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The Hivemind Singularity
An anonymous reader writes "Alan Jacobs at The Atlantic writes about a book called New Model Army (NMA), which takes the idea of Anonymous — a loose, self-organizing collective with a purpose — and adds twenty-five years of technological advancement. The book's author, Adam Roberts, 'asks us to imagine a near future when electronic communications technologies enable groups of people to communicate with one another instantaneously, and on secure private networks invulnerable, or nearly so, to outside snooping.' With the arrival of advanced communications tech, such groups wouldn't be limited to enacting their will from behind a computer screen, or in a pre-planned flash mob; they could form actual armies. 'Again, each NMA organizes itself and makes decisions collectively: no commander establishes strategy and gives orders, but instead all members of the NMA communicate with what amounts to an advanced audio form of the IRC protocol, debate their next step, and vote. Results of a vote are shared to all immediately and automatically, at which point the soldiers start doing what they voted to do. ... They are proud of their shared identity, and tend to smirk when officers of more traditional armies want to know who their "ringleaders" are. They have no ringleaders; they don't even have specialists: everyone tends the wounded, not just some designated medical corps, and when they need to negotiate, the negotiating team is chosen by army vote. Each soldier does what needs to be done, with need determined by the NMA which each has freely joined.' Let's hope resistance isn't futile."
We've seen what happens with democratic decision making, as the population grows so does the splintering and each side grows further apart. Unless human nature can progress like the "25 years of" technology I dont see large hiveminds getting too far past their internal "debates".
Let's hope resistance isn't futile.
Why? As far as I can tell this would be a good thing. If everyone in an army is making decisions then they aren't as likely to engage in risky behavior or unnecessary violence. The analogy is to how many have argued that the US has become more warlike as it has lost its draft, so that people favoring war are no longer in any serious risk of being called up. Nothing in the summary seems that negative, and a brief skim of TFA doesn't seem to indicate much actually negative as far as I can tell.
It's somewhat of a sociologically interesting fact that in 99% percent of the cases, where this sort of utopic future communities are described, voting always come up. The fact that there is a network and a mean for people to be "always on" doesn't make people brighter all of a sudden. That sort of democracy can quickly turn into chaos and then anarchy.
:)
From my experience in being part of some passionate amateurs communities I can say that leadership is very important. Individuals will always have different degrees of involvement, different degrees of the ability to know what is right for the group of a whole, different degrees of objectivity, education, selflessness. And even different agendas. Individuals in a group might sincerely believe that their way is the best.
What I'm trying to say is that voting is not always the best solution, leadership (formal or informal) and fast decision making abilities are more important. Having a vision and seeing "the path" is more important than wasting time and energy (think of how long it takes in a group of people larger than 3 to decide where to eat out and multiply by ten for "important stuff") to vote all the time.
I'm not saying that democracy is overrated but not even democracy supposes that people vote on every single aspect. That's where the idea of a parliament (or similar institution) comes from. You're supposed to have your interests represented by people with knowledge, leadership skills, vision and desire to serve the community.
Then again, we also know how that turns out
Curiously yours, crip.
God knows that if I'm suffering hypovolemic shock concomitant to massive war trauma, I want nothing more than the wisdom of the crowd!
Stupid hierarchical medical profession: all of my comrades can Google "How to start an IV" and hit up the Wikipedia page on exploratory laparotomies. Hell, I bet there's an instructables on how to install a Wittmann patch. Oh wait, I already feel confident/competent enough after seeing the Wittmann Patch Wikipedia page.
Excuse me, I'm off to check the eHow for "How to scrub in for surgical procedures"...
I haven't read this book, but I'd be shocked if it were better or more interesting than Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez - which vividly represented the same sort of organizational idea, but set inside a truly impressive narrative. Check out his talk at Long Now to get a taste.
You can assume that there will be a foreign agent pretending to be part of the 'army' using an equally secure link to send out the planned activities to the adversary.
And what happens if a large number of equally 'anonymous' agents are influencing the vote and then following through with counter actions to whatever is decided?
That's a classic way to run a resistance movement. Mao, Marighella, the IRA, al-Queda, etc. It works fairly well in the early phases. As the revolution advances, tighter coordination is necessary. This leads to centralized leadership. In the end, there's a Stalin or a Castro.
The US is one of the very few countries to get a stable democracy out of a revolution. That's not what usually happens.
they will all be out of a job
Recycled as astroturfurs?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
As long as they don't march on my lawn.
rewriting history since 2109
Inevitably, we can imagine that if groups like these actually existed, one would eventually engage in a war crime of some sort. When that happens, who would be punished? The ones perpetrating it? The people who voted in support of the crime? Those who were aware of it? The entire group?
