WEBVTT - The Lost History of Cybernetics 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:09.399 Cybernetics. All right, this is this is me Christopher Wong, 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:12.959 realizing that I have done like sixteen consecutive actual real 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:15.280 introductions and that if I keep doing them, everyone's going 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:17.239 to expect that I do a real introduction every time 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:21.920 instead of like randomly yelling something. So yeah, well, welcome 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:23.800 to it could happen here. I am trying to make 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:29.319 my job function as it should and not professionalize it. 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:33.360 Um and this is this is a podcast about things 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:37.000 that are bad, but it's also occasionally a podcast about 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:40.040 things that are good and how, in fact there can 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:42.920 be a society beyond this one, and to talk about 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:45.720 some of the shades of what that could look like. 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:48.240 I have with me the co host of the General 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.080 Intellect Unit, Kyle and June, which is as a podcast 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.160 on the Emancipation Network. That is so this is the 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:57.160 tagline the podcast of the Cybernetic Marxists. I am. I 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:02.560 am very excited. Yeah, it's it's really exciting to be here. Absolutely, 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:06.200 thank you for coming on. Um yeah, I guess okay, 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:10.000 you should start at the the very very beginning, because 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.440 I don't think most people know any of this. What 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:22.840 is cybernetics? Right? Um? So cybernetics is I guess a 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:29.759 term that comes from what is it the kaibernetes right, steering, uh, 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:34.120 the idea of steering a boat um, so using your 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:40.920 ore to navigate the waters um. And so essentially it 0:01:41.120 --> 0:01:47.600 is a science of control. And that sounds really scary, 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:52.400 but what it means is that it's that kind of 0:01:52.640 --> 0:02:01.360 connection between the steers person, the or the boat, their 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.920 body and the water around them and getting all of 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:11.680 those things in sync in such a way that the 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:14.280 steers person is going where they want to go, the 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:18.520 ship or the boat doesn't capsize and they don't lose 0:02:18.560 --> 0:02:23.399 the ore um. And so that's what control means. It's 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:31.400 a kind of balancing, a kind of connection between the 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.760 organism and the environment in such a way that it 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:40.520 can survive and thrive. And that's what cybernex is focused on. Yeah, 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:44.160 the thing I love about them, the steersman metaphor, is 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:47.520 that like it's all about it's controlling the sense of regulation. 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.080 But also like very importantly in cybernetics, it's almost always 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:54.960 self regulation m hmm, because like the one of the 0:02:55.000 --> 0:03:00.000 kind of core principles. Again, like the because the term 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.040 usually calls to mind this like kind of terminator like UM, 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:07.239 like cyber Gothic kind of domination. It's actually not with 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.280 the field is about at all. It's UM because one 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:12.359 of the core insights of cybernetics is actually that any 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:16.440 given system UM, the only thing that can really control 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:19.919 it is itself because of the sheer complexity of systems. 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:24.600 So that like UM, like the kind of like top 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.520 down external domination of an organism that we all fear 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:28.799 is kind of like actually, if you look at the 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:32.920 cyber sybanetics literature, that's not not actually really possible because 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:35.760 the the the the external controller would never have enough 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:40.240 complexity to match what the organism is capable of. UM. 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:45.680 And you know, organisms are self regulating systems. The steersman 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:47.840 with his boat is a self regulating system that like 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:51.600 regulates its upright position in the water and regulates its 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:55.760 course that's directed towards its goal. UM. So it's it's 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:58.240 that's why it's so important. I think that's why we 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:01.480 think it's so important for the left and like people 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.280 who are concerned with these like you know, visions of 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:08.400 a politics of autonomy and liberation, they really need to 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:10.120 look at this stuff because it turns out there kind 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:14.240 of is a science of like autonomous, self guiding organic systems. 