The New Wealth of Nations

If we look at nations from a computational perspective, we'll discover that their power stems from a balance between human processors, non-human processors, and the organization of their interconnection - resulting in a kind of general effective computational power of the state, instead of GDP. On the other hand, if we examine cultures according to the size of their effective cultural memory, we'll find that we can measure their wealth and importance through this simplistic external parameter. Cultures and states that internalize this insight will understand that it's difficult to change their resources - but relatively easy to switch to more effective algorithms, which will give them a significant relative advantage, considering the primitiveness of social algorithms that haven't internalized anything from the sophisticated algorithmic knowledge accumulated in the last half-century

India as the West's Hope Against the East (Source)

What's important today is no longer the resources of nations but their computational power, which will determine their strength (China vs. America vs. Russia, etc.). And since a computer doesn't yet compete computationally with a human, a preliminary estimate is the number of people (although because humans are limited in certain calculations that computers are good at, to evaluate a nation's computational power, we might need to add supercomputers, smartphones, and personal computers, which increase human computational power, and here the West has an advantage for now). Computational power summarizes management capabilities, invention, and creativity in a rough estimate of all of them together in one number.

This entire calculation will be correct until computers become computationally stronger than humans, or approach that, and then the number of people in a nation will no longer be important, which is a process that's happening and could cause China to lose its advantage. But a first estimate of the number of processors and their power is only an estimate, because the way the processors are connected is also important, and the variance between processors - which can cause a certain country to have more computational power with fewer processors than another. And here there is a structural advantage to the West, as of today, where thinking is less formulaic, and especially to Jews, in whom the processors are very different from each other and each performs a different calculation. Therefore, they can cover a much larger search space than processors working on more similar algorithms and with less randomness.

In other words, Jews are more like evolutionary algorithms with more mutations, like the sperm cells and brain of the body. They are less good at optimization and more at exploration, and certainly Americans are more like this than the Chinese. And so in tree search, they reach farther and deeper, and the Chinese are thieves and only because of this are they not far from the West. That is, as a computing machine, a nation can be stronger if you find the connection between people that has more exploration, and therefore Israel is stronger than the Arabs, which is the most extreme example on the globe in the quality versus quantity gap.

But what evolution has taught us is that distributed evolutionary processing of billions of years is not equal to one concentrated computing machine like the brain, which achieved in hundreds of thousands of years what the entire planet did not achieve in billions. And how is the brain organized? There is decentralization, but there is also organization into areas, and there is also a very large number of connections between processors. But culture until the Internet was not like the brain but like evolution. The connections were relatively few between people, more similar to evolution where connections were sex and birth, only with more sophistication all the time thanks to language, and then writing, etc.

The Internet can melt the different processors and different people. The network is the melting point, where culture becomes a brain, in terms of the number of connections and their tightness. And then again the conclusion is that like in the brain, we need reputation in connections and money (value) that passes between them on the Internet, so that it melts into one functional thinking system, and not just a communication system. That is, for the network to become a computing system, not a communication network, but a learning network. And all this is true also as private companies, where a different structure can create different computing power, and therefore a small and well-connected company like a startup is not always computationally weaker than a giant company. There is no substitute for concentration of efforts and minds.

In other words, the reputation system and everything that will turn the network into a brain has a transformative importance that is unparalleled in world history. And then it's not at all certain that America will have an advantage over China. If they operate on the same algorithm, China will always have an advantage over America. And humanity's great hope, of a state and culture where there is no tyranny and it is less violent, will be India. And then there will be a world where the two superpowers will be China and India, and the West will be part of the Indian bloc, including Japan. And Africa and Russia and the Arabs part of the Chinese bloc. Therefore, the West's greatest interest is to invest in India so that it will be in the democratic bloc and advance quickly to compete with China. And maybe this is what Israelis understand in tightening the connection between Jews and Indians.