Cindynic Essentials for Coders and Advanced Users

The cindynic method aims to reduce risks and threats to people and their environment. It is based on strategic and action-oriented thinking, founded on universal values, notably those of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In doing so, it is particularly concerned with non-material risks and the protection of fundamental rights, especially in cyberspace, where the technical and legislative aspects of issues such as patents, access to information, security and protection of confidentiality, and information warfare are of interest to many coders.

Coders and librists could therefore benefit from the cindynic method, and are particularly well placed to become power users. Indeed, the kernels of cindynic descriptions are built with MRC, a conceptualization method designed by Mioara Mugur-Schächter, initially for Quantum Mechanics, but whose scope is general: MRC may seem difficult, but it has similarities with the tenets of Object Oriented Languages, which means that presenting MRC as a Description Oriented Language should enable coders familiar with the basics of Object Oriented Languages to quickly master the process of constructing descriptional kernels, which is the most difficult part of Cindynics, generally reserved for power users.

An MRC description is analogous to an object class: just as inheritance enables you to create a tree of classes from an initial class, chaining enables you to create descriptions from a basic description. Descriptions are composed of two layers: basic descriptions, and descriptions chained from these basic descriptions, known as meta-descriptions. However, a meta-description can be chained from several basic descriptions (or from several meta-descriptions), and chaining can be done in the reverse direction: a basic description can at any time be considered as resulting from new basic descriptions, and thus become a meta-description.

Just as an object class has instance variables, a description has view-aspects, which are the variables we choose to observe when describing a phenomenon. The set of view-aspects of a description constitutes a view. A description, on the other hand, has no elements analogous to a method.

A description is composed of three canonical elements: a generator, an entity-object which is the phenomenon or concept to be described, comparable to an object, and a view, made up of view-aspects comparable to instance variables. The notion of generator has no equivalent: a generator is used to generate, or select, an entity-object, and declaring it would be analogous to asking a coder to specify how he defined or delimited the contours of an object in the first place.

Finally, for coders familiar with Object-Oriented Languages, chaining MRC descriptions should pose no major difficulty. The only practical difficulty is related to the management of indices, which inevitably tend to pile up as the chaining progresses.

Three descriptional kernels are available: the first describes the notion of a consensual situation and its vulnerability, which is used for risk prevention. A second kernel describes the notion of a non-consensual situation, or a set of situations perceived differently, called a spectrum, and enables strategic analysis and operational management in conflict situations, as well as the reduction of conflictualities. A third kernel describes the notion of matrix, i.e. a set of spectrums or strategic analyses: this more complex kernel is useful in cases where the dynamics of power perception play a pivotal role, e.g. during coups d'état or the mobilization or construction of collective actors.

These kernels, designed as a common language, are also designed to be freely extensible: hence the interest in mastering description chaining, which enables descriptional kernels to be extended to better adapt to specific cases.