# 'Post-Capitalist Expediency'

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/post-capitalist-expediency/16273>\
**Category:** Collective phenomena\
**Created:** [October 17, 2026, 2:09am UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/post-capitalist-expediency/16273 "2026-10-17T02:09:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![Lukasz20](http://discourse.iapct.org/user_avatar/discourse.iapct.org/lukasz20/32/4000_2.png) [@Lukasz20](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Lukasz20)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 10:43pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/post-capitalist-expediency/16273/3 "2026-10-19T22:43:18Z")

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@bnhpct, I’d begun to worry about Rick. It had been some time since we last saw him, so it is a relief to find him here, and in such fine form.

@rsmarken, I was particularly taken with your warning about the purely theoretical approach to science, which you note persists even in parts of the PCT community. It is a warning worth repeating.

John has raised hard questions here, following Tim Morgan: physical limits on resources, the carrying capacity of the environment, and how a system can hold a proxy such as GDP to its reference with great precision while the substrate it stands for is quietly used up. To answer that the economy is simply control on a large scale, and that people control for their needs and so produce wealth, has the great merit of being true. Whether it also answers John’s question, I leave to John.

The question itself is a PCT question, and a sharp one:

> **A control loop defends its perception, not the world.**  
> If the perceptual function tracks the wrong thing, the loop will hold it to reference faithfully, and the better it controls, the less anyone notices.

That is, as it happens, the problem my own paper is built around.

* * *

I would not draw you away from the repair of world capitalism. But should a quiet moment come, I have just opened a thread in Research › AI:

> [@The Missing Comparator: a perceptual-control loop for language models, with a pre-registered TCV test](https://discourse.iapct.org/t/the-missing-comparator-a-perceptual-control-loop-for-language-models-with-a-pre-registered-tcv-test/16277):
>
> This is a design and a pre-registered test protocol. There are no results yet. DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.23428834](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23428834) What it is. A language model produces an answer, but nothing in the usual pipeline compares what the answer claims with what is actually on record. The paper puts that comparator outside the model. Before anything is delivered, each factual claim in a draft is matched against an independent, read-only record. The share of claims that agree is a perception. It is held to a reference set…

It is a modest thing beside the global economic order: a two-level perceptual control loop around language models, with eight hypotheses registered in advance, each with the result that would count against it, and the whole tested by the Test for the Controlled Variable. **H8** is step 8 of the Test, blocking the sensing, carried out with frozen and replayed measurement packets.

Knowing how firmly you oppose the purely theoretical approach, I would value your view on two practical points:

1. whether step 8 survives the move to an engineered system;
2. the feedback-functions thread, where thirty lines of Python are still waiting for the equations of the disturbance model you have in mind.

* * *

I see you have also asked for thoughts on the birds in _Keys to Bird Survival?_ Intrinsic references, loudness control, sequence perception: a fine set of questions, and too good to answer in passing. Once I have put my own modest trifles in order, I’ll come over and try. Birds, at least, keep their references where we can hear them.

No hurry on any of it. The world economy comes first.

Luk

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