Gambles are random variables that model possible changes in wealth. Classic decision theory transforms money into utility through a utility function and defines the value of a gamble as the expectation value of utility changes. Utility functions aim to capture individual psychological characteristics, but their generality limits predictive power. Expectation value maximizers are defined as rational in economics, but expectation values are only meaningful in the presence of ensembles or in systems with ergodic properties, whereas decision-makers have no access to ensembles, and the variables representing wealth in the usual growth models do not have the relevant ergodic properties. Simultaneously addressing the shortcomings of utility and those of expectations, we propose to evaluate gambles by averaging wealth growth over time. No utility function is needed, but a dynamic must be specified to compute time averages. Linear and logarithmic “utility functions” appear as transformations that generate ergodic observables for purely additive and purely multiplicative dynamics, respectively. We highlight inconsistencies throughout the development of decision theory, whose correction clarifies that our perspective is legitimate. These invalidate a commonly cited argument for bounded utility functions.
April Theses 2020
A. V. Shcherbakov, L. A. Kolesova, V. G. Budanov, S. Yu. Malkov, A. V. Oleskin, A. A. Altunin, B. I. Kostenko, V. S. Kurdyumov, N. V. Belotelov, V. A. Ryzhov, N. Yu. Lobachev, P. V. Belousov
One cannot consider the modern crisis as a purely financial, economic or environmental one. First of all, it is of the deep anthropological nature of the global consumer society: the inability of the modern world order to respond to the challenges of crisis imbalances in the global economy, the threats of local wars and pandemics, climatic, environmental and leisure crises, but most importantly, meaning crises which sharply exacerbate in the digital network society. Therefore, we proceed from a person, not from the economy, the latter should serve the person, and not vice versa, as is commonly considered today. It is clear that after the epidemic and crisis, the world will be different; there are not so many scenarios for overcoming them. These lines are being written during a period of unprecedented general panic over the epidemic of the COVID-19 (which is no more dangerous than the past swine or bird flu epidemics), with the help of which the Masters of the World are trying to justify the inevitable collapse of the global financial and economic system that generates the Great Depression 2.0, which began almost a year ago with an uncompromising trade war between China and the United States, and was accurately predicted by us back in 2018. Now, the richest families of the world, the largest investment funds and TNCs solve their problems of redistributing markets and get rid of their debt liabilities not by means of wars and revolutions that destroy the real material potentials of states and peoples, but sophistically, in a new way, by means of devastating many developed countries through their economic self-destruction during a halt of life in self-isolation and quarantine, the purchase of their assets, lands and real estate for nothing at the end of the crisis, the introduction of a total surveillance system and administrative and medical dictatorship. In fact, we are talking about a kind of ‘digital concentration camp’, the separation and self-destruction of people and peoples, and the establishment of a feudal-oligarchic dictatorship; to get this expected result, it is enough to maintain the fear of being infected and the prospects of new epidemic waves of new viruses that will necessarily appear, either artificial or generated by a sick biosphere. But the plans of manipulating fear are increasingly being destroyed by the awareness of the peoples’ interests by the national elites, the consolidation of people in spite of self-isolation, the awakening of spiritual values and conditions in people in the face of a mortal threat. All these opens a window to the new emerging world, another future for the World, to which the proposed theses are devoted.
«Social Chaperones» Oleskin, Alexander V., Budanov, Vladimir G., Kurdyumov, Vladimir S.
The development of network society (the network revolution) in the present-day world necessitates the establishment of networked regulatory organizations that can exert a positive influence on this process. They can be regarded as analogs of biomolecular chaperones that function in the living cell. Such social chaperones can design optimal scenarios of the network revolution. They can take account of various possible organizational options (paradigms) of network structures. Chaperones can creatively use paradigms that function in biological systems ranging from unicellular organisms to schooling fish, social insects, and apes. Social chaperones can contribute to their implementation using the whole spectrum of possible strategies of promoting expedient network scenarios and convincing political leaders and government regulators of their importance for humankind.
«Preliminary steps toward a universal economic dynamics for monetary and fiscal policy» Yaneer Bar-Yam, Jean Langlois-Meurinne, Mari Kawakatsu, Rodolfo Garcia
We consider the relationship between economic activity and intervention, including monetary and fiscal policy, using a universal monetary and response dynamics framework. Central bank policies are designed for economic growth without excess inflation. However, unemployment, investment, consumption, and inflation are interlinked. Understanding dynamics is crucial to assessing the effects of policy, especially in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis. Here we lay out a program of research into monetary and economic dynamics and preliminary steps toward its execution. We use general principles of response theory to derive specific implications for policy. We find that the current approach, which considers the overall supply of money to the economy, is insufficient to effectively regulate economic growth. While it can achieve some degree of control, optimizing growth also requires a fiscal policy balancing monetary injection between two dominant loop flows, the consumption and wages loop, and investment and returns loop. The balance arises from a composite of government tax, entitlement, subsidy policies, corporate policies, as well as monetary policy.
