(Start: July 11, 2024, Last modification: July 24, 2024)
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: kontakt@gdh-oksimo.org
CONTEXT
This text is part of the CONCEPT topic of the blog sw-en.oksimo.org.
Summary
The oksimo software aims to help people in planning goals in their everyday lives. The software does not find and set goals; this is something the users must do themselves. However, when it comes to working out the path to a goal with others and checking possible outcomes, the software can assist by providing ongoing assessments of how close the set goal has been achieved. For clarifying different paths to the goal, the oksimo software requires that the users collaboratively develop a sustainable empirical theory in the form of a text, using everyday language. The ‘connection’ between the real world and the text of the theory is established through the ‘meaning relationship’ learned by all authors: the expressions in the text then correspond to certain facts in the real world. If the world changes, the expressions of the theory must change accordingly. This is possible because a distinction is made between the ‘description of the current situation’ and a set of ‘change rules’. From the perspective of modern logic, these change rules represent ‘inference rules’, which allow changes in the text that reflect changes in the real world to be derived within a ‘concept of inference’. These derivations could also be made manually without software, but as the theory becomes more complex, manual methods reach their limits. Thus, oksimo software can be used as an editor and simulator for sustainable theories. Since the use of the software is fully transparent, and any user can modify the current text at any time, there is fundamentally the possibility to build ‘trust’ in the quality of these theories – even if they were created with the support of oksimo software.
What the oksimo Software Was Created For
SUPPORTING PEOPLE IN EVERYDAY LIFE
In the world of software, one can differentiate software that is created to directly program a machine—usually called a computer—or software that is designed to support the activities of people in everyday life. Well-known examples of the latter type of software include text processors, spreadsheet programs, music production software, video editing programs, and the like.
ACHIEVING GOALS
The oksimo software is also a program intended to support people in their daily lives. It is designed for groups of people who, with an eye towards desirable future goals, try to jointly describe a process that allows them to move from the present through intermediate stages to the desired end states.
How a group of people (citizens, community representatives, a club, an agency, etc.) comes to agree on goal definitions is not a direct contribution of the oksimo software. Its use presupposes that at least one goal has already been agreed upon. However, the oksimo software can indirectly help assess the ‘quality’ of a goal or an entire ‘bundle of goals’ better, because the elaboration of the path to a goal (the ‘process description’) can raise many questions, the answers to which might lead to doubts about whether the original goal really makes sense. Conversely, the elaboration of the path can also strengthen the conviction that one is ‘on the right track.’
FORM OF A THEORY WITH GOALS
This clarification of goals, including the necessary steps, is part of the ‘environment’ of the oksimo software, the ‘application situation,’ within which texts can emerge that ultimately represent the form of an ’empirical theory (ET)’. If linked with at least one goal, it corresponds to what can today also be called a ‘sustainable empirical theory (NET)’.
The aim of an empirical theory is to enable predictions based on past experiences for the present about what changes are possible in the present and what a changed present might look like in the future.
While an empirical theory ‘by itself’ only describes which ‘changes’ can occur in a ‘given situation’, linking it with a ‘goal’ further allows for an ‘evaluation’ of the process: if all possible changes are applied to a given situation repeatedly, a sequence of situations arises, and with a view to a ‘goal’, it can then be evaluated whether this sequence of situations is approaching the goal or not. Such an evaluation is naturally only possible if there are sufficient similarities between the description of a goal and the description of a given situation.
Example: If the description of a given situation were “The traffic light is red” and the goal described as “The traffic light is green”, and all occurring changes did not alter the state “The traffic light is red”, then the goal would remain unattainable unless something could happen to switch the light from red to green.
DEVELOP THEORIES
If a group of people wants to jointly develop and apply a theory, then this group must meet approximately the following requirements: the members of the group
(i) must master at least one common language that everyone can understand;
(ii) must agree on at least one goal that they want to achieve together;
(iii) must be able to agree on a starting situation (from which the goal is to be achieved), and
(iv) they must agree on a set of changes that they all consider possible and realistic, so that a given situation can be ‘changed’ in such a way that a ‘new’ situation arises. It is also assumed by all that the set of agreed changes refers both to the initial situation and to possible subsequent situations that arise from the application of change rules.
Example: The development of a theory using the example of a board game, e.g., “Don’t Get Angry” (Mensch ärgere dich nicht (GERMAN)) : A group of people are the authors, who agree on a game board with various figures and dice as the starting situation. The goal is to reach specific game squares. The game rules describe the possible changes. The orderly application of the game rules then leads to a sequence of game situations, at the end of which usually one player is the first to occupy all designated fields in such a way that it applies: he has reached the goal.
THEORY AND LANGUAGE
In the usual case, a group of authors for the development of a theory includes more than one member, and there is at least one language that all understand (e.g., German or English). A language is necessary so that the requirements (i) to (iv) can be represented in a way that provides all involved authors with a common reference point.
