check out the Code of Hammurabi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
"People need rules". Like children. What better trap is there than to encode those rules? ;-)
Every set of rules will have some optimal behaviours, eg, you can be a crook if you're big enough to pay for the law to be friendly.
Once you add money, those optimal behaviours may change to maximise income. Then the game changes. Most people seem to expect the old game with the same rules - not happening. This is still a new science - and far harder than being a mere economist.
Thank you. I know the code - I am a teacher for mentally disabled children.
These children partly can't understand why it is shabby to cut off the very biggest piece of cake, because they are hungry after all and the needs of others don't interest them at that moment. So you have to support them directly with the action regulating.
Is it shabby to farm with 1000 accounts or the biggest stake? It is such a smart idea to make gold from straw very quickly - what do I care about the needs of others?... ;-)
... So you have to support them directly with the action regulating. About coding, great trap.
In the discussion about determination of codes, we must basically assume that not everyone has the same moral sense and the same cognitive prerequisites, which is why nothing at all will regulate itself all by itself.
Your cake example reminds me of a basic, yet interesting, optimisation problem.
How do you get 2 children to share fairly a cake?
As we know, people will look at the tiniest difference to get the larger share.
The solution is that you let one child cut the cake into two parts, then let the other child have first pick of their slice.
The solution is sooo simple... ;-)
However, it is (still?) a mystery to me how we can break this metaphor down to our core problem with many, many children. And the coding of it even more so! But in the end this is fortunately the task of competent mathematicians and computer scientists.
Exactly! The multi-person cake-cutting problem is, however, not so simple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_cake-cutting
It is one of many algos I am looking at - thinking takes time tho ;-)
What the h...! Chapeau if you manage to tailor this insane challenge as an algorithm to our concerns!
Maybe step by step, trial and error? Rome was not created in one day... ;-)
Happy Easter,
warm regards,
Chriddi
That's kinda my job! :-)
Thing is, many of these algos assume an agent-ignorance, a lack of total info, so that agents (sometimes human) act with incomplete knowledge, eg. the Prisoner's Dilemma is only a dilemma because the two people cannot communicate, so each has partial knowledge.
But on a blockchain, one can extract a lot of data so that, in theory, everybody acts from a POV of full-knowledge, not partial. This means decisions can be taken with global consequences in mind. This makes it easier to form allegiances on-chain that can break some of the purity of the algorithms.
I've said this many times, and perhaps takes some time to really sink in to the public: that after writing an algorithm, when you try to optimise its effects, it can end up doing something very different to the original intention.
Just as the 2-person cake sharing is easy, but many-people is hard - not just the process but also potential collusion among cake-lovers.