@inproceedings{3c765f80ba0a417f9ecb7ea2bad99221,
title = "In the Beginning There Were n Agents: Founding and Amending a Constitution",
abstract = "Consider n agents forming an egalitarian, self-governed community. Their first task is to decide on a decision rule to make further decisions. We start from a rather general initial agreement on the decision-making process based upon a set of intuitive and self-evident axioms, as well as simplifying assumptions about the preferences of the agents. From these humble beginnings we derive a decision rule. Crucially, the decision rule also specifies how it can be changed, or amended, and thus acts as a de facto constitution. Our main contribution is in providing an example of an initial agreement that is simple and intuitive, and a constitution that logically follows from it. The naive agreement is on the basic process of decision making – that agents approve or disapprove proposals; that their vote determines either the acceptance or rejection of each proposal; and on the axioms, which are requirements regarding a constitution that engenders a self-updating decision making process.",
keywords = "Constitutions, Democracy, Self-governance, Voting",
author = "Ben Abramowitz and Ehud Shapiro and Nimrod Talmon",
note = "Funding Information: Ehud Shapiro is the Incumbent of The Harry Weinrebe Professorial Chair of Computer Science and Biology. We thank the generous support of the Braginsky Center for the Interface between Science and the Humanities. Nimrod Talmon was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF; Grant No. 630/19). Ben Abramowitz was supported in part by NSF award CCF-1527497. Funding Information: Acknowledgements. Ehud Shapiro is the Incumbent of The Harry Weinrebe Professorial Chair of Computer Science and Biology. We thank the generous support of the Braginsky Center for the Interface between Science and the Humanities. Nimrod Talmon was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF; Grant No. 630/19). Ben Abramowitz was supported in part by NSF award CCF-1527497. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.; 7th International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory, ADT 2021 ; Conference date: 03-11-2021 Through 05-11-2021",
year = "2021",
month = jan,
day = "1",
doi = "https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87756-9_8",
language = "American English",
isbn = "9783030877552",
volume = "13023",
series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)",
publisher = "Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH",
pages = "119--131",
editor = "Dimitris Fotakis and {R{\'i}os Insua}, David",
booktitle = "Algorithmic Decision Theory - 7th International Conference, ADT 2021, Proceedings",
address = "Germany",
}