Is it possible that we misunderstand political control after all these years? Existential citizenship as necessary for meaningful political engagement bit.ly/2uEa9I8
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In a past life I was a control theory researcher. Applied to politics it is largely seductive nonsense that explains very little. Look up spectacularly underwhelming history of system dynamics (Jay Forrester, Limits to Growth stuff). Wiener’s Cybernetics led to more woo than wow.
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I thought you'd mentioned previous work in control theory, so I was curious re: your take. I can see how fine specification of control in complex systems would be problematic, if not impossible, but if there is actual control, it must be this way, no?
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(i.e., if the proper components, functions, and relationships can be identified, isn't that sufficient? Otherwise, if control cannot even be specified at a general conceptual level, then what grounds are there to assert its presence at all?)
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You may be confusing the descriptive modeling and synthesis sides of control. There’s always feedback loops in any natural system. Trivially and tautologically everything is a control system. You may or may not be able to acquire control authority that’s all.
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Read Dictator’s Handbook. That’s close to the simplest possibly control theoretic model of politics. Could actually be coded up as a simulation.
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll take a look. (Also, my intuition is that most identifiable control relations will likely be trivial and tautological, as you say. That control is not specifiable in the most signficant situations, even conceptually, seems an interesting point.)
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Didn’t say that. Much of smart politics is already smart controls theory. They just don’t need us to tell them that. A case of teaching birds to fly. You catching a ball is a simple ball_elevation_angle —> running_speed loop. But you don’t need control engineers to teach that
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