Systemic problems, equilibrium and liveness

In the age old days (3-4 years ago that is) I used to have a dial up connection. I was an undergrad then, and like all (or most) undergrads in India I earned nothing. But then my father was good enough, like all fathers, to let me have the power of the Internet. He supposed, ideally, again like all fathers, that I would strictly use it for "educational purposes", though he never told me that. I did not, like all sons, use the Internet strictly for "educational purposes", though I never told him that. A lot of times I used to chat with random people. I used to check mails on all my accounts at 1 o'clock in the night. Heh. Who would send a mail to an undergrad? Sometimes I used to visit some porn sites. And it was a dial up connection, mind you. Not a broadband. As a result, my father had to regularly pay Rs.1000-1200 extra for a few months.

In the institute we used to observe that the net access was extremely slow at night time specially because some people used to download movies. I have done that too, though very rarely. Of course, the "downloaders" later on absolved themselves of the guilt of hogging the bandwidth by sharing the movies so that all and sundry can transfer them and watch. But still the inconvenience was evident.

What would have my father done if he knew that I am misusing a facility? What should he have done? What should have an admin done in case s/he came to know of the incessant downloading? Of course, I myself got tired of all the nonsense I was doing sooner than later and almost stopped misusing. In any case, the above questions in themselves are not so difficult to handle. But their implications surely are.

It's a question about power and responsibility. With power comes responsibility. Power is something that some one "tells" you to assume, or some times you assume it yourself. Same is the case with responsibility. Moreover, there is a positive correlation between the two.

However, there are obvious problems with this. While you want to excercise your power, you don't want to burden yourself with responsibility. The temptation always is to use one's power to the fullest extent possible and be the least responsible at the same time. There are always "gains", mostly of immediate in nature, if you use your power. But being discreetly responsible seems like "losing" something, again at an immediate level. In most cases, you can neither completely exploit your power, not can you completely shrug off responsibility. Even then, it is quite evident that it is extremely difficult to achieve an equilibrium between power and responsibility. There seems to be a constant power responsibility mismatch.

Now, let me tell you how this post actually started. It started in a discussion in which I was involved, over here. In that post the author talks about the atrocities committed by army men in Kashmir and suggests that Kashmir should be demilitarised that is why. My response (comment no-43) to that post is here. My point in brief was this - A systemic problem by itself cannot in any way justify a demand for the absence of the system. Of course, the post has some other points that are valid. This post is not a rebuttal. I just mentioned it to put this post in perspective.

Power responsibility mismatch is a systemic problem. When you are part of a system, the system endows you with certain powers and expects you to use that power judiciously and responsibly. Of course, a lot of times there is no explicit endowment and expectation; it's an implicit understanding. But as we saw in the above examples all this is easier said than done. No system is ideal. In fact, systems are far from being ideal. This causes a lot of resentment mistrust frustration anger within the system, and at times even outside it. People inside and outside the system start believing that there is something terribly wrong with the whole system, and understandably so. If I start feeling that the cause of trouble is the irresponsibility of "everybody else", then that feeling is a further disincentive for me to be responsible. I want to become more powerful and less responsible when I should have been aware that my new decision will only worsen my situation eventually!

Every system has to satisfy certain properties. The important ones are "safety", "liveness" and "fairness". Let me roughly define each one. A system is safe if no system component takes acts in a way that is against the purpose of the system, or at least such chances are minimal. For example, say a lot of army men start harassing people in Kashmir. Then the whole purpose of the army is defeated, and the army is rendered an "unsafe" system. Fairness in some way should minimise unfair advantage that system components take. In the institute example, if downloading movies is bothering people who want to browse for more "educational purposes", it is an "unfair" system. However, "fairness" comes only after "safety". You can afford to have an unfair system, but not an unsafe one. So, fairness is not as strict a requirement as safety. The next one is "liveness". This is a very interesting property simply because without "liveness" there is no point talking about other properties! "Liveness" ensures that there exists a system that is working. It might be unfair or even unsafe, but there is a system in the first place and continues to be. An ideal system guarantees all these properties to the fullest extent. But as you can imagine there cannot be any large scale system that can give such guarantees.

Systemic problems affect the safety and fairness of a system. A trivial way to guarantee safety and fairness is to do away with liveness! My father would say, "You are watching porn with my hard earned money? When did you become so pervert. No more connection. Cut". The admin at the institute would say. No movies. Everyone will access only Google Scholar and Citeseer. All safe. All sound. All disappointed. All fair, nonetheless. India might demilitarise Kashmir. There might still be harassment, violation by militants, or army men from some other country. But the Indian army is not doing it. Right. But as you can see the trivial solution is indeed trivial. It has no practical value. The world is bloody unsafe and unfair place. But we simply cannot wish it away.

Another way to approach this problem while ensuring liveness is to have a "meta system" that will take care of increasing safety and fairness. Typically the "meta system" will guarantee the enforcement of a set of systemic rules. Make no mistake, these rules were already there in the system. But the meta system emphasises them, makes them explicit and strictly enforces them.

However, there are problems with this also. A rule obviously is a check on the power that you have owing to the system. So, people cannot assume powers arbitrarily. But there is a very important caveat here. A curb in power does not automatically translate to an increase in responsibility. In fact, chances are there that people tend to become less responsible because they will see the incentives/gains due to the system reducing as the meta system grows stronger. A ban on movie download does not necessarily increase the Internet usage for more productive purposes. For all you know, it may backfire.

Let me make a final point. This is where I want to touch upon "social" and "technical" solutions. The term "technical solutions" as used over here, is what I would call a "meta systemic solution" and a "social solution" a "systemic solution". A "meta systemic solution" might seem like helping the cause of power responsibility equilibrium, but in most cases it might just be an illusion. Let us even suppose that it does help to achieve an equilibrium. But the way it does is not very elegant; and it will be a case of the end justifying the means. Ideally, a "systemic solution" is elegant and helps the equilibrium better. The admins and the students may collectively come to an understanding that students can download movies only after 12 midnight. This would reduce the incentive to misuse a power. Ideally, that is. There might be someone who hogs the bandwidth during office hours because he is sure that none of partners in crime are downloading, so much more bandwidth than that after midnight, and the more studious ones anyway don't use much bandwidth. Such cases need to be handled, of course. Every system does seem to need and in most cases has a "meta system". A system is more productive if its "meta system" is small.