🚣🏾 👨🏽‍🎤 💪🏽 Connectionism 🖇️ 👩🏽‍🏭 🔫

Evolution awarded each living organism two aspirations - to survive and multiply. The desire to reproduce for an individual is the desire to survive for a population.

To effectively fulfill these aspirations, each organism has a mechanism for assessing potential threats and benefits. Any information that avoids threats and / or acquires benefits is called value .

The most primitive types of value assessment are pain and pleasure - direct instinctive reactions that act directly during the onset of a value stimulus. They are inherent in the vast majority of living things.

In the course of evolution, increasingly complex living creatures (animals) appeared, whose apparatus for evaluating value began to be based on predictions of the future. This led to the appearance of simple emotional reactions - fear and desire.

Further evolutionary complication of animals led to the need for group interaction. Groups are able to more effectively defend themselves against threats and gain benefits through a synergistic effect. Group interaction requires a richer emotional "alphabet" for communication with relatives. To the simplest emotions were added resentment, sadness, anger, envy, etc.

Each act of obtaining benefits or avoiding threats requires a sequence of actions - an algorithm. Part of the information about these algorithms is transmitted in instincts (gene information), and part - in the process of copying the behavior of parental individuals. The more complex the animal we are considering, the more important the second method and the less important the first.

The optimization of these algorithms took place along with the evolution of living beings through the accumulation of random changes in the structure of algorithms and information transmission errors between generations.

The fundamental difference between humans and other highly organized social animals is their ability to optimize value algorithms within even one generation. In other words, man is a transitional stage from the evolution of genes to the evolution of ideas. And this transition is not yet complete.

Pyramid of needs

Each person throughout life constantly generates potentials ** needs ** - fears, desires and ideas.

The work in human society is called the implementation of algorithms to avoid threats and the extraction of benefits, as well as the optimization of these same algorithms.

That is, the natural order of things is to feel the need → to do work → to get value.

The “pain-pleasure” system of each person generously rewards him for cases when, when receiving the same amount of value, he had to spend less energy on work. And severely punishes when for the same amount of work managed to get less value.

Most likely, each of you at least once heard about the Maslow pyramid - it is a very famous attempt to systematize human needs.

Its main feature is the complexity of needs with each new rung. The lowest level refers to the existential needs of only one individual. But with an increase in the level of needs, the individual-society ratio grows in favor of society. The highest level of needs affects all of humanity and very few people reach it at the present time, because for this it is necessary to “build a foundation” from lower needs.

Another important observation is the gradual transition from predominantly fear on the lower floors of the pyramid to predominantly desires and dreams on the upper.

Connectionism argues that the main criterion for the development of society is the weighted average complexity of the needs generated by people.

Social graph

Each person during his life forms informational connections with thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. Some relationships last for decades, such as friendship, love. Some very brief and one-time, for example, buying a souvenir from a merchant in Tunisia.

The unifying feature of all information links is the exchange of value.

The two main parameters of information communication are intensity and symmetry. Each connection has informational components - fears, desires and ideas in different proportions.

The whole process, when viewed from above, is a social graph (network), the nodes of which are people, and the edges are information links.

However, it is worth clarifying that the nodes are not people, but the so-called information actors. They can be individuals, companies, associations, states, or even humanity as a whole.

Politics , in the context of connectionism, considers the configuration of relations for the distribution of threats from their own kind.

Ecology considers the configuration of relations on the distribution of threats from the external environment, but for a long time and with increasing force combined with politics.

The economy is considering the configuration of relations for the distribution of benefits in society.

Science considers all the knowledge and ideas of society as a whole.

Money

From the point of view of connectionism, money is a carrier of information on the value of goods and insurance against threats. Money does not carry information about the value of ideas. The value of ideas becomes clear only when increasing the efficiency of production of goods and / or avoiding threats. Consequently, the role of money is very large at the lower steps of the Maslow pyramid, but significantly less at high.

Inclusive and extractive institutions

In the book “Why are some countries rich and others poor”, Daron Ajemoglu and James Robinson introduce the concepts of extractive and inclusive institutions, as well as analyze many historical events with a view to the reasons for the success of some states and the failure of others. I recommend reading it.

However, it is very vague about what extractivity and inclusiveness are. It was intuitively clear to me that this is about the same as the extensive and intensive forms of development. In short, extensive development is “at the expense of others,” and intensive is “due to internal changes.”

If we combine these concepts with the concept of a social graph, then extractiveness is the ability of any informational message or action (political, economic or scientific) to increase asymmetry and entail breaking ties in the social graph. Inclusivity is the opposite.

The whole progress of mankind was accompanied by a transition from a more extractive to a less extractive institution. Those countries in which it was possible to do this earlier and to resist a rollback to previous states today are developed and rich.

Liberalism

Liberalism is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. This is a set of ideas aimed at eliminating the asymmetry of political relations between people. "Society cannot influence me more than I do on it."

Basic principles:

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Liberalism is closely connected with capitalism, despite the fact that liberalism is an inclusive institution, and capitalism is extractive, and we will talk about this later.

The picture at the head of the post says that liberalism is the only effective way to overcome the first stage of equality, namely equality of rights, although it would be more correct to say the political balance of all members of society.

