Experimental futur projects
A role I would like to play, is being a translator of philosophical and fictional ideas into concrete and fanciful technical projects.
Theme : Cognitive Biases
Recent behavioral psychology has successfully uncovered many cognitive biases that we all possess (halo effect, anchoring bias, framing effect, status quo bias, etc.) and which are so remarkably powerful that they are skillfully exploited by advertisers, recommendation algorithms, and even policymakers (see: Nudge Theory).
However, the only way to combat automatisms is to build new ones on top of the old ones. Therefore, I would like to create a website with the help of psychologists and neuroscientists where we will create interactive exercises where users can practice correcting their cognitive biases through repeated and personalized exercises.
This would thus be possible to give everyone more freedom of action by strengthening the weak links in our cognitive defenses in order to reduce the power of influence that is constantly exerted over us.
(June 22, 2025, 10:52 PM)
Theme : Politics and digital technologies.
Something unexpected internet allowed was the possibility of creating extremely impressive collaborative projects. The most impressive of them is Wikipedia. But we can also think about open-source softwares like Linux, Firefox or in the scientific realm about Foldit for proteins or Galaxy Zoo and so much more…
Currently, thanks to computer-assisted proofs, Mathematic research is also starting to be able to create huge collaborative projects, linking the world of amateur mathematicians to top notch researcher.
Basically, humans are unstoppable when you create for them a proper set up for collaboration.
Unfortunately, a place where this power hasn’t been currently used is in Politics. I firmly believe that it is possible to draft new laws in a collaborative way by any volunteer citizens on internet following the same procedure as in parliamentary commissions. Wouldn’t it be closer to the very ideal of a democracy ?
I would love to be able to implement a project like this to see what our citizens are capable of. I think implementing such a process would make our parliamentary system more participatory, but also more fluid and responsive to societal changes and needs.
(22 june 2025, 10:23 PM)
Theme : Logic, Philosophy of mathematics, semiotics.
What is extremely puzzling is that Mathematic can study and manipulate different quantities of infinities in a formalized finite symbolic logical language.
It means that this finite structure of logical deductions by a finite number of symbols has a power of expression which goes infinitely way beyond. Instead of being interested by the objects composing those infinite collections, logic is interested on the logical links between statements on those infinite collection of objects, making the original objects invisible.
Instead of being interested by the existence of what it studies, logic is interested in the mode and co-possibility of existence of statements between objects, which compose a layer of abstraction which is extremely strong.
In a similar manner, but in a different nature, a latin number, for exemple : 2454353, is capturing, reducing, compressing with 7 letters a quantity we cannot even intuitively grap. How is it even possible ? How can this magic even happen ? What if we could compress it even more ? What would be a lower limit ?
What I would be interested to do would be to first make a deeper philosophical study of the power of expression in symbolic languages and if possible, find it’s limits (Gödel already found some of them).
Then, understanding better it’s generating power, try to develop other kind of representation systems which could compress information about concepts in a way which is not focused on their co-possible mode of existence. (This new way of representation is yet to determine and think about.).
(June 22, 2025, 6:07 PM. Theses considerations came out of a discussion with Joshua Dreier : https://joshua-dreier.ch/ )
Theme :Mathematical logic, cybernetics.
Make a classification of all semantically satisfiable recursive propositions that can be formulated (in the sense of an extended first order logic that allows for self-reference):
“I consider a proposition.” (satisfiable),
“I consider the fact that I consider a proposition.” (satisfiable),
“I consider the fact that I consider no proposition.” (not satisfiable),
“I consider the fact that I do not consider proposition A.” (satisfiable if A is not “I consider no proposition”),
“I consider the fact I consider A without considering B.” (satisfiable if B is not A).
etc…
I want to make a complete classification within a formal and mathematical system, in order to explore the possible limits of structures that can recursively consider themselves (in the sense that they can operate on what they produce or on what they have already operated on), in the same way that John von Neumann carried out a classification of all possible self-replicating structures.
My aim is not philosophical, but rather to map the limits of what structures like computers, brains, or other machines can or cannot achieve by operating on themselves.
(June 9, 2025, 6:41 PM)