Kernel Learn Track - Module 3

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

See Atlas/Maps/Kernel MOC

• Why did the initial visions for the world wide web not work out quite as their inventors intended? It seems that it boils down to ==the incentives== for building it.
• Tackle the ultimate problem: ==how to free the shared record of human knowledge from closed, rent-seeking corporations and extricate ourselves from an extractive attention economy.==

• We cannot hope to succeed where the giants on whose shoulders we stand failed, if we do not understand our own intentions and what freedom really means to each one of us.
• Incentives are a technical problem which can be consciously engineered and secured with deterministic, auditable, and shared code. However, ==we still have to know why we encode certain incentives and not others.== This goes to the heart of what kind of reality you want to participate in, and what kinds of freedom you genuinely feel are worth speaking into being.

• Take Back the Web with Sam Williams
• Take Back the Web with David Vorick and Manasi Vora
• Take Back the Web with Juan Benet

So, you want to take back the web? From whom do you want to take it back? Why do you want to take it back? What will you do with it once it’s been handed over to your care? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg

• We are conditioned to value ==action and results== over intention.
  • We live in a global culture that emphasizes ==what we achieve rather than what we mean.==
• Actions are, in a sense, how we attempt to ==make the external world match our internal world.==
  • If you are not clear about your internal world - about what you mean to do - you will never be satisfied with the external world.
  • How can you hope to improve the world if you do not know how to improve yourself?
• Our action-oriented culture, driven by results, encourages us to believe that life is about what we can expect of the world.
  • However, the reality is that an honest, reflective life is about ==responding truly==, in every moment, to what the world expects of you.
  • This is only possible if you constantly ==practice awareness of your intentions.==
  • Inspired by Man’s Search for Meaning
• What’s unique about web3 - about economic code which creates new trust spaces; expands the possible definitions of value; merges money and speech; and creates new constraints in which to experiment with freedom - is that ==we can encode our intentions, literally. ==
  • Most importantly, the code with which we express our inner world and meaning then lives independently of us on a shared, global network where it will not change.
• Not reliant on people
  • Revolutions always end up failing because they are reliant on people who are error-prone, corruptible, and whose priorities change over time.
  • Smart contracts will go on no matter what happens to the creator
• Timechains whose record of history cannot be reverted hold us to a ==higher standard of intentionality.== Now we must develop the inner tools required to live up to our technology.

Evolve e-love Evolution, not revolution Lessons from evolution:

1. Use what’s already there
2. Every part evolves together
3. Go slow & steady The overarching moral is this: humility.

• Cards/Freedom is being conscious of your constraints.
• Being defined through complementary opposites…this is what the Buddhists call “Cards/The freedom of no escape”
  • Nowhere to go but here
  • By accepting reality as it is, instead of how we wish it to be, we are liberated
  • Cards/Freedom from conditioning
• Current struggle isn’t collective, but individual?
  • Western individualism?
  • There are still collective issues worth fighting for (e.g. basic needs, equal opportunity, just institutions)
  • Graeber: “Forgive debt and redisribute the land”
  • What is also required is “every soul taking every single step”
    • Humanity pursuing perceptual knowledge
    • Recreating old community in new form
      • Relevant: Miscellaneous Notes/Literature Notes/The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet - Literature Notes
• Freedom is the combination of awareness and acceptance
  • Embracing boundaries > denying them
  • What makes real liberation a daily experience
  • Instead of a concept only realized onced an external project comes to fruition
    • relegating freedom to an idealized future…can’t be found there
    • we need to find it within ourselves
    • internal over external
• Value is generated from trust in clearly shared truths
• Trust in the modern world is an emergent property of protocols that define + encode cheating
  • This prevents cheating without the need for human interpretation or enforcement
  • E.G. Smart contracts?
• Freedom is is our conscious ability to decide which shared truths to trust based on how well defined and encoded the concept of “cheating” is
  • “Cheating” is what creates those truths
    • Definition through complementary oppposite
  • We have the freedom to define what boundaries we choose
    • We can’t choose to operate without boundaries
    • The practice of freedom includes accepting that we can’t exist without limitations
• Lived freedom is the conscious navigation of responsibility
  • This reminds me of the free will debate
    • Secular view: Why You Probably Don’t Have Free Will
    • Religious view:
      • Free will in theology
      • Argument from free will
  • free to the extent you take responsibility for the consequences of your actions
• As someone working in tech…
  • the products I create shouldn’t aim to make people “more free”
    • false marketing campaigns and dissapointment
    • automating stuff? probably comes with drawbacks
    • Cards/Technology keeps us stuck in a feedback loop with ourselves
  • instead, they should be conscious of, and communicate clearly, how they constrain the people who use them
    • better Terms of Service?
  • this creates an environment for people to become aware of the trade-offs they’re making -> only kind of freedom that can be trusted to generate sustainable value
  • Cards/Technology must be used as a tool of liberation

“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”

Taking back the web has to do with three fundamental pillars:

1. Augmenting our ability to think for ourselves
2. Reclaiming our time
3. Extending our ability to co-operate

To establish our first pillar, we’ll mix a Vannevar Bush essay from 1945 and a 2019 essay from Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen

• Meaning of take back the web:
  • the internet came with grand dreams
  • though we’re mostly stuck with artificial social spaces, overwhelming algorithms, and extractive incentives which are mining our attention as a means of propping up a failing economy.
• These two essays draw out a common thread of thought stretched across 74 years in order to illustrate what sorts of freedom are actually on offer in this world wide web of ours.
  • Since 1945, one critical feature has revolved around ==constructing new media for free and creative thought.==
  • At first it may seem unrelated to blockchains, but ==tools for thought are public goods and suffer from the same problem of incentives as all other public goods. ==
  • They are thus the perfect example of common patterns for humanity which require us to understand why programming regenerative incentives matters, and what economic code can really be used to achieve in the long-term.

