Possibility Ethics: Measuring Moral Value as the Expansion of Safe Future Options in Sociotechnical Systems
Abstract
Abstract Sociotechnical systems shape not only immediate outcomes but also the range of futures that individuals and communities can realistically pursue. Existing ethical frameworks articulate important principles such as autonomy, fairness, non-maleficence, accountability, and capability, yet they generally do not provide a transparent computational method for comparing alternative system designs according to how they preserve or expand ethically acceptable future opportunities. This paper introduces Possibility Ethics, a conceptual-computational framework for evaluating sociotechnical systems through their effect on distinct, viable, and ethically admissible future option classes. Its central quantity, Option Entropy, is a logarithmic opportunity index rather than Shannon entropy, Ωᵢᵈ = log(κ + Kᵢᵈ) − log κ, where Kᵢᵈ denotes the number of outcome-distinct admissible option classes available to cohort i under design d after viability and harm screening. The framework integrates deterministic outcome clustering, vulnerability-sensitive aggregation, subgroup protection, cohort-level non-regression safeguards, and a procedural requirement of Option Repair when identifiable opportunity losses occur. We provide explicit formal definitions and establish guarded monotonicity, duplication invariance, diminishing marginal opportunity growth, finite perturbation stability, and a logarithmic characterization theorem under an explicit independent-composition axiom. The computational…
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