Lenin, Marx rendered obsolete by modern supercomputer that predicts revolution

[MarxSchmarx]

Apparently some American researchers fed news stories and the like into a giant super computer and saw a dramatic decrease in the public's tolerance of Mubarak that was unlike anything seen before:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14841018

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/55245000/jpg/_55245841_egyptgraph.jpg

I guess judging by that graph 91 was a crisis point as well. Anyway apparently similar results were found for Libya and the Balkans after the fall of Yugoslavia, while the case of Saudi Arabia showed much greater stability.

How does this force us to rethink our activism?

[Hit The North]

Why should it force us to rethink our activism?

[Iron Felix]

I don't think I understand what you're saying, OP.

[ColonelCossack]

But that would just be warped and perverted SO MUCH by biased bourgeois media.

But why does it mean we need to rethink our activism?

Anyway chaos theory dictates that this can never be really accurate because there would be many, many factors in society that would affect the world as a whole, but when they first happen they would be too small to be noticed by the media- like the butterfly effect. This would only ever be as accurate as climate predictions, or a best, weather reports- in short, total shit. So we don't really need to worry.

We can probably guess when a revolution will be most likely to happen anyway because of the level of class consciousness at any particular time. All this does is make it a bit more quantifiable- and possibly not even that, because of the biased nature of the media that I just mentioned. I don't think it'll make much difference.

[CommunityBeliever]

1. Marxism-Leninism brings to light the fundamental laws governing the development of human society. It won't be "rendered obsolete" by new technologies.

2. Modern computers are incredibly stupid (many of them are even artificially stupid). They can't predict anything remotely complex, let alone human behaviour.

We are living in the middle of a new dark ages collapse, where there is bound to be many revolutions/revolts/riots. If one of our computers correctly models a revolt somewhere, it is probably just dumb luck.

[xub3rn00dlex]

1. Marxism-Leninism brings to light the fundamental laws governing the development of human society. It won't be "rendered obsolete" by new technologies.

2. Modern computers are incredibly stupid (many of them are even artificially stupid). They can't predict anything remotely complex, let alone human behaviour.

We are living in the middle of a new dark ages collapse, where there is bound to be many revolutions/revolts/riots. If one of our computers correctly models a revolt somewhere, it is probably just dumb luck.

Wish I could thank you twice!

But yeah OP, why would this signify anything? Super computers aren't miraculous things, they are still designed and programed by people. The software running this was probably designed with bourgeoisie interests in mind.

[MarxSchmarx]

A few of you misunderstand me, but perhaps the way the question was worded was too ambiguous. By "rethinking our activism" I didn't intend to mean that we should just call it quits - tho I guess I can see how some people may interpret it that way.

Rather what I meant to say, and apparently few people took it this way, was how research like this can inform our praxis.

Does it mean we may be able to "plan for the spark"? Does it mean that we can with some rigor identify periods of time that are more conducive to activism than others? Can it help us identify openings that we could take advantage? Should we time our tactics to accelerate change? That sort of thing.

[MarxSchmarx]

2. Modern computers are incredibly stupid (many of them are even artificially stupid). They can't predict anything remotely complex, let alone human behaviour.

On one level sure you are right, computers still need people to tell them what to do.

But on another level, you can't be serious. Why don't you google a few things like "traffic engineering", "computers in operations research", "machine learning", "swarming behavior", "Bayesian statistics and computation power" or even "today's weather" - computers have made previously impenetrable and largely descriptive and allegorical fields of study predictive. That you think "they can't predict anything remotely complex" honestly makes you look at best rather uninformed.

[Luís Henrique]

Quick question, why didn't Mubarak fall in 1991?

Luís Henrique

[Psy]

On one level sure you are right, computers still need people to tell them what to do.

But on another level, you can't be serious. Why don't you google a few things like "traffic engineering", "computers in operations research", "machine learning", "swarming behavior", "Bayesian statistics and computation power" or even "today's weather" - computers have made previously impenetrable and largely descriptive and allegorical fields of study predictive. That you think "they can't predict anything remotely complex" honestly makes you look at best rather uninformed.

