There is only one problem with technocracy: it does not work.

Well, no system of government “works”. You can’t simply point to one failure of a technocratic decision and say that this disproves that type of government. What about all the failures of other systems which are quite high and visible?

This has been very well explained by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, who said:

Everyone is an idiot, not just the people with low SAT scores. The only differences among us is that we’re idiots about different things at different times.

No matter how smart you are, you spend much of your day being an idiot.

I think that about sums it up, and I know it’s true for me, and for most people I know. Technocracy is, ultimately, a recipe for disaster, because most technocrats are intellectuals who have little to no experience of the “real” world. Even people who may have both smarts and real world experience will make terrible mistakes if confronted with an unusual — or totally new — problem or set of issues.

A perfect example of this is the old USSR. To augment cotton production, technocrats decided to divert two rivers for irrigation. But these two rivers were the only ones who brought fresh water to the Aral Sea, one of the largest lake in the world. The result? A terrible ecological catastrophe, with thousands of people slolwly losing all means of subsistence. You can read more about this here and here.

Ultimately, there is such as a thing as the wisdom of the masses. Which is why Winston Churchill was able to say cheekily:

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Of course Plato’s Republic may not even have been intended as anything other than a teaching aid even in his own time - philosophers still wonder whether he himself believed that his republic could or should ever be realized.

His philosophical writings, on the other hand, are perennially interesting.

Plato would have hated Punk rock

could you imagine not being able to practice santeria and do readings unless you were an expert?

Well, technically, from what I understand of Santeria, you really shouldn’t be doing readings until you’re an expert. There is a lengthy and often expensive initiation process of learning and dedication to the spirits of the religion required.

as old as Plato’s Republic. And yet it still hasn’t really happened anywhere. I would guess this is because the people with political will end up with the power, and true technocrats tend not to have the necessary political will.

Well, since you’re referencing Plato, didn’t Plato also say that a Noble Lie was necessary for this system to truly work? The Noble Lie, in this case, could very well be that the system is NOT set up this way and that we have a free republican system of government. Seems that there is no way to 100% prove such a speculation wrong.

The positivists (basically scientific materialists) believe that our finite theories can encapsulate and control the inexhaustible world. Nevermind that the pencil on paper that wrote the theory and the mind that envisioned it is a part of the same physical process and cannot contain its container.

But there are a few ways “around” the seeming paradox. Evolution, for example, allows for levels of complexity that are orders of magnitude higher that first conditions to develop, much as the seed of an oak tree allows for the “design” or structure of the mature oak tree to develop, even though the seed itself does not contain any specific blueprint for the later development. Another very interesting and, in many corners, highly scorned possibility is Amit Goswami’s version of John Wheeler’s “delayed choice,” which is based on a strange variation of the anthropic principle. Now I realize that Goswami came under heavy attack for his participation in the dreadful “What the Bleep Do We Know” movie, which set the “cause” back decades, I fear, but the idea here, this delayed choice, with its connections to the string and many worlds theories, is just too interesting to dismiss out of hand, as most of the dismissals have been. In “An Interview with Amit Goswami,” Craig Hamilton starts by asking the following question:

To be honest, when I first saw the subtitle of your book I assumed you were speaking metaphorically. But after reading the book, and speaking with you about it now, I am definitely getting the sense that you mean it much more literally than I had thought. One thing in your book that really stopped me in my tracks was your statement that, according to your interpretation, the entire physical universe only existed in a realm of countless evolving possibilities until at one point, the possibility of a conscious, sentient being arose and that, at that point, instantaneously, the entire known universe came into being, including the fifteen billion years of history leading up to that point. Do you really mean that?

AG: I mean that literally. This is what quantum physics demands. In fact, in quantum physics this is called “delayed choice.” And I have added to this concept the concept of “self-reference.” Actually the concept of delayed choice is very old. It is due to a very famous physicist named John Wheeler, but Wheeler did not see the entire thing correctly, in my opinion. He left out self-reference. The question always arises, “The universe is supposed to have existed for fifteen billion years, so if it takes consciousness to convert possibility into actuality, then how could the universe be around for so long?” Because there was no consciousness, no sentient being, biological being, carbonbased being, in that primordial fireball which is supposed to have created the universe, the big bang.But this other way of looking at things says that the universe remained in possibility until there was self-referential quantum measurement—so that is the new concept. An observer’s looking is essential in order to manifest possibility into actuality, and so only when the observer looks, only then does the entire thing become manifest—including time. So all of past time, in that respect, becomes manifest right at that moment when the first sentient being looks.
It turns out that this idea, in a very clever, very subtle way, has been around in cosmology and astronomy under the guise of a principle called the “anthropic principle.” That is, the idea has been growing among astronomers—cosmologists anyway—that the universe has a purpose. It is so fine-tuned, there are so many coincidences, that it seems very likely that the universe is doing something purposive, as if the universe is growing in such a way that a sentient being will arise at some point.