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:20.000 You know, yeah, no terminator here, yes, and yeah, I 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:25.280 mean you know when you see uh, scary videos of 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:31.680 militarized robots and they're learning to you know, jump and 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:36.719 fire weapons and all that kind of stuff. There certainly 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:41.560 is cybernetics involved there, but that is a kind of 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:47.000 domain application of cybernetics. Rather than defining what cybernetics is, 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:51.479 it's really kind of holistic systems thinking in general is 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:55.400 what cybernetics is. Yeah, yeah, that that's that That's that's 0:04:55.400 --> 0:04:59.440 probably worth emphasizing, right that, Like um, um, cybernetics in 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:01.960 some ways is a kind of like out of fashion 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.680 these days. Like it it kind of evolved into systems 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.560 thinking and like, um, I guess a lot of its 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:09.960 lessons got kind of absorbed in general. But we find 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.320 there's great value in going back to them, the kind 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.120 of originators and like focusing on that field. It's like 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.400 we on the show, we got into the cybernetics angle 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:24.680 by reading Andrew Pickering in his book with the Cybernetic Brain, 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:27.640 in which um, he kind of acknowledged that like there's 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:29.479 he kind of split it into two, like there's American 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:33.560 cybernetics like which had that kind of like um dour 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:36.200 kind of military domination sort of flavor to it. That 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:39.120 like it's kind of an earned reputation there. But Pickering 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:41.760 was more concerned with British cybernetics. Um, it's like a 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:44.080 lot of British thinkers that and it had a very 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.279 different flavor there where it was more open ended. It 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:48.760 was kind of had more of a focus on kind 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:51.680 of liberation than like politics and stuff. And in fact, 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:55.760 some of those like Gray Walter was like explicitly an anarchist, 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:59.559 wrote an anarchist um like journals and stuff like that, um. 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.520 And for him, like those two things went tant in 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:08.280 glove right like that, like um liberatory politics as like um, 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:11.720 the politics of like human flourishing, like as human human 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:15.320 beings as autonomous units flourishing in their own contexts, and 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:18.360 of like social systems that would enable that kind of flourishing. 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:20.760 To him, that was just hand in glove with cybernetics. 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:22.719 There was no real distinction there. It was just like 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:26.000 these these two things fit each other perfectly, which you 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:29.799 lose later with like general systems theory sort of stuff. 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:32.480 You know, it's like there's there's plenty. I don't know 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.839 who am I thinking of here? Like them that the Tally, 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:38.400 that guy with the like black Swan sort of stuff, 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.240 like he's biggest system and stuff, but like isn't so 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:44.440 much um isn't so much into the liberatory politics. I 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:46.320 guess you know, a lot of that angle is kind 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:48.520 of lost. Yeah, And I think this is awesome. This 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:50.080 is you know, this is sort of a product of 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:54.599 I guess the broader idelogical course that's going on while 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.400 sort of cyberige comes in and out of fashion. I 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:00.320 think I think we should go back a bit to 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.080 the beginning to sort of situate this because I know, 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.080 like when when I, like before I ever did any reading, 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:09.479 What's ever next? Like my immediate assumption was that it 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:10.760 was it was, you know, this, this is the thing 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:13.840 that was entirely just based off of computers, right that 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:17.920 this is like this is and that's not really true 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:20.520 from might understandtanding of us. Can we go back and 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.120 sort of like talk about where this came from a 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:29.360 bit and how it's sort of moves over this over 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:35.280 certain sex. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you can kind 0:07:35.320 --> 0:07:42.040 of trace it back in it's sort of European origins 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:49.400 to UM. You could probably say Hagel Uh, you know 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:55.640 his his move towards like UM understanding being not just 0:07:55.720 --> 0:08:00.480 as substance but as subject. I think is moved towards 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:05.240 a kind of cybernetic understanding where you understand the whole 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:13.040 system as a holistic entity as opposed to just an 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:20.280 individual interacting with an external environment. UM. And you can 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:25.360 also see this come up in say there was a 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:31.320 ecologist X skill in the German ecologist in the early 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:36.040 twentieth century, I believe, who was trying to understand, you know, 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:41.000 the organism in its environment. The sort of precursors to 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:47.280 ecology can be seen as precursors to cybernetics UM. And 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:51.600 then when you get to the kind of development of 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:57.679 cybernetics as a science or as a discipline UM in 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:06.080 the mid twentieth century, it's not exactly about computing, it's UM. 