you know, what was that

1108
01:09:43,560 --> 01:09:48,240
Speaker 1: line there's some I forget some some venture capitalist things

1109
01:09:48,280 --> 01:09:50,240
Speaker 1: like move fast and break things, and it's like, yeah,

1110
01:09:50,600 --> 01:09:52,479
Speaker 1: so when they move fast the things they breaks us.

1111
01:09:53,240 --> 01:09:58,040
Speaker 1: But yes, you know, we can move faster and break

1112
01:09:58,120 --> 01:10:02,519
Speaker 1: things that are bad. Yeah, definite's to a creative and

1113
01:10:02,760 --> 01:10:06,000
Speaker 1: playful kind of motive, being right that like you you

1114
01:10:06,080 --> 01:10:07,719
Speaker 1: might be able to work, wake up in the morning

1115
01:10:07,760 --> 01:10:09,840
Speaker 1: and think, God, you know, it would be really cool

1116
01:10:09,880 --> 01:10:11,760
Speaker 1: if we could have like a like a child care

1117
01:10:11,880 --> 01:10:14,200
Speaker 1: nurse ory just like like out in the out in

1118
01:10:14,280 --> 01:10:16,439
Speaker 1: the common area between these buildings and stuff, and like

1119
01:10:17,000 --> 01:10:19,479
Speaker 1: go to your go to your local like your your

1120
01:10:19,560 --> 01:10:22,400
Speaker 1: workers council or whatever, and have a really plausible like

1121
01:10:23,160 --> 01:10:25,640
Speaker 1: the way of actually getting that and like collaborating with

1122
01:10:25,720 --> 01:10:27,960
Speaker 1: people to make that happen, and then being like, Okay,

1123
01:10:28,000 --> 01:10:30,120
Speaker 1: well we'll try it as an experiment for twelve months.

1124
01:10:30,200 --> 01:10:32,519
Speaker 1: We'll keep we'll see how it goes. And then there's

1125
01:10:32,800 --> 01:10:34,880
Speaker 1: a feedback cycle where it's like, Okay, some aspect of

1126
01:10:34,920 --> 01:10:36,960
Speaker 1: this design didn't really work out. We'll we'll go talk

1127
01:10:36,960 --> 01:10:39,120
Speaker 1: about it some more, and then it aerate on that

1128
01:10:39,280 --> 01:10:43,519
Speaker 1: and that's that's like as it's it's an entrepreneurialism that

1129
01:10:43,560 --> 01:10:46,680
Speaker 1: doesn't bear much resemblance to what that word means right now.

1130
01:10:46,800 --> 01:10:50,639
Speaker 1: It just means that human beings, living real things, real workers,

1131
01:10:50,680 --> 01:10:53,840
Speaker 1: will be able to actually control their environments in this

1132
01:10:54,200 --> 01:10:57,160
Speaker 1: the substance of their lives and in a meaningful way. Yeah,

1133
01:10:57,360 --> 01:11:02,120
Speaker 1: and like this, I think you know, back in the

1134
01:11:02,400 --> 01:11:06,960
Speaker 1: nineties early odds, sort of before the two thousand eight crisis,

1135
01:11:07,040 --> 01:11:12,519
Speaker 1: in the hoary days of your um it's there was

1136
01:11:12,560 --> 01:11:19,880
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about flexibility and dynamicism and adaptation.

1137
01:11:20,880 --> 01:11:26,200
Speaker 1: But what that always meant was we make decisions about

1138
01:11:26,280 --> 01:11:29,960
Speaker 1: what's going to change, and you have to adapt, right

1139
01:11:30,120 --> 01:11:32,519
Speaker 1: it was it was it was, you know, always this

1140
01:11:32,760 --> 01:11:36,320
Speaker 1: arbitrary power for him outside that would just be changing

1141
01:11:36,360 --> 01:11:40,120
Speaker 1: the social fabric, and you had to be flexible enough

1142
01:11:40,200 --> 01:11:44,160
Speaker 1: to cope with what you were being subjected to. It's

1143
01:11:44,280 --> 01:11:50,479
Speaker 1: very different if you know, the planning is being done

1144
01:11:51,280 --> 01:11:57,400
Speaker 1: by you for you, and you're moving towards adaptation and

1145
01:11:57,520 --> 01:12:01,160
Speaker 1: flexibility out of a sense of that, oh yeah, this

1146
01:12:01,320 --> 01:12:05,080
Speaker 1: would be better and I'm going to adapt to be

1147
01:12:05,680 --> 01:12:09,960
Speaker 1: in a better state to to work with my environment, uh,

1148
01:12:10,520 --> 01:12:14,000
Speaker 1: in a more healthy and a more flourishing way, as

1149
01:12:14,040 --> 01:12:16,760
Speaker 1: opposed to just like, oh yeah, you've got to work

1150
01:12:16,840 --> 01:12:20,200
Speaker 1: three jobs now, so figure it out right. That's a

1151
01:12:20,400 --> 01:12:23,640
Speaker 1: very different kind of flexibility, very different kind of adaptation.