Example of an everyday situation: A father with two children stands at the edge of a road and watches as a car stops at a red traffic light. If a child asks why the car is not moving, he could say: “The traffic light is red” (a fact that can be observed with one’s own eyes). If the child then asks when the car will move again, he could say that the car will move when “The traffic light is green”. The children can observe how the traffic light turns green and the car actually moves on. If the father and his two children remain standing for a moment longer, then the children can see how the traffic light switches back to red. From this whole process, the children could now formulate the following description in the format of an empirical theory:
EXAMPLE THEORY 1
INITIAL SITUATION 1: “The traffic light is red”
CHANGE 1: If “The traffic light is red”, then a little later “The traffic light is green”.
APPLICATION OF THEORY 1
If people are in a situation where a traffic light is red and they can read the text of the theory, then they could use the theory to ‘predict’ that the traffic light will turn green. If they stay long enough in the situation with the red traffic light, they will be able to observe that the traffic light turns ‘green’.
EXAMPLE THEORY 2
INITIAL SITUATION 2: “The traffic light is green”
CHANGE 2: If “The traffic light is green”, then a little later “The traffic light is red”.
APPLICATION OF THEORY 2
If people are in a situation where a traffic light is green and they can read the text of the theory, then they could use the theory to ‘predict’ that the traffic light will turn red. If they stay long enough in the situation with the green traffic light, they will be able to observe that the traffic light turns ‘red’.
Both theories can be combined into:
THEORY 1 & 2
INITIAL SITUATION 1: “The traffic light is red” or “The traffic light is green”
CHANGE 1: If “The traffic light is red”, then a little later “The traffic light is green”.
CHANGE 2: If “The traffic light is green”, then a little later “The traffic light is red”.
If one were to record an application of Theory 1-with-2, the following log might result:
Given situation: The traffic light is red
Rule application with Change 1: The traffic light is green
Rule application with Change 2: The traffic light is red
…
Or with a different initial situation:
Given situation: The traffic light is green
Rule application with Change 2: The traffic light is red
Rule application with Change 1: The traffic light is green
…
This log can be technically explained by the operation of text replacement:
The traffic light is red (replaced by)
The traffic light is green (replaced by)
The traffic light is red
…
This illustrates that the creation and application of theories is a dual process: In the observable real world, we find observable states with properties (the traffic light), which we can translate into corresponding linguistic expressions using a communally learned meaning function, forming a text (the theory). If this text is to appropriately reflect the observable reality, then changes in the observable real world must be reflected in the texts associated through the meaning function by corresponding changes in the linguistic expressions. Assuming a functioning meaning function, texts within an empirical theory can then be seen as verifiable representations of empirical circumstances and used as such.
Moreover, as the examples show, when applying an empirical theory, the users of the theory must determine whether something ‘holds’ or ‘does not hold’. The ‘texts alone’ (as in the case of a generative AI like ChatGPT) cannot do this. As long as the traffic light system is ‘operational’, one will be able to observe the change from red to green and vice versa. If the traffic light system fails, then the rules cannot be applied.
SIMPLIFICATION OF LANGUAGE THROUGH ABBREVIATIONS & USE OF SOFTWARE
In modern logic — a kind of ‘theory of reasoning’ — the ‘application of a change rule to a given situation’ is also called ‘infer’ or ‘conclude’, and the entire concept of application is also called ‘inference concept’. This concept of inference is often abbreviated with the symbol ‘⊢’.
As in the example above, if one has a set of expressions S as the current application situation (“The traffic light is red”, “The traffic light is green”) and a set of change rules V, one could also write with the new abbreviation:
S ⊢V S’
This would mean: if I have a finite set of expressions S, and a non-empty set of change rules V, then the inference concept ‘⊢’ describes how the change rules V are applied to the set of expressions S so that a new set S’ of expressions emerges.
Normally, it would be the users themselves — i.e., people, citizens, etc. — who ‘understand’ how to apply change rules V to a given set of expressions S in order to obtain a new set of expressions S’. This ultimately manual activity can quickly become so extensive that such a manual approach reaches its limits. For this situation, the oksimo team developed a software called ‘oksimo Software’, which can be understood as an editor & simulator for empirical theories (even for sustainable empirical theories, if goals are to be included).
With the help of oksimo Software, users can pass their descriptions of current situations S and possible changes V as texts to the oksimo Software, and it would then ‘automatically’ apply the above-described concept of inference ‘⊢’ for the users, so that the users only need to observe which subsequent situations S’, S”, S”‘ etc. are generated by the oksimo Software. Thus, a whole ‘sequence of conclusions’ can emerge. Typically, a ‘sequence of conclusions’ is also called a ‘simulation’.
S ⊢V S’, S’ ⊢V S”, S” ⊢V S”‘, …
TRANSPARENT SUPPORT
These explanations make it clear that the oksimo software does nothing that the human users would not do. Because all expressions in the texts used are expressions of a common everyday language, everyone can directly understand everything that happens within a simulation. The application of the oksimo software occurs in ‘complete transparency’. This allows any participant to change the software at any time: specialized programming knowledge is not necessary. What one must know and understand, however, is the real process itself, e.g., that traffic lights can change from red to green and back again.
Access to the oksimo Software
Access to the oksimo software can be obtained through a web browser by entering the URL https://oksimo.com/. There, one can log in as a regular user via the ‘login’ button, or navigate to the page with publicly accessible theories at https://oksimo.com/public_theories. On this page, you can view and simulate existing theories that have been made available by various users.