That sort of democracy can quickly turn into chaos and then anarchy.
You might think that yet Switzerland has a democratic system which is the closest I have seen to the "everyone votes on everything" idea and yet is an incredibly stable country. I think part of the reason for this is that people get to decide things at the local level which makes for strong communities since they have a sense of control. Certainly you don't seem to get the usual sense of powerlessness caused by the politicians listening to rich special interest groups and trampling all over society in their hurry to get that money.
Even though my buddies and I can hive-mind our decisions, it still takes us 15 minutes to decide on pizza toppings.
Or, to put it more plainly, knowing what we're all thinking won't necessarily help the individuals cast their mental "votes" any quicker.
This signature is false.
I was an army medic, and can tell you right off the bat this idea is bullshit it several different directions. First, no army ever could or would fight this way. The notion of the egalitarian army with no leadership is not really different from a mob. An army works because of the top-down nature of command. In order for all the so-called soldiers to 'vote' on decisions, they'd all have to know what's going on. Otherwise they're voting without having any clue as to what effect their votes might have. There is neither the time, nor the capability, even with this so-called "advanced" communications they're supposed to have, to brief EVERYONE, so either you're going to be wasting time informing everyone then debating everything, getting nothing done, or you're going to have people who don't know what's happening making decisions, either with NO intel, or with undigested and probably misinterpreted intel at every step.
As for the commo, people cannot in my experience, concentrate on more than one conversation at a time. Try it some time if you don't believe.
As for the cockamamie idea of having everyone tend to the wounded... the modern US military has as its new doctrine that every soldier learn basic medical skills. This has actually been the case for years, maybe decades, but recently the expected level of medical proficiency (of all soldiers) went from "buddy-aid", like applying field-dressings to wounds and cooling someone suffering heat-stroke, to every swinging dick being Combat Lifesaver certified. However, that course is about a week long. When I went through, Combat Medic School (Healthcare Specialist Course, MOSC 68W1O) was about 16 weeks long, which was followed up at my unit (as presumably any of my fellow CMS graduates deploying to war as I was, and maybe even ones who weren't,) also attended something called CMAST, Combat Medic Advanced Skills Training, which included performing procedures on a cadaver, and a doing a few other things I'm not permitted to reveal. Then on top of that months of on the job training doing the actual job.
A real functional army waging a war doesn't have the TIME to train every soldier to be a Combat Medic, let alone train them in the 200+ other specialties an actual, real army needs to wage any kind of war.
This... is it a book? This article, or what it references, is sheer mental masturbation, a fantasy that a bunch of soft little fruit-cakes playing games and pretending to be an "army", scoffing at conventional forces demanding to know who their ring-leaders are, is fucking ridiculous. You might as well write a book about people spreading their fingers wide, and flapping their arms and FLYING. It's a fucking joke.
If you're having trouble understanding what I mean, imagine if you went brain-dead tomorrow, and your various body-parts decided to vote on everything you do. Your penis would (assuming you have one) veto every vote that doesn't involve stroking it. Your back would insist it needs to rest, and lay in bed all day. Your stomach and your mouth would agree you should eat, but your hands would demand to know what's in it for them. Your teeth would refuse to chew anything without a guarantee from your hands that they will be brushed and flossed after eating. Teeth appeased, your epiglottis would complain that the body should make up its mind about what they want it to do, open to lungs, or open to stomach, and would start hiccuping to show its displeasure. In short, you wouldn't have the level of agreement and cooperation to be able to so much as stagger into the bathroom and take a shit. Just like what such an army as described in the story would do, without any central leadership and authority.
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
- - Kay
( Men in Black)
The idea of a decentralized "army" is pretty ridiculous
You may want to read up a bit on how the anarchist militia organized in the spanish civil war. E.g. before going on a mission, squads would elect a squad member to be the leader for that particular mission.
they don't even have specialists: everyone tends the wounded, not just some designated medical corps,
Do not sign me up then. When my life is on the line, I prefer a trained medic, thank you very much.
There's a reason specialization has won the culture wars some 10,000 years ago: It works. Everyone who did Economics 101 knows that, it's called "division of labour" there. Basically, you do what you're good at, I do what I'm good at, and we share the spoils, which results in both of us having more than if we had to both do everything ourselves.
And the more complex things get, the more specializiation is required and useful. In a hunter-gatherer society, in a bind the primary deer hunter can also skin the beast and the primary cook can also catch a rabbit. But that was 50,000 years ago. How many medical doctors have even a basic competence in programming? And how many of us geeks here could make even the simplest operation without killing the patient?
So, interesting vision from the sound of it, but already from the summary I can tell that someone hasn't thought hard enough about the consequences.
Oh, also: Even Anonymous has specialists.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org