Mithering about the unmodellable

Michael Smethurst

It is not every post you will read which links the choice of web domain name to the results of the civil war, but it is characteristic of this one that that’s exactly what it does. If you are interested in the arcane minutiae of parliamentary structure, this post is for you. But behind the specific points, there is something much more generally significant which should interest everybody, including those who, inexplicably, are not fascinated by parliamentary minutiae.

Computers crystallise systems. That’s fine for as long as the crystallised form remains valuable – and sometimes that can be quite a long time. But it’s not at all fine for systems which need to retain flexibility and adapt to changing circumstances – and that’s quite a lot of systems.

The lack of a fixed, exhaustive ruleset means Parliament is open to exaptation and adaptation. It is evolutionary by design. It is not brittle. It can sway in winds. Computers on the other hand are really not like this. They tend to prefer defined rulesets. They are deterministic. They are dumb. They are brittle.

So the question becomes whether we can get brittle computers to support systems which are not brittle. And that’s a question which matters much more widely than just for parliament.

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