Related papers: An Apology for Money
Spreadsheets are ubiquitous, heavily relied on throughout vast swathes of finance, commerce, industry, academia and Government. They are also acknowledged to be extraordinarily and unacceptably prone to error. If these two points are…
We argue that whether the universe is infinite or finite is less crucial than usually supposed. Paradoxes of repeating behaviour in the infinite, or eternal inflationary, universe can be alleviated by a realistic definition of differing…
This chapter begins with an investigation into experiences of depression, alienation, and self-abuse amongst the highly creative. After this journey to the dark side, it may be uplifting to see that Mother Nature may have a few tricks up…
The question of "Justice" still divides social research and moral philosophy. Several Theories of Justice and conceptual approaches compete here, and distributive justice remains a major societal controversy. From an evolutionary point of…
A distinctive property of human and animal intelligence is the ability to form abstractions by neglecting irrelevant information which allows to separate structure from noise. From an information theoretic point of view abstractions are…
Scrip, or artificial currency, is a useful tool for designing systems that are robust to selfish behavior by users. However, it also introduces problems for a system designer, such as how the amount of money in the system should be set. In…
Autonomous systems, including generative AI, have been adopted faster than previous digital innovations. Their impact on society might as well be more profound, with a radical restructuring of the economy of knowledge and dramatic…
An explanation for the political processes leading to the sudden collapse of empires and states would be useful for understanding both historical and contemporary political events. We seek a general description of state collapse spanning…
Humans judge each other's actions, which at least partly functions to detect and deter cheating and to enable helpfulness in an indirect reciprocity fashion. However, most forms of judging do not only concern the action itself, but also the…
Governments across the globe are facing challenging times to generate more revenue because of the economic slowdown and to balance their budgets. There is a growing need to find new ways of revenue generation as spending cuts and austerity…
The human ability to repurpose objects and processes is universal, but it is not a well-understood aspect of human intelligence. Repurposing arises in everyday situations such as finding substitutes for missing ingredients when cooking, or…
Trust lies at the crux of most economic transactions, with credit markets being a notable example. Drawing on insights from the literature on coordination games and network growth, we develop a simple model to clarify how trust breaks down…
We propose a minimal model of the secured interbank network able to shed light on recent money markets puzzles. We find that excess liquidity emerges due to the interactions between the reserves and liquidity ratio constraints; the…
Recent advances in generative AI technologies like large language models raise both excitement and concerns about the future of human-AI co-creation in writing. To unpack people's attitude towards and experience with generative AI-powered…
Money flow models are essential tools to understand different economical phenomena, like saving propensities and wealth distributions. In spite of their importance, most of them are based on synthetic transaction networks with simple…
While classical money can be copied, it is impossible to copy quantum money in principle, with only the bank that issues it knowing how to generate it, meaning only the bank can make exact copies. Not all reliable banks, such as central…
One of the main promises of technology development is for it to be adopted by people, organizations, societies, and governments -- incorporated into their life, work stream, or processes. Often, this is socially beneficial as it automates…
Quantum money represents an innovative approach to currency by encoding economic value within the quantum states of physical systems, utilizing the principles of quantum mechanics to enhance security, integrity, and transferability. This…
Many proposals for the design and implementation of digital wallets assume that the purpose of the wallet is to enable offline payments via custodial accounts, ignoring the real problems faced by individuals and businesses that engage in…
Transparency is a fundamental requirement for decision making systems when these should be deployed in the real world. It is usually achieved by providing explanations of the system's behavior. A prominent and intuitive type of explanations…