The basic strategy of a revolution leverages an overwhelming numerical advantage to overcome the coercion produced by an existing power structure.
No it does not. Can you name one successful revolution where the revolutionaries had an “overwhelming numerical advantage”? In the American, French and Bolshevik revolutions the revolutionaries, at best, had parity with the forces opposing them. They succeeded not because they had overwhelming numerical advantage, but because they had advantages in coordination and cohesion that enabled them to strike while their opponents were still preparing.
In the American, French and Bolshevik revolutions the revolutionaries, at best, had parity with the forces opposing them. They succeeded not because they had overwhelming numerical advantage, but because they had advantages in coordination and cohesion that enabled them to strike while their opponents were still preparing.
This claim, as it stands, is false. If a thousand Frenchmen vs. a hundred soldiers of the royal government defending the Bastille isn’t numerical superiority… I’m not interested in derailing into historical debate here; ask your favourite LLM for a fact check on the quoted portion.
I will say one thing, which is that the notion of “striking while their opponents are still preparing” actually smuggles in an assumption of numerical superiority[1], and your point about “cohesion” is the morale differential that contributes to revolutions becoming self-fulfilling prophecies.
The point is that you will not be able to coordinate your way out of an AGI dystopia regardless of your numerical superiority or inferiority. Once we’re past the event horizon, what leverage do think you have left in a system that doesn’t need you for anything, that can crush you like a bug? Well, surely once enough people agree that Shit Sucks, perhapsbecause the UBI checks started to dry up without explanation, we can all… We can all just… Wait, what’s that buzzing sound?
Alice has an army of 100 soldiers, 10 of whom show up to the fight while 90 are “still preparing” (or on the other side of the Empire, or dragging their feet because they don’t care that much about defending Alice, are scared of Bob or secretly think he has a point). Bob has an army of 50 soldiers, 40 of whom show up to the fight (because they very much care about defeating Alice). Who has the numerical advantage?
A thousand Frenchmen may have achieved local overmatch against the forces of the regime. But at that time, the Revolutionary forces most assuredly did not outnumber the entirety of the French military.
Who has the numerical advantage?
Alice, of course. Bob’s army wins via superior cohesion and morale. By your logic there can be no victory against numerical odds, because you can always look closely and find specific points where the victorious side had numerical overmatch against the losing side.
I say that Bob has a 4:1 advantage. Yes, it’s “only” at the moment of contact, however this is what produces anything of consequence and thus the only thing that matters for the outcome.
The fact that Alice is unable to mobilize her entire army means that her apparent 2:1 advantage is fake in any practical sense, a paper tiger.
Though I’m sure that Bob’s historiographers would (instrumentally) agree with you because the underdog story presents a more compelling, better self-serving narrative.
You’re free to use your own idiosyncratic definition of “numerical superiority”, but then you shouldn’t be surprised when your interlocutors are persistently confused as to how you can claim an army of 1000 has “numerical superiority” against an army ten times its size.
“I don’t understand!”, said commander Alice as her palace got surrounded. “There were so many more of us than there were of you”. “Were there really, or was the number on your spreadsheet a fiction?”, said Bob. “If they don’t show up to the fight and switch over to my side en masse, why were they included in your troop count? In what way were they yours?”
Here’s another example. At first glance, it looks like black should win the game easily due to the apparent points differential at the start. But what meaning does “point superiority” have when the game starts and black’s pieces don’t respond to commands and start switching their colour in a cascading fashion, resulting in white’s victory?
These are fictional examples. In reality, like at the Battle of Cannae, for example, the Carthaginian force, led by Hannibal Barca, was outnumbered by the Romans by nearly 2:1 (roughly 40,000 Carthaginians against around 80,000 Romans). And yet the Carthaginians won by trapping the Romans in a double-envelopment and attacking them from all sides, preventing the Romans from concentrating their superior numbers, allowing Hannibal’s forces to slaughter the Romans. Although Hannibal’s forces may have outnumbered the Romans at the actual line of contact, no one claims that the Carthaginians had numerical superiority at Cannae.
Similarly, at Agincourt, the English were outnumbered by the French by approximately 2:1. The French were defeated because the English used terrain cleverly, forcing the French forces to attack down a narrow path surrounded by forest on both sides. This, combined with the superior firepower of English longbows, enabled the English to decimate the French, and win a major victory in the Hundred Years War. Once again, although the funnel effect of the terrain may have meant that the English enjoyed numerical superiority at the point of contact, Agincourt is widely regarded as an example of an underdog victory, where a smaller English army won a major victory against the odds against a much larger French foe.
