Comind ▶ Understanding ▶ S0: Understand ▶ Mind for humanity ? ▶ Organizing the Collective ▶ Motivations and Needs ▶
Defining What Is Good ▶
Wanting to make decisions for the long-term common good is a good orientation. But it is then necessary to determine what those decisions are, that is, to discriminate between those that improve the long-term common good and others.
How can we determine actions that improve the long-term common good ?
Suppose the question is whether or not to build a bridge. There may be many arguments for and against, and it is not always easy to predict the effect of a bridge. For example, the ease of traffic flow may encourage people to live further away, which could lead to an increase in the average number of kilometers traveled by the population (and not a decrease as one might expect). So we see that a serious study on the subject is necessary.
Judging the benefit provided by an action:
What is important for humanity is the prevalence of the long-term collective good. This rule defines a good orientation, but it may seem vague and subject to interpretation. It must therefore be accompanied by solid intelligence mechanisms to define which actions are in line with the long-term common good.
It is a rule adaptable to what we call collective: it can be an association, a company, or humanity as a whole.
In our time (2024), we observe the pitfalls stemming from a social organization based on lower-level objectives (constitutional rules such as freedom of speech): loopholes are used to create injustices that benefit a minority (collusion of powers, etc.). Between the lack of correction mechanisms and a hierarchical organization, deviations from the common good are not corrected and amplify due to the war of currents seen in "How to Associate Motivations with Different Collective Needs?".
We define a social intelligence mechanism as a system that allows the representation of reality, evaluates how good decisions are for the long-term common good, and uses its own resources to improve itself.
So an important question is how to create a social intelligence mechanism
Suppose there is a bias that causes the notion of the common good to be interpreted in different ways. The further one projects into the long term, the more apparent the errors become, because in living systems, errors tend to propagate their problems due to interdependencies. Of course, if the representation of reality is bad, the projection over time will be false. However, considering the long term helps to reveal problems.
For example:
We thus see that the only problem with interpretation would be that of the long term. But the meaning of "long term" is very simple.
By definition, having rules that allow for the long-term common good is beneficial collectively in the long term, but is it also the case in the medium term ? It can be noted that life is a progressive phenomenon in many aspects. For example, animal intelligence developed gradually over the course of evolution, or the expansion of a company does not happen overnight. So overall, the long-term good is achieved by increasing the good over shorter times. Of course, life is complex, and we cannot reduce everything to short-term good.
Furthermore, being an intelligent species, our need for hopeful perspectives is a very important part of the collective good. So even in the face of difficulties, knowing that we are on the right path greatly contributes to collective happiness.
The study shows that associating a collective intelligence mechanism with the goal of the long-term common good is sufficient and robust.