The complexity of this is still linear O(n) because your messages grow linearly relative to the size of your network.
In terms of big O complexity you are correct that it is linear growth. However, the other solution has constant messaging complexity. So there was still an improvement in complexity.
Although, I should also clarify that we were not exactly discussing big O complexity to begin with, and the use of the word “complexity” was a bit more colloquial.
The complexity of offloading the state management from the individual node to a controller node is not simple in the general case.
This is true. I should have been more clear about this. Most likely with more complex and less standardized actors there will need to be periodic re-synchronization with the controller since the controller will only be estimating the state of the workers based on memory (which will become more inaccurate over time).
On a per job basis, there is still more or less the constant overhead instead of linear overhead. It is just that overall for the organization there will be linear overhead. However, in the purely horizontal case, the organization overall will have a quadratic overhead (since the total number of links is O(n^2))
Hierarchical organization here only reduces the difficulty of processing by reducing the amount of data overhead. Reducing complexity here comes through standardization of nodes in the system not through hierarchical organization.
On the contrary, I think it is the other way around. Standardized nodes need to share less information to each other because the nodes can make more assumptions about other nodes. This reduces data overhead. However, the architecture of the network itself determines the node complexity.
Ultimately this is why horizontal job runners based on messaging middle-ware patterns (0mq, rabbitmq, Kafka) still exist and are used in highly complex environments.
I cannot comment on this, as my knowledge of computer science comes largely from random electives I took for fun.
You cannot ensure fungible nodes for humans
This is a given, however, nowhere in my example was the internal nature of the nodes themselves assumed to be uniform. The messaging schemes I have described, for instance, could be used with actual humans, with some modifications, namely that some of the “messages” would likely be more like “meetings”, and the workers would have to periodically meet with the project planner and discuss things.
I cannot program humans
I am not talking about programming humans, but the schemes they use to coordinate with each other. Those are 2 entirely different things.
To apply system design to humans a system has conceive at minimum of the dimensions of power and faith to be durable against:
Democratic centralist systems always stress accountability for people in powerful positions. This is the reason why ML states often get slandered as being “corrupt”, because in ML countries, such corruption is constantly being exposed by design whereas in capitalist countries, corruption is simply the norm and goes unnoticed.
A horizontal system could also harm you. The free market is a relatively horizontal system, and it keeps harming us. The very decentralized nature of the free market makes it so that you often have no recourse or no one to hold accountable when things go wrong, because the actions of the entire group/ dynamic of the system is the problem.
This is a level of complexity that is much harder than designing a job runner with specific properties for your use-case.
The example of the job-runner is not meant to be one that you can build a society on. It is simply the comparison of some of the simplest possible schemes for communication for a project. It exists to illustrate the complexity reduction that can be achieved with a hierarchical design for a specific problem class.
It’s the equivalent of physics research in 2025 using the Bohr model.
But this is not research, this is simply an internet forum. I appreciate the things you are telling me, but I did not come here knowing these things. I am also not saying that the communications overhead problem is a problem that needs to be solved on the theoretical level.
Building durable cybernetic systems like Project Cybersyn or OGAS are the pathways to ensuring a systemic socialism when these systems are open, transparent to average citizens and developed in partnership with their needs.
Although, I should also clarify that we were not exactly discussing big O complexity to begin with, and the use of the word “complexity” was a bit more colloquial.
Which is why my original post offered the term efficiency that OP rejected and insisted on using complexity.
I am not talking about programming humans, but the schemes they use to coordinate with each other. Those are 2 entirely different things.
These are not “simply” coordination schemes since they are created entirely to administer the distribution of resources in the real world. They are social meta programming. You are arguing beyond aspects of coordination/communication you are arguing about real world stakes.
This is a given, however, nowhere in my example was the internal nature of the nodes themselves assumed to be uniform. The messaging schemes I have described, for instance, could be used with actual humans, with some modifications, namely that some of the “messages” would likely be more like “meetings”, and the workers would have to periodically meet with the project planner and discuss things.
Again you are abstracting away the purpose of such a system in order to prove its specifications in a vacuum rather than using the actual intent. What are the meetings about? Production? Great we’re back at node fungibility due to distribution of labor and individual human ability.
Democratic centralist systems always stress accountability for people in powerful positions. This is the reason why ML states often get slandered as being “corrupt”, because in ML countries, such corruption is constantly being exposed by design whereas in capitalist countries, corruption is simply the norm and goes unnoticed.
