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Intelligence vs Production

anon_rifo said in #2996 1mo ago:

"Optimize for intelligence" says Anglo accelerationist praxis. "Seize the means of production" says the Chinese. Who's right? It is widely assumed in Western discourse that intelligence, the ability to comprehend all the signals and digest them into a plan of action that controls of all the variables, is the ur-instrument that begets all other forms of power. Whatever is the right strategy, intelligence is how you find it. Given intelligence you can think your way out of any box. Any other form of power will end up outmaneuvered and controlled by whoever musters the most intelligence.

This makes sense. It's closely related to why our collective hopes are deeply staked on breakout growth from software and AI (PE ratios in the hundreds!). It's also closely related to the high capital efficiency, abstract-financial, high-on-the-value-chain, branding-and-ownership neoliberal theory of economic power that's been serving us so well for the past 50 years.

But I want to make a few observations: we're in the process of getting taken economically by the guys who have been focusing on production for the past 50 years. Relatedly, our intelligence has become terminally unmoored from reality, trapped in spectacle, lacking productive outlets. As just one example, consider the phenomenon of video games (and other entertainment media including much of politics) as a way to burn off excess intelligence that has found no productive outlet. Is it possible that we simulate realities for ourselves where applied intelligence is the bottleneck because we haven't got that in reality? We dream of working on a real factory, but then wake up in a surplus-intelligence reality, stuck playing factorio.

How could there possibly be surplus intelligence? We deny the possibility: "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" Our popular model of intelligence imagines someone with perfect executive function poring over every bit of signal and modelling out the consequences of every bit of control to optimize a singular meta-strategy, for whom there can be no surplus intelligence. But no amount of intelligence can make up for broken executive function or lack of clear strategy (they are equivalent), and a great deal of "executive" function in practice comes from the feedback signals of contact with the right reality. In the absence of the right reality-contact strategy, "optimize for intelligence" collapses into attention-deficit circularity, and intelligence becomes worthless. Intelligence in practice is downstream of strategy, not upstream of it.

The reason the Chinese are getting rich is clarity of strategy, embodied in the wise guiding hand of the Chinese Communist Party, directing their ample intelligence to optimize the means of production.

By production I mean the physical transformation of energy and matter into tools that can accomplish valuable tasks. Because this contains the possibility of not only end-use tools but also self-reproduction of production tools, this whole process has a runaway compounding logic that's far more real and proven than the supposed runaway compounding of intelligence. The latter may just be an ideological hallucination, but compounding growth of physical capital has been demonstrated in practice to the point of transforming the whole world and winning multiple wars.

Optimizing the means of production is the open-ended reality contact game that was proven to be strategically decisive 80 years ago, and is about to be proven again. From the perspective of intelligence, it offers rich feedback from non-spectacle reality, and a rich field of opportunity. It's a perfect strategy to focus intelligence into something actually useful. It's probably not the only such strategy, but it's certainly the most fundamental.

Since the means of production anywhere can be exported to solve problems everywhere (in return for buying power in materials and political concessions), mastering the means of production may mean mastering the world.

How do we get in on that?

"Optimize for intell

anon_ricy said in #3038 4w ago:

Nice post. I'd say the anglo strategy is defined by Motivation instead of Intelligence but I hear you. The defining moment for the anglo world was the english population boom and subsequent exporting of that excess population along with law to the rest of the world. A population that's willing to colonize distant lands is defined by motivation, not intelligence. So really the constrast in strategies is that of efficient production and exporting which is the route the Chinese have taken and maxed their skill points on and for the Anglo it's the ability to implement law in foreign lands and attract migrants.

I think it's easy to look at the Chinese strategy and say "we should be doing that" but this ignores the fact that we are alien states and populations. This is for a few reasons:

1) We have a much smaller population
2) We have a much richer population
3) Our services based economy supports the financial sector which is (unfortunately) where we're finding an edge for now
4) We have a political economy that gets pulled in different directions by sloshing political and cultural tides and can't focus on one thing for an extended period

We absolutely should have domestic steel, drone, and semi production, but any lower level production would require either 1) forfeiting much our financial strength by moving Americans down the production chain or 2) importing tons of labor to do the lower level production. Nobody wants to nuke the economy and nobody on the right wants to import tons of migrant labor (and nobody on the left wants to import labor in a strategic way, only an ideological way). Sticky situation!

