Unknown's avatar antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 3:33 am on January 11, 2019  

Chris Beiser on Twitter…  the role that complex systems theory played in letting Xi Jinping centralize power in China… with cybernetics. https://t.co/NqPXKdlnHk

via @meaningness

https://twitter.com/ctbeiser/status/1082905884060086272

 Jan 9

One thing that makes this a great paper is that it makes clear that at the highest level, faith in centralization comes from the idea that feedback loops can replace participatory mechanisms. (I mentioned Qian Xuesen’s OCGS the other week—here’s what the party thinks)
 Jan 9

The idea of the OCGS is a particular type of system which is problematic for science: too many variables, no fixed boundaries with the outside, the systems themselves are in flux. This is much like what design thinking refers to as a “wicked problem.”

 Jan 9
Qian identifies failures of authoritarian high modern thought, and then proposes that feedback loops and modeling can make solve them—including in the social sciences.
 Jan 9
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Interestingly, this claim rests largely on the esteem of AI researchers working on expert systems, immediately before the AI winter. Around the time this paper was published, everything in that space was imploding. Perhaps Xi Jinping should have read .

 Jan 9
Now, what has Xi Jinping brought back with his newfound certainty through cybernetics? One that OP misses is Mass Line Theory. The Wang Shaoguang essay I linked the other day gives it’s best defense as a mode of representation:
 Jan 9
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The mass line was a mao-era process by which revolution was carried out. In short: 1. Listen to the people’s unsystematic complaints. Directly. 2. Systematize them 3. Sell those back to the people 4. Use the people’s energy as a way to enact that state and reap political capital.

 Jan 9

Xi Jinping has been reviving the theory—with the distinction that the fourth step is gone. Instead, the policy is pitched as an iterative process by which government realizes the people’s desires. ie—cybernetic governance.

 Jan 9
And apparently, that pitch was what convinced the party elites that in spite of some bad results from strong central leaders in the past, Xi’s plan for centralization could go differently. I’d love to know what they think now.
 Jan 9
I wanted to talk about mass line governance and the details of the OCGS, but you should definitely read ‘s thread linked at top, which is much more comprehensive.
 Jan 9

PS: worth reading up on Qian’s life: 🚀 Co-founded JPL 👨‍🎓 Becomes a prof at Caltech ❗️Is deported to China on false suspicion of being communist 🤯 Builds the Chinese nuclear and space programs 🤖Invigorates a generation of CCP thought with the OCGS

 Jan 9
(If one wanted a worst case on unexpected consequences from “trying to keep defense infrastructure away from Chinese nationals”—a popular topic these days—you could hardly imagine a clearer case study.)
End of conversation
New conversation
 Jan 9
Replying to 

iinteresting, the bear case on democracy has always been about the improvement in other systems of feedback loops making it no longer the efficient frontier on legibility and synchronicity

 Jan 9
Damn, seems some of these links quoted and replied are paywalled, do you have shareable folder of them somewhere?
 Jan 9

The paper in OP is on sci-hub; the Qian Xuesen one I link here:

One more: Qian Xuesen’s “A New Discipline of Science The Study of Open Complex Giant System and Its Methodology”, in which a leading Chinese rocket scientist solves “wicked problems” with cybernetics. Apparently hugely influential. …
 Jan 10
Replying to  

Please clone Xi and have him reform US medicine using systems theory. Also clone him and have him teach me how to get promoted using systems theory. Thanks.