Computers also automate financial trade and there we can see the problem of garbage in/garbage out. Computers don't know what Libya, public opinion or Libya is, they are just giant calculators crunching the data fed to them.

[Die Neue Zeit]

A few of you misunderstand me, but perhaps the way the question was worded was too ambiguous. By "rethinking our activism" I didn't intend to mean that we should just call it quits - tho I guess I can see how some people may interpret it that way.

Rather what I meant to say, and apparently few people took it this way, was how research like this can inform our praxis.

Does it mean we may be able to "plan for the spark"? Does it mean that we can with some rigor identify periods of time that are more conducive to activism than others? Can it help us identify openings that we could take advantage? Should we time our tactics to accelerate change? That sort of thing.

I would say, comrade, that this supercomputer stuff may help determine when it's appropriate to emphasize "revolutionary gambits" (tactics during a politically revolutionary period) more than institution-based class activism and related "propagandism."

Unfortunately, it doesn't help in the way of ebbs and flows in the rest of the (ever-political) class struggle.

[xub3rn00dlex]

All this means is that now we must wage war against Skynet as well as the bourgeoisie. But seriously, I'm wondering if there was an option where they set human nature = greed/ thievery/ hoarding possessions/ capitalizing on others/ etc. If this was true then I'm sure it would greatly alter the conclusions regarding alternative systems.

[Q]

I don't believe it'll be able to ever predict the future revolution any more than perhaps a few weeks in advance; basically for the same reason that we can't predict the weather with any reliability more than three weeks in advance. The reason is scientifically explained in chaos theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory).

In the case of the weather: all laws and mechanics involved are well understood, yet we can't predict what will happen when. This leads to what is often popularised as the "butterfly effect": The wing flapping of one butterfly in the US can cause and contribute a mighty storm in China weeks later.

So we can predict the weather to some reliability in advance, but the further into the future we look, the more important tiny factors can become. I don't see how any "predict the revolution" computer would escape such limits.

Furthermore, DNZ is quite right that what we need is conscious political action of the masses, something that goes beyond "mere" labour struggles (which stay within the logic of the system). Essential for this is the organisation of the class as a class for its own and political programme that is aimed at going beyond the system. So, we need more than a computer to know when to launch the "spark", what is needed is "revolutionary patience" in building mass organisations that are armed with a clear historical mission to change society.

[Hit The North]

"Can the party that owns the super computer please move to the front of the vanguard. Thank you." :lol:

[Hit The North]

Furthermore, DNZ is quite right that what we need is conscious political action of the masses, something that goes beyond "mere" labour struggles (which stay within the logic of the system). Essential for this is the organisation of the class as a class for its own and political programme that is aimed at going beyond the system.

As long as we realise that "going beyond mere labour struggles (which stay within the logic of the system)" means pushing the economic struggle beyond the logic of bourgeois property relations and not merely diverting this struggle into empty, rhetorical political programmes. The immense power of workers lies at the point of production, not in the assembly halls of political parties.


So, we need more than a computer to know when to launch the "spark", what is needed is "revolutionary patience" in building mass organisations that are armed with a clear historical mission to change society.The prospect of building mass revolutionary organisations this side of a revolutionary situation is next to nil, wouldn't you say? I understand the functional requirement to preach patience, but revolutions are abrupt eruptions and are not built incrementally over a long period of time.

[agnixie]

Quick question, why didn't Mubarak fall in 1991?

Luís Henrique

Because the computer's results run on hindsight.

[Desperado]

Seeing as it cannot predict a change in public tolerance of a regime, it does not predict revolution.

[S.Artesian]

We need a computer for that..............? Come on. First, revolution as the expropriation of one class by another is not being predicted. Public tolerance is not social revolution. Actually nothing is being predicted, because this is all after the fact stuff, isn't it?

Secondly, uhhh... didn't someone say about 20 years ago, "It's the economy, stupid!" ?