«Model synthesis and model-oriented programming – the technology of design and implementation of simulation models of complex multicomponent systems» Yu.I. Brodsky
A formalization of the concept of a complex system simulation model is proposed, as a family of models-components with the standard organization of simulation calculations. This family is closed under the integration of models-components into the model-complex, so it is possible to synthesize fractal complexity models, without changing the computation organization. A new approach to the description, design and implementation of simulation models of complex systems arises – the model synthesis and model-oriented programming, allowing to exclude imperative programming, and to get the high degree of parallelism in the executable code.
«Industry 4.0.: socio-economic junctures» Vladimir Budanov, Irina Aseeva, Ekaterina Zvonova
Abstract. The modern civilization, known as Industry 4.0., is in the midst of a new industrial revolution. It is characterised by the pervasive implementation of convergent technologies, the shift in forms of ownership, fusion of cyber-physical and social realities, endowment of machines with elements of intellect and utilisation of social media in new communication alternatives. Such major social shifts will inevitably instigate a search for new methods of interaction between people and machines in all spheres, including economy, education, industry and everyday life. Gaining awareness of technological, economic and socio-anthropological risks is the primary subject of this paper. The authors analyse various social transformation scenarios, which are fraught with tectonic shifts in the modern society: disappearance of the middle class and unqualified workers, decreasing migration of unskilled workers to Western countries and their self-isolation, and increasing potential migration of the middle class to developing countries. The paper conducts an Umwelt-analysis of both man-machine system development prospects and the danger of the technological singularity, when machines endowed with artificial intelligence may create an economic and political situation that would threaten human strategic domineering and the very existence of humankind. The authors ponder alternative paths for the evolution of humanity through supporting international consolidating megaprojects, establishing network civil society structures, building an economy of trust, releasing mankind’s creative potential and spiritual values in the context of decreased industrial employment spurred on by the deployment of the digital economy, which will require a radical change in the aims and methods of education.
«Nanocorpuscular mutagenesis: New horizons» S.T. Zakhidov
In the long term, nanocorpuscular mutagenesis will provide a new experimental basis for a deeper understanding of living systems’ development processes and for obtaining fundamentally new artificial life forms, and will thus expand the scope for the geneticists and biologists, biotechnologists and medical specialists. As regards the problem of genetic safety of materials obtained using nanotechnological synthesis, it will probably require the years-long, laborious genetic studies to tackle it successfully. In the modern context, only such studies may set up the barrier for the release of genetically hazardous nanomaterials into the environment.
«Creation, transdimensional relations, aesthetic modeling» A. Koblyakov
One of the most general definitions of creativity reads as follows: «Creativity is the process of solving a problem which gives rise to a new quality, and a new result» [Sosnin, 1997, p. 6; Beskova, 1993, p.162]. What does it mean to «creatively solve a problem», or to remove a contradiction? As we wrote earlier [Koblyakov, 2015, pp.261-279], the strategy of the computer in a problem-solving situation — in this case, the presence of mutually contradictory statements — comes down to a simple rejection of one of the alternatives, in other words, a reduction. In turn, the strategy of synthesis that combines alternatives is characteristic of a creative mind, which, at its core, differentiates it from a computer [Beskova, 1993, 165-169]. For example, Alfred Whitehead in his book «Process and Reality» (1929) writes that the purpose of art is «to move from disjunction to conjunction, and the formation of a new essence, different from the one given by disjunction» (Nalimov, 1989, p.162). Let us be reminded that in logic, the transition from disjunction to conjunction also means a transition from a disjoining statement to a conjoining one, from a juxtaposition or separation of qualities, processes, and phenomena, to a synthesis or a connection.
«Landscape of Russian digital philosophy problems: Discussion overview» Chekletsov Vadim, Arshinov Vladimir
Abstract. The article is based on the round table2 (9 April 2019, Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow). The main topic of the round table timed to International Internet of Things Day (IoT Day) was «Digital Philosophy Millennium Problems» by analogy with David Gilbert/Clay Institute mathematical Millennium Problems list. Presentations and discussion have been made by more than twenty academic researchers from different fields of philosophy and nonacademic digital professionals (engineers, designers, programmers, managers, businessmen). After the round table we have conducted a survey by email and social networks with more than one hundred Russian speaking researchers (from humanitarian and technical side). Also, we gather opinions by open facebook channel for digital specialists and general public from Russia and abroad. In result we have generalized philosophical problems, concerning digitalization and made some methodological work for these issues classification and reflection.
«Social Chaos and Problems of Management of Future During an Era of Changes» Vladimir Grigorievych Budanov and Irina Alexandrovna Aseeva
In a tornado presentiment life it is disturbing fades, tries it is realized or unconsciously to take cover, evade from unknown ways of death. The person the creator and the slave of social elements believing to be the full owner at the time of prosperity, it becomes helpless or mad in the times of troubles. Not a lot of persons manage to keep understanding of the events, to be active and reasonable at the same time. Responsibility of decision-making multiply increases and time for their acceptance and implementation doesn’t absolutely remain. Nevertheless, in the turbulent worlds there are laws and rules not only survivals, but also managements of reality, external and internal, there are laws of creation and damping of catastrophe and stability. It seems to us to its time to talk right now on these subjects.