Before you laugh (too hard) read the rest of the interview, as the anthropic principle involved does not actually make man the center of the universe; rather it is consciousness, human (and conceivably otherwise) which sort of congeals into reality, in a quite understandable manner, at least once you’ve opened your mind to the possibility. http://twm.co.nz/goswam2.htm

“A more positive view of an Platonic style government would be Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. His citizen can be compared to a Platonic Guardian, without the communal breeding and property, but still having a militaristic base. Although there are significant differences in the specifics of the system, Heinlein and Plato both endorse systems of limited franchise, with a political class that has earned their power and wisely governs the whole.”

I see you reference philosopher kings, so I imagine you realize the idea is at least as old as Plato’s Republic. And yet it still hasn’t really happened anywhere. I would guess this is because the people with political will end up with the power, and true technocrats tend not to have the necessary political will. Just a guess of course.

could you imagine not being able to practice santeria and do readings unless you were an expert?

Crypto-anarchist Tim May used to always point out that licensing journalists, for instance, was effectively equivalent to denying free press rights to the rest of us. He applied this reasoning to every kind of licensing or authorizing.

Just finished the Baroque Cycle last night, it was definitely worth reading.

That is the fatal flaw in all “scientific” top-down control strategies. It is not possible to model every detail of a system without consuming an amount of energy equivalent to that in the system itself.

Yes! There is a deeply related phenomenon from information theory and algorithmic information theory where it is proven that any possible theory can only contain a finite amount of predictive power. Essentially, even our best theories cannot predict any more information than what we put into their definition.

The positivists (basically scientific materialists) believe that our finite theories can encapsulate and control the inexhaustible world. Nevermind that the pencil on paper that wrote the theory and the mind that envisioned it is a part of the same physical process and cannot contain its container.

But their irrational and unshakable belief in positivism means they have to fit everything they encounter into this framework, by force if need be.

The Christian/Muslim/(Jewish?) fundamentalism that moves so much on the world stage these days is an utterly modern reaction to the materialist worldview. There was no ‘fundamentalism’ prior to materialism.

John Gray’s “Al Qaeda and what it means to be modern” addresses this well.

The ‘burbclaves’ remind me of Neal Stephenson’s ‘Snow Crash’, which is a lot of fun.

I quote the wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadology#What_is_a_monad.3F

Monads are metaphysical points. They exist in space, but they have no extension. In fact, everything material that exists is composed entirely of monads. These monads have no causal relationship to one another, or to any other substance, and are moved about (and appear to affect each other) through what Leibniz called pre-established harmony. In other words, without God overseeing and directing every action of every monad, the entire universe would fall apart.

Our souls are of a special kind of monad, termed dominant, or rational, monads. These dominant monads give us consciousness, which is reflection on what happens to us, and which Leibniz terms apperception. All other simple monads have two basic qualities, appetite and perception, while some monads also have memory.

Monads are eternal, having existed since God created each one, indestructible, and immutable.

It’s not necessarily related, but I thought it was interesting, nonetheless. Neal Stephenson, through Leibniz, describes monads much more effectively in his book(s), which I do encourage reading in spite of its (their) length.

alan watt talks about the technocratic dystopia at length on his website above.
patricia pitcher talks at length about technocrats, lovers of power, in her book, artistts, craftsmen and technocrats.
could you imagine not being able to practice santeria and do readings unless you were an expert?
my view has always been that as bureacracies grow the tend to become self-serving, that is, dissociated from thier initial purpose and switch over to self preservation. government is clearly in that mode now. it`s agencies are cruising around taking money from the citizenry at the barrel of a gun. it is as if as more people group together in a specific purpose this over-agenda appears at some point. a tipping point where the management of our community needs become secondary to control.
welcome to 1984.

This so called “technocracy” it seems to me, has this incredibly vast blindspot. In some ways I can imagine this blindspot as being its chief feature — both imposing on that which perceives itself as weaker than the whole it claims that it is but also being driven by that which it cannot perceive (i.e. science).

That is the fatal flaw in all “scientific” top-down control strategies. It is not possible to model every detail of a system without consuming an amount of energy equivalent to that in the system itself. But in the details are nonlinearities that may lead to huge unforeseen consequences. Technocratic systems are doomed to follow the wake of these blind spots. In fact, this is a clear example of the “Void” leading humanity. We are led by that which we cannot perceive.

