Economic Systems: Capitalism and Communism

[arvo]

So - how the path to socialism looks like practically from the Marx point of view ideologically? Well - it is not about social acitivism, about enlightement, about writing and distributing phamlets, about critcial arts. It is about developing technologies that themselves will bring the new socio-economic phase transitions. That is why the Science, the open source programming of AI/AGI projects, the investment in technology stocks, the political push for investments in R&D, innovations and technical education - all those simple steps are the core activities towards the socialism.

What about Church? Well - there will be little that Church will be able to do when the social-economic phase transition will start to happen. She will have to adapt its teach, update its knowledge about social science and issue new edition of Catechism. My guess is that this will trigger the next Ecumenical Council.

Why it is timely to thinks and talk about this? Well - maybe such phase transition is already starting?

In its first edition after the Trump election The Economist magazine mentioned grave fact about America - 50% of the society (those under the income median) today is living worse than in 70ties (45 yearse ago). It is true, that now people can have cell phone, TV set, internet or whatever other toys. But the essential things like housing, education, healthcare etc are much more expensive w.r.t. salaries than 50 years ago. Why is that? My answer lies in Wage share - Wikipedia that reflects the advacement of technologies and the proximity to inevitable transition to the socialism.

 

[MPat]

I know that to seed and spark (yes it is exactly so - we will not machinate or make AI, we will develop in silico system seeded with the current intelligence that futher itself is learning and gaining power) AI/AGI is not so easy, I am far beyond python, keras or whatever.

So, how many AIs have you implemented with your own hands?

Given all this mostly empty talk, I would guess that the answer to that question is precisely zero.

So, no, you are not “far beyond python, keras or whatever”, as you imagine.

And thus I’ll reiterate the advice to try to implement some AI on your own.

You know, there are some simple projects you could try.

My approach is to use complex systems research and automated complex systems research and mathematical models or artificial consciousness

It is not “your approach”, if you do not lift a finger to implement it.

In such case you do not deserve a tiniest part of credit for it.

(Yes, I am trying to shame you into doing some work.)

I myself know this stuff and my reasonable judgement (based on what I see on the frontiers of Science) is that AGI will be achieved in this or next one-two years, there is so little to be done.

Seriously!?

Oh, well, I suppose we should warn you that con artists can exploit such views…

Although I do not expect that such warnings will be heeded…

 

[arvo]

It is OK, that you are putting me in shame. Yes, I have completed little, but still - I am developing my system. Consider this - how easy or hard it is to implement Higher Order Logic starting from the parser and sequent calculus (which are still quite fuzzy thing for HOL) and ending with the definition of concrete grammar that can be used for the formal semantics of natural language. Well - you can put me into shame, but it takes a little time, even more because I already have my full time job that I am doing for the living.

But every morning I see through the arxiv AI preprints and I can say that I am on the right path. Lot of people are going in the same direction.

And regarding the complex systems approach to intelligence I have found excellent resource - special issue of the “Physics of Life Reviews” journal about the mind - “Physics of Mind”: Physics of Life Reviews | Physics of Mind | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier

You can judge yourself how close we are to cracking the Mind! And lot of automation will emerge from that. And postcapitalism will emerge as well!

 

[MPat]

And regarding the complex systems approach to intelligence I have found excellent resource - special issue of the “Physics of Life Reviews” journal about the mind - “Physics of Mind”

Well, I guess the name of one section in one of the papers - “Conclusions: it’s not true, but I still believe it” - gives a pretty good indication of scientific rigor of this special issue…

You can judge yourself how close we are to cracking the Mind! And lot of automation will emerge from that. And postcapitalism will emerge as well!

Well, it looks like so far only exclamation marks have emerged.

Anyway, if you make so many predictions, let’s look at the one with a deadline:

I myself know this stuff and my reasonable judgement (based on what I see on the frontiers of Science) is that AGI will be achieved in this or next one-two years, there is so little to be done.

Its year 2020, thus “next one-two years” ends in 2022-12-31. Thus that’s the deadline. So, what are you going to do, if the deadline will pass with neither “Artificial general intelligence” nor Communism in sight?

For that matter, what criteria are you going to use to check your prediction?

Or is your prediction unfalsifiable?

Well - you can put me into shame, but it takes a little time, even more because I already have my full time job that I am doing for the living.

