"We tend to forget that
throughout history many decision-makers were delighted to accept “double or
nothing” tactics if the odds looked sufficiently favorable." Kahn
 |
| Too constrained to maximize? |
Alexander
Kotov, the Chess grandmaster with eyebrows worth a queen sacrifice and probably
also a KGB fellow, was quite on the mark while describing a disposition to make
judgmental errors and go with a misplaced gut while being constrained with
overanalysed choices. The agency of 'constrained maximizers', not necessarily
always as rational as in the western conception, has its students in the arena
of conflicts beyond the chess board, rooted in its potential for both
serendipity as well as misfortune. A Machiavellian adage therefore rightly
suggests that true prudence consists in knowing how to distinguish the
character of troubles and in the choice to take the lesser evil. In Yogic
philosophy there is a word for that, Sadbuddhi, referring to developing the much
touted virtue of timely knowing the right thing to do - arguably resolving the
groupthink/polythink syndromes that beset most decision making units. This
writing is inclined to touch upon political culture and the decision making
therein, so we'll follow the lens of intra-species aggression. And although
coalationary intra-species aggression spans our non-relatives too, from lions
and wolves to even numerous ant species among others, we'll stick to apes likes
us.
The
term "political culture" itself is recent, though the practices have
existed throughout. Like humans, chimpanzees too have a coalationary psychology
— that is an inclination to form closely structured groups/ecosystems with
strategic hostility toward outgroups, and sometimes even outliers. Other than
cooperation, reciprocity and role division - the division of meat and other
resources among chimps follows a process of sharing in which power, sex, and
violence tend to interact in rather human ways. So different groups of chimps
in their territories end up having very different behaviours and social
customs, developing different kind of tools and manifesting different
communication mechanisms thusly. Reductionism it is, but a chimp order rises
with its own crude geopolitics.
The
human society too, going by Dunbar's logic, functions in sets of humans. The
successful sets have and attract more members (Roman allies rebelled in 80s BC
not for secession but for overt Roman citizenship), while losing few to others.
This is compounded by the networked nature of an information society. Yet these
sets and their members, like those of chimps, never function outside the laws
of direct or indirect reciprocity towards each other i.e. I'll help you but
when we meet again then you help me. This basic evolutionary dynamics makes
Proportionality perhaps the only natural law of war, and other conflicts
between sets.
Basis
'Proportionality', the nuclear MAD doctrines would appear as optimized
bluffing, for all WMD may be CBRN weapons but not all CBRN weapons are WMD, but
that discussion is for another day. As it is, all such interpretations, by
nature of self-interest, are biased and susceptible to 'syndromes of the self'
i.e. self-deception and self-centeredness. Coming back, it is safe to say that
the set-membership nature of society causes, especially in the conditions of
present degree of connectedness, an evolving instance of political boundary
setting, from physical boundary to the ideological ones shaping member identities.
 |
| Basic Structural Coupling |
It is
well known, that for a system to stay "alive" it must preserve its
identity. Though since the gap between perception and reality is also a
socio-psychological threat surface, the system must keep maneuvering the
environment around it and be fluid enough to evolve along. In the age when goal
setting of AIs is termed not an engineering but a political problem, the
notions of 'structural coupling' between systems and environment therefore
apply equally to political cultures as well. An advice from John Boyd "the
maneuverist" suggests decision makers to approach people, ideas, and
machines — in that order. However the how-to of such abstractions remains
subject to systemic pressures and some degrees of operational and
organisational elusiveness, often threatening a conceptually devolving set.
Pursuing a Systemic Sadbuddhi thus becomes a matter of acting on and perceiving reality without letting our beliefs be colored by our desires (and fears), and as Robert Jervis has recommended, making our 'Assumptions, Beliefs, and Predictions' explicit and inquisitory, for it underlines that the predictions are always resting on some assumptions. Taking human society as a whole, the present chimp world order reflects the inertia of the predominant last great war positions. As the economic center-of-gravity shifts from Atlantic to the Pacific and technology gives chimps men equalizing effects over adversaries, how the decision makers of resource constrained competing sets battle it out remains to be seen. One thing is evident though that usually he who would pay the piper, historically speaking, will call the tune.
__