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:14.280 It's more about balancing a machine with its environment. So UM. 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:21.079 Sort of prototypical UM machine of this kind was the 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:27.880 servo mechanism, which was used to help guide a like 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:32.520 an anti aircraft gun in shooting down in any aircraft, 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.880 so making sure it tracks properly with the target and 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:40.760 doesn't lose the target and is assisting the operator in 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:46.760 operating the gun instead of just being a inanimate object 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:52.640 that has trouble tracking what it's a very fast moving target. 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:55.320 I mean, you can even think back to like the 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:58.719 you know, in World War One, when they discovered, hey, 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:01.280 we could actually like sing chronize the timing of the 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:03.920 propeller and the timing of our gun on the front 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:07.280 of this plane so that our guns aren't destroying our 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.840 propellers and shooting and we're we're shooting our own planes 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:15.240 down with our guns when we're dog fighting, right, Like 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:21.199 it's uh, yeah, that's the system's understanding, right, So that's um, 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:24.280 that's that's Norbert Leaner, right and working on the automated 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.640 gun turret stuff. And that's he coins the term cybernetics 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.599 to like um given name to the thing he was 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:32.559 starting to discover. And it's like he was kind of 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:35.160 pulling together a bunch of rights there, and like one 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:37.600 of those kind of important insights is that like, um, 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.560 like they couldn't get an improvement in like targeting and 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:45.240 accuracy without like basically making the gun turret an agent 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:48.080 of its own that like and the like the turret 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:52.040 and the gunner would be cooperative agents that in combination 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:56.000 would achieve their goal. But like there was there was 0:10:56.040 --> 0:10:58.160 there's something strange and spooky about that. And I think 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.600 that then this feedback mechanism in inside the terrist gives 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.720 it a sort of weird agency that UM combines with 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.160 the agency off the gunner to link going to the 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:12.360 whole system towards it goal. UM. Yes, And what it 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:16.560 ends up becoming then is a kind of boundary space 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:25.120 where the distinction between human and machine UH starts to 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:29.920 become ambiguous because they both start to possess they're both 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:33.679 understood to have a kind of agency, they're both understood 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:38.920 to have kinds of like functions, And then you kind 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:43.400 of get this sort of like a human machine interface idea, 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:46.040 and you can start to bring in all of these 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:52.319 different ideas from like anthropology, from physiology, from math, from 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:57.480 ecology UH, and they all start to interact in this 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:02.520 domain of cyber addicts. And like the core, the core 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.240 idea of them that kind of ties everything together is 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:09.760 that of feedback UM. So like weener realizes that what 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:12.040 he needs to do achieve this goal is is a 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:16.000 feedback mechanism I am. That would is error correcting feedback, right, 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:17.480 like if the if the gun is slightly too far 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:20.880 to the left, it corrects itself right words and so on. Um. 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:22.679 But that as you said, that that connects across all 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:24.439 sorts of things, right, Like you start to realize that's 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:30.560 present everywhere in ecology, in neurology, in UM, like that 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:34.199 learning is based on feedback, you know. So it's really 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:36.640 funny to read to read Norburt Wiener like in the 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:40.880 fifties basically describing what would become machine learning, and he's 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:42.520 just like he just off the cuff, is like, yeah, 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:45.840 like if you could, if a machine could like UM, 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:49.119 or if if any system could just like UM analyze 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:51.800 its own performance and then feedback onto itself, it would 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:53.440 it would learn any old pattern you wanted it to. 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:56.280 And he's like, yeah, he turns out he was completely correct. 