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Comment by willis936 | Hacker News Reader

Some of the themes remind me of themes mentioned in this matrix analysis. Specifically I am reminded of the Dune concept of control: "you control what you can destroy" and then asking "do you control your refrigerator?". Sure, you can turn it off but then your food would rot and you might starve. So in a real sense humans have not controlled machines for a long time but have been co evolving in symbiosis. Sure, it's not driven by natural selection and standard rules of life, but it is important to frame our relationship with machines in new ways if we're ever going to make some sort of artificial intelligence.

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Gotta keep in mind that "you control what you can destroy" was expressed as the crux of a single-planet guerrilla group's maximalist negotiation strategy with an interstellar government, where the destruction was of the ability to travel between the stars. It's not a coherent theory of control outside of the razor thin application of "I'm willing to accept pain as long it hurts you much more." It is not a control that builds stability and infrastructure, it is the control of base extortion

> Sure, you can turn it off but then your food would rot and you might starve.

If I live in a world where I can afford a freezer with food in it, it's practically guaranteed I can destroy my fridge without starving to death after. Heck, even if I was completely broke I could destroy my fridge and would have a pretty good (+99.999%) chance of not dying in the next year from starvation.

I get I'm nitpicking your point a bit, but I actually think most of our machines we could destroy and still be fine. We'd need to make sacrifices to our quality of life of course..

I can destroy my refrigerator pretty easily. If I care about food inside, I can take it out into a new one. So, seems I control it by that definition. Your idea "but food will spoil"/"I will lose a small amount of wealth" seems irrelevant to the strict definition.

Conversely I think it's a bad definition, it's a show of what is the frame of the mind of the person who states that: "I want to show my control by destroying my things, look how powerful I am" which sounds like a toddler. That's how you portray psychopathic/narcissistic disorders in movies.

The fridge is a toy example. Take all machinery man has made and destroy it. Will you survive? Or live in a space ship and destroy the ship. Will you survive? Or have a pacemaker or an iron lung or dialysis. How about the simple concept of a combustion engine or any necessary subcomponent, where removing that today would grind all logistics to a halt. How long do you survive? Just because you have one machine that is replaceable doesn't refute that you need machines as much as they need you.

If you so readily dismiss Herbert's definition of control posit a competitor and we can pressure test it. Also, "correlated with a toddler's world view" is not the epic rhetorical refute you think it is.

> sounds like a toddler.

I think you missed the point. It's absolutely nothing to do with what's good to do, only brute facts of power. What things can or can't you cause to happen? And indeed, toddlers and psychopaths have a scarily good understanding of what power is.

I didn't miss the point. I showed other more usable (in my opinion) point of views. I think that definition is so narrow that it starts being absurd.

> It's absolutely nothing to do with what's good to do, only brute facts of power.

This sentence reads like: "if we narrow our view this much, this makes sense". I agree that it makes sense under the condition that we narrow the view of issue. It's valid in this small context (a film about controlling one thing).

> And indeed, toddlers and psychopaths have a scarily good understanding of what power is.

I disagree completely with this sentence. They are good at controlling in certain situations. They don't understand it. If you want to understand it, there is a lot of information about controlling, whole fields of knowledge that people spend many years on studying. As for psychopaths, they are very predictable and controllable when you understand control theory and how psychopaths operate. There are courses on this single topic by people who need to do it to prevent tragedies (police negotiators) and they are not that complicated.

Why do you think it's a bad definition?

Not for fridges, I think that was a bad example. But it seems accurate at the level of geopolitics, where e.g. Iran shows it controls Hormuz by closing it with mines and other weaponry.

> Why do you think it's a bad definition?

It presumes a sentient, rational counterparty. Being able to shoot a horse isn't the same as being able to ride it.

It only requires agency from the party assuming control. There are other definitions of control in contexts other than power dynamics that are important. Like a PLL can control an oscillator frequency without the philosophical question of agency needing to be applied. That is a closer definition of control for riding a horse. You control the horse when you pull the reigns. You also control the horse when you decide when it is put down. Two different controls.

> only requires agency from the party assuming control

It's a political concept. It requires agency from the actor recognising the threat. We're pretty close to being able to hurl a giant rock at Mars. That doesn't by a long shot mean we "control" it.

If there were a human settlement on it, on the other hand, being able to credibly threaten Armageddon does give the thrower control.

I see your point.

In the original context of Dune Paul controls the spice because he can destroy it and his will would survive but it would destroy the way of life of the other cultures. So saying "Paul controls spice" only makes sense because another entity needs it and what's really meant is "Paul controls society".

It's closing, not destroying. If you can stop and start a refrigerator, but can't destroy it, does it mean you don't control the refrigerator? If you can only stop it, but not start, do you control it?

Alternative definition of control: You do some actions and it changes state. It's used by a field called "control theory". A lot of people agreed on this definition. Destroying something is "end of control, because there is no more things to control". You can control something UNTIL you destroy it. That's why I think "you control what you can destroy" is invalid, because it captures only one small aspect of controlling things, and also the least usable one.

Could you elaborate on that last part?

I didn't mean it as in changing our framing enables technological progress but something we should do if we don't want to lose the control we have. e.g. if we lose all principle and intention then it doesn't really matter what happens with computers. In order to do something with intention we must first understand what we're doing. Skipping that step is an admission of defeat.

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