Well, it looks like you have protected yourself from unpleasant facts from this side…

 

[arvo]

Physics of Life Reviews has Impact Factor 14, that is way more than even Physical Review Letters (with IF 8). Other branches of science has this edifice of beliefs too, there is no science and existence without beliefs. We all know that all the current physical theories are not true, that there should be at least another theory, GUT, that there should be unification if superstring theories. Yet we are quite adept at using physics as we know it today.

What are the signs of our times that can hint towards AGI and communism? Well - last week Nature edition has this article about Universal Basic Income bounded implementation in Spain: Pandemic speeds largest test yet of universal basic income And funny discourse is emerging and is represented by this article: the main question about UBI is about the morality and humanity of UBI and not about the economic possibility of UBI. This article assumes that UBI is implementable even today. Quite a sign how automation is providing for the human people.

And there are nice things that gives hint about emerging AGI too. Some 2-3 weeks ago Nature or Science has article about robot chemist which not only does the lab work but also reasons which experiments to do. And [2001.00008] Computational model discovery with reinforcement learning is about use of Reinforcement learning to discover the symbolic models (essence of any science) and [2007.08794] Discovering Reinforcement Learning Algorithms is about meta-reinforcement learning - how machine discovers the reinforcement learning algorithms themselvees. Generally this problem is solved in the framework of AIXI, so, essentially, this metarefinforcement learning discovers the approximate algorithms that works in specific cases as AIXI is not practical. But thus is old stuff already http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/metalearner.html (about Goedel machine - self-improving program), that is waiting for further advancement.

Artificial General Intelligence - 13th International Conference, AGI 2020, St. Petersburg, Russia, September 16–19, 2020, Proceedings | Ben Goertzel | Springer is this years proceedings from AGI conference.

Personally I devoted these 2 weeks to study Isabelle/HOL shallow embedding of modal logics, essentially - modal operator as predicate approach. So - all the zoo of modal logics is tamed and put into single framework. And modal logics esentially not about the something mathematical, it is mathematicised philosophy as it models (and gradully specified) such notions as belief, knowledge, duty, temporality, effects of actions (programs). So - this is incredibly useful stuff for converting natural language into mathematical formulas. Imperative HOL is used also for formalizing algorithms, enabling the automatic discovery of proofs that algorithms are correct and may be terminating as well. It is my current effort to develop kind of Inductive Logic Programming that discovers algorithms from specification, ILP for dynamic logics (that models programs). So, I am really, really busy.

And yes - one should never put all eggs in one basket. Job for living and live for science/AGI/communism - that reinforces one another.

 

[MPat]

Physics of Life Reviews has Impact Factor 14, that is way more than even Physical Review Letters (with IF 8).

You imagine that “Impact Factor” indicates quality of research?

Imperative HOL is used also for formalizing algorithms, enabling the automatic discovery of proofs that algorithms are correct and may be terminating as well. It is my current effort to develop kind of Inductive Logic Programming that discovers algorithms from specification, ILP for dynamic logics (that models programs).

So, we are to expect Communism after Entscheidungsproblem will be solved…?

And yes - one should never put all eggs in one basket. Job for living and live for science/AGI/communism - that reinforces one another.

Yes, it looks like you have insured yourself.

If Communism fails to arrive, you will have a good job, be rich, and will justify not really caring about the poor (and anything else condemned by conscience) by your support for Communism, claiming it is “just a couple of years away!!!” for tens of years.

And if Communism comes, you will be a parasite on body of society, as illustrated by “Universal Basic Income”, and because AI will supposedly do everything anyway, leaving nothing of any importance for you.

But, um, what makes you think that such parasites will actually be kept alive under Communism…?

For then you will be useless, and what other justification for being left alive are you able to offer under your ideology?

 

[BT3241]

I am certainly not for communism.

The difference between Socialism and Capitalism is one wants everyone to share the wealth the other doesn’t.
Unfortunately life does not work that way - there has to be the grunts or the bottom falls out of the system. There is not enough room at the trough of success - if there was there would be no one to hand you that coffee at the drive thru or any one to do all the things that no one wants to do. Face it some people have better opportunities than other at no doing or fault of their own its how it has to work There should be basic human rights to food water shelter and health. It will always be top heavy in wealth.

