Here is a thought experiment. Undoubtedly already suggested by many smart people. What would happen if the amount every person was paid, was actually reflected in the amount that their profession benefitted society?

Ya, ya, ya. You might be thinking about some things right now. Such as:

"But it already is, that is what Markets do!" or "That's impossible, because of the sheer complexity and intangibles, there is no way to determine the correlation between professions." or "You commie!"

And maybe you should be saying those things. Or maybe you should begin the thought experiment?

;-p

OK, you started the experiment and you are seeing probably see a challenge right away. "What does "benefit society" mean. There is a myriad of ways words can be thrown together to describe this. I'll choose one that will guide the experiment.

To benefit society is: "To better enable the enduring existence of the lifeforms that compose society." With this definition, something that benefits society is something that helps us stupid humans have a better chance at immortality. And even a chance at godliness. Hopes that fold into many ultimate beliefs of some transhumanists. As a quick note, this definition implicitly lumps all of humanity into a single society. More on that in a later blog post.

Ok, with the definition of benefitting society taken as above, please continue with the Gedankenexperiment you've started.

Suddenly, you might realize, "Wait, that is impossible! determining actions that benefit society implies that we know what actions benefit society!" And you're somewhat right. We don't necessarily know all of the actions that will benefit society, nor to the extent to which a given action will benefit society in the future. Yet.

However, we do know some things, that probably benefit society. And some that probably harm society.

An a few examples of beneficial things might include:

feeding people housing people education providing communities etc... Really, things that contribute to some sort of hierarchy of needs. A few things that do arguably not benefit society might be: mindless acts senseless destruction / war needless creation* etc...

This might seem odd, but creating this is not always beneficial. Like a building a Wall.

Even taking reasonable definitions of these beneficial and harmful actions, we even find that sometimes these things are not necessarily beneficial, and not necessarily harmful in the long run. So how would we know?

One way to do this might be to have everyone vote in a democratic manner, on what elements of society we individually believe are more beneficial. As we've recently learned in a poignant manner, such voting might not do well, as it will depend on the education and conditions of people. It is also clearly a massive challenge, because our domain expertise is so narrow, that an engine mechanic might not best know how to value the contributions of an apple farmer. And vice-versa. Voting would be biased selectively, and maybe inaccurately.

Is there another way that this could happen? What about through the use of simulation and predictive models.

That's right. Simulation. We are already simulating for many, many things. From the smallest of things, Like quantum chromodynamics. To the largest of things, like our entire cosmos. Simulation is working on the scales of molecules, cells, human bodies. Simulation works on higher-level networks such as transportation grid, and economies. And even simulation for Societies.

With accurate and predictive simulations, a professional might be able to be deemed more or less necessary in its ability to benefit society.

With reasonable simulations, we could begin to determine the appropriate value of particular elements within society. With our current massive racial/gender/economic imbalance, this suggestion might open up a whole #canofworms, but imagine this experiment is taking place under the hypothesis that Universal Basic Income is provided, and that people are given equal opportunities to positively benefit society.

There is even the possibility of using a democratic-like system, that fuses simulation and predictive modeling with an AI-like devise. With the opinions of people fed into a prediction engine, the predictive futures could more accurately evaluate the value of a profession. To some extent, they're already doing that with AI these days!

Swarm AI

Assuming we have a manner to accurately evaluate the beneficial contributions to society, we can better evaluate the appropriate compensation for contributions to society. I call this the information economy because it is primarily the information and transfer of information that contributes to our evolution. And just like having money, the interchangeable value between compensation and benefit to society is valued with something. Because it is a catchy name, here's what I'm calling them. ICiONS (eye-cons).

A quick rundown of the cycle: A profession contributes something to society, the contribution is evaluated towards how much it betters the survival of humanity. Those within that profession are rewarded in accordance with the relative benefit they bestow upon society. That simple, right?

I'm writing this here because it is an element in the scifi-book that I'm up to. And I just wanted to put it down on paper. But back in the real world, here is why I think this quite likely possible with present future advances.

How?

BitCoin

But also bitcoin itself. It costs hella energy, to mine the friggan things. A lot of it. Now the mining might stop, but in the meantime, in the meantime in the US it is consuming an estimated 1% of Energy. And for what useful purpose? What if that energy actually was used to perform the future simulations that enable the information economy to exist?

Ok, not just bitcoin, but the broad idea behind cryptocurrencies. Decentralization of our money system.

This brings me to Sensay

This application, or whatever you might call it, is really a platform that looks to reward expert advice that helps other people out. And a method to disrupt the economy on a very root basis. In their next step is to use the Sense tokens attributed that were bought with other cryptocurrencies in their recent ICO.

With Sensay, positive contributions are associated with sense tokens, which will sometimes have a monetary linkage. It might allow the people to award different amounts of tokens, to a different person, or entity for their different contributions.

It is also possible, that if Sensay wanted to take the more paternalistic approach as above, it could award a number of Sense Tokens, proportional to the calculated utility of everyone's contributions. So, in effect, sense tokens are effectively ICOiNS and people are awarded ICOiNS based on their contributions. In many regards, Sensay is an important step towards the Information Economy. They just need to involve AI a lot more. And get a lot more users on board.

As a final note

Now finally, you might be able to tell a general theme, and perhaps an essential element in this Information Economy is AI. It is likely that this external agent may have to be a GENeral Artificial Super Intelligence. A GENASI As I call them. And if we never have something like that, I do see it as highly unlikely that humans alone could design a system that is smart enough to escape its own extinction. But I could easily be wrong. I haven't run all the simulations on that one.

It's your turn

What do you think? Would it work? What other challenges do you see? What other socio-economic platforms could be made to create a future that is more sustainable for the survival of life? Thanks for any thoughts you have!

The Wisdom Economy