Kernel Learn Track - Module 0

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

See Atlas/Maps/Kernel MOC

#cognition #personaldevelopment Goal: learn framework that will help you think in transformative ways about Web3

• Pattern recognition is the core of cognition
  • best way to improve critical thinking
• Think in complementary opposites
  • No to dualities like “decentralization good, centralization bad”
  • There is no good without evil, no North without South, etc.
  • This is known as “quantum thought”
    • being able to contemplate both 0 and 1 simultaneously, along with the spectrum of probability between
    • no need to seek certanity
    • This humbles us; coupled with wider perspective of total spectrum of possibilties, this can help us make more effective decisions
• Thus, we should have humility
  • We can’t be sure about the consequences of our actions
  • We can only cultivate an acute observational awareness that can guide us towards making the right trade-offs

People who have positively changed the world did so because they negotiated complexity over imposing their own will

💡 What is the question to which you are the universe’s answer?

💡 How can you respond most honestly, accurately, and lovingly?

#crypto

• Bitcoin: “Don’t trust, verify.”
  • Trust is only meaningful where verification ends -> fully understanding how people can lie
  • Application
    • we can codify the way in which it is possible to cheat
    • we can also write executable software rules with deterministic results
      • prevent cheating in protocols that we use to define and transfer value
• Demonstration of ==complementary opposites==
  • To understand trust, you must know all possible deceptions
  • Protocols with strong trust guarantees are built by defining and encoding what it means to lie
  • Example of clearly defined and encoded rules
• This does not mean that we no longer need trust. It means that there is an ==implicit== shift from trusting those who own the media by which we transfer value, to those with whom we are actually transacting
  • Decentralization at work!

• Viries in numeris; another early Bitcoin maxim meaning “Strength in numbers”
  • Pythagoras: “All things are number”
• This implicit shift is enabled due to a fundamental change in the language by which value is defined
  • Old: Regulatory fiat, enforced by legal prose and human courts, backed by threat of violence
  • New: Bitcoin, enables network of peers to create conditions required for functional currency from mathematics alone, enforced by deterministic coputation
• ==Trust has something to do with truth==
  • The more succintly we can express shared truths, the easier it becomes to verify (and therefore trust) the systems we use
  • See this in:
    • Using numbers and mathematical consenseus gives us the strength to lay down “unassailable facts” (according to Andreas Antonopoulos)
    • What gives power and meaning to any narrative? The community which believes it
• Publicly verifiable truth -> more people can reach consenseus on the basic state of their shared realities, and get on transacting in increasingly valuable ways based on new kinds of trust
• Profound feedback loop
  • Use universal language (math) to define succintly what it means to cheat
  • Enforce penalties in a deterministic and executable way based on your definitions (code)
  • These definitions allow more people to experiment with interpersonal trust in ways previously unimaginable
• TL;DR: we can make it easier to verify and trust the systems that we use by succintly expressing shared truth

To dream up important ideas you must think like an idealist; to build systems that will live up to those dreams, you must think like an adversary.

• Deterministic verifiability between peers > trust based on blind faith
• Ability -> access; see how Bitcoin source code can be auditied by anyone, anywhere in the world
• Trust has a lot to do with transparency and education
• Requires architectural innovation in structure of money
  • No more clients and servers
  • Everyone needs to be a peer
• Nicky Case: ==We are each other’s environment==

https://ncase.me/trust/

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, may be not just a ==moral== truth, but also a ==mathematical== truth.

In 1985, when Americans were asked how many close friends they had, the most common answer was “three”. In 2004, the most common answer was “zero”. We now have fewer friends across class, racial, economic, and political lines, because we have fewer friends – period. And as you just discovered for yourself, the fewer ==“repeat interactions”== there are, the more distrust will spread.

With a ==lower “win-win” reward==, cheating takes over. Game theory has two powerful ideas about this: “Zero-sum game”. This is the sadly common belief that a gain for “us” must come at a loss to “them”, and vice versa. “Non-zero-sum game”. This is when people make the hard effort to create a win-win solution! (or at least, avoid a lose-lose) ==Without the non-zero-sum game, trust cannot evolve.==

This is why ==“miscommunication”== is such an interesting barrier to trust: a little bit of it leads to forgiveness, but too much and it leads to widespread distrust! I think our modern media technology, as much as it’s helped us increase communication… has increased our miscommunication much more.

Game theory shows us the three things we need for the evolution of trust:

1. Repeat interactions
2. Possible win-wins
3. Low miscommunication

What the game is, defines what the players do. Our problem today isn’t just that people are losing trust, it’s that our environment acts against the evolution of trust. That may seem cynical or naive – that we’re “merely” products of our environment – but as game theory reminds us, we are each others’ environment. In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it’s us players who define the game. So, do what you can do, to ==create the conditions necessary to evolve trust.== Build relationships. Find win-wins. Communicate clearly. Maybe then, we can stop firing at each other, get out of our own trenches, cross No Man’s Land to come together…

Learn to live and let live.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/01/van-gogh-purpose-letter/

“it is not necessary to accept the choices handed down to you by life as you know it.”

On the road that I’m on I must continue; if I do nothing, if I don’t study, if I don’t keep on trying, then I’m lost, then woe betide me. That’s how I see this, to keep on, keep on, that’s what’s needed. But what’s your ultimate goal, you’ll say. ==The goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely==, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting, as one works more seriously, as one digs deeper into the originally vague idea, the first fugitive, passing thought, unless it becomes firm.

You don’t need to “find yourself” before beginning your creative journey.

I’m always inclined to believe that ==the best way of knowing [the divine] is to love a great deal.== Love that friend, that person, that thing, whatever you like, you’ll be on the right path to knowing more thoroughly, afterwards; that’s what I say to myself. But you must love with a high, serious intimate sympathy, with a will, with intelligence, and you must always seek to know more thoroughly, better, and more.

Love is the only conduit to connecting with one’s purpose, with divinity itself

There are idlers and idlers, who form a contrast. There’s the one who’s an idler through laziness and weakness of character, through the baseness of his nature… Then there’s the other idler, the idler truly despite himself, who is gnawed inwardly by a ==great desire for action==, who does nothing because he finds it impossible to do anything since he’s imprisoned in something, so to speak, because he doesn’t have what he would need to be productive, because the inevitability of circumstances is reducing him to this point. Such a person doesn’t’ always know himself what he could do, but he feels by instinct, I’m good for something, even so! I feel I have a ==raison d’être==! I know that I could be a quite different man! For what then could I be of use, for what could I serve! There’s something within me, so what is it! That’s an entirely different idler.

You know, what makes the prison disappear is very deep, serious attachment. To be friends, to be brothers, to love; that opens the prison through sovereign power, through a most powerful spell. But he who doesn’t have that remains in death. But where sympathy springs up again, life springs up again.

Why was this chosen? To help you…

1. Ask better quesrions
2. Think deeply about your intention
3. How to define both “value” and “trust”
4. Think about what you’re personally doing here…what’s your question?

Food for thought:

• How do we handle this tension between improving and being joyfully who we already are?
• Van Gogh presents tinkering as a better way of being. In our own time, it may not be about building more products for ‘consumers’, but rather using new trust spaces to commune in a different and digital sense.
• What is in your heart of hearts? You may wonder how relevant this question is, but we cannot build a better web if we do not first understand what it might mean to be better ourselves. And that requires deep enquiry into the nature of self: there is no other way.
• Do you trust the inner voice? Again, a seemingly abstract question with profound implications for what we actually, in practice, understand trust to be; which is then directly reflected in the kinds of products we build.
• TL;DR: to build a better web, you must first know how you yourself can be better