Social procedure
Encyclopedia
The term Social Procedure is sometimes applied to any of the procedures carried out by people in various areas of society, such as legislative assemblies, judicial systems, and resource arbiters, such as banks or other lending organizations. It has been described as Social software (social procedure) and indeed does resemble software.
Social procedures include as a subset procedures which are at the foundation of our society, such as Procedural Law
. Similarly many social procedures are explicitly designed to ensure fair treatment to individuals or corporations, as official records of parliamentary debates show.
Multiple social procedures can serve to achieve the same end. Justice, as an example, in the U.S. achieved through the use of 2 adversarial lawyers, a neutral judge, and a jury of peers. In Canada
the judge is less neutral. This subtle difference in programming has an effect on the justice outcome.
When writing code, a programmer
does not have to worry that the computer
may suddenly decide that the next instruction is not worth its time. However, when designing a social procedure in which individual agents are performing each instruction, such a situation could arise. A successful piece of social software, i.e., procedures involving the interactions between multiple agents, will ensure that each agent can and will perform each action assigned to it. This implies that someone designing social software should keep in mind not only the flow of information in a multi-agent setting but also game-theoretic
considerations such as trying to find a mutually preferred outcome.
Though game theory is a highly technical subject with no special attention to sports, an example of a social procedure designed to help make a sporting system more fair is the Major League Baseball Draft whereby the teams which performed the worst in the last season get the first choice of players for the new season.
There is a project called A Formal Analysis of Social Procedures underway at the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS) under the direction of Dr. E. Pacuit. This interdisciplinary project looks at social procedures undertaken by rational and not-so-rational people, and the complex phenomena arising when the people involved in such producures interact.
Social procedures include as a subset procedures which are at the foundation of our society, such as Procedural Law
Procedural law
Procedural law or adjective law comprises the rules by which a court hears and determines what happens in civil lawsuit, criminal or administrative proceedings. The rules are designed to ensure a fair and consistent application of due process or fundamental justice to all cases that come before...
. Similarly many social procedures are explicitly designed to ensure fair treatment to individuals or corporations, as official records of parliamentary debates show.
Multiple social procedures can serve to achieve the same end. Justice, as an example, in the U.S. achieved through the use of 2 adversarial lawyers, a neutral judge, and a jury of peers. In Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
the judge is less neutral. This subtle difference in programming has an effect on the justice outcome.
When writing code, a programmer
Programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...
does not have to worry that the computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
may suddenly decide that the next instruction is not worth its time. However, when designing a social procedure in which individual agents are performing each instruction, such a situation could arise. A successful piece of social software, i.e., procedures involving the interactions between multiple agents, will ensure that each agent can and will perform each action assigned to it. This implies that someone designing social software should keep in mind not only the flow of information in a multi-agent setting but also game-theoretic
Game theory
Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...
considerations such as trying to find a mutually preferred outcome.
Though game theory is a highly technical subject with no special attention to sports, an example of a social procedure designed to help make a sporting system more fair is the Major League Baseball Draft whereby the teams which performed the worst in the last season get the first choice of players for the new season.
There is a project called A Formal Analysis of Social Procedures underway at the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS) under the direction of Dr. E. Pacuit. This interdisciplinary project looks at social procedures undertaken by rational and not-so-rational people, and the complex phenomena arising when the people involved in such producures interact.