You Want Wars to Stop? Read This.

October 9. I hope this finds you well. In any case, grab a coffee and let’s talk about a realistic utopia of a fair society as only that is the type of society that will eliminate violence from our lives.

Why am I saying that, and saying it with confidence? Because a fair society is one that gives every member what persuaded them to cooperate in the first place: the security necessary to engage in random searches in pursuit of the high payoff only these searches offer. That’s the prerequisite that all fulfill their obligations stemming from the social contract that establishes the structures and rules of the cooperation; first and foremost, the obligation to implement this dataset in the processes to self-generate their individual and therefore naturally diverse models of the world in order to align these individual models just enough to make the desired level of cooperation possible. As soon as even one member of society is not enabled to lean into the unknown, discover and explore far more often than they are forced to exploit existing knowledge to simply survive, the goal of the contract is not met. And not only for this one member but for all members because of how random searches work.

In a random search it is not predictable when, where, how, or what exactly is found. That’s what makes them such a high risk that individuals alone can’t engage in them. But the unpredictability, the way you search without having any preconception of what exactly you are looking for, is what establishes the high value of what is finally found. Because any preconception is based on existing knowledge won in prior problem-solving exercises. We will never face the same problem twice; we will never face the same surroundings twice. Every moment requires therefore its own exploration and interactions. Every member in society not engaging in that but applying existing knowledge is a chance less for all to discover what can and must be discovered.

So, when the cooperation isn’t working out the way it is meant to, when the members don’t get out of it what had convinced them to join, why then should the members meet their obligations and continue to align their individually generated models of the world? Simply exploiting existing knowledge to survive is something they can do alone and do it while self-generating their model of the world as they think serves them personally best. The answer is therefore: they wouldn’t.

But just as some are at the bottom of society others are at the top. And while their chances to hit the biggest jackpot possible, too, diminish with every member of the cooperating group who is unable to conduct their own random searches and is forced to exploit existing knowledge, they get far more out of the arrangement than they would by living alone – especially because the exploitation of existing knowledge is a search that delivers its payoff at a predictable place and time in a somewhat predictable fashion, at least for a while. And that enables them to siphon it off what enables them to do some random searches. So, they don’t want to give up what they got.

The only way to make everyone else continue the arrangement, including those experiencing a loss due to the cooperation, is to force them with violence or the threat thereof to continue to accept that part of their reality is based on the existing dataset. Once this violence is introduced into the social contract, it will balloon because others will want to force a dataset that favors them onto everyone else.

Hence, the only way to stop wars and any other version of violence or the threat thereof is to implement a truly free and fair society, one that enables every member to lean into the unknown and explore their surroundings in a fashion of random search.

Any thoughts? Tell me. Tell all. Since our models of the world change with every new information we gather and the models are only accessible to others when we communicate them, we are part of never-ending negotiations that require constant conversation and debate.

To watch this post as a video, go here.

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