FastForward Radio, Episode 18, Live Tonight!

I was just thinking about a book I read on sovietology, Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy. This was written before the fall of the USSR (and of course, failed to predict it). There were two things of interest. First, much of the book was devoted to a single high level Soviet policy change made sometime in 1966 (a couple of years after the fall of Kruschev). Second, the book explicitly described how the decision was deduced and its implications.

Because the Soviet Union doesn’t usually announce changes in its military doctrine and related areas, finding out what happened depends on studying subsequent events after they happen. For example, a sovietologist can presumably figure out what happened in 1966 by studying how military handbooks changed in the years soon after or in counting numbers of military troops and hardware. As it turns out, the USSR had apparently decided that a nuclear war was winnable, but not with what they had. As a result, from the US intelligence, there followed a scary series of underestimates of nuclear weapons and USSR military strength that lasted for around a decade.

If one looks at page 382 of the above link, you can see a diagram of something that looks like an ocean wave (in deep water, not breaking on the shore). The front of the wave is a period of time labeled “pressure for change”. The wave peaks at the moment of “decision” followed by a period of time in which details of the decision are worked out. Finally the tail of the wave is the observable implications of the decision. An outside observer might see the pressure for a decision and might know something odd was going on during the decision period, but it’s only the last part where they understand (to an extent) what happened.

I think that would be one model for an external observer of a singularity event. Even if the information of what happened during the singularity is freely available, it might be so complex that the external observer still has to piece a good part of it together from what they see happening.

And I guess the final lesson to learn from Sovietology. Too much of the time, you will be wrong. I guess we have a new science waiting, post-singulartology, the study of what the hell happened during what we think could have been a singularity event.

Hmmm, so when does it start? Nothing on the page yet.

Karl:

It was great talking to you. If you would like to continue the discussion we were having, please contact me at mattduing@gmail.com. Thanks.