[ExI] The End of the Future

[Stefano Vaj]

2011/10/4 Dennis May <dennislmay at yahoo.com>
> Anders lists a number of observations of symptoms of
> a problem.  The root of the problem is not hard to
> understand - it is central planning versus free markets.
> Central planners represent a serial computer with a number
> of bottlenecks in speed and a limited number of inputs
> [limited knowledge].  Free markets are a massive parallel
> computational project with nearly unlimited inputs and
> outputs.  You can build remarkable serial and/or partially
> parallel computers [Watson] and conclude their successes
> imply a path forward [seen versus unseen].  Or you can
> learn from history and what works in nature and unleash
> the much greater potential of what amounts to a massive
> parallel operation in essentially neural network form
> [much greater knowledge] - free markets.

This sounds a little ideologically biaised.

Just to play Devil's advocate, it is perfectly true that planned
economies used to mimic - or at best be based on! - serial computers
of a limited power.

It might however be possible today to have real, literal parallel
computing actually surpassing the performance of the markets as far as
economic optimisation is concerned.

One would be hard-pressed to indicate state economies on the way to
rearrange themselves along those lines, but large private
conglomerates whose internal working are not based on "market-like"
transactions already exceeds the size and complexity of small
nation-states...

--
Stefano Vaj