I think you are just wrong about swarming. Revolutions do not work by zerg rushing since… the invention of grapeshot, at least. Information cascades can and have led to regime change from a very small group of committed activists, if the legitimacy of the regime is shaky enough.
I don’t know about “zerg rushing”, but some recent examples of popular pro-democracy revolutions are the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989-1991, and Ukraine’s two revolutions in 2005 and 2014. Interesting point about information cascades, perhaps a more accurate model is (number * commitment relative to the regime), though size still matters to the extent that the activist group can project legitimacy and power, and not worry about getting swarmed in turn.
I actually believe there is a good chance that political economy might get washed away together with all other human-era concepts by Actually Something Incomprehensible. The dominant narrative (“Everything will be ok, UBI, right?”) is wishful thinking, obscuring the fact that being economically obsolete and unable to constrain the system by threatening revolution puts the vast majority of people[1] in a genuinely precarious position.
In these revolutions, the disintegration of state apparatus loyalty was a key factor, with poorly organized groups primarily serving to undermine the legitimacy of the existing regime and facilitate coups within the government, as seen in the Bangladeshi Revolution or the Ukrainian Revolution.
However, history records at least two distinct revolutionary models: In the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks exploited informational advantages and a vanguard-organized military to execute a decapitation strike and seize control of the existing state apparatus. In China’s revolution, the Communist Party established its own state apparatus capable of delivering more effective governance than the original government, ultimately defeating the state machinery of warlords and the Kuomintang through warfare.
Unfortunately, in the post-AGI era, neither of these methods of launching revolutions is any more likely to succeed than expecting a coup within the government.
I think the framing of the “October Revolution” as an obvious turning point is mostly a retrofit by Soviet historiographers. It was a coup which lead to several years of civil war with the incumbent and other actors, ultimately favouring the Bolsheviks. I understand that civil war was also the primary arena that determined regime change in China.
I agree that these differ from the other revolutions mentioned previously, though I’m personally more inclined to put them in a different conceptual bucket altogether, noting that them calling themselves revolutions shares a resemblance with North Korea calling itself a democratic people’s republic in that the choice of terminology appears to be deliberately self-legitimizing.
With that said, I agree that both of these ways to engender regime change encounter the same predictable failure mode post-AGI.
I don’t know about “zerg rushing”, but some recent examples of popular pro-democracy revolutions are the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989-1991, and Ukraine’s two revolutions in 2005 and 2014. Interesting point about information cascades, perhaps a more accurate model is (number * commitment relative to the regime), though size still matters to the extent that the activist group can project legitimacy and power, and not worry about getting swarmed in turn.
I actually believe there is a good chance that political economy might get washed away together with all other human-era concepts by Actually Something Incomprehensible. The dominant narrative (“Everything will be ok, UBI, right?”) is wishful thinking, obscuring the fact that being economically obsolete and unable to constrain the system by threatening revolution puts the vast majority of people[1] in a genuinely precarious position.
or everyone if one accepts the added assumption that ASI has no reason to accept human property relations.
In these revolutions, the disintegration of state apparatus loyalty was a key factor, with poorly organized groups primarily serving to undermine the legitimacy of the existing regime and facilitate coups within the government, as seen in the Bangladeshi Revolution or the Ukrainian Revolution.
However, history records at least two distinct revolutionary models: In the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks exploited informational advantages and a vanguard-organized military to execute a decapitation strike and seize control of the existing state apparatus. In China’s revolution, the Communist Party established its own state apparatus capable of delivering more effective governance than the original government, ultimately defeating the state machinery of warlords and the Kuomintang through warfare.
Unfortunately, in the post-AGI era, neither of these methods of launching revolutions is any more likely to succeed than expecting a coup within the government.
I think the framing of the “October Revolution” as an obvious turning point is mostly a retrofit by Soviet historiographers. It was a coup which lead to several years of civil war with the incumbent and other actors, ultimately favouring the Bolsheviks. I understand that civil war was also the primary arena that determined regime change in China.
I agree that these differ from the other revolutions mentioned previously, though I’m personally more inclined to put them in a different conceptual bucket altogether, noting that them calling themselves revolutions shares a resemblance with North Korea calling itself a democratic people’s republic in that the choice of terminology appears to be deliberately self-legitimizing.
With that said, I agree that both of these ways to engender regime change encounter the same predictable failure mode post-AGI.