What was it that Diaz said before the Mexican Revolution? "A dog that has a bone neither hunts nor kills." Guess he had a computer.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Er, didn't Mubarak fall a while ago? Wouldn't that make this a postdiction rather than a prediction?

I'll be impressed when they start predicting things before they've already happened.

[MarxSchmarx]

Er, didn't Mubarak fall a while ago? Wouldn't that make this a postdiction rather than a prediction?

I'll be impressed when they start predicting things before they've already happened.

Well, the point was they used only news reports before his fall and there was a difference in the pattern. It's called cross validation in the literature.

As to Luis Henrique's question I wondered that myself.

[Die Neue Zeit]

As long as we realise that "going beyond mere labour struggles (which stay within the logic of the system)" means pushing the economic struggle beyond the logic of bourgeois property relations and not merely diverting this struggle into empty, rhetorical political programmes. The immense power of workers lies at the point of production, not in the assembly halls of political parties.

Growing political struggles out of mere labour disputes and other economic struggles has proven time and again to be a failure. Also, since you've acknowledged here that the "struggle for socialism" is economic and not political, you've also acknowledged your agitator's Broad Economism by calling support for allegedly "empty" and "rhetorical" programs of an educational and "politico-political" character as a "diversion."

"The strength of the proletariat and its revolutionary capacity flows [...] not from the employed workers’ power to withdraw their labour [at the point of production] but from the power of the proletariat as a class to organise. It is organisation that makes the difference between a spontaneous expression of rage and rebellion, like a riot, and a strike as a definite action for definite and potentially winnable goals." (Mike Macnair)

[S.Artesian]

Growing political struggles out of mere labour disputes and other economic struggles has proven time and again to be a failure. Also, since you've acknowledged here that the "struggle for socialism" is economic and not political, you've also acknowledged your agitator's Broad Economism by calling support for allegedly "empty" and "rhetorical" programs of an educational and "politico-political" character as a "diversion."

"The strength of the proletariat and its revolutionary capacity flows [...] not from the employed workers’ power to withdraw their labour [at the point of production] but from the power of the proletariat as a class to organise. It is organisation that makes the difference between a spontaneous expression of rage and rebellion, like a riot, and a strike as a definite action for definite and potentially winnable goals." (Mike Macnair)


Wonderful abstractions from the master of self-aggrandizement DNZ. However, if we look into history then we see...uhh....exactly that social struggles are preceded by.... labor strikes even when those struggles do not become successful, complete proletarian revolutions.

Yeah you can look it up in history. Like the history of the 1905 revolution in Russia; the history of the strike wave in Mexico 1906-1907 preceding the onset of the struggle against Diaz, and persisting through 1911 and deep into the revolution. Like the strikes in Vietnam, including the peasant strike of 1931, and the urban workers' strikes in the 1930s. And there's always Chile in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

Of course there are variations-- we can look at the struggles in El Alto, Bolivia, 2000-2005, but we'll find those citywide, or neighborhood wide struggles against utility privatization being led by former miners, unemployed and employed workers.

Nobody's suggesting that struggles be confined to "economic issues," in the narrow sense. And we don't have to worry about that, as the bourgeoisie themselves have demonstrated how broad their attack on labor is.

Rather, the economic issues are social issues--- Madison, Wi. Athens, Greece cases in point.

It's the transition, the mediation, of the "economic" into the social that amounts to the advance of class struggle.

[Die Neue Zeit]

However, if we look into history then we see...uhh....exactly that social struggles are preceded by.... labor strikes even when those struggles do not become successful, complete proletarian revolutions.

There's a difference between political strikes and general strikes.


Yeah you can look it up in history. Like the history of the 1905 revolution in Russia; the history of the strike wave in Mexico 1906-1907 preceding the onset of the struggle against Diaz, and persisting through 1911 and deep into the revolution.

Re. Mexico, did the strikes pose an alternative organizational form of authority with a political program to resolve the crisis?

