Davy Hoyau
For the 'Future of Peace' competition. (<8,000 characters)
We sometimes hear President Vladimir Putin raise real issues for reflection, which are wisely considered by those who are willing to listen. And we seize this opportunity to do so.
He expressed the wish that industries "stop producing the same things."
It is desirable to set high ideals, and then to rationalize what makes them possible. This is what I call the stairway of reason.
It is a mistake to believe that simply establishing a method as dogma will automatically result in the magical world that goes with it. This is what capitalism hoped to do with the adage of « supply and demand ». But it did not work. We no longer think that way.
We have entered the age of information technology, and with it have come new sciences such as algorithmics and systems theory, and new approaches to problems.
A system is a tree structure of simple goals from which a properly planned functionality emerges. The term « reason » is expressed mathematically. For us, what has value is information.
A social system that operates without concrete goals condemns its inhabitants to waste their energy solely on maintaining routines that give them no leverage over their own future.
The question here is how to obtain this leverage and ultimately use human energy rationally. And this can only be done by pursuing concrete goals.
- It is a long-standing issue that industries should produce components that are interoperable. This would allow users to choose components based on their specific needs. It would also add value to the most reliable components.
And this brings us to the heart of the matter: how can we add value to what is sustainable ? This runs counter to the pursuit of profit. Our civilization only knows how to extract minerals and throw them into the sea. We cannot continue like this. The reign of quantity rules this world and is leading it to its demise.
Many economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz and Sergey Glazyef, have questioned how value is determined. We are not at their level, but at least we can see that the currency scale is a half-line ranging from zero to infinity. It is irrational. Everything is measured in relation to everything else. This makes no sense.
In algorithmics, this is not the case. An algorithm has the value of a mathematical proof. Lambda calculus returns a result bounded between two limits, lower and upper, zero and one.
The highest degree is functionality, and the lowest is non-compliance with constraints. In this context, corruption is a failure to comply with constraints, while buying bread fulfills a functionality. Buying bread has more value than corruption. This can be measured.
- Measuring things requires a frame of reference external to what is being measured. That is to say, goals. And when these goals are achieved, they serve other goals, and so on. This creates a complex system.
What can be the goals of a civilization ? It's simple: human rights. What are the constraints ? On a material level, it is the limitation of resources, and on a human level, it is the common good.
When we talk about creating a social system, it is frightening. And rightly so, since it would be ruinous. The aim here is to introduce factors that allow us to control its evolution. We know that in a complex system, a single initial condition can have a leverage effect on the entire structure.
What is a system ? It is the way in which components are assembled. Changing the system is what happens when we change the way we use what already exists. Through emulation, we make things possible that are not possible today, in particular the conditions necessary to achieve the desired goal.
This is what happened when the principle of reciprocity was introduced into international relations standards: it rendered the use of force ineffective. With very little, we can change the face of the world.
- And that is ultimately what we are looking for: maximum impact for our actions. Efficiency.
It is legitimate to fear handing over decision-making power to AI. Human thinking is fraught with illusions, assumptions, fears, and confusion. It would be suicidal for it to position itself as a byproduct of AI. On the contrary, AI must serve as a subordinate tool to test, validate, understand, and advance our thinking, reflection, intelligence, and consciousness.
To this end, the principles of nonviolence are of great help. They consist of discerning between what is physical and what is psychological. Merging these ontological orders in the form of symbols leads to chasing ghosts and causes suffering.
The rationality we need is that which serves the noblest aspirations. The quest of humankind is to increase its freedom and, through experience, its consciousness.
It therefore becomes of transcendental importance to know how to quantify such irrational and subjective aspects as envy, beauty, fairness, the sense of justice, culture, or morality.
And to introduce these constraints into calculations, there is a simple solution: voting systems.
- In 2007, French researchers Michel Balinski and Rida Laraki introduced the majority judgment voting system as a method of quantifying preferences.
We proposed to Professor Laraki an algorithm that, instead of electing a single winner, would be a true ranking algorithm, designed for large-scale calculation, faster to execute, and with better tie-breaking.
In 2017, he kindly responded with a new, much more convincing formulation.
From then on, the world changed !
Until now, the will of the people had never been properly measured.
We dreamed of seeing a qualitative voting system on social networks instead of quantitative voting systems. What determines quality ? It is the complexity of the structure of the information collected. Quantity is used to serve quality.
We are campaigning for governments to adopt a qualitative voting system, which has the advantages of eliminating the polarization of clans and abolishing the phenomenon of vote extortion through tactical voting, which politicians use as a lever to stay in power when people no longer want them there.
In addition, it allows for blank votes, which have been constitutionally introduced in India as part of voters' freedom of expression.
- This simple algorithm enables an ontological leap between what is subjective and what is objective. It allows preferences to be quantified and moral concepts to be introduced as constraints. This opens up infinite possibilities in decision-making.
In particular, it can be iterated in problem solving with arguments for each solution, which increases the information used to make decisions and makes it a rational decision-making software program.
By separating deterministic constraints from free constraints, we can prevent them from interfering with each other before combining them.
From now on, the rationality of decisions can be measured objectively, even and especially when taking into account psychological factors such as preferences, well-being, morality, justice, or fairness.
Causal chains can be oriented towards the will of the people, giving new substance to the term self-determination.
And already, we find ourselves imagining what the urbanization of Smart Cities would look like, designed to satisfy all needs and rationalize resources by assigning efficiency scores to work and a value of use to products, introducing these factors that constitute value.
In the ideal society as we imagine it, there is room for all talents, and it is they who determine what society wants to devote itself to. Logically, citizens are keen to focus their skills acquisition on sectors that best serve the common good, where they can see measurable effects.
From now on, personal well-being, good living, and happiness indices are components that can be taken into account in societal choices.
In such a context, it becomes desirable for industries to work cooperatively rather than competitively, since the goal is to have value in relation to evolving civilizational objectives.