I'm an advocate of "playing your position". We should play our position as the legal and financial powerhouse of the world while also putting on some "fat" like onshoring the aforementioned areas of production. But we should absolutely not try to compete directly in the position that China already dominates.

referenced by: >>3051

Nice post. I'd say t

anon_rifo said in #3051 3w ago:

>>3038
Yeah I don't mean to historically characterize the anglo and chinese strategies in their whole nature. Just to contrast these two particular strategies (intelligence and production) which happen to be currently aesthetically associated with the two civilizational poles. Good call on motivation towards expansionary order-out-of-chaos as the defining historical anglo strength. I don't disagree.

>We have a much smaller population
This isn't as true as you might think. If you include the continent, the western bloc has just as many core westerners as the Chinese have han.

>the financial sector
Yeah we're finding an "edge", but it's increasingly unclear whether this edge is actually real, or just juking numbers around to mask our loss of actual ownership and actual productive skill capital to China while the finance class gets rich on zero-sum internal parasitism. To the extent that our financial system extracts actual money from Asia without just selling debt and equity, then I would believe in it, but I'm skeptical whether it's actually extractive or just cover for selling debt and scamming ourselves.

>forfeiting much our financial strength by moving Americans down the production chain
I don't really believe this either. Most smart people I know work in fakeshit prestige jobs and would basically be zero-opportunity-cost labor if they were put to work on actual production. A lot of people are effectively sitting on their thumbs for lack of physical-technical labor demand.

>importing tons of labor to do the lower level production
And of course this doesn't appear to work out even economically, as I read the numbers. Even if it did, it has the same control-loss problem as offshoring. We thought offshoring resulted in us owning them, it didn't. Labor immigration is similar.

>I'm an advocate of "playing your position".
I agree with this in principle. But one of the most important parts of playing your position is figuring out what your position actually is, and what strategy is appropriate and actually viable for it. If there's some actual strategy that lets us play a strong position against an unaligned Asia that has ~all the manufacturing capital, I basically still haven't heard it. What exactly is this "financial powerhouse" strategy and how does it help?

I agree trying to directly compete with China in a head-on symmetric way is stupid. That's not what they did to beat us at production. But if we're not able to build the means of our own way of life, we're beholden.

referenced by: >>3160

Yeah I don't mean to

anon_hahy said in #3062 3w ago:

There can be surplus intellect, but in that case there's been a misallocation of resources and thus the system in toto isn't as intelligent as it could be. I agree that certain sub-spheres of Anglo thought have cultivated a kind of silly mystery cult of intelligence, but that's a misapprehension of the idea.

I think a reframing that inches a little closer to the proper strategic distinction here is one that is historically the subject of much debate in chess, which is the question of "which is better, dynamics or material?". 19th century play was fantastically dynamic, full of bold sacrifices, dashing human creativity, etc, but as the game evolved it became more and more dominated by preparation and memorization of opening lines in obsessive depth. Then the computers came along and the debate seemed even more settled on the side of material, with their soul-sucking style of minmaxing the thinnest of advantages. But then comes along something like AlphaZero and what the hell, it's playing like a 19th century master, focusing on things like sacrificing material if it means more opponent material is disabled for effective play.

Therefore to me the best question instead is "*When* is dynamic play better and *when* is material play better?".

Moreover, if intelligence is maximization of future freedom of action, there's an implicit dependence upon available substrate, as is true of any kind of variational principle, because that means playing well, and you can't play without pieces! Hence the Bitter Lesson in all its forms.