The 1905 soviets in Russia are overrated. For good reason the Bolsheviks were skeptical towards the potential for soviets, and the pre-war SPD would have even better grounds for skepticism towards the potential of Arbeiterrate to pull off a 1905 in Germany (even if such a 1905 could have killed at infancy the party-movement's smooching of the tred-iunion bureaucracies).


Of course there are variations-- we can look at the struggles in El Alto, Bolivia, 2000-2005, but we'll find those citywide, or neighborhood wide struggles against utility privatization being led by former miners, unemployed and employed workers.

That's more like the mass civil disobedience campaign against Thatcher's poll tax than a repeat of 1905.


Athens, Greece cases in point.

It's the transition, the mediation, of the "economic" into the social that amounts to the advance of class struggle.

The Greek case was political from the outset. It didn't start as a collection of strikes to settle mere labour disputes, thanks to the political initiative of the KKE.

[S.Artesian]

^^^^^The usual crap. "The soviets were overrated." "The Bolsheviks were skeptical." "The Bolsheviks were right to be skeptical."

Well, here's the news flash: The workers were skeptical of the Bolsheviks in 1905 and again in 1917, until that is the Bolsheviks started agitating for "All Power to the Soviets," until the workers who were Bolsheviks actually made that slogan the material program of revolution.

As for the Mexican workers-- uhh... it was part and parcel, first of the struggle against Diaz, and the scientificos, and the capitalists, and then against Madero and Huerta.

Did it lead to a political program to "resolve the crisis"? What does that mean? As I pointed out, it did not lead to a successful proletarian revolution, but it sure did lead to a new authority, a new constitution, and the "enshrinement" of labor in the articles of the constitution itself.

[Hit The North]

Just to add to S.Artesian's points above, the soviets are the prime example of how the industrially organised proletariat broke through the bourgeois property relations and established a foothold in the realm of worker's democracy. This is not to negate the role of political agitation by organised communists, but merely to place the stamp of a materialist analysis. The soviet's were not reliant on the power of the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks were reliant on the power of the soviets. And the soviets were the working class organised at the point of production and exchange. Without the soviets, there would have been no dual power in Russia in the months leading to October. It might take communist agitators to reveal the potential of the soviets to many rank and file workers, but without the workers first establishing their organs of democracy, even the most meticulous political program exits as so many words.


Also, since you've acknowledged here that the "struggle for socialism" is economic and not political, you've also acknowledged your agitator's Broad Economism by calling support for allegedly "empty" and "rhetorical" programs of an educational and "politico-political" character as a "diversion."The struggle for socialism is both economic and political and at the same time. You betray your "bourgeois"/"academic"/"positivist" paradigm by not understanding this. A good dose of dialectic would do wonders for your cognition. And my meaning was not that the poltiical struggle is a "diversion", I was actually warning against the attitude that once the economic struggle has provided a basis, it can be abandoned or ignored in favour of party-political action. This is the history of both Social Democracy and post 1945 Communist Parties. We need to guard against the energy of agitators being drained and channelled into the activity of bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, yes, I guess I do betray my agitator leanings, having spent a long time in the SWP(UK) which does not have a political program as such but a clear set of political principles and a consistent aspiration towards fighting in the class struggle.

And, anyway, better the agitator, Lenin, than the administrator, Kautsky. One gets revolutions done, the other caves in to imperialist national chauvinism irrespective of his programmatic ingenuity.

[Sasha]

Euhm, if a computer working on analysis based algorithms would be able to "predict" revolts is that not a confirmation of historical materialism and thus of one central theses of Marx his work?
The title of this thread makes as much sense as "large hauldron colider renders Einstein obsolete" would

[Die Neue Zeit]

Well, here's the news flash: The workers were skeptical of the Bolsheviks in 1905 and again in 1917, until that is the Bolsheviks started agitating for "All Power to the Soviets," until the workers who were Bolsheviks actually made that slogan the material program of revolution.

The Bolsheviks were a mass party already before WWI. That's hardly an expression of worker skepticism towards the Bolsheviks.