Its the system we are stuck with its always been this way.

 

[phaster]

I think what the Church wants is capitalism with more regulation to decrease suffering, ecological damage, etc.

what we need is an economy that does not go to extremes

ever ponder the nolan chart, which in addition to a left vs right political spectrum, it also has a measure of how much government involvement there is in peoples lives

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I mention the nolan chart because as I see things, a pure laissez-faire economic system in which transactions between private parties are absent of any form of economic interventionism such as regulation and subsidies IMHO isn’t ideal because it allows things like credit default swaps on mortgage back securities (i.e. subprime fiasco) and things in the global economy fell part because market players did not have financial reserves to cover their bets (this is just one example where I think we could have used more government oversight)

…also consider that government is needed to enforce contracts,… like in real estate deeds

came to this realization after a holiday trip down in Peru and learned about an economist that pointed out one big mess down in that area and why he thought the poor were forever poor is because they did not have title to land, so they could not go to the bank to borrow money on land they have lived on for as far back as they could remember simply because paper work was not in place

Hernando de Soto (economist) - Wikipedia

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-landrights-desoto-idUSKCN10C1C1

at the other extreme a pure command economy isn’t all that great either because all too often those in charge are idiots who can’t come up w/ innovative consume products,… over the years I’ve managed to find myself in a few of the former soviet republics as well as cuba “the socialist paradise”

basically I was in those places on holiday as a capitalist w/ an exit strategy as well as a personal supply of TP

the shortage of basic toilet paper, and both the “Izvestia” and “Pravda” newspapers served instead of this toilet paper

the doughnut economic model is something I find interesting because it’s the only economic school of thought that takes into account the mathematical concept of boundary conditions (i.e. acknowledges that natural resources are finite),… as well as acknowledging the touchy feely social justice issues

the diagram itself kinda reminds me of an aircraft center of gravity chart, in that it shows a region of “social” stability

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[Theo520]

This was a spot on

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[arvo]

For those who are not reading this thread in full - I just posting here once more time the article Market Socialism as a Distinct Socioeconomic Formation | New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry which explains that technological advancement is precondition to the automatic (not revolutionary) socio-economic phase transition towards some kind of post-capitalism (Post-capitalism - Wikipedia). Marx suggested just one kind of postcapitalism (socialism-communism) but there are other kinds as well.

Historical materialism says that the level of development of the production factors determine the socio-economic relationships and the socialism and communism can happen only when there is sufficient advancement. This was not the case in the the beginning of 20th Century, and it was especially false in the semi-feudal tsarist Russia. But now it can be true.

E.g. US Party https://transhumanist-party.org/ suggest the path towards other kind of society.

We can see how the technology refutes arguments against communism:

• anti-communists argue that without market and price signals there is not honest and effective distribution of resources and demand-supply equilibrium. Well - we should be honest about this. Markets and money per se are not the effective signal mechanisms, but they are mechanisms that maximizes this effectiveness. E.g. even in the advanced countries there is waste of food - just because the pricing and market mechanisms did not deliver the sufficiently effective signals. It is easy to see how networked technologies and mobile apps can provide such ordering and signalling systems even without the money and market proxy.
• …
  well - thare are so many other things that technology addresses. I simply have not time for that.

 

[arvo]

I am using this thread to report on my Artificial Intelligence project, well - it is good and healthy, but I will report some week later, I have lot to do.

I just wanted to put at link regarding the Artificial General (Universal) Intelligence:
https://www.goodai.com/meta-learning-multi-agent-learning-workshop-2020/
This is about the workshop that was held last week by the Czech AGI company GoodAI. We can see people from Facebook AI, Google Brains, DeepMind, MIT, etc. - all working towards the self-learning, self-developing Artificial General Intelligence. And it can be factor that determines the path towards communism. Personally - I don’t regard this workshop as something very important - I have not found new ideas, all this is already floating around and we all need more people, more time, more talent, more investments to just catch those ideas and bring the down into AGI software and real business tools.

I have mentioned some good AGI companies here not just because of marketing (they are not providing consumer services generally), but for giving and example who business are going in the direction in which the capitalism is becoming post-capitalism. Two other such Artificial (General) Intelligence companies are https://www.cyc.com/ and https://nnaisense.com/ .