Howard Schneider, Piotr (Peter) Boltuć
THE SOCIAL HALTING PROBLEM AND THE NEED FOR MITIGATION OF DECEPTIVE ALIGNMENT
https://doi.org/10.37240/FiN.2025.13.01
ABSTRACT
This paper integrates fundamental theoretical computability concerns of AGI systems with the practical challenges of engineering safe AGI systems. Prior simulation experiments with AGI-capable agents [1] illustrate how increasing complexity and social interaction can lead to inevitable control challenges, most notably, through deception. We adopt an ethically neutral definition of deception as the measurable divergence (discrepancy D) between an AGI’s internal and external objectives. By drawing an analogy with Turing’s classical Halting Problem, we introduce the Social Halting Problem, demonstrating that reliably detecting deception in complex AGI systems is fundamentally undecidable, as expected. To address this challenge, we propose a Deception Complexity Index (DCI)—a quantifiable metric based on behavioral complexity, deviation from truthful behavior, and the resources needed for verification. This enables more precise risk assessment and alignment engineering. The inevitable presence of deception in social, complex AGI systems and the inherent undecidability highlighted by the Social Halting Problem imply that our engineering focus should shift from complete verification to risk mitigation.
Keywords: AI alignment, deceptive alignment, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), halting problem, undecidability, AGI engineering.
–––––––––
Andrew Targowski
Professor Emeritus of Computer Information Systems, Western Michigan University.
Email: andrew.targowski@wmich.edu
QUANTUM INFORMATION THEORY: TOWARDS THE PARADIGM OF COGNITION, THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING AND PHILOSOPHY
https://doi.org/10.37240/FiN.2025.13.02
ABSTRACT
It is the author’s concept of quantum information theory as a universal paradigm of cognition and a theory of everything, integrating physics, epistemology, and the ontology of sense. The author assumes that information is not only a description of reality, but its primordial material — cognitive energy that co-creates matter, consciousness, and the evolution of civilization. The model is based on a five-step hierarchy of cognitive transformation: data → information → concept → knowledge → wisdom, corresponding to the gradual ordering of the entropy of sense. The process of cognition is quantum in nature: every act of thinking exists in the superposition of senses, and only at the moment of interpretation does the collapse of sense occur, i.e.,the transition from potentiality to cognitive actuality. The author develops an analogy between the wave of cognition and the wave of matter, introducing the concepts of theamplitude of sense and cognitive entropy as formal measures of the quality of cognition. The result is a theory in which man, artificial intelligence, and the Universe participate in a single field of quantum information, and the cognitive equilibrium corresponds to the state of minimal entropy – wisdom. The article integrates the classical concepts of Bohm, Einstein, McLuhan, and Floridi, showing information as an efficient factor equal to energy and matter. The proposed concept of Homo sapiens harmonicus presents the man of the future as a being capable of harmonizing the amplitudes of sense, combining knowledge with values, and transforming technology into a tool for spiritual development. The paper concludes with the postulate of a quantum epistemology, in which philosophy becomes the science of organizing the world’s information field—the art of transforming the chaos of data into the wisdom of existence.
Keywords: Quantum information theory; quantum epistemology; collapse of sense; cognitive entropy; wisdom; philosophy of information; amplitude of cognition; theory of everything; Homo sapiens harmonicus; McLuhan; integration of matter and information.
–––––––––
Stanisław Buda
ANS TWP Szczecin.
Email: stbuda@wp.pl
THE UNIVERSE AS AN ISOLATED SYSTEM
https://doi.org/10.37240/FiN.2025.13.03
ABSTRACT
This article proposes an original physico-ontological model of the Universe as an absolutely isolated system characterized by non-zero exergy, a relational order, and the ontological primacy of information. Challenging the classical thermodynamic prediction of the heat death of the Universe, it argues that entropy is scale-dependent and that global exergy is continuously sustained by a dynamic coupling of energy and information. Local subsystems (P ⊆ W) emerge as self-regulating centers of order, concentrating exergy and reducing informational entropy. The model integrates ideas from conformal cyclic cosmology (Penrose), holographic principles, and downward causation, suggesting a holistic, idealistic cosmology in which the whole precedes the parts (hologenesis). Observational implications include a reinterpretation of CMB anisotropies as imprints of information inherited from previous eons and tests to be performed with Euclid and JWST. The universe is not a system tending toward equilibrium but a self-sustaining relational process—existence as eternal dynamism, meaning, and self-regulation.
Keywords: Universe, ontology, exergy, information, entropy, hologenesis.
–––––––––
Aneta Rumak
Szkoła Doktorska, Uniwersytet Rzeszowski.
