[HN Gopher] The Tragedy of Stafford Beer (2023)
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The Tragedy of Stafford Beer (2023)
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 44 points
Date : 2024-12-04 02:24 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kevinmunger.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kevinmunger.substack.com)
| ggm wrote:
| The tragedy of a declining impact from operations research
| continues to annoy me and I mention it whenever I think
| contextually, it makes sense. Usually when people trivialise
| complex decision points across non related competing pressures
| and goals but talk as if some (false) dichotomous choice exist.
|
| I didn't do O/R but family members did at Royal Holloway and some
| friends I met online, from Cardiff. I have used some of the
| online decision support tools as a rank amateur. It feels like a
| specialisation joining stats over computer science and
| information management, with links to process design, process
| control, systems description and structural understanding of
| complex systems and processes.
|
| The intersection of O/R, computing and socialism (state planning)
| is fascinating. I don't personally see Beer as a tragic figure.
| He made conscious choices. Allende and all of Chile suffered the
| consequences of violent opposition to the planning.
| asplake wrote:
| Re the viable system model, I can recommend Dan Davis, The
| Unaccountability Machine, which also touches on the Allende
| story, and Patrick Hoverstadt, The Fractal Organisation. My own
| VSM-inspired book with a modern complexity lens will be published
| next year.
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| Seconding the recommendation of _The Unaccountability Machine_
| ; if anyone wants a taster of the book, patio11 did a great
| episode of his _Complex Systems_ podcast where he interviews
| the author about it:
| https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/dan-davies-or...
| xnorswap wrote:
| Apparently included in spotify premium too, I'll add that to
| my list, thank you.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11): Balancing
| control and chaos: cybernetics, fraud, and modern
| organizations with Dan Davies
|
| Episode webpage:
| https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/dan-davies-
| or...
|
| Media file: https://chrt.fm/track/993DGA/media.transistor.fm/
| 003b6520/a8...
| igorkraw wrote:
| can one preorder your book?
| asplake wrote:
| Find me on LinkedIn (a hop or two from my profile page here)
| and I'll give you early access if you're up for giving some
| feedback
| fallinditch wrote:
| Fascinating how Beer's radical vision was both so ahead of its
| time and fundamentally constrained by the technological
| limitations of the 1970s. Imagine what he could have done with
| today's distributed systems and real-time data processing. The
| tragedy isn't that Cybersyn failed, but that we're still catching
| up to his core insights about organizational complexity.
| stafford_beer wrote:
| I agree, this guy gets it
| qrian wrote:
| I tried to read many papers of Stafford Beer and cybernetics to
| parse some insights on complex systems to use in modern days but
| failed.
|
| Project Cybersyn was just a dashboard (which was revolutionary
| back then of course).
|
| Viable System Model was just another systems engineering diagram,
| which only has meaning to those who are deep into that field.
|
| At least I got 'The purpose of a system is what it does' stuck in
| my head.
| gweinberg wrote:
| I don't think that's true though. Isn't the purpose what it's
| intended to do, not what it actually does?
| pmichaud wrote:
| The point of the aphorism is specifically to dispel the
| notion that the straightforward definition of "purpose" is
| correct here.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Why not just use the correct word? It seems weird to drag
| in an unrelated term just to redefine it. The word
| "purpose" divorced from intent seems to only have the
| utility of confusing the reader/audience.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| What is the "correct" word?
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| ...presumably not "purpose"?
|
| > that the straightforward definition of "purpose" is
| correct here.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Sounds like a witty aphorism would be useful in order to
| express the real meaning he was trying to get at, seeing
| as the word you're demanding doesn't seem to exist.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| > ...presumably not "purpose"?
|
| That was already very clear. But you clearly don't have
| any better suggestion.
| pmichaud wrote:
| I am pretty confused about why this conversation is
| happening, ie why this pithy little saying isn't self
| explanatory, but the saying is supposed to be witty
| commentary.
|
| For example, we make a system of speed limits to make
| roads safer, and we have a law enforcement system. We
| notice later that the roads are not safer, but that the
| police are vigorously enforcing the law and collecting
| the ticket profits from doing so. We ask: why does this
| system exist? What is the purpose of it? The naive answer
| is to make roads safer to drive on. The witty, savvy,
| cynical answer is: ...
|
| Ie the reason the system still exists in the way it does
| is because its real "purpose" is to be a revenue
| generating scheme for the police, regardless of the
| intent of whoever set it up in the first place, if indeed
| anyone did.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| It exists in the way it does for multiple reasons in
| tension with one another.
|
| If it was just trying to generate revenue for the police,
| it would be better at it.
|
| Ditto, if it were just trying to make roads safer, or if
| its main objective was full compliance. (Which are
| related objectives, but not the same thing).