1152
01:12:24,200 --> 01:12:26,360
Speaker 1: And you know, those things have sort of become dirty

1153
01:12:26,439 --> 01:12:29,160
Speaker 1: words in some ways, but they are really core to

1154
01:12:29,240 --> 01:12:31,439
Speaker 1: the way that we all exist as organisms in the

1155
01:12:31,520 --> 01:12:35,439
Speaker 1: world and they don't have to be just synonyms for abuse.

1156
01:12:36,439 --> 01:12:39,599
Speaker 1: Mm hmm exactly. Yeah, I think okay, we can take

1157
01:12:39,680 --> 01:12:42,600
Speaker 1: this as a place to leave off. Yeah, do you

1158
01:12:42,680 --> 01:12:44,400
Speaker 1: two have stuff you want to log and I know

1159
01:12:44,479 --> 01:12:46,840
Speaker 1: you you want to plug, but plug the things that

1160
01:12:46,920 --> 01:12:51,000
Speaker 1: you want people to listen to because they are Um. Yeah,

1161
01:12:51,320 --> 01:12:54,160
Speaker 1: we're General Intellecting us um e cou to General Intellecting

1162
01:12:54,200 --> 01:12:56,439
Speaker 1: a totness and it's got all the episodes on there

1163
01:12:57,120 --> 01:13:01,160
Speaker 1: around Twitter, ask gunice pod um. Yeah, you can find

1164
01:13:01,240 --> 01:13:03,639
Speaker 1: us on all the podcast things. Um. We're also part

1165
01:13:03,680 --> 01:13:07,640
Speaker 1: of a podcast network called Emancipation and so that's emancipation

1166
01:13:07,720 --> 01:13:11,760
Speaker 1: dot Network on the web. UM. And yeah, some really

1167
01:13:11,800 --> 01:13:16,519
Speaker 1: excellent shows on there. We were collaborating with Swampside Chats

1168
01:13:16,760 --> 01:13:21,200
Speaker 1: and um, Mortal Science, from Alpha to Omega, Jumpsy in Utopia.

1169
01:13:21,240 --> 01:13:25,439
Speaker 1: They're they're really wonderful shows that are all Um. It's

1170
01:13:25,439 --> 01:13:27,720
Speaker 1: it's a variety of different sort of takes on things,

1171
01:13:27,800 --> 01:13:30,560
Speaker 1: but like, um, there's a sort of common there's a

1172
01:13:30,600 --> 01:13:34,280
Speaker 1: sort of a spiritual common grounds they all have. Um yeah,

1173
01:13:34,439 --> 01:13:43,040
Speaker 1: we we all were all interested in thinking systematically. We're

1174
01:13:43,080 --> 01:13:47,240
Speaker 1: all interested in emancipation, as the network name says, and

1175
01:13:47,360 --> 01:13:53,599
Speaker 1: we're all interested in sort of building something going forward,

1176
01:13:53,800 --> 01:14:00,960
Speaker 1: trying to construct an alternative as opposed to simply getting

1177
01:14:01,000 --> 01:14:04,920
Speaker 1: caught up in day to day politics or getting caught

1178
01:14:05,040 --> 01:14:10,760
Speaker 1: up in uh dum mentality. Yeah. So yeah, it's it's systematic,

1179
01:14:10,840 --> 01:14:13,320
Speaker 1: it's critical, but it's also constructive and I think that's

1180
01:14:13,360 --> 01:14:16,680
Speaker 1: what we're all trying to do there. Yeah. Yeah, Well,

1181
01:14:16,760 --> 01:14:19,280
Speaker 1: thank you too both for coming on. Thank you it's

1182
01:14:19,280 --> 01:14:22,880
Speaker 1: been wondering, Thanks for having us. Yeah, this has been

1183
01:14:22,920 --> 01:14:25,040
Speaker 1: Make it happen here you can find us that happened

1184
01:14:25,040 --> 01:14:29,560
Speaker 1: here pod in places. There's also stuff at quals on

1185
01:14:29,640 --> 01:14:32,200
Speaker 1: Media that you can also find in those same places

1186
01:14:32,280 --> 01:14:34,479
Speaker 1: and possibly also different ones. We have a we have

1187
01:14:34,560 --> 01:14:38,040
Speaker 1: a website. Everyone asked me for my sources every single

1188
01:14:38,120 --> 01:14:43,080
Speaker 1: week and they get posted there once a month. So yeah,

1189
01:14:43,160 --> 01:14:45,880
Speaker 1: go go to coals on media dot com and you

1190
01:14:45,960 --> 01:14:48,840
Speaker 1: will find all of the sources so you don't have

1191
01:14:48,880 --> 01:15:00,640
Speaker 1: to DM me every week. All Right, Happened Here is

1192
01:15:00,640 --> 01:15:03,320
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts from

1193
01:15:03,360 --> 01:15:06,240
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,

1194
01:15:06,400 --> 01:15:08,160
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,

1195
01:15:08,200 --> 01:15:11,519
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can

1196
01:15:11,560 --> 01:15:14,240
Speaker 1: find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly at

1197
01:15:14,280 --> 01:15:17,479
Speaker 1: cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.