At the battle of Narva, Charles XII of Sweden used a snowstorm to hide the approach of his 10,000 troops, suprising the 35,000 Russians laying siege to Narva and putting them to rout. Do you claim that the Swedes had numerical superiority over the Russians merely because some of the Russian troops could not see the Swedes until it was too late?
At the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson had 27 British ships, against Villenueve’s combined Franco-Spanish fleet of 33. However, Nelson was able to maneuver his fleet such that it split Villenueve’s line into thirds, allowing his fleet to defeat Villenueve piecemeal. Although Nelson had numerical superiority at specific, crucial points in the battle, overall Villenueve’s fleet was larger, and Trafalgar is seen as a victory of British elan and seamanship, not numerical superiority.
The reason I bring up all these battles is because numerical superiority is but one part of victory, and, arguably, not even the most important part. Logistics, terrain, morale, and tactics all have parts to play as well. Redefining numerical superiority as you’ve done elides those factors, as you can always say, “Well, actually, at the point of contact, the victorious forces had numerical superiority over the vanquished.” That’s true, but it’s in some ways as much of a tautology as, “The team that wins the game is the one that scores the most points.” It doesn’t inform any predictions about the future, nor does it indicate when you should be surprised by an outcome.
I appreciate the historical research, but insofar as all of your examples are of interstate conflicts, we have diverged far from the original context of revolutionary calculus.
The key differentiator is that the incumbent’s army is not “vanquished” by a successful revolution; it is absorbed by it after an internal transfer of political legitimacy away from the incumbent and toward itself.
This process can be bloodless. The fall of the GDR comes to mind, where mass demonstrations produced their own political legitimacy with sheer numbers, causing automatic restraint from security forces despite the appearance that on paper, they (in aggregate) outnumbered the demonstrators; and the fact that they outgunned and basically outmatched them on every tactically relevant metric.
Returning to the original point of this post, this ultimately human mechanism whereby security forces hesitate when faced with a popular uprising of sufficient size (e.g. “there are so many, and they’re not scared, maybe they’re right”, or “maybe some of my neighbours/friends/relatives agree with them or have joined in”) can cease to exist in a regime where advanced AI is in charge of securing the state.
You and everybody else lose the two levers you could historically use to protest the worst indignities and abuses of power the state can subject you to: the lever of withholding your labour in a general strike (because human labour stops being a factor of production), and the lever of participating in a political revolution (because no critical mass of people can overwhelm the system, which loses nothing if you die). The disempowerment of the people is a predictable consequence of the current trajectory.
That’s true, but it’s in some ways as much of a tautology as, “The team that wins the game is the one that scores the most points.”
That’s not a tautology, and indeed there are games where the opposite is true, such as golf.
No it does not. Can you name one successful revolution where the revolutionaries had an “overwhelming numerical advantage”? In the American, French and Bolshevik revolutions the revolutionaries, at best, had parity with the forces opposing them. They succeeded not because they had overwhelming numerical advantage, but because they had advantages in coordination and cohesion that enabled them to strike while their opponents were still preparing.
This claim, as it stands, is false. If a thousand Frenchmen vs. a hundred soldiers of the royal government defending the Bastille isn’t numerical superiority… I’m not interested in derailing into historical debate here; ask your favourite LLM for a fact check on the quoted portion.
I will say one thing, which is that the notion of “striking while their opponents are still preparing” actually smuggles in an assumption of numerical superiority[1], and your point about “cohesion” is the morale differential that contributes to revolutions becoming self-fulfilling prophecies.
The point is that you will not be able to coordinate your way out of an AGI dystopia regardless of your numerical superiority or inferiority. Once we’re past the event horizon, what leverage do think you have left in a system that doesn’t need you for anything, that can crush you like a bug? Well, surely once enough people agree that Shit Sucks, perhaps because the UBI checks started to dry up without explanation, we can all… We can all just… Wait, what’s that buzzing sound?
Alice has an army of 100 soldiers, 10 of whom show up to the fight while 90 are “still preparing” (or on the other side of the Empire, or dragging their feet because they don’t care that much about defending Alice, are scared of Bob or secretly think he has a point). Bob has an army of 50 soldiers, 40 of whom show up to the fight (because they very much care about defeating Alice). Who has the numerical advantage?
A thousand Frenchmen may have achieved local overmatch against the forces of the regime. But at that time, the Revolutionary forces most assuredly did not outnumber the entirety of the French military.
Alice, of course. Bob’s army wins via superior cohesion and morale. By your logic there can be no victory against numerical odds, because you can always look closely and find specific points where the victorious side had numerical overmatch against the losing side.
I say that Bob has a 4:1 advantage. Yes, it’s “only” at the moment of contact, however this is what produces anything of consequence and thus the only thing that matters for the outcome.
