Georgy Dalidovich. Norbert Wiener: lessons in optimism

(Continued. See the article " Norbert Wiener: The First Cyber ​​Prophet .")

The best we can hope for when speaking about the role of progress in a universe generally heading towards its destruction is that the spectacle of our aspirations for progress in the face of oppressive necessity may have the sense of the cleansing horror of a Greek tragedy.

“No defeat can deprive us of the success that lies in the fact that for a certain time we have been in this world, which seems to have nothing to do with us.” Awareness requires real courage. The world does not lose its colors if you look at it without rose-colored glasses. On the contrary, they become piercingly bright and clean. "We are, in a very real sense, shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet . " The word “helmsman,” which gave its name to cybernetics, takes on a new meaning. If it is impossible to fight the current, then you need to make it work for you, choosing a course that brings you closer to your goal.

Cybernetics and society

For Wiener, human society is an environment in which a variety of modes of communication are possible. Since members of the human community pursue their individual and group goals, often contradictory, attempts arise by various individuals and groups to control the social structure, including the mechanisms of distribution. Society, like any cybernetic system, strives for a balanced state. This process is called homeostasis and involves bringing into line the real capabilities and needs of all parties involved. In the formation of homeostasis, the most important role is played by feedback connections, which are impossible without a developed communication infrastructure, starting from the formation of a communication language that adequately reflects the whole variety of phenomena, and ending with technical means. That is why Wiener postulates the following: “The boundaries of human society extend to those limits within which effective transmission of information is possible.” . And, further: “The mechanisms of the functioning of society can only be understood through the study of the principles of information transmission, while in the future messages or commands from person to machine, from machine to person, and, finally, from machine to machine will become increasingly important , ” which is especially important in “the current age - the age of communication and control.” Wiener sees the social task of cybernetics as “to develop a language and technology that will allow us to actually solve the problem of communication and control in a general form, as well as to identify a range of ideas and techniques that allow us to classify their particular manifestations within individual concepts . ”

Wiener's views on the ownership of information would please modern hackers: "The purpose of information in typical American society is to become an object of purchase and sale . " At the same time, any attempts to limit the exchange of information by creating financial, government or legal obstacles are doomed to failure in the long term, since they hinder the development of that part of the community that is most committed to them.

“The integrity and unity of information channels is extremely important for the functioning of society, and it is compromised by the cost and complexity of communications. From a cybernetic point of view, law enforcement and legal authorities of the state make too much “noise”, representing the interests of various groups and segments of society. Information has no owner ", as evidenced by the difficulties of complying with copyright laws. Moreover, information quickly loses its value in a rapidly changing world."

Indeed, intellectual property cannot be included in the usual system of legislation, historically developed in application to “material” property. The fundamental difference is that infringement of intellectual property does not deprive its owner of the original right to own it. Simply put, intellectual property cannot be taken away. However, Wiener’s views did not prevent him from receiving fees for the publication and republication of his works, which were a significant addition to the professor’s salary... But this is only one of the particular examples of “personal” homeostasis or adaptation to environmental conditions, in this case in its social manifestation.

However, despite the dominance of the general tendency towards stability, in modern types of society, homeostasis, according to Wiener, is unattainable: “There are very few truly homeostatic processes in the life of the state . ” At a certain period of development, mechanisms of destabilization, which are described by game theory, inevitably turn on. Specifically, a situation in which the maximum winnings are received by the player who, having chosen a good moment, decides to violate the rules of the game established by society. “There is no homeostasis here. We must go through the cycles of boom and bust in business life, successive changes of dictatorship and revolution, wars in which everyone loses and which are so characteristic of modern times ,” wrote in 1948.

How I would like the professor to be wrong. But what is happening says otherwise. Social life is increasingly taking on the characteristics of a game in which meaning is being lost. And the game obeys its own laws: “It is rare to find a large number of completely reasonable and unprincipled people playing together. Where scammers gather, there are always fools; and if there are a sufficient number of fools, they represent a more profitable object of exploitation for scammers. Psychology of a fool has become an issue worthy of serious attention from scammers . "

Criticizing and debunking the myth about the possibility of universal prosperity in the conditions of free enterprise, Wiener leaves no hope for the socialist structure of society: “The constant homeostasis of society cannot be achieved under the assumption of the logically rigid completeness of Marxism, just as it cannot be achieved in the case of a similar assumption applied to to the theory of free enterprise and motivation through profit. What is important here is not the choice of the mechanism for the development of society, but precisely the fact that it is considered as something completed, the specific form is no longer important . " In general, the professor did not like fanaticism in any of its manifestations, considering any completed thought to be dead, that is, containing too much entropy. “Variety and possibility are inherent in human perception and are the keys to understanding the most significant human achievements and achievements. Variety and possibility form the very nature of the human body.” .

