I praise your thinking on the subject. Do you have any guesses about the institutions /structures in today's world, that show both power and coherence?
On further reflection, my above comment wasn't very well worded, and in fact, it seems self-contradicting. I first said that without oligarchy, humans "cannot work coherently towards any well-defined goals," but then later I mentioned that even without oligarchy, we can sometimes observe "apparent coherence [that] requires a non-intentionalistic explanation." So let me explain what exactly I mean by that.
The key problem here is differentiating between two distinct ways in which large groups of people can be directed to work towards a g...
Most long term users on Less Wrong understand the concept of optimization power and how a system can be called intelligent if it can restrict the future in significant ways. Now I believe that in this world, only institutions are close to superintelligence in any significant way.
I believe it is important for us to have atleast some outside idea of which institutions/systems are powerful in today's world so that we can atleast see some outlines of how the increasing optimization power will end up affecting normal people.
So, my question is - what are the present institutions or systems that you would classify as having the maximum optimization power. Please present your thought behind it if you feel you are mentioning some unknown institution. I am presenting my guesses after the break.
Blogospheroid's guess list
Institutions I found significant outside this list is the Singaporean and Abu Dhabi city governments, very rational and increasing their significance in the world, but highly restricted from fooming because of constraints.