Did it lead to a political program to "resolve the crisis"? What does that mean? As I pointed out, it did not lead to a successful proletarian revolution, but it sure did lead to a new authority, a new constitution, and the "enshrinement" of labor in the articles of the constitution itself.

No mass party of the Mexican working class took power, and that's what really matters.


This is not to negate the role of political agitation by organised communists, but merely to place the stamp of a materialist analysis.

Again, another excessive emphasis on agitation.


And the soviets were the working class organised at the point of production and exchange.

No they weren't. You confuse the 1917 soviets with the factory committees. The former were organized by political parties and filled by geographical constituencies, like parliaments. The 1918 constitution merely confirmed this.


Without the soviets, there would have been no dual power in Russia in the months leading to October.

Without the initial actions of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries on this front (since they set up the 1917 soviets), ironically, there would have been no unintended dual power.


It might take communist agitators to reveal the potential of the soviets to many rank and file workers, but without the workers first establishing their organs of democracy, even the most meticulous political program exits as so many words.

Why do such organs have to exist all the time outside political parties?


You betray your "bourgeois"/"academic"/"positivist" paradigm by not understanding this.

I think comrade Rakunin said it best:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-mere-labour-t152648/index.html


But first: what's (mere) political and what's (mere) economic, and where do both go hand in hand?

Obviously you can't simply distinguish one from another. The economic situation determines politics, and politics has a real influence on economics. But bourgeois reasoning forces us to distinguish politics and economics from each other because class societies have turned politics (decission-making) into the lifestyle of a privileged few and the miserable economic sphere (labour) into the harsh reality for the majority of society.

What then is a political movement of the working class? It is a movement with a democratic character. The common people try to organize themselves, step by step, in order to force their own organs of decision-making upon bourgeois society. Lenin called the economists bourgeois ideologists because they based themselves almost solely on the economic, because they only organised the class as a class of wage slaves, because they did not bring the bourgeois sphere of politics any closer to the proletariat, and thus simply because they were not social-democrats.

The question that needs to be solved is "who rules?" Mere economic or labour struggles don't solve the question. They pose the question. So the withdrawal of labour for example is not an answer to capitalist rule. The arming of the people, the creation of their own organs, etc. are partial answers to that question of democracy. Those are political. The case of factory committees shows that the economic can become political in certain nodal points (as once written by Thalheimer). But those committees don't suffice. Because you are still left with the question of beating the labour bureaucracy (for example).

Chartism based its struggle for political demands only partially on economic struggles.

Anyway:


Meanwhile, yes, I guess I do betray my agitator leanings, having spent a long time in the SWP(UK) which does not have a political program as such but a clear set of political principles and a consistent aspiration towards fighting in the class struggle.

Sorry, but I cannot retract my criticism of the SWP's "enraged liberalism," which stems from the absence of any sort of substantive political program. Neither the dalliance with the Muslim Brotherhood in Respect nor the insistence of the ULA in Ireland not having a more openly socialist orientation exhibited "a clear set of political principles."


And, anyway, better the agitator, Lenin, than the administrator, Kautsky. One gets revolutions done, the other caves in to imperialist national chauvinism irrespective of his programmatic ingenuity.

Kautsky wasn't an administrator, but an educator (working alongside agitators like W. Liebknecht and organizers like Bebel) without whom Lenin could never figure out what a politically revolutionary period was.


Euhm, if a computer working on analysis based algorithms would be able to "predict" revolts is that not a confirmation of historical materialism and thus of one central theses of Marx his work?
The title of this thread makes as much sense as "large hauldron colider renders Einstein obsolete" would

The problem is the political bias of those programming the computers. They'll want to avoid scenarios like 1968, and moreso scenarios that are a lot more organized.

[Sasha]

What do you think that those huge analysis departments at ministrys and intelligence agencies have been doing for the last several decades?

So they have developped a tool to more accurately tell them that if you treat humans like shit they will revolt. if that will mean that they will stop treating people like shit. that's a win, but since they won't people will still revolt.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What do you think that those huge analysis departments at ministrys and intelligence agencies have been doing for the last several decades?

