Collective Choice Theory in Collaborative Computing

TL;DR

This paper explores fundamental collective choice theories, including Arrow's theorems, providing rigorous logical conditions and discussing practical implications for collaborative computing and resource management.

Contribution

It rigorously restates Arrow's theorems in second-order logic and discusses their application in designing collective decision-making systems in collaborative computing.

Findings

Restates Arrow's theorems with rigorous logic

Provides probabilistic analysis of voting on issue pairs

Suggests frameworks for resource control in enterprises

Abstract

This paper presents some fundamental collective choice theory for information system designers, particularly those working in the field of computer-supported cooperative work. This paper is focused on a presentation of Arrow's Possibility and Impossibility theorems which form the fundamental boundary on the efficacy of collective choice: voting and selection procedures. It restates the conditions that Arrow placed on collective choice functions in more rigorous second-order logic, which could be used as a set of test conditions for implementations, and a useful probabilistic result for analyzing votes on issue pairs. It also describes some simple collective choice functions. There is also some discussion of how enterprises should approach putting their resources under collective control: giving an outline of a superstructure of performative agents to carry out this function and what distributing processing technology would be needed.