“The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world’s record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.”

Vannevar Bush’s essay begins as a plea for cooperation between scientists so as to make the shared record of human knowledge more accessible.

“The scientists, burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership […] They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.”

“There is a growing mountain of research [but we] cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, all the conclusions of others as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial […]

“The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record.”

We discussed how the record we use for establishing our shared history and for recording our transactions became one and the same thing in 2009, but we have yet to attend to this central question: how can we best use it?

“A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted.”

Section 4:

“[Our technology must allow users] to free their brains for something more than repetitive detailed transformations in accordance with established rules […] A mathematician is not one who can readily manipulate figures […] S/he is primarily an individual who is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, capable of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes employed.”

Section 5 begins with the manipulation of logical processes beyond arithmetic and then dives into the final and most critical part the human record: consultation.

“We can enormously extend the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it. This […] involves the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge. The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed […] Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing.

“[Instead of alphanumeric indices] the human mind […] operates by ==association==. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain.”

Bush introduces the ==“memex”== - a supplement to memory which pulls together microfilm, recording technologies, and associative selection. It won’t be as fast or flexible as the brain, but it could at least improve the clarity and permanence of our recall.

“This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing […] Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space.”

Bush is really talking about ==building “user trails” through these associative indices.== In much the same way that one book is the associative trail of a mind moving through and selecting certain information; Bush has designed a machine to build trails of trails. These trails ==could also be shared:== my trail passed into your memex and vice versa - a far more efficient and less lossy means of collaboration than simply recommending a book or two.

“Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified […] There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.”

Bush then spends some time speculating on technologies which directly manipulate the human nervous system. He ends with this:

“[Science] may yet allow us truly to encompass the great record and to grow in wisdom. We may perish in conflict before we learn to wield that record for our true good. Yet, in the application of science to our needs and desires, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.”

The most critical aspect of useful shared records, and the one we are worst at is consultation. This requires that we improve at selection when working with information.

==Media for thought are all around us==: Bush cites the abacus which, through the positional display of number relationships it implies, led the Arabs to the concept of 0. ==Media for thought create powerful immersive contexts in which to explore new classes of ideas which were formerly impossible.== Matuschak and Nielsen take this much, much further.

💡 If our media help us remember what matters, we may find our minds are already free.

“Alan Kay summed up the optimism of this dream when he wrote of the potential of the personal computer: ’the very use of it would actually change the thought patterns of an entire civilization’ […] for better and worse, computers have affected the thought patterns of our civilization over the past 60 years, and those changes seem like just the beginning.”

Media for thought, like the abacus - or like money and writing - create ==powerful immersive contexts== (which can change the ==thought patterns== of civilizations).

Leveraging the insights of cognitive science, we can create media that make it effortless to remember what you’ve read. The medium builds in the key steps involved in memory. In this context, it means adopting ==highly specialized flash cards== in an essay, and ==spaced repetition (SRM) reminders== after reading. These may sound trivial, but it takes advantage of a fundamental fact about human memory: ==as we are repeatedly tested on a question, our memory of the answer gets stronger, and we are likely to retain it for longer.==

Why all this focus on memory, though? Will building mnemonic media really free our thought? Remember, Bush showed how new media free our brains from rote tasks: mathematicians are not calculators, but people skilled at intuitively grasping higher order logic.

“Memory systems can be extraordinarily helpful for mastering abstract, conceptual knowledge […] because of the way the mnemonic medium embeds spaced repetition inside a narrative. That narrative embedding makes it possible for context and understanding to build up.”

The key in all this is how you craft the cards: the idea being to make a ==scalable memory laboratory== which can answer some very deep questions about human memory, how it might be improved and practiced, and what impact it can have on our thought and learning.

“We’ll see that memory systems are a small part of a much bigger picture […] Seriously developing memory systems is likely to lead to one or more transformative tools for thought.”

Critically, memory systems need to ensure that people don’t just learn surface features; they need to help users in innovative ways when they do forget; and they need to encode stories into the mnemonic medium. In this sense, you can see the mnemonic media as ==carrying two texts: the actual one and the reflected one==, built up by all the knowledge encoded in cards.

However, it is a mistake to think “good memory system == spaced repetition”. There is also ==elaborative encoding== and the sort of ==associative trail==s Bush was talking about; and techniques like the method of loci, though this isn’t as useful for remembering abstract, conceptual knowledge. Seeing this broader perspective allows us to ask much deeper questions, like:

💡 What is the ideal network structure of knowledge?