So they have developped a tool to more accurately tell them that if you treat humans like shit they will revolt. if that will mean that they will stop treating people like shit. that's a win, but since they won't people will still revolt.

Again, I must stress the political bias of those programming the computers. The subtle implication here is that they might also have flimsy definitions of "revolution." The Arab Spring in Egypt, for instance, has become so overrated (i.e., the resulting not-so-popular military dictatorship) that only liberals would dare continue to call it a "revolution."

[Rodrigo]

A computer cannot do such a thing. It can't even win a chess match against a good chess player.

The Deep Blue winning against Kasparov was very controversial

[CommunityBeliever]

It can't even win a chess match against a good chess player.

Chess programs have an evaluation function (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaluation_function) which takes a position and evaluates its material, mobility, board control, king safety, center control, development etc and it returns a number measuring the advantageousness of that position. Then with a processor from at least ~2003 (2003 is the year Moore's law died) then the computer can use that evaluation function and search algorithms like alpha-beta pruning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-beta_pruning) to search forty moves deep or more.

Furthermore, computers have huge opening databases and ending databases, so during the beginning/end of the game they can achieve nearly perfect play, well still playing incredibly good in the middle game with their search algorithms.

Any human chess player, even the world champion (like Garry Kasparov) is going to have a very hard time competing against all this which should be available on any 1997 super computer (like Deep Blue), 2003 personal computer, or even most modern cell phones. This isn't even taking into account what would happen if you used distributed/parallel algorithms to make use of more then one processor/computer, possibly even thousands of computers over the Internet...

A computer is capable of all of this because Chess is a relatively simple game with never more then 128 moves to consider at a time. On the other hand, if you take anything complex like the Chinese game go (圍棋) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28game%29) which has a 19x19 board, then the computer is going to totally fail because it can't effectively search and is limited to casino algorithms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_algorithm).


A computer cannot do such a thing.

You are spot on about that point, comrade. Our computers cannot defeat even beginning Go players, let alone predict the weather or human behaviour.

[Luís Henrique]

More useful than speculating about whether it can or cannot "predict" a revolution, it would be to look at what it can do. It seems to point to a correlation between Mubarak's "down" with international affairs issues - his worst results, previous to the crisis that ousted him, were in 1991 and 1993: just before the two US Iraqi military adventures.

Luís Henrique

[MarxSchmarx]

Euhm, if a computer working on analysis based algorithms would be able to "predict" revolts is that not a confirmation of historical materialism and thus of one central theses of Marx his work?
The title of this thread makes as much sense as "large hauldron colider renders Einstein obsolete" would

It's an interesting point, but the computer programmers (to my knowledge, at least) didn't make explicit use of Marx - in other words, from what was described in the article they basically came to their conclusions without using Marxist ideas.

I think the analogy is therefore flawed. The LHC was inspired by Einstein's theories that were ahead of the empirical data, and the question was explicitly "how can we test einstein's theories and his suggested experiments?" To the best of my knowledge, nothing like this was involved in inspiring the computer analysis.

It's also worth pointing out that a lot of the engineering that went in to the LHC was inspired by Einstein. very little (if any) of the engineering/software design that went into the lhc was inspired by marx.

Having said this, I think these kinds of approaches can help us test Marx's theories more systematically and refine marx's ideas. But it also shows that at least at the present moment, they are presented more as an alternative, rather than a compliment, to the kind of social science marx (and I guess for that matter lenin) practiced.

[ckaihatsu]

But why does it mean we need to rethink our activism?

Anyway chaos theory dictates that this can never be really accurate because there would be many, many factors in society that would affect the world as a whole, but when they first happen they would be too small to be noticed by the media- like the butterfly effect. This would only ever be as accurate as climate predictions, or a best, weather reports- in short, total shit. So we don't really need to worry.

We can probably guess when a revolution will be most likely to happen anyway because of the level of class consciousness at any particular time. All this does is make it a bit more quantifiable- and possibly not even that, because of the biased nature of the media that I just mentioned. I don't think it'll make much difference.


