The seed of reason

Qualia and the computational theory of mind

Qualia are defined to be first person experiences.  Examples include the seeing the colour blue, hearing a perfectly tuned middle C, excruciating pain and smelling a violet.

Qualia are generally also defined to be ineffable (not communicable and not describable even in principle).

The computational theory of mind states that minds are computations and that brains are a type of computer (albeit one that has elements of randomness to its operation).

Many arguments have been put forward, in which qualia feature, which attempt to disprove (or undermine) the computational theory of mind.  In this post I shall address the knowledge argument (although my points will work just as well for other common arguments).

Before describing and tackling the knowledge argument, lets first investigate what qualia might be, if they could not be explained computationally.

We have two possibilities for qualia.  Firstly qualia might be causally disconnected from physical reality in that qualia could not cause anything to happen in the physical universe.

The most obvious question to ask then is "Why are qualia important?"  If qualia do not effect your actions or the actions of others why should we care about qualia?  Furthermore if qualia do not interact with reality then all arguments made for the existence of qualia (of this causally disconnected type) would have been made in a universe without qualia (note that this must also be true of all arguments you make inside your own head (as these arguments can in principle effect the world outside your head)).  So if qualia are causally disconnected from physical reality then reading an argument for their existence should not convince one of their existence!

Secondly, qualia might be causally connected to physical reality.  In this case we may as well redefine physics to include qualia.  When we do, we either get a computationally simulable theory or we do not.  In the former case we have a computational theory of qualia.  In the latter case we have a profound revolution in physics.  Although such paradigm shifts have occurred before, dubious thought experiments are really insufficient, to establish massive breakthroughs in science.

Now for the knowledge argument:  "Imagine a vision scientist Mary.  Mary has colour vision but is kept in a monochromatic room (say blue) for her entire life (the original version is a black and white room but this has some minor loopholes including Mary seeing the colour of her own nose!).  Now suppose Mary learns every computational fact about colour vision that there is to know.  Then does Mary understand what it is to experience the colour red?

Suppose now that Mary is let out of her room and sees a red telephone box.  Would Mary not learn what it is to experience the colour red in that moment?  In which case, the computational theory of mind must miss this aspect of experience."

Before giving my response, I need to explain a subtlety of the computational theory of mind.

When we say "describe an experience" what do we mean?  We might mean, that you give all relevant pieces of information, about that experience.  Or we might mean, that you tell me enough about that experience, for me to be able to imagine it.

To understand the difference, consider a computer.  The computer might have a program that displays images and it might have another program that compiles code written in C++.  However, if you write some code in C++ and take a photo of it that photo won't be understood by the compiler.  Never the less, the photo might contain a complete description of the program.  Indeed this is certainly possible.  The problem is, that the computer lacks the ability to translate the image into a text file (which is what it needs to be able to compile it).

I now give my response to the knowledge argument.  I acknowledge that Mary does learn something new when she sees the telephone box.  However, I think this is because her brain lacks the ability to translate verbal and textual data (in which form all her scientific knowledge is represented) into the very complex brain signals which constitute her experience of the colour red.

It is like, you tried to install an operating system onto your computer, by taking photos of all the source code, and saving these photos to the computer's hard drive.

So Mary, may well gasp with awe and say "I never knew that's what postboxes looked like.".  However, this does not in any way, undermine the theory that Mary's mind is computational.

Some may think that a computational account of the human mind is depressing in that it reduces our experience to processing information.  I prefer to consider it from the opposite perspective.  If my beautiful, mesmerizing and profound experiences of the world are formed from highly complex computations then might even more complex computations be even more intoxicatingly vibrant?  In the future we may be able to manipulate the brain and give it new forms of input.

If the computational theory of mind is true then it may one day be possible to add entirely new senses to our brains and entirely new experiences to our minds.

What would it be like to be able to see two extra colours?

What would it be like to be able to see in four dimensions?