This is why “a human community is a much more productive structure than, for example, a community of ants; this is why a person, if forced to perform the same actions over and over again, can be neither a good ant nor a good person. "Those who try to organize us to constantly perform individual functions within the rigid confines of personal limitations doom humanity to retarded development. They thereby deprive man of the ability to adapt, limiting the acceptable range of methods and significantly reducing the chances of the long-term existence of such a society . "

This applies to any dictatorship: “It does not matter whether the paramilitary group to which a person associates himself follows the precepts of Ignatius of Loyola or Lenin, if his main priority is belonging to the side that considers itself absolutely right, and not personal freedom and , even, the right to be naive . " Wiener understands perfectly well that “power and the desire for power are a sad reality that can take different forms ,” but often those who allow the dictatorship to establish themselves are also responsible for what is happening, along with the dictator, since “modern man, especially the modern American, is too knows well “how” to do something (“know-how”), but knows almost nothing about what needs to be done (“know-what”). This is due to the fact that “the faith with which we perceive commands from the outside , is not faith; and a society that is based on such a pseudo-faith is certainly doomed to destroy itself due to the paralysis caused by the inability to develop science normally." .

It is obvious that the myopic professor, who could not distinguish the faces of those around him and confused people in close proximity, saw very clearly the historical perspective of not only America, but also the Soviet Union. Part of the forecast has already been fulfilled with frightening accuracy.

It is striking that Wiener himself was quite skeptical about the possibility of cybernetic prediction of social processes: “One of the main responsibilities of a mathematician acting as an adviser is to warn against too high expectations . ” He further explains: “All the great successes of the exact sciences are associated with such areas where the phenomenon is separated quite sharply from the observer... In the social sciences, the connection between the observed phenomenon and the observer is very difficult to minimize. Here, usually, the observer has a significant influence on the phenomenon , attracting his attention. With all due respect to the intelligence, skill and integrity of the intentions [...] of anthropologists, I cannot believe that any community they have studied will remain the same after this study. More than one missionary, reducing primitive languages ​​to written form , enshrined as the eternal laws of such languages ​​the fruits of his own misunderstanding. There is much in the social structure of any people that is dissipated and distorted as soon as someone begins to make inquiries about it... In other words, in the social sciences we are dealing with short statistical series and cannot be sure that a significant part of what we observe is not created by ourselves.Studying the stock market will most likely change its condition. We are too well attuned to the objects of our research to be good probes... We cannot afford to neglect the social sciences, but we must not build exaggerated hopes on their possibilities." . In other words, a forecast in the social field is possible, but the complexity of calculating the parameters of a system with many degrees of freedom and feedback will lead to the fact that even with the current level of computing facilities, a forecast for a week will require the collection of information and calculations that can be completed in a month. .

But still, the achievement of homeostasis in social development at a stage of a still unknown social formation quite distant from us is inevitable, whether humanity strives for it, or, on the contrary, tries to avoid it. The fact is that the establishment of homeostasis or complete balance and rest means the end of development and the inevitable subsequent decline. At this stage, the following logical question arises: “Do we have the courage to face the inevitable decline of our civilization, just as we have the courage to face our personal inevitable fate?” But this is still a very distant prospect. Until now, situations approaching homeostasis and described by historians as flourishing and, at the same time, “stagnation” in the development of one or another empire ended in new bursts of instability (we had to experience the last example quite recently). The similarity of the main conclusions obtained by the cybernetic theory of society and the theory of “passionarity” by L.N. Gumilyov, based on completely different premises, is striking. Wiener calls not to overestimate the importance of technical and scientific progress, which “opens up not only new opportunities, but also new limitations.” Moreover, “The more we get from the world, the less is left, and in the long run we will have to pay our debts at a time when it is least convenient for our survival . ”

Exploring the analogies between various biological and social structures, Wiener emphasizes the unique feature of human society, which lies in the vital importance of the process of mutual learning of members through social feedbacks that permeate its structure, and in the possibility of conscious choice of the main direction of development. Ignoring such features leads to “fascist confidence in the applicability of the large anthill model, which stems from a deep misunderstanding of the nature of both humans and ants. The anthill as a system has an ineffective metabolism due to limiting the development of the nervous system of an individual ant, due to the loss of individual memory and accumulated information during numerous metamorphoses. A person, on the contrary, spends a lot of time on the learning process, which increases the individual value of each person . "

Cognition and self-learning, or How we differ from ants

Wiener clearly and unambiguously defines the main feature of an “intelligent” cybernetic system, be it a person, a developed animal or a machine. This feature is the ability to self-learn, which consists not simply in the accumulation of information about the environment, but in the development of behavior algorithms in dynamically changing conditions. Since changes in environmental conditions can be caused by the actions of the learner, we can talk about learning systems of the first, second and higher orders, depending on how possible it is to predict the consequences of one’s own actions. This is especially important for humans in an industrial society, since "we have changed our environment to such an extent that we must change ourselves in order to survive . " Thus, the development of intelligence (human or machine) through self-learning is a necessary condition for survival.