The fact that Alice is unable to mobilize her entire army means that her apparent 2:1 advantage is fake in any practical sense, a paper tiger.
Though I’m sure that Bob’s historiographers would (instrumentally) agree with you because the underdog story presents a more compelling, better self-serving narrative.
You’re free to use your own idiosyncratic definition of “numerical superiority”, but then you shouldn’t be surprised when your interlocutors are persistently confused as to how you can claim an army of 1000 has “numerical superiority” against an army ten times its size.
“I don’t understand!”, said commander Alice as her palace got surrounded. “There were so many more of us than there were of you”. “Were there really, or was the number on your spreadsheet a fiction?”, said Bob. “If they don’t show up to the fight and switch over to my side en masse, why were they included in your troop count? In what way were they yours?”
Here’s another example. At first glance, it looks like black should win the game easily due to the apparent points differential at the start. But what meaning does “point superiority” have when the game starts and black’s pieces don’t respond to commands and start switching their colour in a cascading fashion, resulting in white’s victory?
These are fictional examples. In reality, like at the Battle of Cannae, for example, the Carthaginian force, led by Hannibal Barca, was outnumbered by the Romans by nearly 2:1 (roughly 40,000 Carthaginians against around 80,000 Romans). And yet the Carthaginians won by trapping the Romans in a double-envelopment and attacking them from all sides, preventing the Romans from concentrating their superior numbers, allowing Hannibal’s forces to slaughter the Romans. Although Hannibal’s forces may have outnumbered the Romans at the actual line of contact, no one claims that the Carthaginians had numerical superiority at Cannae.
Similarly, at Agincourt, the English were outnumbered by the French by approximately 2:1. The French were defeated because the English used terrain cleverly, forcing the French forces to attack down a narrow path surrounded by forest on both sides. This, combined with the superior firepower of English longbows, enabled the English to decimate the French, and win a major victory in the Hundred Years War. Once again, although the funnel effect of the terrain may have meant that the English enjoyed numerical superiority at the point of contact, Agincourt is widely regarded as an example of an underdog victory, where a smaller English army won a major victory against the odds against a much larger French foe.
At the battle of Narva, Charles XII of Sweden used a snowstorm to hide the approach of his 10,000 troops, suprising the 35,000 Russians laying siege to Narva and putting them to rout. Do you claim that the Swedes had numerical superiority over the Russians merely because some of the Russian troops could not see the Swedes until it was too late?
At the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson had 27 British ships, against Villenueve’s combined Franco-Spanish fleet of 33. However, Nelson was able to maneuver his fleet such that it split Villenueve’s line into thirds, allowing his fleet to defeat Villenueve piecemeal. Although Nelson had numerical superiority at specific, crucial points in the battle, overall Villenueve’s fleet was larger, and Trafalgar is seen as a victory of British elan and seamanship, not numerical superiority.
The reason I bring up all these battles is because numerical superiority is but one part of victory, and, arguably, not even the most important part. Logistics, terrain, morale, and tactics all have parts to play as well. Redefining numerical superiority as you’ve done elides those factors, as you can always say, “Well, actually, at the point of contact, the victorious forces had numerical superiority over the vanquished.” That’s true, but it’s in some ways as much of a tautology as, “The team that wins the game is the one that scores the most points.” It doesn’t inform any predictions about the future, nor does it indicate when you should be surprised by an outcome.
I appreciate the historical research, but insofar as all of your examples are of interstate conflicts, we have diverged far from the original context of revolutionary calculus.
The key differentiator is that the incumbent’s army is not “vanquished” by a successful revolution; it is absorbed by it after an internal transfer of political legitimacy away from the incumbent and toward itself.
This process can be bloodless. The fall of the GDR comes to mind, where mass demonstrations produced their own political legitimacy with sheer numbers, causing automatic restraint from security forces despite the appearance that on paper, they (in aggregate) outnumbered the demonstrators; and the fact that they outgunned and basically outmatched them on every tactically relevant metric.
Returning to the original point of this post, this ultimately human mechanism whereby security forces hesitate when faced with a popular uprising of sufficient size (e.g. “there are so many, and they’re not scared, maybe they’re right”, or “maybe some of my neighbours/friends/relatives agree with them or have joined in”) can cease to exist in a regime where advanced AI is in charge of securing the state.
You and everybody else lose the two levers you could historically use to protest the worst indignities and abuses of power the state can subject you to: the lever of withholding your labour in a general strike (because human labour stops being a factor of production), and the lever of participating in a political revolution (because no critical mass of people can overwhelm the system, which loses nothing if you die). The disempowerment of the people is a predictable consequence of the current trajectory.
That’s not a tautology, and indeed there are games where the opposite is true, such as golf.