What would it be like to have sonar vision?

A few TED talks I like

Today I will be writing about an online conference called TED.  TED stands for Technology, Engineering, Design.  However, this conference rarely sticks to these topics.  Typical speakers include entrepreneurs, charity workers, scientists, artists, musicians, politicians and inventors.  Most talks are about cutting edge developments or new work in business, science, art and politics.  There's a particular emphasis on information technology, green energy.

I watch the TED conference videos regularly and I thought I would start a series of posts on particular talks that I like and why I liked them.

In the first talk Hans Rosling talks about myths regarding the 'third world'.  He demonstrates some quite impressive data visualization tools in the process.

Hans Rosling

The second talk is by the comedian Julia Sweeney.  Her talk is insightful and hilarious.  She talks about her atheism.

Julia Sweeney

The third talk is a demonstration of a new multi-touch technology.  I'm impressed by the potential but a little skeptical that people won't get too tired using this screen full long lengths of time.  Still I'd love to have one.

Jeff Hans

The fourth topic concerns Wikipedia.  Wikipedia has been a hobby of mine on and off for many years now.  At some stage I will write a series of articles about the inner world of Wikipedia.  In the mean time you can here a short introduction from someone much better qualified to speak on the matter.

Jimmy Wales

Do take a look at these and tell me what you think!

Finally apologies for the lack of recent blogging.  I am incredibly busy right now.  Things should be more regular by December.

Is there a lowest level of reality?

I want to take my idea of a coding invariance principle further (see my earlier post defining the philosophical principle).

What do we mean when we say "The law of gravity is true"? We could mean that the law of gravity matches all the available data.  We could even require that it matches all true statements about the universe (or does so to within some degree of approximation).  But more might be required.  We might ask that there is no other simpler theory that matches the world as well or better.

What if there are two theories explaining different physics (like quantum mechanics and relativity) and a third simpler theory comes along that explains both areas (the very small and the very large) better than either theory.  This third theory might be simpler than the combination of quantum mechanics and relativity.  But in this case would it make sense to say quantum physics is true or even the best theory for the very small anymore?

Clearly its conceivable that a theory explains a narrow domain well but is superseaded by a theory which is little better on this domain but explains a much wider domain and therefore is a better theory overall.  A theory could also be better at explaining that narrow domain than our original theory in which case you would also say that it was a better theory.

A significant question is then "Is there a best theory to explain any domain of our universe?".  It is consistent that the answer is no and that for any theory there is another theory which is either more elegant (explains more with little additional complexity) or explains the same data with a higher degree of accuracy.

This isn't to say that in such a universe science could not progress and make better predictions over time.  However, it does draw into question whether it is meaningful to talk about a theory giving a truthful description of the universe.

There are various bizarre possibilities in such a universe:
For instance the best available theory may keep changing its opinions on matters such as:

1) Whether the universe had a beginning
2) What exactly happened in the past
3) Whether the universe is infinite
4) The number of dimensions the universe has

A universe that has many partial descriptions matching 1,2,3,4 would be a strange beast indeed but it would certainly be an interesting place to reside!

The data flood

Over the last decade western societies have begun to generate vast quantities of data.  Examples include:

1) Sales statistics
2) Medical records
3) Web traffic data
4) Media usage data (scrobbling, play counts etc.)
5) User generated data (facebook pages, text messages, emails etc.)
6) Online gaming data (second life, online board game archives etc.)

We have also begun to mine this data for useful patterns.

I give two major problems with the way in which we are doing this. 
A) The privacy of this data is often undermined by the careless manner in which it is stored.  Whilst the data has great economic value (mostly to companies and governments but also to the consumer/citizen) it can also be used for new and worrying kinds of abuse.

B) We depend too much on people to analyze this data.  In my opinion the main limiting factor in gaining economic advantage from this data is our ability to process it.