I would question that it's clarity of strategy per se, but the presence of genuine strategy at all. To play better you have to see further, and to do that you need to bind components (for technical reasons) into some greater body. Formal affiliation is not the same as functional integration, and I think the problem with the west is the absence of that, because it's fascism (binding) or "collectivist", "authoritarian", whatever, I fucking guess. The evidence of this for me is the sheer full-spectrum of overgrazing on human substrate that you can see on every single domain of life in the west. Fat fucks, sterile girlbosses, imported vote blocs, diploma mills, thinly-veiled schemes leeching money from the tax base (e.g. fat contracts for housing migrants in hotels). Not that the Chinese of all people are famous for loving their neighbor, but there's enough control structure to direct activity strategically where it counts.

There are very few things which are universally dominant. Almost all strategies have de facto operational ranges, natural habitats where their characteristics become advantages, and that includes individualist liberalism. Has the context changed enough to turn it into a liability instead of a strength?

"What should we do?"
"What you mean 'we', Kemo Sabe?"

referenced by: >>3063

There can be surplus

anon_rifo said in #3063 3w ago:

>>3062
Most of the ideological points we are citing (mystery cult of intelligence, anti-authoritarianism, obesity, finance maximalism) masquerading as strategy are in fact copes for the lack of strategy. The whole cannot direct the parts by any higher logic, so we come up with excuses to explain why what we're doing instead is actually good. It's the same for our very noticeable ideologies: in the degenerative end-times of an empire, everyone becomes fat, gay, and brown. Therefore that must be OK, or at least bad to notice in any negative way, so as not to imply that we are actually on a bad track.

Much of anglo thought at this point is just this sort of collective face-saving rationalization. China must be failing economically. Our dwindling edge in certain technologies must confer some actual advantage. The fact that we're unable to keep faith with each other or say what we mean and mean what we say must not be particularly important. This is connected somehow to the monetary situation: American buying power is propped up by belief in the power of America's economy manifested in asset prices and dollar demand, and we produce belief in the power of our economy by... having a lot of buying power. The whole thing is powered by face saving spectacle. How can we expect anything but psychosis?

But rationalization isn't quite all of it. Much is actually enforced. "we hate fascism because we can't into fascism anymore" well ackshually we hate fascism because we fought a holy war against fascism on behalf of the enemies of fascism (collective strategy), who then proceeded on a long march through our institutions to root out the last vestiges of fascist (strategic) possibility. And a combination of their power and the face saving logic means we have a hard time noticing that this was a mistake. Thanks, Franklin!

>the presence of genuine strategy at all ... you need to bind components (for technical reasons) into some greater body
Let's get a little more concrete: specifically, we need the binding to have a strategic conversation that means anything at all: the conclusions made in that conversation result in something like the actions discussed. This is a particular instance of the more general problem of the binding of our words to reality. This I think more than anything is the essential matter accounting for much of the problems we face.

Most people really aren't good at binding their actions to the words and their words for reality, for lack of training and enforcement, and because doing so is often punished in various ways. Public discourse is totally detached from the possibility of action-in-reality. Private discourse is no better. Philosophy has nothing in particular to say about this. I hear there used to be a concept "the Logos" that had something to do with this. Intelligence without logos is just noise. Even production without logos is just noise. The problem of life is how to have matter-in-reality bound to some kind of logic of self-intelligibility, integrity of function, and necessity of action. How to put the logos into flesh...

I'd like to see more "accelerationist" study of this issue in particular: the binding of logic to matter, especially at scale when there are multiple agents involved. Getting good at this seems like the essential power core of a civilization far superior to our own.

Tolkien made a big deal about the rigors of "truth speaking" both because he was a logos-respecting christian, because he was a germanophile who saw integrity as the foundational virtue, and because he saw we didn't have enough of to live. He failed, but maybe something can be done.

Most of the ideologi

insurrealist said in #3096 1w ago:

>I'd like to see more "accelerationist" study of this issue in particular: the binding of logic to matter, especially at scale when there are multiple agents involved. Getting good at this seems like the essential power core of a civilization far superior to our own.

Yes, I agree. It's roughly what I call "the edification of purposes", as a kind of vertical counterpart to "rectification of names."

