From Executive Control to Distributed Intelligence

Every Sunday, a new lecture. We begin at 9:00 AM with informal conversation, followed by a focused dialogue at 9:15 AM and an open Q&A afterward.

This week, we will explore how do large groups of people coordinate at all? How do order, cooperation, and stability emerge when millions of individuals act with limited information, conflicting interests, and imperfect judgment?

We begin with Thomas Hobbes, who offers the most pessimistic answer.
For Hobbes, coordination without a central authority collapses into conflict. In a state of nature, individuals pursue survival and advantage, producing insecurity and violence. Order, therefore, must be imposed from above. A strong sovereign enforces rules, deters defection, and stabilizes expectations. On this view, coordination is not emergent but engineered. Peace depends on centralized power.

Hobbes matters because his logic still shapes modern arguments for strong states, emergency powers, and centralized control over complex systems. When people say society will fall apart without firm authority, they are repeating Hobbes.

We then turn to Herbert Simon, who complicates this picture.
Simon introduced the idea of bounded rationality. Humans do not have the cognitive capacity to understand or optimize entire systems. We rely on shortcuts, rules of thumb, and institutional structures to cope with complexity. Hierarchies emerge not because they are perfect, but because they reduce cognitive load and enable action.

For Simon, neither pure top-down control nor pure bottom-up self-organization works in practice. Real coordination happens through imperfect hierarchies, layered decision-making, and ongoing adjustment. Institutions are not designed for optimality, but for survivability under limits.

Simon is useful because he breaks the false binary. He explains why organizations need structure without pretending that structure is ever fully rational or complete.

Finally, we examine Elinor Ostrom, whose work challenges the assumption that central authority is always necessary.

Studying real communities managing shared resources, Ostrom showed that people often self-organize successfully without a single controlling center. Fisheries, irrigation systems, and local commons can be governed through shared norms, local rules, monitoring, and trust. Coordination emerges when feedback is tight and participants have real stakes.
Ostrom proposed polycentric governance: systems with many overlapping centers of decision-making rather than one sovereign authority. These systems are resilient because failure in one part does not collapse the whole.

Ostrom matters because she provides empirical evidence that bottom-up coordination works when properly structured. Her work reshapes how we think about governance, civic institutions, and even digital platforms.
Taken together, Hobbes, Simon, and Ostrom map three coordination logics: imposed order, bounded hierarchy, and emergent self-governance. The real challenge today is not choosing one, but understanding when and how each applies.

Key Thinkers & Concepts
Thomas Hobbes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes
Leviathan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)

Herbert Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon
Bounded rationality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

Elinor Ostrom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom
Polycentric governance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_governance
Governing the Commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governing_the_Commons

TIMEZONES
6:00 AM — Pacific (USA)
7:00 AM — Mountain (USA)
8:00 AM — Central (USA)
9:00 AM — Eastern (USA)
The meeting begins at 9:00 AM Eastern, with dialogue starting promptly at 9:15 AM.