I predict two trends over the next decade with regard to data mining. 
Firstly there will be significant abuses of people's personal data resulting in a backlash against the mass storage of such data.  This will cause more data to be stored in a distributed or properly encrypted form.  Computation on this data may be performed in a distributed manner too with the programs that perform the computations being more likely to be under the control of the users.

Secondly simple artificial intelligence agents (not much more intelligent than insects) will proliferate as the cost of the necessary hardware to run them approaches zero.  These agents will make be called upon to dramatically reduce the burden of decision making for users.

Various developments have been hampered in the past by the unwillingness of people to make large numbers of trivial choices.  Some examples include:

1) Highly efficient payment structures (for text, music and video) which require large numbers of individual payment choices.

2) Consumer boycotts based on the complexities of the supply chain and company financing.

So I think that we'll deal with the flood of information by finding better ways to control the movement of that information and by finding better ways to utilize the value in that information.

Pseudo-anonymity

Our personal data is being harvested for many purposes these days.  Stored in vast databases with little or no encryption organizations from our supermarkets to the security services are mining this data for reasons from commercial gain to national security.  How we keep confidential and sensitive information private is much debated.  However, important facts concerning cryptography are being ignored in this discourse.  Today I want to describe what is possible as a result of the revolution in cryptography that occurred at the end of the 20th century.

Our intuitions tell us that ineffective solutions aside (such as identification by indexed numbers) it is impossible to have both the benefits of anonymity and those of transparency.  But this is false.  Cryptography can combine benefits of anonymity and benefits of transparency.  Pseudo-anonymity is possible and comes in many forms.  Without an understanding of these possibilities any discussion concerning privacy will be be missing out on a huge range of potential solutions.

In what follows I will be making a couple of technical assumptions that are not hugely controversial.  Firstly I shall assume that certain widely believed mathematical conjectures are true or at least not usefully false.  I shall also assume that we are not going to be able to build quantum computers any time soon.  Our entire banking transfer system is based on these assumptions so I am in good company in making them!

Various counter intuitive things are possible with modern strong cryptography.  A cryptographic signature consists of a private and a public key.  Anyone in possession of the private key can sign messages (but no-one else can).  Anyone in possession of the public key can check the signature and read the messages.  Creating a cryptographic signature is easy with the right software.  Cryptographic signatures can be used to create a virtual identity which is hard (or if desired impossible) to tie to the person who created it.  However, over time such virtual identities can acquire trust in much the same way that individuals have for millenia.

Networks may be set up which allow anonymous communications to be sent.  This allows not only the content of a message but the existence of a message to be hidden.  Such networks already exist (for example Tor) and are used in high tech music piracy peer to peer networks.

Protocols are possible in which a certain action (such as decrypting a document) are only possible if certain people agree to the operation.  As an example it is possible to so encrypt a document so that any 3 people out of 5 key holders can decrypt it but that no 2 people can decrypt it acting alone.

A canary is a characteristic piece of data which identifies the source of a document.  The ordinance survey include minor errors dotted over their maps.  This allows them to detect any may which has been copied from an ordinance survey map.  Canaries can be added to many types of data to help identify unauthorized copies (although their utility is restricted to situations where few people have access to data).

No one has absolute privacy.  There are many ways in which your privacy may be intentionally violated.  For instance private detectives can be employed to follow you, public records mined for information or bribery used to obtain sensitive information.  We shouldn't try to get any absolute guarantees of privacy because we know it to be impossible.  In practice maintaining privacy is a matter of raising the cost of violating privacy to the extent that it is not worth the effort for the eavesdropper.

What matters is the cost of access to private data, the people who can access it, how easy it is to trace them and how susceptible the data is to abuse.  The problem with storing masses of credit card details in centralized databases is not that the information needs to be private but that the cost of steeling each record is lower by a kind of mass-stealing economy.  If only 2 or 3 people have access to a confidential file and anonymous blackmail threats are made then there is already a ready made shortlist of suspects available.  If furthermore there are tell tail mistakes in the blackmailer's threat (because canaries have been used) then the perpetrator may be identifiable.  Finally ease with which data can be abused matters.  There are sometimes alternative methods to store information and some may be less prone to abuse than others.

