Seeing Like a State: Difference between revisions
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Any government must be able to “read” and thus “get a handle on” — hence, “make [[legible]]” — and so ''administrate'' the vast sprawling ''detail'' and myriad of ''interconnections'' between its citizens, lands and resources. It does this by, in its “statey” way, [[Narrative|narratising]] a bafflingly [[complex system]] into a thin, idealistic model: it assigns its citizens permanent identities (in the middle ages, literally, by giving them surnames: now, identity cards and the, er, chips that are shortly to be implanted in our foreheads); it decrees standard weights and measures for all times and places (we may have proceeded by local customs and conventions;<ref>It is said Chinese farmers gauged distance by “the time it takes to boil rice”, which provides a different, and more practical means of comprehending how far away you are</ref> commissions cadastral surveys of the land so it can collect taxes; it records land holdings, registers births, deaths and marriages, imposes conventions of language and legal discourse designs cities and transport networks: in effect, to create a standard grid that could be measured, monitored and understood from the bird’s eye view of city hall. A population that legible is ''manipulable''. | Any government must be able to “read” and thus “get a handle on” — hence, “make [[legible]]” — and so ''administrate'' the vast sprawling ''detail'' and myriad of ''interconnections'' between its citizens, lands and resources. It does this by, in its “statey” way, [[Narrative|narratising]] a bafflingly [[complex system]] into a thin, idealistic model: it assigns its citizens permanent identities (in the middle ages, literally, by giving them surnames: now, identity cards and the, er, chips that are shortly to be implanted in our foreheads); it decrees standard weights and measures for all times and places (we may have proceeded by local customs and conventions;<ref>It is said Chinese farmers gauged distance by “the time it takes to boil rice”, which provides a different, and more practical means of comprehending how far away you are</ref> commissions cadastral surveys of the land so it can collect taxes; it records land holdings, registers births, deaths and marriages, imposes conventions of language and legal discourse designs cities and transport networks: in effect, to create a standard grid that could be measured, monitored and understood from the bird’s eye view of city hall. A population that legible is ''manipulable''. | ||
This cost of this legibility is ''abridgement'': it represents only the slice of society that interests the administrator, which would be harmless enough those measures did not in turn impact how citizens interact with each other and their environment. But, as we know they do. Citizens account for their income to optimise their tax position. When adminstrators levied a window tax — reasoning that the number of windows is proportionate to the size of a building, and therefore a fair [[proxy]] — citizens redesign houses to have as few windows as possible, notwithstanding adverse consequences to the general health of the population. Modern society is shot through with similar arbitrary rules wherever government interacts with its citizenry. Through their combined effect society comes to be ''remade'' to suit the administrator, but not always in ways the administrator might have had in mind. | This cost of this legibility is ''abridgement'': it represents only the slice of society that interests the administrator, which would be harmless enough those measures did not in turn impact how citizens interact with each other and their environment. But, as we know they do. Citizens account for their income to optimise their tax position. When adminstrators levied a window tax — reasoning that the number of windows is proportionate to the size of a building, and therefore a fair [[proxy]] — citizens redesign houses to have as few windows as possible, notwithstanding adverse consequences to the general health of the population. Modern society is shot through with similar arbitrary rules wherever government interacts with its citizenry. Through their combined effect society comes to be ''remade'' to suit the administrator, but not always in ways the administrator might have had in mind. Society is the archetypal system: arbitrarily diverting its natural stocks and flows only creates other feedback loops. | ||