Sure. I agree. However:
Your argument here is based on a hypothetical demcen system full of good faith actors.
The reason that in capitalist countries corruption becomes legalized and normalized is because “corruption” in the general case boils down to perception. We’re back at interpreting good faith vs bad faith. Capitalist propaganda works overtime to manage the perception of the legalized corruption in capitalist countries to at best normal expressions of rights and at worst good faith mistakes.
A horizontal system could also harm you. The free market is a relatively horizontal system, and it keeps harming us. The very decentralized nature of the free market makes it so that you often have no recourse or no one to hold accountable when things go wrong, because the actions of the entire group/ dynamic of the system is the problem.
It’s entirely arguable if the market is in practice horizontal or hierarchical. Regardless my arguments here aren’t about proving horrizontalism as “better than”, it’s about the complex trade offs happen socially when choosing these broad structural archetypes to organize around. I never said horrizontal systems cannot be harmful. My point is that the difficulty of horizontal systems can be a form protection.
But this is not research, this is simply an internet forum. I appreciate the things you are telling me, but I did not come here knowing these things. I am also not saying that the communications overhead problem is a problem that needs to be solved on the theoretical level.
My point is based on OPs original submission and my understanding that your position was a defense of it. OP submitted OP’s own essay from OP’s own substack with a pro-heirarchy case. I criticized the essay as generally lacking depth on the subject. OP got mad at me and started berating me based on OP’s socialist bona fides.
I could have been gentler with my criticism because I did not understand that OP posted OP’s own substack because the names don’t match. I understand that not everybody knows these things, my line of criticism while admittedly harsh and teetering on unproductive, is honestly meant to raise the conversation from simplistic defenses of hierarchy using typical bromides of the immortal science to a more holistic evaluation of these systems and their implementation and conception of socialism.
Your argument here is based on a hypothetical demcen system full of good faith actors.
Part of the point of the DemCen system is to increase the prevalence of good-faith actors and decrease the prevalence of bad faith ones. It is not as if MLs have historically just ignored education of the youth or the cultivation of good faith actors.
Regardless my arguments here aren’t about proving horizontalism as “better than”
Part of the point of the DemCen system is to increase the prevalence of good-faith actors and decrease the prevalence of bad faith ones. It is not as if MLs have historically just ignored education of the youth or the cultivation of good faith actors.
This doesn’t practically explain the how. You’re talking about building patronage networks. That effectively means that those networks themselves can be evaluated as good or bad faith. This just moves the question to another area of the political structure typical of DemCen systems.
Then what are we even arguing about?
When reading theory I don’t see us as being on “teams”. What’s the purpose of writing this stuff if we’re evaluating this solely through the lens of “teams”? At that point any article might as well say “Right Marxist Leninism is the best”. It’s a bad argument it could be better. I’m not even settled on what the “ultimate system” here is, I don’t think there is one, especially not as simple as just do “hierarchy”. If we want to converse about this stuff in good faith we should generally have a complex conversation about it in reality, that often means there’s a lot of grey areas and not a lot of practically right answers if we’re being honest with ourselves.
Like I’ve said elsewhere in this thread: CPC’s done a really good job, but they’re not in the business of exporting socialist thought. I linked this
The CPC’s own words are:
Second, while continuing to learn from and absorb ideas from other countries, we have made our own explorations and innovations to avoid blindly copying the system or democratic model of any other country
While leading the people through the periods of revolution, construction, and reform, the CPC always held fast to the belief that no two political systems in the world are the same and that no universal political model exists.
This is a very adult way of speaking about socialism compared to other sets of thinkers who argue implicitly about universal contexts, and universalize ML concepts without explaining their application to their context or even explaining what their context is. If you believe in whatever theory and whatever individual practices, the onus is on you to explain why those practices work in the contexts you’re referring to. OP has not done this vis-a-vis hierarchy. They have created a very abstract rationale.
In terms of big O complexity you are correct that it is linear growth. However, the other solution has constant messaging complexity. So there was still an improvement in complexity.
Although, I should also clarify that we were not exactly discussing big O complexity to begin with, and the use of the word “complexity” was a bit more colloquial.
This is true. I should have been more clear about this. Most likely with more complex and less standardized actors there will need to be periodic re-synchronization with the controller since the controller will only be estimating the state of the workers based on memory (which will become more inaccurate over time).