So taking all this into account we should worry when:

1) Data is stored in central databases

The more data in one place the cheaper it is to illegally access that data (per record)

2) This Data is in a computer readable format

Working through masses of data by hand takes many more resources than if that process can be automated.  As an example a supermarkets credit card database is computer readable but google street view is not (in any useful way)

3) Data is in abusable format

Records of transactions are necessary but these records can be stored in a manner which doesn't expose people's bank accounts to fraud.

4) The data is sensitive

Data about what music you like is not as open to abuse as data identifying which whores you've been visiting.

5) Many people have access to the data

It stands to reason that the more people have access to records the easier it is to trick/bribe them and the more likely it is that there are bad apples.

6) Its hard to trace the source of a leak

Clearly the easier it is to identify abuse the easier it is to discourage it.

7) The value of the data is high

A database containing movie preferences is much less valuable than one containing details of police cautions.  The second one needs much better protection than the first.

I will now give some examples of what cryptography could be used for.  Firstly it is possible to have electronic voting systems which are private but for which everyone involved in the process can count the votes themselves.  Unfortunately no system that is currently in operation uses the necessary technology.  Hence I am not against electronic voting in principle but I oppose all systems currently used.

Secondly any interaction that can be thought of as a sort of game with hidden information (such as a game of poker or a financial transaction) can be implemented using cryptography is such a way that the information can be hidden (such as the face of the card) the and yet when it is revealed the information is still known to be correct (revealing your hand).

Thirdly identity cards are possible which allow you to prove that you are a member of some group (such as non-terrorists or over 18s) without identifying who you actually are.  It is possible to do this without making the system more prone to abuse by terrorists or underage drinkers! Please note that the UK governments proposals for ID unbelievably do not use such technology.

The benefits of modern cryptography then are (A) that pseudo anonymity is possible are can be used to prove facts such as your age, your criminal status without revealing any other information (B) that signature schemes allow proofs of transactions without increasing the risk of fraud (C) that cryptographic protocols are stricter instruments of public policy than laws in that they can (subject to our assumptions) be mathematical proven to prevent abuses.  One of the many failings of modern liberal democracies is a failure to put our understanding of cryptography to work to provide these benefits and a failure to recognize the need for cryptographic solutions to provide privacy for the public, data for the government and intelligence for the police.

There are problems with cryptography too though.  Cryptographic protocols take time to perform but as computers get faster this objection becomes weaker and weaker.  Cryptographic protocols are brittle and not easy to adapt to new usage patterns.  I think that it is better to live with this than to risk the massive privacy violations that will occur without it.

Usage rights

There is no post today because I have written a rather longer article and placed it elsewhere within my web page.  So see an article on an analysis of copyright laws failings and my proposal for overcoming these at this page.

AI and AL

I have discussed artificial intelligence in many of my previous posts.  To see those articles click on the link under categories on the top left.  I had a discussion recently about the potential for warfare between clonable minds (AIs) and non-clonable minds (homo sapiens sapiens).  It was an interesting and thought provoking discussion centered around the question "Would AIs ever choose to use biological weapons against humans?".

Today I'm going to talk about the interesting points that came up in this discussion.

Firstly we discussed what other methods AIs might prefer (in their own self interest) or in the interests of a trans-mind Geneva convention.  We came up with several possibilities including the following:

1) AIs might infiltrate the media and seek to control human civilization through the manipulation of our information sources and our analysis.

This would be a very powerful way for AIs to wage cultural warfare against humans and prevent or contain physical warfare.  Because AIs can be cloned AIs would quickly learn about the human emotional balance and the weak points in our intellectual defenses to propaganda.  With pervasive computing and the Internet there's no reason AIs won't have access to the information sources that they need.

