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Fixed-Point Theorems and the Ethics of Radical Transparency: A Logic-First Treatment

Published: September 7, 2025 | arXiv ID: 2509.06055v1

By: Faruk Alpay, Hamdi Alakkad

Potential Business Impact:

Proves perfect honesty always causes problems.

Business Areas:
Privacy Privacy and Security

This paper establishes a formal framework, grounded in mathematical logic and order theory, to analyze the inherent limitations of radical transparency. We demonstrate that self-referential disclosure policies inevitably encounter fixed-point phenomena and diagonalization barriers, imposing fundamental trade-offs between openness and stability. Key results include: (i) an impossibility theorem showing no sufficiently expressive system can define a total, consistent transparency predicate for its own statements; (ii) a categorical fixed-point argument (Lawvere) for the inevitability of self-referential equilibria; (iii) order-theoretic design theorems (Knaster-Tarski) proving extremal fixed points exist and that the least fixed point minimizes a formal ethical risk functional; (iv) a construction for consistent partial transparency using Kripkean truth; (v) an analysis of self-endorsement hazards via L\"ob's Theorem; (vi) a recursion-theoretic exploitation theorem (Kleene) formalizing Goodhart's Law under full disclosure; (vii) an exploration of non-classical logics for circumventing classical paradoxes; and (viii) a modal $\mu$-calculus formulation for safety invariants under iterative disclosure. Our analysis provides a mathematical foundation for transparency design, proving that optimal policies are necessarily partial and must balance accountability against strategic gaming and paradox. We conclude with equilibrium analysis and lattice-theoretic optimality conditions, offering a principled calculus for ethical disclosure in complex systems.

Country of Origin
🇹🇷 Turkey

Page Count
29 pages

Category
Mathematics:
Logic