COMPLEXITY Experiment Hypothesis
With. the COMPLEXITY experiment the fundamental question we seek to address is: “Can empathy drive economies of scale?” As short as the question is, there is a lot to be considered when we unpack the words within it. Empathy speaks to the ability of human beings to share feelings. Drive implies that this shared feeling can stimulate economic activity. Perhaps the most complicated part of this question is whether these systems of activity can be replicated, grown, or dispersed in such a way that make them accessible to a group of people as large as a state or nation. Investigating all of this requires psychology, economics, art, mathematics, and philosophy (ethics) and so the study of COMPLEXITY is as dynamic and evolving as the field itself.
Our starting point is a series of assumptions that out line a basic model for understanding human behavior that can be tested, and iterated upon as information is presented:
- The rational mind work as a pattern recognizer, language processor, and probability computer to produce solutions based on objective goals (avoidance of pain, maximization of pleasure).
- Emotions are intuitive faculties that give us the ability to perceive given stimuli subjectively, thus helping us orient ourselves prioritize and focus on relevant stimulus (desire, preference, interest,scope).
These two faculties interplay to generate a comprehensive framework for interacting with the world. Our brain may receive signal from our body that says “eat”. Our mind begins the process of determining how to fulfill this request. Our emotions qualify tastes stimulus that help us decide what to eat (sweet carbs=appetizing vs bitter acids = unappetizing)
Emotions augment decision making by qualifying otherwise arbitrary stimuli. This all spits out not only “I am hungry” but more specifically “I want a cheese burger.”
The difference between hunger and craving is the difference between the practical matter needing food to live (metabolism) and the irrational matter of having a preference for a specific kind of food as a product of mood + appetite.
We rely on pleasure and pain as the most fundamental intuitive faculties of decision making. Arguably emotions are at the base of ethics in some visceral sense. For example unconditioned emotional reactions to unfair treatment by comparison give rise to psychological anguish in children and primates alike. Here, the rational mind seeks to answer “Why am I exempt from pleasure?” when no rational answer is provided our emotions begin to assist in the qualification of this imbalance and may generate envy. Tere there is some innate sense of entitlement expressed as product of some precognitive expectation of equity. Emotions may be stimulate first or simultaneously with rational thought, and some emotions are resolved with the addition of new relevant information. This is the general basis for our thinking that there is some logic to our emotions, as they occur often in expected ways. Subjective interpretation helps us derive significance from crude data, by reflecting it against individual experience and identity.
If emotions do help us make “sense” of intellectual and/or metaphysical information then we should not ignore them, but integrate them into the processes we engage in to survive. Complexity economics begs that we accept dynamic value centers that allow for iterative value creation. Complex economic systems have generative centers of value that adapt and define new economies as a function of new connections and activities.
This operates similarly to the way taste works in people where ethics are not relative or absolute but cross referential. There is not just one kind of food that tastes “good” but contextual, conditional, and temporal criteria for good. You may be hungry but discriminantly want a burger (contextual), and you may only like your burgers cooked medium well (conditional), and furthermore you may only want it for lunch, as opposed to dinner.
Empathy becomes important when we account for the way our moods affect our objectives, particularly when it comes to maintaining a social agreement based on a reasonable set of expected behaviors. We have to know the difference between what is good for the individual and what is good for society, and navigate the changes in objective in order to have shared values.
“Value”, here takes the dual meaning of both ‘practical resources needed to continue life’ but also ‘ethical considerations about what is considered good’ . The dual meaning of value means there is no single “Economy” but instead the are striations of economies that are diverse, decentralized, and temperamental. It requires that individuals be in touch with their emotions and rational mind to generate fulfillable objectives that can be met by the economy, through existing means or some synthesis of resources (technology).
The hope with this research is to unlock insights as to how we might organize economic systems that provides value on-demand, regardless of what is considered valuable at the time.
LINK TO VIDEO SUMMARY
