Conversation

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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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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If you want to uncover control loops, relevant structures will be obvious, but meanings won’t be. For eg, gerrymandering = politicians choosing voters rather than other way around, disconnecting voting as feedback loop. Mesquita analyzes that the way a control theorist would.
Agreed (esp. re: smart/lucky practitioners doing what works w/out much analysis). Still, a more analytical look also seems worthwhile, esp. w/reasonable framework (ala BdM). Just interested in what can be learned thru modeling control loops, esp. where control is assumed w/out ?
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