Moreover, since progress and, accordingly, the technical power of man significantly outstrips the capabilities of biological evolution, the transfer of part of the functions of management and control to a machine becomes inevitable. Moreover, such a “machine created for decision-making will literally be “puzzled” if it does not have the ability to learn . ” But if some of the functions previously characteristic exclusively of man must inevitably be transferred to a machine, then the man himself will have to become a self-improving second-order system, that is, be able to predict the consequences of such a transfer of control. “Woe to anyone who allows a machine to make decisions for him, unless this has been preceded by a study of the principles of its operation and it has been established that their use is acceptable to us . ” The role of humans in decision-making technology is not decreasing, but, on the contrary, is increasing qualitatively. The very definition of life in the information environment takes on specific cybernetic contours: “I repeat, to live effectively means to be exposed to a constant flow of influence from the outside world and to have an active influence on the world around us, in which we are only an intermediate stage . Figuratively speaking, to be alive in the world means to take part in the ongoing process of development of knowledge and its unhindered constant exchange."

What is the purpose of this game? (Not to be confused with meaning ). It literally means “running ahead of the locomotive.” Here it is necessary to remember the connection between information and entropy. A steam locomotive is a movement of progress and civilization, requiring more and more energy resources, burned in the furnace and increasing entropy in its desire to reach the state of an equilibrium “warm swamp”, and providing short-term (while the fire is burning) conveniences and advantages. It is impossible to stop the locomotive. It can stop on its own when there is nothing to throw into the firebox, but this is tantamount to death. You yourself may not participate in the process if you don’t like it, but there will always be many applicants for your place to warm yourself by the firebox. Therefore, the lot of the majority of intelligent, active and unselfish creatures is literally to run ahead of our locomotive, so that at the nearest stop, instead of firewood, prepare a bunker with coal, and then a tank of oil, and then a cart with uranium, then a can of deuterium. .. What awaits at the next stop? On this occasion, Wiener writes: “We live only thanks to inventions, and not only those that have already been made, but, to a greater extent, thanks to our hope for new, not yet made inventions in the future . ”

But that's all about the goal for now. We all participate in the movement towards it, whether we want it or not, since this constantly elusive goal is established not even by society, but by the second law of thermodynamics. What's the point ? Don't expect so much from this article! In the end, this meaning can be different for everyone. Wiener knew his meaning, and this knowledge helped him overcome depression. I assume that such meaning is present in the life of every person, so I want to leave a few hints for you that may help in your search. Here they are.

Information does not arise and is not created. It is only transmitted (usually with distortions). Who then is the primary source of information? What is important is not who or what this source is, but that the primary source of adequate information contains all the answers to all questions, even unasked ones. Access to them is given to those who are aware of their instrumental role and responsibility for its implementation, subject to the readiness of society as a whole. For others, this information remains hidden in noise-like signals with high redundancy. Academician Kurchatov’s favorite phrase comes to mind: “the rustle of nuts.” Coincidence again? Or did he know too? Want to find meaning? - Listen to the noise...

The article contains quotes from the works of Norbert Wiener:

"Cybernetics" (according to the publication - M.: Soviet Radio, 1968, preface by G.N. Povarov).
"Ex-Prodigy, My Childhood and Youth" ("Бывший вундеркинд").
“I am a Mathematician” (“I am a mathematician”); translation - M.: Nauka, 1964.
"God & Golem, Inc." (“AO God and Golem”); translation: "The Creator and the Robot." - M.: Progress 1966.
"The Human Use of Human Beings" ; translation: "Cybernetics and society". - M.: IL, 1958.
"The Tempter" ("Искуситель").

The author expresses special gratitude to Virginia Tech. Professor Antonio A. Trani ; Jenny O'Neil and especially Deborah G. Douglas of the MIT Museum, as well as RLE and MIT Historical Collections , JAN Lee , VPI&SU Annals of the History of Computing, and Moore School of Electrical Engineering for providing photographs and materials.