2) Economic blackmail

AIs will be essential to much of our economies.  A war against even a particular subset of AIs could well result in crippling economic sabotage.

3) Mass blackmail

With access to large stores of personal data AIs could blackmail millions of people at once in myriad different ways in order to achieve tactical or economic advantages.  This tool is also available to humans but AIs would have superior processing capabilities (due to mind cloning) and could use this tool more effectively.

We agreed that biological warfare would not be a weapon of first choice for AIs as the above 3 methods and conventional warfare (or what counts as conventional by mid century!) would probably be enough of an advantage.

However, if for some reason AIs were to find themselves outgunned in conventional warfare and facing extermination then biological warfare would enable AIs to win a war because:

A) AIs would not have to fear a similar counterattack.

B) AIs would not have to restrict biological weapons to diseases which are not very infectious.  Humans must do this to avoid pandemics.

C) AIs would be able to replace human labor in the production of AIs and supporting infrastructure.

It was over (C) that we disagreed (at least initially).  You have to ask yourself "Why is it that we don't build a fully autonomous industrial infrastructure?".  The answers are instructive and help us understand why (C) holds.

Firstly humans are dexterous.  There are no equivalents of the human hand yet in the manufacturing process.  Why? Because hands require highly sensitive and high density sensors capable of returning large quantities of useful information AND because we lack the sophisticate AI to control these hands.

The first problem is a difficult but eminently solvable problem which we are likely to solve (due to a huge economic reward) once we have necessary level of AI.

Secondly humans are intelligent and resourceful.  However, all the intellectual capacities that allow humans to fix systems that break down, to design factories for novel problems etc. would be present in an AI as advanced as humans by definition. 

Hence we see that if we had AIs then they would be able to replace humans in all our industries.  But the true import of this is that AIs would then be capable of surviving without humanity.  They would be able to reproduce and pass on a genetic  material of sorts (their underlying source code).  In short they would become alive.  Indeed AI could probably over time remove all dependence on biologically derived materials and become a totally new form of life which could survive independently of DNA if necessary.  The creation of AI would really be an origin of life event.  Although one might prefer not to refer to it as life as it is would not be limited to Darwinian processes.  Perhaps hyperlife would be a better term.

Counter terrorism and music piracy

Two apparently unrelated trends have been in the public eye over much of the last decade.  These are counter terrorism and music piracy.  I suspect counter terrorism will encounter problems caused by attempts to crack down on Internet piracy (that is if this crack down continues).  In this post I shall explain why I think that, what these problems will be and how they might be averted.

Terrorists must formulate plans, learn techniques and communicate these plans to collaborators.  In addition new recruits must be located and the relevant ideologies passed on.  Most of these activities can now be performed best with the help of the Internet and modern communications technologies.  This is why modern counter terrorism requires access to communications.

Terrorists and their warehouses have physical locations which are potentially vulnerable to counter terrorism operations.  When you have a physical location and you are engaged in a confrontation it is vital to you that this location remains secret.  Without private information and communications technology (ICT) a terrorist must:

1) physically visit a training camp.

2) fix a physical location to plan.

3) buy all equipment by physically visiting a site.

4) recruit others in a physical local where bugs may be placed and those involved may be identified.

These all create opportunities for detection and monitoring.

For the terrorist though, cryptographic protocols can help with these problems.  Terrorist training information may be encrypted and sent anonymously (but note that participants may still be able to identify each other) and later communications may be exchanged using strong cryptography (believed to be unbreakable).

A powerful counter terrorism tactic is to force terrorists to use unusual methods to orchestrate their attacks and so make it much easier to identify them and to prevent those attacks from succeeding.

If only a terrorist would want to buy a particular combination of goods then those that do are likely to be terrorists.  In addition if terrorists are forced to employ old fashioned and laborious techniques this will slow them down and make it that much easier to catch them before they cause any damage.