The liberal movement is still in the process of transforming society, and I wholeheartedly support this process.

Capitalism and socialism

Capitalism and socialism arose as two solutions to the eternal dilemma - “what is more important - individuality or society?”. As is customary for new ideas, people started from extremes and turned them into religions.

Both institutions are extractive, albeit less extractive than the feudal system. They give advantages to a small group of people, infringing on everyone else, but they do it in different ways.

In capitalism, this group consists of people who were able to make full use of the phenomenon of economic asymmetry and completely legally pump money out of the market.

In socialism, which is more reminiscent of “feudalism with ideology”, this group is the party nomenclature, which uses the simplest form of asymmetry - political.

The linkage “capitalism + liberalism” is more effective than the linkage “socialism + authoritarianism” only because the first phenomenon does not stifle the free market by regulations and allows preserving property. As a result, the phenomenon of collective intelligence and the effect of synergy gives it more advantages than the second bunch.

I do not agree that there is such a thing as a “planned economy”. It would be more correct to call it “a free market, laden with tank hedgehogs, barbed wire and mines”.

Capitalism in the late stage of its development tends to use political asymmetry - lobbyism.

Economic asymmetry causes cyclical crises in society - from within, arising “discharges” of the dumping of economic polarization (stratification of society into rich and poor).

All these phenomena are not a secret and have long been discussed in the highest offices and tribunes of developed countries.

At the moment, the countries of Scandinavia cope best with these shortcomings of capitalism, albeit through a very high tax burden on the population.

Definition of Connectionism

Connectionism is the second stage of liberalism, aimed at ensuring equal opportunities or, in other words, the economic balance of relations between information actors.

If liberalism says, "Society cannot influence me more than I do on it," then connectionism adds, "Society cannot take more from me than I do from it."

Connectionism is a social system designed to replace capitalism.

Do not look for this definition on Wikipedia - the idea has not yet been awarded the right to be there.

Creative destruction

All in the same book, “Why are some countries rich and others poor” introduces yet another concept - creative destruction. This is a gradual replacement of institutions that impede the development of society, or introduce asymmetries in the relations of people with those that are devoid of such shortcomings.

Connectionism is built on the basis of liberalism, which means that it cannot be created with a “strong hand”, it cannot be made at gunpoint of tanks or by the destruction of all those who disagree (hello, USSR!). It is possible only within the framework of a strong liberal rule of law, with powerful democratic institutions, independent courts and free media.

Connectionism replaces loan interest and rental institutions with other institutions and prohibits people from automating any process. With him, the phrases “money makes money” and “money must work” lose their meaning.

Money is not able to work, people do work.

The paradox of freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the basic and inalienable right of every citizen of the rule of law. However, in practice, absolute freedom of speech is often broken up into cruel reality. At the trial in Nuremberg, the liberal courts faced a very difficult philosophical dilemma - how to punish propagandists, because you can’t be punished for words. At that time, the courts did this with the help of tricks. You can see more in this video:

In the information age, this problem has worsened many times. Fake news, infodemia, online activism and bullying.

From the point of view of connectionism, there is no philosophical dilemma - any information has a degree of extractiveness. Unverified rumors, calls for violence, anti-vaccination and “flat-earth” messages, propaganda, radical feminism are highly extractive movements and can destroy social ties between people.

Determining the level of extractiveness is a very difficult task, it is more suitable for it as a form of collective immunity against this kind of information and wide public control over the institution of suppression of such currents (extractive action directed to the extractive institution can be inclusive if most of society knows about it and approves it). One cannot trust such a task to private companies, as for example happened with YouTube, Facebook, etc.

This approach can be applied to the analysis of any institutions and phenomena. This is called connectivity analysis .

Turquoise principle

The whole idea of connectionism would be exclusively paper, if not for one BUT. There are organizations in which he already works, and very efficiently, even if he does not have a specific name. For example, Valve. The organizations based on such principles are discussed in detail in the book “Discovering the Organizations of the Future” by Frederic Lalu.

What's next?

Connectionism in the framework of not a company but a whole state can significantly accelerate progress, including in the field of artificial intelligence. The moment of creating a strong AI is likely to be decisive for humanity. If it appears in conditions of highly extractive institutions, it will most likely become a “great filter” and destroy us all.

If this does not happen, then there will come a weakly predictable future, with information actors capable of producing more needs and values alone than current humanity is producing now.

A new stage of social structure will come to replace connectionism - modificationism, which can lead us to the 3rd step of equality, but I can hardly imagine its principles at the moment.

Conclusion

This article is the first wave of my thoughts on how we can build our future. The article may contain errors and incomplete reasoning, since one person is unable to develop a truly consistent and scientifically sound strategy in a short time. I will be grateful for any additions and discussions.

I also create an information resource. It will have a much deeper justification of the ideas from this article, with complex mathematics, simulations and analysis of historical examples, as well as the development of a vision and experimental reforms to ensure the existence of such a society.

Connectionism has a symbol - "The Third Planet near the Star-Capital" on a turquoise background, in tribute to the book "Discovering the Organizations of the Future".

Connectionism