Blockchain Philosophy: Social emotions and blockchain
This time, let’s be smarter. Let’s implement a management of social emotions in our algorithms.
Introduction
The blockchain is a technology that allows us to create trusted interactions between agents who do not know each other without calling on a third party, namely a trusted intermediary.
I will not explain how this technology works. I already did it in another article(written in french). Just remember that this technology allows trust interaction between agents who do not know each other (who does not share an impersonal relationship) and that without ever having to call on a third person. This faculty is simply revolutionary.
To understand how this is revolutionary, we need to take a little distance on our societies. A social relation is schematized from a logical point of view as a deontic relationship between two agents A and B. By deontic, I mean with John Searle (Making the Social World, 2010) a relationship involving rights, authorizations, obligations, and so on. which can be formal or informal. In a way, there is no social relationship without any form of deontic relationship. When an agent is in a deontic relationship with another agent, it is sometimes identified by a status. This is how the relationship of friendship, being an employee, being in love gives deontic powers that can be formal or informal. Thus it may be legitimate to expect something from a friend, a lover, an employee, a policeman, a mother, a father, a son, a president, a commune mayor, a business leader, etc. All of this can be equated with formal or informal obligations. It is also legitimate that all these people expect something from another. In this case, we can equate this with rights that again can be formal or informal.
Social relationships can be formal or informal, status can be formal or informal. The transition from informal to formal is the central element that reflects the historical evolution of our societies.
Informal relationships
Previously, in an informal setting, to have an economic exchange for example in the form of barter between two agents A and B, it was necessary to establish a personal relationship between these two agents in order to establish a climate of trust, because often one of the parties did not necessarily have the good at the time when bartering started, or the person was not assured of the quality of the well-received. It was therefore necessary to establish a personal relationship of trust. Establishing this relationship could take time, a lot of time and then it was necessary to continue cultivating this relationship sometimes over several generations. In other words, informal economic exchange between two agents, whether between two people, between two communities or between two tribes, required a personal relationship; in the same way that friendship requires a personal relationship, “because it was him, because it was me,” Montaigne said to explain his friendship with Etienne de la Boétie.
It is clear that in this informal setting the number of relationships that an agent was likely to establish is extremely limited. Each relationship required a considerable investment to build that trust. Friendship was not a button that just can be clicked. And besides, it will never be such a button despite the proliferation of social networks. Friendship is first and foremost a personal, emotional relationship that gives rise to mutual commitments based on a relationship of trust.
To summarize, the informal relationship involves two entities, it is of the following form: A ↔ B.
What is first from a logical point of view in this type of relationship are the entities, the people. The relationship exists because it is A and because it is B. “Because it was him and because it was me” said Montaigne.
An informal relationship is characterized by:
- his personal dimension
- the difficulty to implement (high cost to build trust)
- the limited number of relationships that can be established
- instability
The fact that they are personal makes these relationships dependent on people’s emotions. The day one of the people get angry, the relationship wobbles. Despite the cost of implementation, these relationships remain precarious, depending on the emotional hazards of each other.
The need for stability naturally led societies to formalize relationships when they had the means and where possible.
The formalization
Informal relationships can become formalized. The friendship can be formalized in contract, the love in contract of marriage, the mutual help in contract of employee etc. The exchange relationship can also be formalized through a particular contract namely money whatever its fiduciary or scriptural form.
The formalization of social relations was one of the greatest social advances. A silent revolution that allowed a stabilization of society and a liberalization of energies within society. Indeed, thanks to the formalization, the number of social relations that we can establish has evolved exponentially. For example, in the economic field, the formalization of financial transactions opened up the field in modern times and economic development that would have been impossible without it.
Formalization consists of abstracting this relation, giving a pre-eminence not to A or B, but to the relation “↔”. The relationship acquires a proper existence independently of A or B. It carries with it conditions of implementation. Anyone who can fulfill the conditions of the relationship can grab this relationship. The relationship is liberated in some way from persons A and B. Its actualization in society always requires the existence of A’ and B’. For A’ to be related to B’ (A ‘↔ B’), it suffices that A’ and B’ fulfill the formal conditions of this relation.
The primary interest of formalization is a depersonalization of social relations. It is no longer because it is him or because it is me, but rather because he fulfills such a condition and that I fulfill such other condition sufficient for the establishment of the relationship.
This formalization of social relations has, therefore, unleashed an immense energy within the society which is flagrant when we compare our contemporary societies with traditional informal societies. But this development, this power of our societies has a price, the depersonalization of social relations.
Disenchantment
The tragedy is that the human being is by nature as Aristotle says a social being. Humans need others not only for their material sustenance but also for their emotional balance. Nature has integrated into the human a need of social emotion to force it from the inside to cooperate with its peers. But this social emotion requires a personal relationship, a person-to-person relationship. There is no informal emotion. We can regret it but that’s how emotion is a personal relationship. We have evolved but the human body has not progressed. He has kept his inertia, he is dependent on his social emotions.
Without realizing it, the formalization of social relations has logically induced a depersonalization of social relations which has induced an emotional imbalance of social order in people, and therefore in the best cases a form of social disenchantment.
Sometimes the consequences are much more dramatic. Historically, the social is what allows to face together the crisis of subsistence. Especially in times of subsistence crisis, the need for social emotion can be dramatic and can lead to tragedies. In these circumstances, people jump into the first ideology (political, religious, etc.) at hand that can provide them with this emotional social need, sometimes to the detriment of their livelihood. The shape of the future tragedy is uncertain today, but the tragedy seems to be inevitable because we have not known how to take into consideration this need for eminently human social emotion.
To summarize, formalization has allowed humanity unprecedented progress at the cost of a depersonalization of social relations that leads at best to the disenchantment of our societies and sometimes to tragedies.
Disenchantment is in a way an externality that results from the formalization of social relations. We must therefore think together about how to take charge of this externality and integrate it into our organizational models.
Blockchain and social emotions
Today, blockchain technology allows us to bring a new impetus to the formalization of our society. So far, the formal relationship had been freed from people A and B, but remained somewhat supported by a third party, a trusted intermediary that could take the form of a central entity. This entity bore the relationship in a certain way, it was the guarantor of this relationship. What the blockchain allows is an absolute formalization and therefore a total depersonalization of the relationship. The relationship is only supported by a computer algorithm running on unknown machines. If we look at the progress that has brought us the formalization of relations, we can imagine the immense progress that awaits us thanks to the blockchain.
But on the other hand, we now know that formalization is accompanied by depersonalization and that depersonalization induces an imbalance of the need for social emotions in people.
I propose to think about these different consequences when designing algorithms. We are fortunate to be able to intervene because the technology is still in its infancy. There is still time to integrate methods into these algorithms that strengthen the personal connection and contribute to the emotional balance of people.
Nature has placed social emotions in us to ensure our cooperation. She does not know that we have somehow managed our cooperation despite the negative signals emitted by our primitive emotions (for lack of personal relationships). I propose to return this spring of nature by ensuring that our model of cooperation is such that it sends the expected positive signals to ensure the emotional balance of our societies. To do this, we can create an incentive to respond to these emotional signals in society and in this way take care internally this negative externality.
A simple method is to implement in blockchain’s algorithms a mean that automatically reward people who create social welfare. Each agent can report on the blockchain for example 50 people who provide him with social good. Those who receive 5 reports receive a minimum wage. Such a model that needs to be clarified would automatically ensure a certain emotional balance in our societies by rewarding those who contribute to the emotional balance of our societies.
A french philosopher.