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.360 And that's that's where kind of like gets into like 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.720 you get a sure thinkers like Ross Ashby who was 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.280 UM and like other folks like were in in and 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:08.959 around psychiatry. We were like really interested in how the 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.760 brain worked. And that's that's the other thing that feeds 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:16.160 into like cybernetics is like, um, it's It's why Pickering 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:18.400 called his book the Cybernetic Brains, because like the brain 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:21.880 and nervous systems show up so much in that field, 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:25.079 right that, Like the brain being a kind of learning 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.760 and adapt an adapt adaptation machine attached to the body 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:32.280 or whatever, and like, um, yeah, I don't know, there's 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.559 there's something fascinating there, and like, um, the I mean 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:37.800 there's something kind of possibly troubling and kind of melting 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:41.040 down the distinctions between living organisms and machines or whatever, 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.240 but like there's also something very compelling and just like 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.920 recognizing the same patterns happening at all these different levels, 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:52.200 right that, Like um, like you get similar behaviors and 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:54.320 similar kind of outcomes, and then you know, it turns 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:56.040 out like you can kind of do a science on 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:59.800 these things and and come up with an even better 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.560 planage my frameworks based on your observations across many fields. Yes, 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:09.520 and so it is in a sense about computers. But 0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:15.280 the computers are really just understood to act like a 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:20.400 kind of brain, and that's connected to a nervous system 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:25.080 which is connected to you know, like actuators of some kinds, 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.160 some kinds of like machines that actually do things in 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:36.400 the world. So it's not about like say computer science specifically. 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:39.520 It's more about, like, well, computers are a useful way 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:46.120 to do cybernetic design because they can act as a 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:50.400 control system and they're flexible. It's not that this is 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:54.880 about computers really, yeah, yeah, absolutely, And like the you 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:57.600 brought you brought up something very important there that like, um, 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:00.480 in all cases of like cybernetics like thing, the systems 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:03.200 that we're considering are not like isolated like braining a 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:05.280 box kind of things. They're all the things that are 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:09.560 directly engaged with a world, um like. So it's it's 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:13.720 it's not that kind of like monadic kind of rationalism 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:16.360 of like computation just happening in a box somewhere and 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:18.520 like per perfect intelligence, right, that kind of the kind 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:22.040 of stuff these are always, like the separantations, are always 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:27.480 working with systems that were engaged in real time emergent situations, UM. 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.480 And because of that, they rapidly kind of like acknowledge 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.320 that for so many of these important like systems, the 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:35.960 only way to figure out what it's going to do 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:39.480 is to let it do it UM because you can't 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:42.640 like pre compute all the possible outcomes. You know, of 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:47.200 these like very sticky and complex real world situations, the 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:49.240 best way to figure out what it's going to do 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:52.320 is to let it do it and watch yes. And 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.320 I think I think that's an interesting sort of like 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:56.200 if if you look at where a lot of the 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:02.840 sort of like techno fetishist like social attempts to sort 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:05.880 of like manipulate so side the technology have gone, it's like, yeah, 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.040 you get like like blockchain smart contracts, and it's like 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:13.040 the blockchain smart contract is like, Okay, we are going 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:16.280 to think of literally everything that could possibly happen an 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:18.680 attempt to put it in like a very small amount 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.520 of code, and if anything like literally anything at all happens, 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:27.280 that uh, you know that we didn't expect where now 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:29.640 everyone is now screwed because we have just made this 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:31.040 thing im beautable and put it in such a way 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:33.440 that we can't change it. So I think that, yeah, 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:35.680 that's a I think this is a useful sort of 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:39.480 I mean corrective just just in the way that we've 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:41.880 we've we've now like like we've gone backwards, like we've 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:43.840 we've gotten into this place where you instead of like 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:45.640 