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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 10
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      1st order: healthcare surge, supply chain disruption 2nd order: economic slump, demand collapse 3rd order: large infrastructure load imbalances 4th order: large opportunistic exploits like oil war 5th order: normal accidents frequency increase 6th order: extended outage gangrene

      10 replies 20 retweets 91 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 10
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      Trying to low-order model the system stability with a dozen or fewer moving parts. I think people smarter than me are falling into the trap of modeling things with intractably high-dimensional fidelity. It alleviates comprehension anxiety but exacerbates the control problem.

      2 replies 2 retweets 21 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 10
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      You want global governance to focus on all the biggest system modes, while those are still controllable. Small-scale things will break all over the place as a result and people will get mad but they can adapt, sort of. But if the big modes go out of control all bets are off.

      10:51 PM - 10 Apr 2020
      • 1 Retweet
      • 13 Likes
      • Alex Boland Sunil S. Rawat Flat Arthur Rachel 'flatten the curve' Weidinger portalnyc Drake E. 🎙 Piyush Maverick Tainguriya Customer Support🎙 HKGK Força Jovem
      2 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 10
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          The challenge is keeping ordinary people informed and trusting enough, for long enough, for big-mode controls to take effect since they all rely on consent of the governed. If the crowd loses patience, control fails, stability unravels.

          1 reply 2 retweets 15 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 10
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          Civilization is dynamically stabilizable, statically unstabilizable. Like a bicycle. It needs to be moving to be balanceable.

          3 replies 5 retweets 36 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 10
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          Systems theory at civilization scale is useless shit 99% of the time, but this one of those other 1% times. And more than stock-flow diagrams you need evocative language to make it work.

          1 reply 3 retweets 15 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 10
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          A good turn of phrase like “flatten the curve” can stretch system controllability (aka people not rioting) from weeks to months and make the difference between restored stability and a runaway unraveling.

          2 replies 3 retweets 29 likes
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        6. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. grigori milov‏ @grigorimilov Apr 10
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          Replying to @vgr

          All bets are off regardless. And there is no global governance. We do have global companies, but their CEOs are ill equipped to run the world. The world is not run by anybody.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Apr 10
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          Replying to @grigorimilov

          There *is* global governance. It is just not enough for the scope of the problem. So the problem is 80% ungoverned, but the 20% being governed well is how the 80% is eventually reined in.

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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