Why continue to push the Big Lie, when the Plain Truth is so much easier and would be received by a grateful world with undying appreciation and fidelity?

Great question. My personal belief is that the Plain Truth would in fact NOT be met with appreciation and fidelity. Quite the opposite, I think. The reason why they don’t just reveal it to us I think also relates to on Star Trek what they call the Prime Directive: we must be able to rise up and join them on their level - hence this notion of Evolution, as explored a bit in the previous post.

Anyway I plan to write about exactly this tomorrow.

a.) we are spiralling downward toward totalitarian dytopia, complete with hollow “democracies” run by corporate interests, very heavily and yet subtly controlled media, rampant militarism, and a seemingly complete indifference to environmental degradation, and

b.) none of us want any of the above. I very much believe that it would require less effort to build heaven on earth, a workable, sustainable utopia. Capitalism, like its parent, mercantilism, depends in large part on economies of scarcity. Does anyone doubt that the “free market” is an artificial, even arbitrary construct? That collusion better describes the relationship between corporations than does competition? (A quick overview of the pharmaceutical industry, specifically the pricing agreements on brand and generic drugs, will dispel any romantic notions about any “free hand” doing anything but goosing the consumer/citizen.)

The fact is that we have the means at hand right now to turn this downward spiral around, without “selling our despair to any stronger man,” to quote Phil Manzanera, guitarist and philosopher (don’t laugh–Frank Zappa was far more enlightened than any politician of the modern era!) Why, if we could fix all that ails the world, and actually institute true political freedom and truly representative government, are these technocrat persons helping push us in the other direction? Why are the technologies which could literally save us being suppressed? Why continue to push the Big Lie, when the Plain Truth is so much easier and would be received by a grateful world with undying appreciation and fidelity?

Humanity looking into itself — even if being done merely by a handful of technocratic elite is the symiotic equivalent of an infinite regress between mirrors — you don’t see infinity but you deduce that it must go on (simple physics/phenomenology). The energy that fuels the “USS Humanity on Planet Earth” comes from none other than our vast stores of awe. The awe is quickly running out as the tank appears to be finite, like our human lives are finite yet we have elevated past the concept of God.

I don’t think anybody meant to do it. But it is quickly becoming apparent to me that this shit is what “the singularity” is. It will all come down on ‘one man” and he will decide to incinerate it all rather than possibly entertain the idea that he might be mistaken. No one is safe, not even the “elite” (whatever that means). Ergo: Jesus Christ.

I’d still like to see everybody, even the asses, able to make a living without killing themselves, to raise their kids in peace, and to feel a sense of belonging in a community. The current situation seems to promote the opposite. [...] Hopefully they’re wrong.

I’m not saying they’re wrong, but I am saying that if you look at the source materials of the people who initiated all this: the Enlightenment philosophers, people like Adam Weishaupt, then it starts to appear as though the things that you want are the same things that they want (or at least wanted)….

“The masses are asses”. I think Hamilton said that.

Well, I’m not too impressed either with the “masses” these days, plugged into IPods and uninterested in anything critical to our long term survival. Nevertheless, I’d still like to see everybody, even the asses, able to make a living without killing themselves, to raise their kids in peace, and to feel a sense of belonging in a community. The current situation seems to promote the opposite. And if you believe the various doomsayers (e.g. Jeff Wells) the long term goal is more of the same kind of abject serfdom and horror. Hopefully they’re wrong.

Instead of a technocratic utopia, we (they?) are creating a technocratic dystopia.

I think they may be looking at this with two filters: (1) one of which is materialist-behavioralist - essentially that mankind doesn’t have a soul, and internal states (such as suffering or dissent) are meaningless, and (2) that they are working on the long game, molding society through a painful birthing process as we transition out of old cultural beliefs and behaviors into their perfect scientopia. In this vision, any bad done or felt now would be outweighed by the future good and the ultimate goal.

The problem is that dictatorships rarely if ever end up benevolent, even if they start out that way.

The other thing: they don’t think they are running a dictatorship. They believe they are championing democracy, as I think is evidenced in the Bernays quote above:

It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition.

I think they are also relying on the fact that lack of competition is bad for scientific advancement. To kill all opposition would lead to memetic/ideological stagnation. So instead they have to manage and corral that opposition into proper socially-constructive forms…

The ironic part of all this, I think, is that this is how our country was quite possibly originally envisioned. In a lot of ways, it is completely inline with the original goals of this nation, not counter to it. It may in fact be the final intended fulfillment of it, as the layers of myth and noble lie necessary at the time to grease the wheels are gradually stripped away. “The masses are asses”. I think Hamilton said that.

