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emerging – but also considerable risks. If we make the wrong choices now, it could

threaten our greatest societal achievements. The evolution is from programming

computers to programming people. In effect, “Big Nudging” aims to bring many

individual actions into line and manipulate perceptions and decisions. This brings it

close to the deliberate disenfranchisement of citizens through state-planned behav­

ior control. We fear that the effects could be fatal in the long run, especially consid­

ering the above-mentioned, partly culture-destroying effect.

Looking to China: Is this what the future of society looks like (Feudalism 2.0)?

1. By tracking and measuring all activities that leave digital traces, a transpar­

ent citizen is created whose human dignity and privacy fall by the wayside.

2. Decisions would no longer be free, because a wrong choice from the point of

view of the government or company that sets the criteria of the points system

would be punished. The autonomy of the individual would be abolished in

principle.

3. Every little mistake would be punished, and no person would be unsuspected.

The principle of the presumption of innocence would be invalidated. With

“predictive policing”, even anticipated rule violations could be punished.

4. However, the underlying algorithms cannot work completely error-free. This

would mean that the principle of fairness and justice would give way to a new

arbitrariness against which it would hardly be possible to defend oneself.

5. With the external specification of the target function, the possibility of indi­

vidual self-development would be abolished and with it democratic pluralism.

6. Local culture and social norms would no longer be the standard for appropri­

ate, situational behavior.

7. Steering society by a one-dimensional objective function would lead to con­

flicts and thus to a loss of security. Serious instabilities would be to be

expected, as we already know from our financial system.

Solution: Collective creativity and freedom

Centralized top-down control is a solution of the past, suitable only for systems

of low complexity. Therefore, federal systems and majority rule are the solutions of

the present. However, with economic and cultural development, societal complexity

continues to increase. The solution of the future is collective intelligence: citizen

science, crowd sourcing and online discussion platforms are therefore eminent new

approaches to harness more knowledge, ideas and resources. Collective intelligence

requires a high degree of diversity. However, this is reduced by today’s personalized

information systems in favor of reinforcing trends. Sociodiversity is as important

as biodiversity. It is the basis not only for collective intelligence and innovation,

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16  Bioinformatics Connects Life with the Universe and All the Rest