Look at it from an information theory (applied to organization it’s called systems theory, cybernetics, or scientific management) perspective: when you put one guy in charge of too much stuff (and let’s face it; its usually gonna be a guy, because misogyny ud a feature not a bug of these systems), you have to compress all the data coming to him, and all the orders will be based on increasingly shitty abstracted models as you try to make him in charge of more stuff. Even if that guy is the absolute best, he literally cannot have good information, and the more fine grained his control, basically the more its just a crap shoot.
So yes. Centralized authority is bad, and it can be proven with math. You can try to hedge it, you can try to optimize it, but its got a fundamental flaw, not just from a moral perspective, but a mathematical one. Please don’t make me look up the actual numbers; I’m on mobile.
Got any reading suggestions for systems theory for people with little/no academic background? I want to read into it but people usually link college textbooks for advanced classes lol
So you should probably understand at least the idea of information theory, ‘the information: a history, a theory, a flood’ is a great conceptual explain/primer/pop-sci book on that.
‘Seeing like a state’ is a little specific, but its specific about this idea.
I’ll check that out, thanks. Funny you mention seeing like a state, I just finished it last weekend. I was kind of getting that vibe from it, having watched/listened to stuff about complex systems before. But Ive been intimidated by the nature of most writing on complex systems
I AM NOT DEFENDING CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY!! Holy fuck, you idiots literally cannot understand the concept that distributed authority is still authority…
Look at it from an information theory (applied to organization it’s called systems theory, cybernetics, or scientific management) perspective: when you put one guy in charge of too much stuff (and let’s face it; its usually gonna be a guy, because misogyny ud a feature not a bug of these systems), you have to compress all the data coming to him, and all the orders will be based on increasingly shitty abstracted models as you try to make him in charge of more stuff. Even if that guy is the absolute best, he literally cannot have good information, and the more fine grained his control, basically the more its just a crap shoot.
So yes. Centralized authority is bad, and it can be proven with math. You can try to hedge it, you can try to optimize it, but its got a fundamental flaw, not just from a moral perspective, but a mathematical one. Please don’t make me look up the actual numbers; I’m on mobile.
Got any reading suggestions for systems theory for people with little/no academic background? I want to read into it but people usually link college textbooks for advanced classes lol
So you should probably understand at least the idea of information theory, ‘the information: a history, a theory, a flood’ is a great conceptual explain/primer/pop-sci book on that.
‘Seeing like a state’ is a little specific, but its specific about this idea.
I’ll check that out, thanks. Funny you mention seeing like a state, I just finished it last weekend. I was kind of getting that vibe from it, having watched/listened to stuff about complex systems before. But Ive been intimidated by the nature of most writing on complex systems
It can get pretty dense; any field with con Neumann involved does that.
Theres a podcast called ‘general intellect unit’ about this stuff. Also has book recommends.
Oh, tight! I’ll give 'em a listen. Cheers!
I AM NOT DEFENDING CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY!! Holy fuck, you idiots literally cannot understand the concept that distributed authority is still authority…