Instead of a technocratic utopia, we (they?) are creating a technocratic dystopia.

Part of me still thinks the younger me may have had a point… another part thinks he’s batshit crazy…

I know what you’re saying - it’s definitely a fence-riding issue in a lot of ways. It cuts to that argument people always bring up about surgeons: you wouldn’t just want anybody to operate on your brain would you? You would only want somebody with the proper training and expertise to do so.

Here’s my best guess at what is happening though: it is a blend of both. “Behind the scenes” I expect that things really are run in more or less a technocratic method, and may have been so for close to a century.

But we all have these nagging lingering beliefs about democracy, the value of the individual, etc - which is essentially the tradition of Liberalism which originally was birthed with the Enlightenment and the dawn of modern science.

Modern science, however, moves a lot faster than individual humans and human culture. They essentially know we aren’t ready to jettison our long-held beliefs in favor of a scientific utopia. And frankly, they probably think, why should we? They can use our belief in our own democratic control and freedom as a “Noble Lie” to maintain our happiness within the system they are running behind the scenes. That way, everybody gets what they feel that they want, except for us nasty annoying discontents.

Great Vernor Vinge quote on this subject I posted recently:

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006...6/is-the-illusion-of-freedom-freedom/

“The leaders of most powerful countries are coming to realise that the most important natural resources are not factories or the size of armies. Economic power is in the size of the population that is well-educated, creative and generally happy enough to be optimistic enough to want to do something creative.”

“The illusion of freedom becomes a strange thing when a government is dealing with … thousands of people who are as bright as the smartest people running the government. Together, they outclass the people running the show. The turning point is the notion that to provide this illusion of freedom for such a group would wind up being more like real freedom than anything in human history.”

Bernays would be in agreement with Walter Lippman who coined the term ‘manufacturing consent’. He basically argued that in a properly-functioning democracy there are classes of citizens. There is the class of citizens who have to take some active role in running general affairs. That’s the specialized class. They are the people who analyze, execute, make decisions, and run things in the political, economic, and ideological systems. That’s a small percentage of the population… ‘Those others, who are out of the small group, the big majority of the population, they are what Lippman called “the bewildered herd.” We have to protect ourselves from the trampling and rage of the bewildered herd’

George Orwell and Huxley were probably liberal/libertarians they did not trust the state. One of my favorite Orwell quotes is “if you want a vision of the future- imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever”. One of the things I find funny though is Orwell absolutely hated surrealism.

But they may yet be the future.

On the other hand, I’ve long thought that an “energy credit” based economy would be a good idea, though not in the way they’re thinking. What I’d have in mind is directly pegging the value of the dollar to 20 KWH of electricity, and keeping a national energy reserve (based on the most efficient and directly accessible energy technologies- natural gas, hydrogen, and nuclear); money could be directly exchanged for energy in the same manner as the old gold reserve. It would make a lot more sense than backing a currency with precious metals (which are little better than the current fiat system), as an economy is essentially a breakdown of energy states. And it would provide a market-based solution to energy resource depletion, as it would provide a direct compensation for conservation and the creation of energy-reserves; energy would no longer be an economic “free lunch”.

But it’s interesting to note how similiar the “technocratic” vision is to the political positions that I argued for with my father as a child- he’d try to tell me why democracy mattered, while I always thought the world would be better off if it were run by scientists and engineers, and if people were genetically engineered into castes (mind you, this was a decade before I’d get around to reading Brave New World). Part of me still thinks the younger me may have had a point… another part thinks he’s batshit crazy…

It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda.

In theory, every citizen makes up his mind on public questions and matters of private conduct. In practice, if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything. We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions. From our leaders and the media they use to reach the public, we accept the evidence and the demarcation of issues bearing upon public questions; from some ethical teacher, be it a minister, a favorite essayist, or merely prevailing opinion, we accept a standardized code of social conduct to which we conform most of the time.

That was published in 1928. The Technate very much already exists!

It is increasingly clear that in the 20th century, the expert will replace the industrial tycoon in control of the economic system even as he will replace the democratic voter in control of the political system. This is because planning will inevitably replace laissez-faire in the relationships between the two systems.

http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/quig13.htm

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Commentary/Technocrats.htm

Good base definition of technocracy too:

“Technocracy, in classical political terms, refers to a system of governance in which technically trained experts rule by virtue of their specialized knowledge and position in dominant political and economic institutions.”

What we see, in other words, is philosopher kings, or rule by the wise.