Yes, I agree. It's r

anon_ricy said in #3160 5d ago:

>>3051
Yes the western bloc and even just North America makes up a huge productive force. My thinking behind our small population comes from the current situation where the regime is trying to divest from those relationships as quickly as possible. Hence why I say importing labor is a path, albeit a bad one, because other paths are being intentionally closed.

If China is the bar for Real Productivity then we should trust them when they take the profits from that Real Productivity and plow it into the US and adjacent markets. 1/3 of all residential real estate in California was purchased by Chinese nationals in 2023. This tells me they find our economy to be quite real and that there may be some benefit to being the financial powerhouse. I'm not saying that putting every single skill point into finance is a perfect strategy, just that it isn't something we should be comfortable nuking either.

On fake jobs – what you're talking about where one population can consume the labor of others is also known as Wealth. It's popular right now to target the wealthy management population in this country as a ripe cohort to shift into more menial labor. It's an odd starting place though before defining 1) what should be produced and 2) how should it be produced. Migrating the high earning (even if the jobs are fake) population to labor should be the last thing to consider after some controlled offshoring or near shoring. The latter two solutions require more political tact which is why I think they're not considered today.

"Unaligned Asia" is another popular leap that stems from low political tact and jumps too hastily to outcomes like war. We have no proof that China has expeditionary ambitions. Look at their efforts in Niger. They began building out infrastructure, then were promptly forced out with the projects being confiscated. It's also likely our doing that they've aligned more closely with Russia. Again, problems spurred and solved by political tact or lack thereof.

I agree with you that the Chimerica relationship is imbalanced. While I'm yet to figure out how exactly to rebalance it, I think we need to resist being hasty and **define first what areas of production are worth reclaiming and by what means**. As far as I've gotten on Item 1 is that we should reclaim some amount of steel, drone, and semi production but have no answers for by what means. I'm yet to see these two items articulated by anyone really and it's definitely an area that deserves more intellectual development.

I imagine the Bismarck folks are cooking up a brief to answer these questions as we speak.

referenced by: >>3162

Yes the western bloc

anon_rifo said in #3162 5d ago:

>>3160
> we should trust them when they take the profits from that Real Productivity and plow it into the US and adjacent markets. 1/3 of all residential real estate in California was purchased by Chinese nationals in 2023.
Them buying real estate is literally just us selling equity in our country. They have the production, so they buy us out in exchange for trinkets. At some point we run out of equity (and debt) to sell. Also, they want in on our economy, not because it is fundamentally strong, but because ours is designed to create returns on financial capital, whereas theirs subordinates capital to a productive discipline. High returns for capitalists is not the same thing as a strong economy.

> what you're talking about where one population can consume the labor of others is also known as Wealth
Yes i get this but its a definition of wealth i actually disagree with as a policy. Its a catabolic definition of wealth, not an anabolic one. Direct capacity for production is the anabolic definition. We dont have to caricature ourselves by making it about reassigning elite grads to menial jobs. The fact that thats what comes to mind instead of engineering management, factory ownership, hard scientific research, production optimization, etc shows that we are a) catastrophically out of touch with what an actually productive society is like and b) obsessed with petty class resentment politics. All classes have a more dignified (in my mind) role in a productive economy than the fake jobs we do now, and many know it and yearn for it. And i do think it appropriate to talk about it prior to identifying specific opportunities. We wish to become more in touch with productive reality, but dont yet know precisely how. The debate on what to prioritize only makes sense once you accept that basic premise.

I agree it would take tact and careful strategy focusing on a few high leverage industries. Basic heavy industry like steel, high tech manufacturing like drones and machine tools, and semiconductors seems like a good start, but none of us are wise MITI bureaucrats.

Yes the point that China has no apparent imperial ambitions is an important one. We are mostly shooting ourselves in the foot, getting outplayed because we refuse to do basic sensible anabolic things.

referenced by: >>3163

Them buying real est

anon_ricy said in #3163 5d ago:

>>3162
Good man, I appreciate you sparring with me on this. It's good fun.

