Summary: there are two ways to fit (=solve for) an objective function: (1) implicit, and (2) explicit. Both are needed. If we would understand mathematical reasons behind specialization of two brain hemispheres and behind the world's ideological conflict, we would make space for both ideologies to flourish, just like brain did, without needing for WW3.

Conflict

One could describe the current conflict between the (1) "Western" democracy with free markets and (2) "Eastern" socialism with markets, as the fight between implicit and explicit control ideologies.

Implicit

You can think of this as inductive reasoning. It is the methodology of something that many know of as "capitalist free markets", with government influence, where markets, and capitalists are sources of policy.

This is a relatively new methodology, that works like an AI, where you set generic constraints, and use people and markets as black box optimizers to "learn" (as in machine learning) to find the fit, and letting those black boxes loose to find their optima. It started with the invention of "Corporation", a social supra-organism, and the idea of using governance only to create fences (like monetary policies and abstract laws) to prevent monopolies and misbehavior, otherwise allowing high level of autonomy for these entities.

This methodology came out as a result of failure to explicitly optimize supply chains at the time in history, where the world's most powerful governments did not have the supercomputers to do that. Hence, they came up with a brilliant idea of free markets, that work like human-powered AI modules to build their empires.

The self-control of such society built up from the implicit optimization AI modules, stems from individual freedoms to start new corporations to enter the markets, and voting rights to shape policies (or boundaries) for corporations to operate.

You can think of those policies as shaping the height of grass for sheep to graze, instead of adding fences. The benefit of implicit control is freedom to innovate, and it's more flexible, more adaptive approach.

However, this is a slower approach, similar to how octopus is slower than a cat.

Explicit

You can think of this as deductive reasoning. It is the methodology of something that many know of as "planned economy", using markets only as tools to implement policies, and not as sources of policy.

The reason for effectiveness of explicit governance is proven in our computers: when a software engineer thoroughly designs and explicitly writes a program by thinking about each bit and byte, optimizing memory for effect, then software can achieve stellar performance. In addition, explicit programming proved to be amenable to collaboration as well: programmers reviewing each others' code, using multi-branch forking and merging methodologies introduced in explicit programming, allow to achieve something close to democracy, where many programmers can weight in to the final program to run.

It is not unfathomable that in an explicitly controlled society, people at large could be the architects of their own social operating system, and partake explicitly in the engineering of social rules, in the same way that programmers do. However, the assurance of such explicit control means high level of surveillance to ensure that programs run as expected. This is a very fast and effective approach.

However, it also a less creative approach, a cat can't squeeze or ooze through a hole.

Balance

One could notice that "explicit" is "implicit in limit", that is, something what looks like explicit control done by our neurons doing engineering, writing software code or policies, is an expression of many neurons working to simulate possible scenarios in the engineer's head, and drawing an engineering line, a line of code, a policy clause, or an axiom in theory of mathematics. The behavior of neurons through the laws of large numbers, converge to something that looks "explicit", yet it is always "implicit" — those ideal-looking axioms and engineering lines are mostly "emergent phenomena" conceived by many neurons attempting to simulate reasonable structure.

The preference for the explicit control ideology may be rooted in engineering culture. Also, a larger brain may do more mental experiments running the conflict right inside the brain, without a need to externalize it into a competition at the level of corporations (in software engineering terms, drawing different boundaries for public/private class interface, and uniting behind goals by "competition between ideas rather than projects").

Nevertheless, the distinction between implicit inductive (such as statisticians and AI practitioners evolving programs engage in) and explicit deductive (such as mathematicians and engineers writing programs manually engage in), remains.

Brain

Apparently, a healthy brain needs both inductive AND deductive reasoning to function properly. It is likely that the on-going ideological conflict between the explicit and implicit decision making (and countries like China and Russia trying to prove the benefit of explicit control, while the U.S. and its allies trying to prove the benefit of implicit control), is of the same nature that the evolution of brain has solved many times over, and found a solution to it, seen in brain structures.

It is no coincidence that most brains of most higher life forms have 2 hemispheres: left brain and right brain, where one has specialized in logic and reasoning, whereas another has specialized in art and creativity. Brain has also built a bridge between them: corpus callosum, so we feel like one identity rather than two conflicting identities.

It is not an accident that the brains in practically all higher life forms have this separation:

• 1 hemisphere: emergent pattern discovery (1) - implicit
• 2 hemisphere: pattern engineering (2) - explicit

Conclusions

World needs an alternative to Western implicit model.

Brain evolution has done that fight for us long ago, so we don't have to, and since the differences are as fundamental as mathematical concepts of "implicit" and "explicit", or "emergent" vs "defined", the existence of such mathematical duality itself grants the rights for existence of at least 2 different modes of operation of the society.

Building an explicit model through peaceful means.

Do we have to fight wars in order to draw a line between the (1) implicitly and (2) explicitly governed worlds? I don't think so. In theory, just create two ideologies, give them names like "implicit ideology" and "explicit ideology", think through the rules of engagement, find partners, propose and invite to continue to collectively adjust rules of engagement in each ideology, and let people choose freely, which one they want to join, then build a bridge between them (some people will want to be a part of that bridge).

While the "implicit" model may seem more "democratic", but just like programmers were able to create a version control systems and negotiate between inclusion of things into master branch (even voting for branches and their features), a society that runs on "explicit" ideology could systematically and also democratically-meritocratically control itself by writing its own code through a similar process.

Ecosystem vs Organism

The difference between explicit and implicit, is like that of an "organism" and an "ecosystem": an organism is deductive and allows efficiently do many things, yet an ecosystem is inductive and allows new organisms to emerge, grow and evolve. Ecosystem treasures diversity, organism treasures identity. Both important: there's no diversity without many identities. 

Fusion

The conflict fundamentally is NOT between East and West, it's between the Explicit and the Implicit governance models, and the brain has found a way to create fusion between them, resulting in a system that supports both: the explicit (deductive) and implicit (inductive) reasoning, overall, enriching our abilities, with a bridge between the two (independent hemispheres) to share the fruits of both.

If evolution of brain could resolve this, perhaps world's society can too.