Scott is persuasive that we lose something critical when we simplify in our yen for clear description, which state officials cannot but do. Trying to covert local customs — “a living, negotiated tissue of practices which are continually being adapted to new ecological and social circumstances — including, of course, power relations” — to unalterable laws loses the subtlety and scope for micro-adjustments that these customs, if left to themselves, continually experience. | Scott is persuasive that we lose something critical when we simplify in our yen for clear description, which state officials cannot but do. Trying to covert local customs — “a living, negotiated tissue of practices which are continually being adapted to new ecological and social circumstances — including, of course, power relations” — to unalterable laws loses the subtlety and scope for micro-adjustments that these customs, if left to themselves, continually experience. | ||
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[[Diversity]] ought, you’d think, to be ''hard to pin down'', its manifestations being naturally — well — ''diverse''. Diversity is the very benefit that accrues from the range of our differences; the interplay of our unique perspectives. | [[Diversity]] ought, you’d think, to be ''hard to pin down'', its manifestations being naturally — well — ''diverse''. Diversity is the very benefit that accrues from the range of our differences; the interplay of our unique perspectives. | ||
But, to get a handle it, organisations must make [[diversity]] ''[[legible]]''. They do this by defining it in a strikingly limited and homogenous way. They gather ''data'' from their staff on that limited metric — to make it more [[legible]], so that the organisation can propagate statistics about its “improving” [[diversity]]. Thus, “[[diversity]]” as the administration knows it is a formalised, homogenised, parameterised and regularised ''[[proxy]]'' of [[diversity]], and no attention is paid to how this | But, to get a handle it, organisations must make [[diversity]] ''[[legible]]''. They do this by defining it in a strikingly limited and homogenous way. They gather ''data'' from their staff on that limited metric — to make it more [[legible]], so that the organisation can propagate statistics about its “improving” [[diversity]]. Thus, “[[diversity]]” as the administration knows it is a formalised, homogenised, parameterised and regularised ''[[proxy]]'' of [[diversity]], and no attention is paid to how this [[proxy]] [[diversity]] affects the behaviour of people in the organisation, for good or ill. | ||
In any case, the point is clear: if imposed proxies can prompt the wealthy to restructure their tax affairs and French peasants to fill in their windows, so can it prompt those in a commercial organisation to behave in similarly counterproductive ways. There is an argument that whole segments of the infrastructure have developed for precisely that reason. [[Legal]] included. | |||
===An authoritarian state and prostrate civil society=== | ===An authoritarian state and prostrate civil society=== | ||
Scott’s last two criteria are opposite sides of the same coin: an authoritarian state that is able | Scott’s last two criteria are opposite sides of the same coin: an authoritarian state that is able to coerce the society it manages to bring its [[high modernist]] ideals to bear, and a subjugated population that cannot resist it. | ||
Scott was writing in 1998, a few years after the collapse of communism | Scott was writing in 1998, a few years after the collapse of communism, when [[This time it’s different|Francis Fukuyama]] and others were declaring the end of history, all battles won and so forth, so was a little shoe-shuffly about this. He needn’t have been. Not only have we seen the return of authoritarian governments and prostrate populations — for posterity, I write from the ninth month of a government-mandated nationwide lockdown — but both the authoritarian disposition amongst the executive class and the supine one amongst the general population have ''always'' been a feature of the corporate sector. | ||
Every “meaningful”<ref>Meaningful to them, not to you.</ref> aspect of your performance and your role is, at some level, reduced to a parameterised data point: ID, location, salary, rank, position, performance, reporting line, holiday entitlement, sick-leave, [[service catalog]], objectives. All of that work you do: the subtle analysis, the advocacy, the creative solutions — all is, in the eyes of the executive, reduced to a grade and a number. As for the [[high modernist]] ideal, well, this entire site is a paean to that, but “strategy” as we mutely receive it, seems entirely predicated on a [[reductionist]] ideology that we can solve all conundrums in our landscape and then proceed sedately and without the need to be troubled by turbulent [[subject matter expert]]s thereafter. | Every “meaningful”<ref>Meaningful to them, not to you.</ref> aspect of your performance and your role is, at some level, reduced to a parameterised data point: ID, location, salary, rank, position, performance, reporting line, holiday entitlement, sick-leave, [[service catalog]], objectives. All of that work you do: the subtle analysis, the advocacy, the creative solutions — all is, in the eyes of the executive, reduced to a ''grade'', a ''rank'' and a ''number''. | ||