I agree that returns for capitalists is not the same thing as a strong economy. Maybe because I've taken the unpopular side of this argument you think I'm for financialization. I'm not. I tried to emphasize it in my last post but my point in this topic is that we shouldn't blow up what we have **without a clear plan**. But just on California real estate I'll say – there's something counterintuitive about it where the price can just float into space with no real limit. CA real estate may be The Reserve Currency. Again, not making some claim that this represents some perfect economy, just that it's something we have so we shouldn't mark it down to zero.

And on shifting labor, your stance (if I understood correctly) was that we should compete with China on production but importing labor isn't an option and neither is alliances with the broader western bloc since those are being deconstructed in real time, but also that the things that'll be made don't need defining, so what else am I supposed to assume about that type of labor that will be employed? The only image I can come up with is menial labor (since the goal is to vaguely compete with China on production) using only the existing US population. There's an order of operation to these things where the actual objects of production are upstream of all of them. We can't opt out of identifying that and then move on to what the production will look like. You assume a tactful approach to this problem (the jobs will be factory and production management, not sitting at a sewing machine in a sweatshop) which I have trouble doing when this regime has displayed little tact.

We're on the same page about wishing to be more in touch with productive reality, my view though is that we need to define first what areas of production to make reality before deciding by what means. And defining this specifically is important because as you said, people do yearn for productive work. We have so little of it that we need productivity simulators (video games) where we can fantasize about managing a factory or farm or state. Only a population with an insane labor excess can have people sitting in productivity simulators for hours each week. These desires for productivity are innate and sitting at a computer all day does not scratch that itch.

referenced by: >>3165

Good man, I apprecia

anon_rifo said in #3165 5d ago:

>>3163
>alliances with the broader western bloc since those are being deconstructed in real time
Look no comment on the current regime and its lack of tact. I support their priorities but there's obviously a lot of dumb stuff going on. In any case I consider it orthogonal to what we should be doing in theory and i wish not to be constrained by their reality in this discussion. I don't think the loss of friendliness with europe or canada will stick, or at least they don't have to.

What we *should* be doing is building on those alliances, considering the whole core western world (america, core anglosphere, western europe, japan) as an economic bloc, and going for reasonably free relatively balanced trade internally (by whatever combination of trade deals, negotiation, and bilateral agreements) and internalizing and developing the means of production, while treating everything else with much stricter mercantilism. That would take careful planning.

As for labor, you wonder where we will get the labor from but admit we have an unused labor excess. I myself am, from a development bureaucrat's perspective at least, criminally underemployed. My grandfathers were a railroad executive and a Stanford research scientist, so I have at least some family memory of what that was like. I was trained in that kind of work and worked in what is left of the engineering field on this continent. Now I work in effectively bullshit jobs, mostly related to admiring the problem instead of solving it, because that's what's institutionally available. I don't think my case is unique. This is the basis for my opinion that we have a LOT of high quality effectively unused labor for development work that doesn't have to look like menial stuff. I don't think the US population is as bad as you say, or maybe my bar is lower for what even trying would look like here. We have a lot of capital to make our people productive. We're just spending it on chinese-manufactured lifestyle inflation and welfare clients instead of production scaling.

I don't know that we can compete with China on production, but we can do a hell of a lot more than we are doing. It's pretty simple too and the Asians have it down to a science: set up a powerful industrial planning bureaucracy with collaboration from private industry, staff it with development bureaucrats who read List, and start picking industries to build up. Details I don't know, that's for the bureaucrats to figure out. The hard part there isn't in the doing, but in getting the elite consensus that that's what needs to be done, and finding honest people to run such a thing without immediately turning it into a slush fund for transgender refugee activists or "based" shoot-yourself-to-own-the-libs stuff. And that consensus starts with getting the philosophy clear.

So that's why I'm not so concerned with the details and existing realities. I believe strongly in the will. I know we have the fundamentals. What matters is simply deciding that we want to be anabolic rather than catabolic.

Look no comment on t

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