we need to let these systems play out, we need 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:50.000 to let them control themselves. Have gotten to like we 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.520 think that we can actually just sort of like you know, 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:57.800 turn turn the entire system into code that we can 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:01.240 predict ahead of time and have the basis of some 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:04.080 sort of social system off of Yeah, I mean it's 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:06.119 I think it's something that like the serpetitions and like 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:09.639 maybe Pickering would describe as like a kind of perversity 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:13.240 of modern thought, like the modern mindset like that that 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:17.679 kind of like rational like um kind of mindset right 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:20.520 like um, and like to the serpenetitions that that whole 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.000 thing with like the blockchain stuff, will be just truly 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:26.320 laughable because it's immediate, it's immediately obvious to them that 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:30.280 the problem there is like okay, proposing we're going to 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:32.480 use a blockchain to regulate some sort of social process 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:34.880 or whatever, smart contracts, whatever, and it's like that thing 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:38.400 has nowhere near the fidelity required to regulate social processes. 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:43.440 Because social processes are unimaginably complex and have just incredible variety. 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:45.639 There's a there's a there's like a law that's at 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:48.920 the house of cybernatics called Ashby's law of requisite variety. 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:54.120 And in short, it basically states that given a system, um, 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:57.240 the only thing that's really capable of regulating is regulating 0:17:57.240 --> 0:18:01.520 it is itself, because a regulator knee needs as much 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.080 variety as the thing it's regulating if it's gonna like 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:08.000 actually succeeded it um. And so that's that's the kind 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:11.480 of thing that nudges everyone towards, like like when you 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:13.840 get to someone like Stafford Beer is his whole model 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:17.919 of like organization pushes all a lot of the intelligence 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:20.480 downwards to the to the bottom layers, because there is 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:23.040 basically the people on the ground on the shop floor 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:25.520 are the people who are best informed to actually deal 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:27.720 with their own situation. And that's that sounds like a 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:30.560 banal observation, but like it for Beer that was actually 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:32.639 quite a step forward to like just admit that like 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.480 trying to trying to like in his context, it was 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:40.040 like often the organization of a firm, like at our company, 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.000 like trying to manage a company from the boardroom is 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:47.240 just fucking ludicrous, Like no nobody there has enough information 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:50.560 to act on They're all dumbasses anyway. So for Beer, 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:52.159 it was just like this is where it starts to 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:54.439 get interesting, and it connects to the politics, right that 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:57.879 like for one of these scientists just observing reality and 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.080 like you know, using you know, pretty pretty good stray 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.919 intuitions and like scientific frameworks, just looking at it and 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:06.199 going like, oh, it is obviously the case that the 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:11.480 best way for society to organize his bottom up self organization. Um, 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:14.080 And that like it's not just a moral point, it's 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:17.480 actually a technical point as well. Then like, um, these 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:21.520 these top down, bureaucratic kind of micro tyrannies are not 0:19:21.600 --> 0:19:24.840 only morally objectionable, they're also technically inferior to the kind 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:28.040 of like cyber communism we want to institute. Yeah, and 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:30.840 I have like one off one of my what if 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:33.399 one of my favorite stories about So I worked as 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.080 a maintenance worker for a while and one day my 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:37.879 boss was like, there was some problem with a sink. 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:40.200 And my boss was like, no, we don't need the plumbers. 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.360 I can do this. And so he goes in there 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:43.879 and it's it's what it's like, It's it's like a 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:45.600 sink in like a building, right, So it's it's just 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:47.119 one of those things where there's like a pipe that 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:49.280 connects to the top of the sink to like the wall, 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:51.960 and he goes, Okay, here, look at this. I'm gonna 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:53.720 I'm gonna turn this valve and this is gonna turn 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:56.280 the water off. And what he instead does is he 0:19:56.359 --> 0:20:00.520 take he takes the pipe off of the wall, and 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.760 just like a torrent of water is just now shooting 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:05.960 out of this pipe because he has removed the thing. Yeah, 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:09.879 he's removed the pipe from the wall. This is you know, 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:13.800 this is this is why I think like, yeah, go 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:15.919 this this, this, this this, you know this this is 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:20.119 like a particularly funny example of how these sort of 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.000 top down management systems. And this guy like like used 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:24.680 to be a maintenance guy, right, but he just like 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.120 must a plumber, and so you know, and he accepts 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:29.320 into it and he's like, oh no, no, no no, no, no no, 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:31.200 hold on, I know, I know how this system works. 