14 Comments
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Al Dean's avatar

Genuine question, because the traffic frame is so sharp:

Does the binary hold inside an org with membership?

People in a firm have different goals, but they consented to being coordinated the day they joined.

So the firm needs less of the thing you framed as scarce. Membership banked a substitute up front.

Curious how you see it.

Dror Poleg's avatar

What is the objective of "an org with membership"?

Al Dean's avatar

Whatever it declares. That's the point.

The objective is set, not shared. Members don't agree to the goal.

Pavel's avatar

I wonder whether the deeper constraint is biology itself. Many of the challenges you describe—coordination, trust, legitimacy, consent—may ultimately reflect limits in human cognitive and social capacity rather than limits in intelligence. If so, a second question follows: what happens if our capacity to integrate and coordinate around new technologies eventually catches up with the technologies themselves? Is the current divergence temporary, or do you see it as a permanent feature of human civilization?

Dror Poleg's avatar

Technology enables us to coordinate on an increasing scale. Once we are connected through a network that creates feedback between us, we begin to operate as a single organism. This happens whether we choose to or not, and whether we are aware of it or not.

I wrote about this a few years ago:

https://www.drorpoleg.com/the-ant-that-went-to-mars/

David Kooi's avatar

Dror I wrote about this recently, you may like: https://uncagedminds.substack.com/p/to-what-extent-is-intelligence-the

Dror Poleg's avatar

Thanks, David.

David Z. Morris's avatar

banger

Bruce Raben's avatar

Excellent. I remember studying Pereto Optimality 50 years ago and thinking how cool it was but as you say humans especially American 🇺🇸 humans don’t cotten to being optimized. And we are now in an era to technofeudalism where the control and the returns flow to the overlords

Michael Christen's avatar

I agree. Intelligence was never the limiting factor inside most organizations. The real constraint is coordinated judgment under uncertainty: who notices the exception, who speaks up, and who gets ignored because the metric says everything is “fine.” AI will expose which companies actually know how to make good decisions together and which ones were just very good at maintaining process.

mariposa's avatar

was..... this written by chatgpt???

Dror Poleg's avatar

Was this? 👆🏻 (real writers use Claude, BTW)

mariposa's avatar

real writers write.

Zoe's avatar

this is giving pluribus and I'm not entirely against it