A case for Marxism:

My phd research this past year has been on a population-based optimization method called “Particle Swarm Optimization”— PSO.

This aspect, in the infinite seabed of knowledge, influences my thinking, no doubt.

And I would argue,

that human societies also perform a form of optimization.

The ultimate ‘quantity’ that is being optimized — is happiness.

The wellbeing of human beings is that which people seek for.

It becomes expressed through various ways—

some people think money will bring them to a happier state.

some people think striving towards virtue will give higher happiness

some people find calmness to be a state of ultimate happiness.

And on different levels —

some people think free-er markets will improve the social position

some people think more control, over oneself and a disciplined control in society, is good.

and other very intricate details about economics, politics and society; and psychology.

In fact, just like the PSO algorithm has a term that influences the individual bird (particle) into a specific direction and a term that influences the swarm (global best); so too can one imagine you as an individual psychology— and contributing to some statistical property when looking at the WHOLE—i.e. society.

And then you can imagine further and realize each society is like a point—like an individual unit — and it is one of many data points for analyzing the collection of societies— such as civilizations (various societies in some time period).

This sort of imagining:

Zooming in-and-out of systems of various sizes (i.e. dimensions) is an interesting way-of-imagining.

This stems directly from influences of computer-science, mathematics and quantum physics.

Computer science you are always dealing with lists: x = [1,2,3,4….]

Every computer system must have this idea of discretization.

In quantum mechanics (QM), we’re dealing with matrices and vectors.

A vector, is really just a list…

V = (1,2,3… )

Anyway,

The Marxist theory — demonstrates (in my view) this idea that people collectively optimize their situation.

But just like in any optimization algorithms, sometimes the system won’t converge to the proper value—in fact it might explode as I have seen with PSO.

Similarly, people diverge away unknowingly, and sometimes perhaps even unwillingly. But if you zoom out — people are overall really improving their condition.

This is true, because people move away from oppressive systems, into more democratic ones.

That is, energy spreads out.

What is this called?

entropy — the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

—in an isolated system, the total entropy (a measure of disorder or randomness) tends to increase over time. Entropy can be thought of as the degree to which energy is spread out or dispersed across a system.

When energy spreads out, it leads to increase in “randomness” or “disorder”.

Is this not what we see in society?

( is this not the more global view of evolution, in general?)

Money, a symbolic representation of energy, and will therefore represent the movement of energy — eventually it will “spread out” and become more equalized across the entire society, as opposed to its insane concentration today.