Shalizi
More serious is the problem that people will straight-up lie to
the planners about resources and technical capacities, for reasons
which Spufford dramatizes nicely. There is no good mathematical
way of dealing with this.
(a point which is echoed in heartfelt manner by Gray and Reuter in
their book on "Transaction Processing)
Come to think of it, _Animal Farm_* was composed in the early 1940's,
based upon the author's experiences in the late 1930's. My guess as
to why mathematicians would continue to follow the dream well after
writers have been disillusioned is that mathematicians tend to only
have to deal with other people in theory, and writers (well, at least
those who've slept rough) have dealt with them in practice.
-Dave
maybe one of these days I'll know enough russian to know what the
dialog in this scene (set in 1969) means:
Старые песни о главном - 2 (1997) @8:29
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq28m1ndA1E#t=503
at the moment, in my ignorance, I can't help but think of "... but
some are more equal than others".
* the genius of Orwell being that his book applies equally well to
other (perhaps all, except for any frankly inegalitarian?) societies,
but the correspondence with Stalinism is so strong that at least some
of these other countries, rather than worrying about being tarred
with the same brush, made it required reading for impressionable youth.
I'm reminded after long, of this - now old -
initially dystopian, and then hopeful story from Marshall Brain.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
I'm afraid I only skimmed the story, but I didn't see that Brain ever
engaged with what I would think a key hypothesis for his thesis: how
should the "Australia Project" protect itself against a hostile
takeover by the "US Oligarchy"? Maybe singularity-fiction doesn't
bother with such mundanities, but in the recent globalized centuries
it's stayed true across a wide spectrum of technological change that
he who rules the waves may be tempted to waive the rules.
