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Comment by kwatsonafter | Hacker News Reader

I think it's so important we remember that period with Weiner and William Grey Walter and the rest. Ross Ashby super under appreciated. I wish, "software engineering" were more like what an advanced, "careerish" form of Cybernetics/Systems Thinking would have looked like.

That golden age of science is something we should behold in reverence and vigilance. It used to mean something. Society used to feel like it was guided by, "top men." We can't ultimately lose that to our own folly. Bill Deming spent a career keeping America from, "committing suicide." What will it take to take the magazine out of the proverbial (and non proverbial!) pistol?

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As much as I admire the golden age of science, I'm always skeptical of the idea that the past is something to revere. Society as a whole is much better than it ever has been by almost any metric: literacy, life expectancy, human rights, equality, technological advancement, and so on.

I agree we should not forget the accomplishments of our predecessors. Yet I also think it's a fallacy to think that means we should try to model our society on the past. Even if those "top men" were alive and guiding society, I doubt they would be able to solve our problems.

Maybe we are just stumbling forward, perpetuating processes introduced earlier? Walking on decaying roads the Romans built, after they left. Science has severe issues, and life expectancy is decreasing in the US.

To be fair, there is a lot of progress going on these days, but even if there was none - there would be all kinds of "growth" to be squeezed out of what the giants before us built. The internet can still bring a lot more of that "literacy" to the world.

But you can't deny the diminished optimism about technology, and the future in general. We can't get Fusion, we can't get quantum computing, we won't have a base on the moon, expensive physics experiments find nothing practial.

> I'm always skeptical of the idea that the past is something to revere. Society as a whole is much better than it ever has been

You could just as well argue that that's because of the golden age of science. The past is not something to be revered by definition, but there definitely are achievements that deserve our respect. And we might not be as good at keeping society in its current state as one would hope.

We may as well choose some metrics to disprove this notion that "society is better than it has ever been":

* Quantity of school shootings

* Respect for science, scientists, and scientific institutions

* Rates of mental illness

* Severity of natural disasters

I believe all of these things have gotten worse over time.

> Society as a whole is much better than it ever has been by almost any metric: literacy, life expectancy, human rights, equality, technological advancement, and so on.

Sure, if you ignore the imminent climate catastrophe, fueled by the same engines powering most of the other advancements.

And the increasing income inequality that is blowing major winds in the sails of fascism in Europe and the USA.

And the looming threat of nuclear war as tensions between NATO and Russia are at a 50 year high.

> Yet I also think it's a fallacy to think that means we should try to model our society on the past. Even if those "top men" were alive and guiding society, I doubt they would be able to solve our problems.

This part I do agree with 100%.

Would you say more about Deming? I am 2/3 the way through The New Economics based on recommendations on HN. I love the boldness of some of his ideas. But also, some of them are.. not good ideas. Like, if you were to try to follow his prescription wholesale - it would not work out well. I recognize that it's primary[-ish] source in dialogue with Drucker school (which also has some good in the bad! even though Deming hates on it), so it can be valuable as a radical idea even if not practical. But where can I read "Deming, the good parts"?

I still have to read the best biographies of Wiener, but I've read some of his books, and the sense I get is that he was doing all of this for the sake of humanity. "The Human Use of Human Beings" wasn't written for the sake of a department that was obsessed with publishing. "Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" wasn't written for an industry with adtech blinders on. I am looking forward to investigating Walter and Deming per your recommendations.

"Dark Hero of the Information Age" is excellent.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211053.Dark_Hero_of_the_...

> That golden age of science is something we should behold in reverence and vigilance.

Explain why in a way that non-nerds would care about.

Stuff like Ashby's ouvre is forgotten because it wasn't true. Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety? Not a law. Just a flowery proposition. The Good Regulator Theorem? Not a theorem, and not true. Just a Sokal-like appropriation of technical terms and mathematical argumentation style. I don't know where the presumable founding blog-post was, but there has been formed a subset of software engineers who, not being quite technical enough to see that this stuff is b.s., laud it as tragically overlooked. This comment is this phenomenon right on-the-nose

Sorry i disagree, WR Ashby was a great pioneer on many aspect, even if this is not law...

http://www.rossashby.info/ contain so much interesting content.

Also please, look at the (huge) work of Manfred Drack and David Pouvreau (thesis of 1000 pages, David Pouvreau is a french mathemacian : https://www.theses.fr/174821581) on LW Bertalanfy and the important role of Ashby.

Nah man, that's all been deconstructed because "All leadership is moral leadership."

Nowadays, strange people named Nobody and Anybody are deciding what's good for you.

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