To be precise, the approach used by the supercomputer model is more accurately described as 'complexity theory' rather than 'chaos theory' since most major factors -- even if nonlinear -- would be abstracted and represented in the model in some distinct way (such as popular mood, etc.).

The 'butterfly effect' of nonlinear systems is over-emphasized to such an extent that the very mention of it should be considered borderline-propagandistic. (Meaning that it's a lesser dynamic within a nonlinear system and its popularization distorts public understandings away from the most important, *major* factors in the complex system.)

I'll note that while the computational prowess of the process described is no doubt formidable, the *approach* contained within it is probably not much more than just a fancy version of card counting:





Basic card counting assigns a positive, negative, or zero value to each card value available. When a card of that value is dealt, the count is adjusted by that card's counting value. Low cards increase the count as they increase the percentage of high cards in the remaining shoe, while high cards decrease it for the opposite reason. For instance, the Hi-Lo system subtracts one for each dealt ten, Jack, Queen, King or Ace, and adds one for any value 2-6. Values 7-9 are assigned a value of zero and therefore do not affect the count.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_counting





The problem is the political bias of those programming the computers. They'll want to avoid scenarios like 1968, and moreso scenarios that are a lot more organized.


*No one* can sidestep the *qualitative* aspect of what's being examined by the computer model, and so there's no way around some *human* interpretation of the computer's output -- not to mention the designing / engineering of the conceptual factors that make up the model itself, before it's activated to crunch data. In this way the supercomputer remains a *tool* and necessarily subject to political perspective, as some have noted here.

Finally -- even foresight doesn't guarantee omnipotence. We know the class struggle is intrinsic to a global society predicated on the class division, and that a bourgeois decision -- no matter what it's based on -- to take forceful actions against those expected to revolt could simply result in an *expanding* of widespread struggle.

[jake williams]

I don't understand what's supposed to be interesting, or relevant, about this study. Revolutions (and non-revolutionary social changes like the overthrow of Mubarak) require a lot to be going on in a society for them to happen. The events leading up to them have to be widespread and multifaceted, or they won't happen. Mubarak can't be gotten rid of for no reason, out of nowhere. The processes leading up to his being overthrown will exist in the society. If one has access to an exceptionally large quantity of data regarding those processes, they'll be visible.

This sort of study doesn't make "predictions". It won't tell you what will happen next, but it could tell you what is going on right now - and possibly, how that effects your options or your chances in the future.


Anyway chaos theory dictates that this can never be really accurate because there would be many, many factors in society that would affect the world as a whole, but when they first happen they would be too small to be noticed by the media- like the butterfly effect. This would only ever be as accurate as climate predictions, or a best, weather reports- in short, total shit. So we don't really need to worry.
With due respect, I think this is a really common, but mistaken, understanding/interpretation of chaos theory, and its usefulness. It's true that we can't make specific predictions about specific things far in the future that involve complex factors. In aggregate though, and in the long run, more general predictions can be more accurate than more specific ones. This can, in some cases, run contrary to the direction "chaos theory" might lead you to expect them to take.

For example, it would be almost impossible to predict how much precipitation Montreal will receive on, say, June 1st of 2016. But it would be relatively easy to make a pretty accurate prediction of the precipitation that Montreal will receive over the next five years. A prediction made over the next ten years might be even more accurate - its random effects might be more likely to cancel each other out. Even with climate change and random variable effects, precipitation in the long run doesn't vary all that much, and to the extent that it does, it does so in some relatively predictable ways (again in the long run and overall).

I'm really not a meteorologist and some of the assumptions I'm making here involving guesses about numbers might be off; but I hope the point is clear. Predictions in the long run can smooth out the effects of not just random variables but chaotic, complex effects.

[ckaihatsu]

In the spirit of this "big picture" kind of stuff, here are a couple of interleaving conceptual frameworks that may be useful.... Just customize them according to whatever situation is in front of you.


[3] Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

http://postimage.org/image/34modgv1g/


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

http://postimage.org/image/34mjeutk4/