Comments on: Big-Tent Problems

By: William Benzon

William Benzon — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:56:32 +0000

Here's a little something I wrote on the AI problem over at New Savanna: Hereâ€s an analogy that I find useful in thinking about this business of always seeing The Solution around the next corner. The analogy is based on those old Christmas tree lights that were wired in parallel. When one light went out the whole string went out. To get the lights working again you had to test each bulb individually until you found one that was broken. Then youâ€d replace it in the string, turn the switch, and â€“ if it was the only defective bulb â€“ the lights would go on. If they didnâ€t, then you had to keep on looking until you found another broken bulb. And so forth. It was a little tedious, but not difficult. Think of the problem of building an artificial human mind as consisting of, say, 100,000 little problems. Each of them is a light bulb, theyâ€re all connected into one string, and that string is wired in series. If even one bulb is missing or defective, the string wonâ€t light. In the analogy the stringâ€s initial state is that wonâ€t light. We donâ€t know what bulb or bulbs is causing the problem or even how many are defective. In fact, a thousand bulbs are defective and theyâ€re randomly scattered along the string. Research, then, is the process of testing each bulb to see whether or not it works. If it doesnâ€t, you replace it. http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2010/05/theyre-at-it-again-hacking-human-mind.html

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:40:07 +0000

Ok, I may soon be involved in development in a fairly serious way in Georgia, so I’m interested in what a major re-think would promise.

Here are my priors: I hope to see Georgia advance a bit among the ranks of medium-income countries. Over something like a 15- or 20-year time frame, I hope it will become a member of the European Union. Both of those have many implications, I know.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:44:31 +0000

I agree absolutely as far as the need for people in communities to be first among equals in the big tent. That doesn’t require turning them into another fetish-object like women were in WiD programs, though, and that’s the danger–that we just end up, either from a radical or technocratic view, believing that communities or new social movements are the natural unit of sovereignty, and that whatever they want or know is sufficient to determine what development is. At some level, the concept of development or progress is a concept that requires that we find the present condition insufficient, inadequate, unfinished. And if you think about it, much of what even radicals or critics of globalization and capitalism would now consider to define progress are practices, materialities and identities that were done to communities (or at least happened without them planning for and asking for those changes). Many people within those late 18th or early 19th Century communities around the world would not have named much of modernity as something they wanted or believed in.

By: Ben Bradlow

Ben Bradlow — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:51:42 +0000

Re #3… Especially in the field of development, I find that often the most articulate skeptics and critics are the people who are actually affected by developmental theories and policy: poor communities themselves. The challenge for academics from whatever field related to development, whether they be economists, social/cultural theorists, or political scientists, is to find ways to engage meaningfully with the subjects of their work. This means supporting communities to organize around their own capacities to engage as equals in the contest of ideas, just as professionals â€” academics, policy-makers, NGOs â€” can focus their efforts on supporting the poor to organize around their own capacities to engage as equals in the everyday contest for resources.

The gap between theory and practice in development will remain wide as long as the table is only accommodating theoreticians, no matter how multi-disciplinary the grouping. If you want to put aid/development in “the workshed,” as you suggest, then engaged support for the poor organized around their own capacities and interests â€” not those of academics, governments, multilaterals, etc â€” may be the kind of fundamental shift that addresses your call.