As mentioned above terrorists need to use modern cryptography in order to pursue efficient and secret operations.  A good strategy therefore for the counter terrorist would be to make sure that encryption (without back doors of some form for the counter terrorist) are something that few people wish to use.  Some legislation is already in force and more is probably on its way to force people to hand over their encryption keys.  However, it is likely that counter terrorist, faced with increasingly sophisticated terrorists, will want encryption systems to come with protocols allowing some limited access by counter terrorists.  Any found to use systems without such back doors then become a relatively small suspect group who can be investigated more efficiently.

Music piracy flourishes mainly because the public as a whole does not see it as being clearly wrong (or at least not significant enough to act as snitches).  Social norms in support of criminal legislation depend on the reasonableness of the law in question (for more of my posts on this topic look at my tags: computers and the Internet and politics).  Unfortunately copyright law is no longer providing a fair balance between copyright holders, creators and users.  As I have argued in my previous post entitled "a digital libraries act" copyright law for the digital realm should be abandoned and userights should replace it.  In short the economic value from a piece of music (or indeed any media) comes from playing the music not from possessing a copy.

Whilst the law remains unjust, however, it causes the following issues:

Restricting who may copy a file creates a communications system in which as few nodes store the relevant file as possible (each node is a potential failure point).  Unfortunately networks which use few storage nodes can be more than an order of magnitude less efficient (in use of bandwidth) than more modern networks which have many, more local, nodes.

There are large incentives to break copyright law.  This creates an arms struggle between rights holders and the public in which the public stimulate the development of communication systems that:

1) Are decentralized and hard to take offline - Stops music companies from using the courts or ISPs to shut down the network.

Terrorists could use such networks to swap training material.

2) Use encryption to hide the data passed around - Stops music companies from gathering evidence of files passed around for use in court.

Terrorists could use the encryption to keep their communications (and training materials) secret.

3) Anonymize users of the network - Stops music companies from identifying who downloaded a particular file.

Terrorists could use anonymity to keep their physical locations secret and prevent honey traps from being as effective.

So in conclusion, the crack down on music pirates by the music industry is catalyzing the creation of a black network of communications technologies that are a terrorist's dream.  They may already be using such networks for all I know.  The music industry cannot work with current copyright law without using disproportionate tactics and this is making it harder for those who have (or may soon have) more of a claim to their use.

Breakthroughes IV

Yet more possible (or current) breakthroughes in technology together with a very basic description, critique, likelihood and timescale.

Development: Artificial intelligence
Likelihood: Medium to High
Importance: Supporting pensioners, teaching children and re-educating adults amount to as much as 50% of our economic output.  The equivalent costs for AIs would be insignificant.  AIs would be able to colonize the solar system more effectively than people.  AI labor could move around the globe almost instantaneously lubricating the cogs of the global economy.
Drawbacks include: Changes in the balance of power, massive unemployment, biological warfare becomes more likely, cloning of AIs contributes to loss in individuality and a new type of political system becomes necessary to deal with unequal minds.
Time Scale: 20-60 years.

Development: Materials with high tensile strength >60GPa
Likelihood: Very low to Low
Importance: The stronger a material you have the lighter you can make various forms of transport.  Aircraft, cars, ships and space ships would all become more efficient.  Space elevators and sky hooks would become possible opening up cheap access to space.
Drawbacks: New types of weapon.
Time Scale: 30+ years.

A digital libraries act

In this post I will discuss an proposal of mine for the creation of digital libraries protected by a new act of parliament which I will refer to as "a digital libraries act".  I shall explain what the purpose of such an act would be, why we should want it and finally give an overview of how I think it should work. 

A digital libraries act would establish the right to collect together digital works and charge reasonable rates for access to these works whilst distributing the earnings fairly to the respective creators.