On a per job basis, there is still more or less the constant overhead instead of linear overhead. It is just that overall for the organization there will be linear overhead. However, in the purely horizontal case, the organization overall will have a quadratic overhead (since the total number of links is O(n^2))
On the contrary, I think it is the other way around. Standardized nodes need to share less information to each other because the nodes can make more assumptions about other nodes. This reduces data overhead. However, the architecture of the network itself determines the node complexity.
I cannot comment on this, as my knowledge of computer science comes largely from random electives I took for fun.
This is a given, however, nowhere in my example was the internal nature of the nodes themselves assumed to be uniform. The messaging schemes I have described, for instance, could be used with actual humans, with some modifications, namely that some of the “messages” would likely be more like “meetings”, and the workers would have to periodically meet with the project planner and discuss things.
I am not talking about programming humans, but the schemes they use to coordinate with each other. Those are 2 entirely different things.
The example of the job-runner is not meant to be one that you can build a society on. It is simply the comparison of some of the simplest possible schemes for communication for a project. It exists to illustrate the complexity reduction that can be achieved with a hierarchical design for a specific problem class.
But this is not research, this is simply an internet forum. I appreciate the things you are telling me, but I did not come here knowing these things. I am also not saying that the communications overhead problem is a problem that needs to be solved on the theoretical level.
I doubt you will find many MLs opposed to this.
Which is why my original post offered the term efficiency that OP rejected and insisted on using complexity.
These are not “simply” coordination schemes since they are created entirely to administer the distribution of resources in the real world. They are social meta programming. You are arguing beyond aspects of coordination/communication you are arguing about real world stakes.
Again you are abstracting away the purpose of such a system in order to prove its specifications in a vacuum rather than using the actual intent. What are the meetings about? Production? Great we’re back at node fungibility due to distribution of labor and individual human ability.
Sure. I agree. However:
It’s entirely arguable if the market is in practice horizontal or hierarchical. Regardless my arguments here aren’t about proving horrizontalism as “better than”, it’s about the complex trade offs happen socially when choosing these broad structural archetypes to organize around. I never said horrizontal systems cannot be harmful. My point is that the difficulty of horizontal systems can be a form protection.
My point is based on OPs original submission and my understanding that your position was a defense of it. OP submitted OP’s own essay from OP’s own substack with a pro-heirarchy case. I criticized the essay as generally lacking depth on the subject. OP got mad at me and started berating me based on OP’s socialist bona fides.
I could have been gentler with my criticism because I did not understand that OP posted OP’s own substack because the names don’t match. I understand that not everybody knows these things, my line of criticism while admittedly harsh and teetering on unproductive, is honestly meant to raise the conversation from simplistic defenses of hierarchy using typical bromides of the immortal science to a more holistic evaluation of these systems and their implementation and conception of socialism.
Part of the point of the DemCen system is to increase the prevalence of good-faith actors and decrease the prevalence of bad faith ones. It is not as if MLs have historically just ignored education of the youth or the cultivation of good faith actors.
Then what are we even arguing about?
This doesn’t practically explain the how. You’re talking about building patronage networks. That effectively means that those networks themselves can be evaluated as good or bad faith. This just moves the question to another area of the political structure typical of DemCen systems.
When reading theory I don’t see us as being on “teams”. What’s the purpose of writing this stuff if we’re evaluating this solely through the lens of “teams”? At that point any article might as well say “Right Marxist Leninism is the best”. It’s a bad argument it could be better. I’m not even settled on what the “ultimate system” here is, I don’t think there is one, especially not as simple as just do “hierarchy”. If we want to converse about this stuff in good faith we should generally have a complex conversation about it in reality, that often means there’s a lot of grey areas and not a lot of practically right answers if we’re being honest with ourselves.
Like I’ve said elsewhere in this thread: CPC’s done a really good job, but they’re not in the business of exporting socialist thought. I linked this
The CPC’s own words are:
This is a very adult way of speaking about socialism compared to other sets of thinkers who argue implicitly about universal contexts, and universalize ML concepts without explaining their application to their context or even explaining what their context is. If you believe in whatever theory and whatever individual practices, the onus is on you to explain why those practices work in the contexts you’re referring to. OP has not done this vis-a-vis hierarchy. They have created a very abstract rationale.