E-mail: anetar@dokt.ur.edu.pl
LUDWIK FLECK’S CONCEPT OF THOUGHT STYLE AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF MULTICULTURALISM
https://doi.org/10.37240/FiN.2025.13.04
ABSTRACT
The concept of thinking style finds its application in the scientific world. The author himself gives such an application of it, drawing exoteric and also esoteric circles within it and situating specialists in a particular field and laymen there. However, it seems that the concept of thinking style can also be successfully applied in the field of culture, especially with regard to the coexistence of many cultures side by side and their interactions. The purpose of undertaking the considerations in this article, in addition to introducing the figure of a resident of Galicia of the early twentieth century itself, is to highlight the relationship of thought style and the phenomenon of multiculturalism. The juxtaposition of thought style and multiculturalism, a perhaps difficult and novel task, seems important, as it may demonstrate the enduring relevance in today’s world of Fleck’s concepts of almost a century ago.
Keywords: thought style, multicurturalism, thought collective, sociology of knowledge.
–––––––––
Jacek Gurczyński
Instytut Filozofii UMCS Lublin.
E-mail: jacek.gurczynski@mail.umcs.pl
EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION AND AFFECTIVE DATA IN THE DIGITAL AGE
https://doi.org/10.37240/FiN.2025.13.05
ABSTRACT
This article offers a critical analysis of emotional manipulation in social media, framing it as a constitutive element of the broader infrastructure of digital affective capitalism. It opens with empirical cases of interference in users’ emotional states—the Facebook emotional contagion experiment of 2014 and the activities of Cambridge Analytica—which reveal the capacity of digital platforms to modulate moods, decisions, and political behaviors through algorithms, personal data, and psychographic microtargeting. At the same time, the article argues that narratives of the “omnipotence” of these technologies are often exaggerated, as models of personality and emotional prediction remain epistemologically fragile, reductive, and highly context-dependent.
The analysis then shifts from spectacular scandals to everyday affective practices, such as the use of emoji, emoticons, and platform-specific reaction systems. These are interpreted as tools of emotional standardization that simultaneously enable affective expression and reduce its complexity, rendering it susceptible to aggregation, sentiment analysis, and commodification. Drawing on Whitehead’s process philosophy, Butler’s theory of performativity, Hochschild’s concept of emotional labor, and Zuboff’s critique of surveillance capitalism, the article argues that emotions in social media are not merely expressed but are co-produced by platform architectures.
Emoji and sentiment analysis systems are thus presented as components of a biopolitics of emotion, in which affect becomes an economic resource and users function as affective workers for platforms. At the same time, the article highlights the limits of algorithmic approaches to emotion: its contextuality, ambiguity, and relational character resist full automation. In conclusion, an alternative research perspective is proposed, inspired by concepts of transindividuality and emotional communitarianism, which conceptualizes affect not as a commodity but as a relational, political, and ethical resource capable of fostering solidarity and resistance to the instrumental logic of digital capitalism.
Keywords: emotional manipulation; social media; emoji; sentiment analysis; affect; emotional labor; surveillance capitalism; personal data; algorithms; psychographic microtargeting; transindividuality; biopolitics of emotion.
–––––––––
Sławomir Czetwertyński1, Jakub Marcinkowski2
1Katedra Mikroekonomii i Ekonomii Instytucjonalnej, Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wrocławiu, ul. Komandorska 118/120, Wrocław.
Email: slawomir.czetwertynski@ue.wroc.pl
2Katedra Zarządzania Strategicznego i Logistyki, Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wrocławiu, ul. Komandorska 118/120, Wrocław.
Email: jakub.marcinkowski@ue.wroc.pl
ON RESEARCH HEURISTICS IN INSTITUTIONAL SCIENCE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES
https://doi.org/10.37240/FiN.2025.13.06
ABSTRACT
The article addresses the issue of the dominance of the isolation method in economic sciences within the context of institutional and behavioral conditions. The authors hypothesize that researchers employ research heuristics within institutional science, understood in Kuhn’s terms as a period of paradigmatic consensus. The isolation method, as a form of reductionism derived from Weber’s concept of the ideal type, serves not only as a cognitive tool simplifying complex socio-economic phenomena but also as a safe strategy for shaping one’s academic career. From a behavioral perspective, the researcher, as a cognitively limited agent, tends to use proven methods that can be compared to decision-making heuristics known from behavioral economics. Institutional pressure expressed in the maxim “publish or perish” and the biological imperative of managing the energy budget foster the use of established research patterns. The article demonstrates that economists’ methodological choices result from the interaction between research tradition and cognitive constraints, as well as the requirements of an academic career.
Keywords: institutional science, isolation method, research heuristics, methodology of economics.
