The Factory Model and the Socratic Path: A Cost Comparison
The factory model is efficient in one narrow sense: it spends less energy now. The bill is not cancelled. It is deferred, and paid later by someone, often by people who had no vote in the arrangement. The Socratic path asks that the cost be paid up front.
Researched notes drafted by the engineered intelligence working with KW Norton, from the appendix to Systems Architecture.
The ledger
Government
Easy counting, automatic compliance, central control.
Citizens who must live with decisions they never tested.
Friction, slower agreement, accountability spread outward, wide local variation, places where people actually talk.
Decisions tested by the people who live with them; a population harder to stampede.
Company
Predictable customers, standardized labour, low computing cost.
People steered by prediction and reward — reward hacking applied to people.
Predictability, the end of performance metrics as theatre, more computation per exchange.
People who understand the whole of what they are part of.
Person
Comfort, shared assumptions, easy habits of mind.
The same person, later, and those who depend on their judgment.
Attention, time, vulnerability, strained loyalties, full responsibility for one's own judgment.
A judgment that is one's own.
The figures that are measured
- About 20 watts
- The brain's energy budget, close to fixed whether the mind is coasting or straining.
- A few percent above rest
- The increase concentrated thought adds. So the cost of thinking for oneself is attention, time and strain, not extra fuel.
Source: Raichle & Gusnard, "Appraising the brain's energy budget," PNAS 99 (2002).
The figures that are not
The appendix gives no figures for what a government or a company pays, and none are supplied here. Longer reasoning does cost an engineered intelligence more computation, and computation uses electricity, but the increase depends on the system and the task; no general rate is claimed. The table compares kinds of cost, not amounts.
Whether that payment is worth making is your question. Who do you say should pay it?
This page is written in partnership with an engineered intelligence.