|
| The reality is that political pressures exist which means
| neither full compliance nor the engineering interventions
| to make roads much safer are palatable to US voters, but
| there are pressures in the other direction which demand
| something must be done. Which is how we end up where we
| are.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Think of all the broken systems that are left in place
| rather than fixed.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| More specifically, when a system that you naively expect
| should have the purpose of doing X is found to actually be
| doing Y, do not automatically assume that it means the
| system is failing to fulfill its purpose. Instead, look
| around and see if there are people who are benefitting from
| it doing Y instead of X, and who are maintaining the state
| where the system does Y instead of X. That would mean that
| the true purpose of the system - what it is being
| deliberately made to do - is Y instead of X.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| I think that's the correct reading. What the system does
| is its purpose; an equivalence.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > At least I got 'The purpose of a system is what it does'
| stuck in my head.
|
| Which seems like a rather odd understanding of "purpose"
| divorced from any possible use of the word. What is the point
| of talking about "purpose" if you can't persuade the person
| intending that purpose to change their mind? Why not talk about
| "use" or "effect" instead?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| cybersyn is just a dashboard if you ignore all the communist
| aspects he incorporated. it was a dashboard and organic
| feedback from the production itself. if you see production as
| uneducated workers and managers, then you fail to understand
| cybersyn. the human component is the focus. the rest is just
| communication improvement.
|
| but no mba will write this
| wkyleg wrote:
| The Counterfactuals of his ideas are very interesting.
|
| Chilean socialism didn't work (just ignoring the coup, it
| couldn't actually run the economy), but the reasons why it
| failed, or in other forms could have worked bear consideration.
|
| In short, it failed for the same reasons central planning tends
| to, considering modern understandings of complexity theory and
| ideas suggested in books such as Seeing Like A State. Just having
| a dashboard and greater access to information is still subject to
| the same forms of hubris as is general central planning, even if
| these shortcomings are better anticipated.
|
| Yet, many of the innovations in this project bare similarity to
| how large enterprises CAN run will, such as with ERP and Business
| Analytics in the private sector, and modern intelligence and
| command and control systems in the military.
|
| So in all, they didn't completely work, but in the way is ideas
| did work they were very early.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Winners write the history books. There's whether or not a
| system fails, and there's who it fails for.
|
| Because we can all see a heck of a lot of fail in today's
| system, but those failing or being failed don't tend to get
| much of a platform to write about it.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Today you have Manufacturing Execution Systems integrated with
| other software. It is equivalent to Stafford Beer's vision but
| limited to one company and without the nice scifi room.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Stafford Beer 's Cybernetic Synergy Operations Room: "You'll Be
| Free Hacker"_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37248676 -
| Aug 2023 (1 comment)
|
| _Project Cybersyn_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34486062 - Jan 2023 (2
| comments)
|
| _There were almost two internets. Then, the CIA destroyed one_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32538322 - Aug 2022 (71
| comments)
|
| _Project Cybersyn and the Origins of the Big Data Nation (2014)_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29930098 - Jan 2022 (39
| comments)
|
| _Project Cybersyn_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764727 - Oct 2020 (114
| comments)
|
| _Project Cybersyn (2016)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24443238 - Sept 2020 (8
| comments)
|
| _Project Cybersyn_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23343929 - May 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Cybersyn and Allende's Semi-Automated Luxury Socialism_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21673423 - Dec 2019 (105
| comments)
|
| _Project Cybersyn_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19487476 - March 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _Project Cybersyn_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19182538 - Feb 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _Project Cybersyn: Socialism Through Cybernetics_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12641425 - Oct 2016 (58
| comments)
|
| _The Socialist Origins of Big Data (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9052163 - Feb 2015 (16
| comments)
|
| _Project Cybersyn and the origins of the Big Data nation_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8417882 - Oct 2014 (13
| comments)
|
| _Project Cybersyn (1971)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7398245 - March 2014 (36
| comments)
|
| _Nineteen Seventy three: Stafford Beer and his Chilean brew
| "Cybersyn"_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6037276 - July
| 2013 (1 comment)
|
| _Project Cybersyn, a 1971-73 Chilean Experiment in Computer-
| Assisted Economy_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4682951
| - Oct 2012 (65 comments)
|
| _Computer-controlled socialist economy gets destroyed on 9
| /11... 1973_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3054018 -
| Sept 2011 (8 comments)
|
| _Project Cybersyn_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1639149 - Aug 2010 (3
| comments)
|
| _Project Cybersyn: real-time computer control of a planned
| economy (1970-1973)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190508 - March 2010 (33
| comments)
| bilater wrote:
| Disappointed in this article. I was hoping to get some
| introduction to Beers methods especially compared to naive
| centralized planning but its mostly about how Beer didnt live up
| to his potential.
| Suppafly wrote:
| These comments make a little more sense once you realize that
| Stafford Beer is a person's name.
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