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:33.879 It's going to be fine. And it just there's a guys, 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:36.040 the guys are of water has so much force. It's 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:38.680 like it's like pushing our tool cart across the room. 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:56.399 It's like a fighter hydrants coming out this wall. I 0:20:56.440 --> 0:20:59.720 wanted to I guess beers is an interesting way to 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:02.280 go to go into the sort of the politics of 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:03.840 what this actually looks like do you want to talk 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:07.239 about and I know I briefly talked about this in 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.119 an episode in The Liberalism a while back, but do 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.200 you want to go into sort of more detail into 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:17.760 what Beers was up to and the eventually failed attempt 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.639 because of military coup, to try to implement like a 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:29.920 cybernetic system for organizing essentially an economy. Yeah, sure, um. Yeah, 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:38.600 So Stafford Beer was a UM management consultant UM he 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:43.359 and a cyberneticition. He got his start sort of doing 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:51.119 operations research UM, which is kind of a precursor to 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:58.879 cybernetics UM that is kind of like interested in logistics 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:05.879 and organizing systems UM in the British military UM in 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:09.520 World War Two. And then he came out of that 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:16.480 and became a corporate UH consultant for operations research and 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:25.240 management UM. And so in working in the corporate world UM, 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:30.360 he saw all of the things that were really screwed 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:36.680 up with the status quo UM way of doing business 0:22:36.880 --> 0:22:41.440 and of organizing things, you know, the way that autocratic 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:48.040 power of management creates all kinds of ridiculous problems, the 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:52.880 way that managing organizations, according to ORG charts which are 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:57.320 there to assign blame more than anything else, creates all 0:22:57.440 --> 0:23:04.960 kinds of perversities, the way that organizations fail to adapt 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:08.520 to their environments because they get into these kinds of 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:13.480 strange neuroses. Um. And you know, just sort of going 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:19.840 through all of that and more often than not being 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:26.560 unable to intervene in an effective way uh to um 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:31.200 address these problems and just sort of like seeing how 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:37.720 these little instances of perverse corporate culture are indicative of 0:23:37.760 --> 0:23:43.280 the broader problems of our society as a whole and 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:50.040 of capitalism, right. Um. And so you know, he had 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:53.879 a basis from his time in India during the Second 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:59.040 World War in uh kind of like contra uh kind 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:06.160 of like you know, Eastern or specifically Indian um, spirituality, yoga, 0:24:06.240 --> 0:24:08.760 all this kind of stuff. So he kind of had 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:13.359 a cult countercultural side to his personality. UM. And he 0:24:13.400 --> 0:24:18.080 was always doing tinkering strange experiments with cybernetics. He wasn't 0:24:18.240 --> 0:24:22.800 just the straight laced corporate guy. Uh. But it was 0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:29.439 a combination of that sort of countercultural background with his 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:35.159 growing frustration with corporate systems that led him to start 0:24:35.200 --> 0:24:39.080 to develop ideas about how things could be different. And 0:24:39.119 --> 0:24:43.200 this kind of meshed up with the thoughts that were 0:24:43.240 --> 0:24:50.959 happening in Chile during the Chilean Revolution in the early seventies. Um, So, 0:24:51.080 --> 0:24:55.200 they reached out to him to come and help out 0:24:55.280 --> 0:24:59.959 with organizing their economy as they were undergoing this revolutionary 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:05.960 process of trying to sort of throw off the shackles 0:25:06.080 --> 0:25:12.879 of imperialist dependency and create a society that was focused 0:25:12.960 --> 0:25:17.800 on the flourishing of workers, uh, and of society as 0:25:17.840 --> 0:25:19.800 a whole, as opposed to one that was based on 0:25:19.920 --> 0:25:23.879 sort of you know, resource extraction where everything flows to 0:25:23.920 --> 0:25:28.240 the top. Yeah, do you want to explain some more 0:25:28.280 --> 0:25:33.800 about how that went well? So? Um, yeah, it it 0:25:33.920 --> 0:25:35.879 went well and then it went badly, I guess. Um. 0:25:35.960 --> 0:25:38.760 But from from from the reading we've done and from 0:25:38.760 --> 0:25:43.240 our research, it seems like if basically, if the if 0:25:43.280 --> 0:25:47.200 the US hadn't sent in the fascists to kill them all, um, 0:25:47.240 --> 0:25:49.560 this this would have worked like it was working, and 0:25:49.560 --> 0:25:51.720