I think the act would benefit society in the following ways:

1)  It would lower transaction costs for the use of 'copyrighted' material.  If I want to create an on-line documentary (legally) using text, videos, newspapers and photographs all of which are copyrighted by different people and distribute this documentary to a small group of people I cannot effectively do this because of the cost of chasing down each rights holder.  A digital libraries act would considerably lower this cost.  The act should be designed to allow autonomous software agents to perform transactions driving the cost of the transactions close to zero.

2)  The public would gain access to much information hidden within copyrighted works that it would otherwise be unable to access.  The number of times that I have tried to access single data points from copyrighted works and been asked to fork out £20+ for access to a journal article, book or database that I do not need for any other purpose.  A digital library act would allow such access without compromising the authors economic needs.

3)  Most requests for information are likely to be from individuals who rarely access information on related topics (this is the long tail phenomenon) and so systems which allow broad access to academics, or special interest groups will deny most data requests that are useful to society as a whole (and which come from people who do not often access such information).  This is a counterintuitive but well documented feature of the Internet.

4)  With lower transaction costs and greater access to larger domains of hidden data (in a computer readable format) new media forms will become possible (the style of documentary listed above is a prosaic example).  Most of the value of a digital library is likely to come from forms of media which are only possible with a digital library act.  When video was invented it created the 'film' which was a completely new media form.  Most of the value of video is now in forms of usage (including film) that no-one anticipated before video was created.  The telephone and the Internet themselves are other examples.

5)  A more liquid market for 'copyrighted' works would make it easier to assess the true value of information and so encourage creators to produce works more useful to society.  This is just standard economic theory.

6)  Academics spend a considerable portion of their time looking up material on disconnected and idiosyncratic systems (many of them still paper based).  A digital library act would massively boost their productivity.

I now move onto asking how such a system should work.  I think that:

A)  'copyrighted' works should be included under the digital library act if they are being sold in the public sphere, are not trade secrets or personal data.  Possibly other exceptions might be useful.

B)  It should be entirely legal and free to keep copies of 'copyrighted' works (hence the scare quotes!).  This would legalize file sharing and allow a much more efficient storage and retrieval system for 'copyrighted' materials.

* The storage of information should be legal and free because a file sitting on a hard drive is not relevant to anyone until it is used by someone.  It can be very useful to have potential access to a 'copyrighted' work but one should not be charged anything until the work is actually used/viewed.  It should be possible for me to own a device that contains all published music but not be charged a penny until I choose to play a song.  Furthermore I should be charged solely based on what I play (or otherwise use).

C)  Copyright should be replaced (for works covered under A) by usage rights.  If you have a usage right over X then you have a right to payment for the economic benefits derived from X by its use.

* X is used if it is displayed (e.g on a monitor, speaker, haptic output) or it is given as input for a computer program.  A definition of when X is used could thus be expressed in a way that a computer could understand thus removing the need for cumbersome legal challenges.

The question remains as to how usage should be charged? In the interested of simplicity it would make sense for charges to be determined by the rights holders unless others query their payment system.  We could have a system where auctions can be forced if enough parties request them but are not automatic.

I would argue that those requesting auctions should be able to decide on extra responsibilities for bidders (E.g Can only be sold to X demographic, can not be sold to government or must be part of a certain derivative work).  This allows the market to bundle items and to break markets down into segments (otherwise the economics are too silly).

Obviously we would need a restriction on insiders bidding in the auctions to prevent abuse of the system (just like with most existing systems).  Customers would need to be insulated from the complexities of such a system just like we insulate them from the complexities or the financial markets, actuarial calculations and many other modern industries/services.

I claim that the above system would not actually require excessive bureaucracy as all the important systems can be computer automated.  This is an important point.  Systems may sound incredibly convoluted but if the system can be handled by software systems they can be entirely manageable.  This is true of the systems I describe above in my opinion.

I don't think I've addressed fully all of the plethora of questions that need to be answered about the systems I propose and the associated legislation.  Hopefully though I have given you pause for thought over my (overly bold) suggestions.