And what does memory have to do with understanding and creativity?

Conceptual mastery and creativity is actually enabled by a mastery of details. By largely automating away the problem of memory, ==the mnemonic medium makes it easier for people to spend more time focusing on other parts of learning, making the awkward early stages easier to get through.== The link between memory and mastery goes much deeper though, right down to the idea of chunking, as demonstrated with chess masters in the 1970’s.

“Players learn to recognize somewhere between 25,000 and 100,000 patterns of chess pieces. These much more elaborate ‘chunks’ are combinations of pieces that the players perceive as a unity, and are able to reason about at a higher level of abstraction than the individual pieces […] Memory is, in fact, a central part of cognition.”

My sense is that having transportable user trails, like Bush imagined in ‘45, would be extremely useful. How to make this wealth of knowledge easily shareable? Just encode them as 12-word mnemonics inside a world computer…

Creativity is largely enabled by mastery of detail.

“The design and mathematical insights are inextricably entangled: the mathematical insights are, in some sense, design insights, and vice versa [… This is] a general truth: the most powerful tools for thought express deep insights into the underlying subject matter [… Mnemonic media] will express deep original insights into memory […] A truly great memory system will be cognitive science of the highest order.”

This general truth reveals the deep difference between what Alan Kay called “pop” and “research” cultures. ==Pop culture is great at producing products we consume, but is insufficient for creating new tools for thought.==

“This is not the common argument that making new tools can lead to new subject matter insights for the toolmaker, and vice versa. New tools can lead to ==new subject matter insights for humanity as a whole==, and vice versa, and this would ideally be a rapidly-turning loop to develop the most transformative tools.”

“Doing this is a cultural struggle. It seems to be extraordinarily rare to find the ==insight-through-making loop working at full throttle== […] You have brilliant researchers who think of making as something essentially trivial, ‘just a matter of implementation’. And you have makers who don’t understand research, who see it as merely a slow and dysfunctional process.”

“Watching this video is a remarkable emotional experience. It’s obvious the person narrating the video loves mathematics, and you cannot help but empathize […] It’s tempting to overlook or undervalue this kind of emotional connection to a subject. But it’s the foundation of all effective learning and of all effective action […]

“Is it possible to create a medium which has the emotional range possible in video – a range which can be used to convey awe and mystery and surprise and beauty? […] ==To create an integrated medium, with a unified and carefully crafted emotional and intellectual experience?"==

We must take emotion as seriously as movie, music, and video game designers do. All of these people have elaborate models for emotional response, which we must also take into account if we are to augment our freedom to think with digital tools.

The foundation of all effective long-term learning is emotional connection to a subject.

Tools for thought are public goods. Thus they suffer from the same issues around funding and building the right kind of practices and processes required for real development.

“Consider our most fundamental tools for thought – language, writing, music, etc. Those are public goods […] These tools all introduce fundamental new mental representations and operations. Those aren’t owned by any company, they’re ==patterns owned by humanity.==”

“We need to develop a powerful ==praxis==, a set of ==core ideas== which are explicit and powerful enough that new people can rapidly assimilate them, and begin to develop their own practice.”

Why is it worthwhile devoting yourself to an open-ended endeavour like this which isn’t as well-funded as many other sectors in tech? Well, because:

“The creation of language – the ur tool for thought – is perhaps the most important occurrence of humanity’s existence […] Similarly, the invention of other tools for thought – writing, the printing press, and so on – are among our greatest ever breakthroughs.”

What will new tools for thought really look like? Our contention is that protocols for money are exactly one such tool and - given that money preceded writing - they are also an ur tool.

“If we could communicate the experience in an essay, then the tools would be failing at their job; they would not be transforming a person’s thinking, or even their consciousness.”

“Scaffolded exploration: a way to build up your own understanding, and perhaps even push the frontiers of knowledge. It’s tempting to regard [Jupyter notebooks] as merely a mashup of essay and code. But really they’re a new media form, with different possibilities from either essays or code, and with striking opportunities to go much further.

“There’s a general principle here: ==good tools for thought arise mostly as a byproduct of doing original work on serious problems== […] Furthermore, ==the problems themselves are typically of intense personal interest to the problem-solvers.== They’re not working on the problem for a paycheck; they’re working on it because they desperately want to know the answer.”

Embedding narrative into new tools for thought encourages scaffolded exploration as a way to build up your own understanding.

“You could begin an executable book with material the users already care about, can connect to easily, and find motivating […] but such an opening won’t suffer the drawback of popular science, of being vague and imprecise. Rather, the interface would be completely ==well specified== and could be ==scaled out==, applied in ==ever-expanding contexts==. The understanding would be ==transferable==. Even a user who has understood only a tiny part of the material could begin tinkering, building up an understanding based on play and exploration.”

This is the first part of what it really means to “take back the web”. It’s about building public tools for thought which - like language - are really patterns owned by humanity as a whole, in which we can playfully explore with each other the very edges of our shared record of knowledge, adding new pieces as scaffolding for those who follow to continue the fun.