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.
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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.
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Also, thanks again. This has already been quite helpful. I am just putting together my ideas now and trying different things out.
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Don’t let my criticism dissuade you from exploring system dynamics. Donella Meadows or John Sherman books a good place to start. You may also enjoy doing some basic hands-on modeling with ithink the main tool. Should be a free trial version iseesystems.com/store/products
No worries. I appreciate your time & recommendations. Its very helpful to have feedback (pun?) as I develop these ideas. I still think there's a solid kernel here, just want to do it right as I think it thru. (And apologies to the others I did not remove from the thread sooner.)
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