As for the [[high modernist]] ideal, well, this entire site is a paean to that, but “strategy” as we mutely receive it, seems entirely predicated on a [[reductionist]] ideology that we can solve all conundrums in our landscape and then proceed sedately and without the need to be troubled by turbulent [[subject matter expert]]s thereafter. | |||
Given our recent history you would think our overlords ought to know better than that. | Given our recent history you would think our overlords ought to know better than that. | ||
===[[Metis]]=== | ===[[Metis]]=== | ||
Speaking of [[subject matter expert]]s brings us nicely to Scott’s | Speaking of [[subject matter expert]]s brings us nicely to Scott’s closing, where he ruminates on the concept, missing from high modernist canon, of ''[[metis]]''. This is hard to describe — folk wisdom, knowhow, Odyssean cunning — but in the corporate world it struck me as most resembling ''[[subject matter expert|expertise]]''. Ingenuity, [[Problem solving|problem-solving]], lateral thinking; smarts for figuring out what to do on the fly if you are in a jam. This is something that the [[high modernist]] programme seeks to abolish — the theory being that [[Subject matter expert|loose cannon employees]] wandering around making snap decisions is potentially catastrophic, and jams of this sort can and should be avoided by appropriate planning and the right [[algorithm]]: thus, [[subject matter expert]]s aren’t needed. | ||
There are two interesting observations here. The first is that [[metis]] is much more ''efficient''. You could — if you accept the reductionist stance — solve any problem with the right calculations, but the necessary data and processing power would be huge | There are two interesting observations here. The first is that [[metis]] is much more ''efficient'' than an algo, even if you can find one to work. You could — if you accept the [[reductionist]] stance — solve any problem with the right calculations, but the necessary data and processing power would be ''huge''. Practical knowledge, on the other hand — [[metis]] — is “as economical and accurate as it needs to be, no more and no less, for addressing the problem at hand.” | ||
This is the difference, says Scott, between Red Adair<ref>Younger readers may not remember this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair legend of the fire-fighting community]. </ref> and an articled clerk. There are some skills you cannot acquire except through experience | This is the difference, says Scott, between Red Adair<ref>Younger readers may not remember this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Adair legend of the fire-fighting community]. </ref> and an articled clerk. There are some skills you cannot acquire except through experience: learning to sail, ride a bike, or play a musical instrument or ''negotiate a commercial contract''. You could spend as much time as you like with textbooks, but you will never master that kind of skill until you have done enough practical rehearsal. This is where the [[meatware]] knocks the [[chatbot]]s into a cocked hat, and always will. | ||
Which brings us to the last connection: | Which brings us to the last connection: to [[complexity theory]], [[systems analysis]] and [[normal accident]]s theory. And, for that matter, ''superforecasters''. All of these come to the same conclusion: if you are dealing with [[complex systems]], especially [[tightly-coupled]] ones with [[non-linear]] interactions, you ''cannot'' solve these with [[algorithm]]s, no matter how much data and no matter how sophisticated is your conceptual scheme. The ''only'' way to manage these risks is with experts on the ground, whom you empower to exercise judgment and make provisional decisions, which they can adjust as a situation unfolds. That is, with their ''[[metis]]''. If with your [[high-modernist]] schema you have ''eliminated'' [[metis]] from your operation, you may carry on in times of peace and equability, but come the revolution, you are ''stuffed''. | ||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*{{br|Thinking in Systems}} — {{author|Donnella H. Meadows}} | |||
*{{br|Models.Behaving.Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality can be a Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life}} | *{{br|Models.Behaving.Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality can be a Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life}} | ||
*{{br|Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies}} | *{{br|Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies}} | ||
*[[Diversity]] | *[[Diversity]] | ||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||