Kernel Learn Track - Module 4

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

See Atlas/Maps/Kernel MOC

• Chesterton’s Fence story: don’t break down barriers the function of which you do not fully understand.
• We must go back and understand more clearly ==what kinds of institutions we may need== to keep our world wide web safe to walk through gaily.
• Instituions need not be things like The Federal Reserve, or a government department, or a place you go when you need to spend some time separate from society.
• We have - for instance - the institution of marriage: which is ==a practice or a custom.== It is in this sense which we will be using the word for the rest of Module 4.
• The internet routes information around slow-moving bureaucracies and so requires that ==we update the practices and customs we use to relate to one another and organize ourselves.==
• It has caused critical shifts in three spheres of human life:
  • How we identify ourselves
  • How we reach consensus
  • How we experience time
• Through the language of hierarchy (meaning no rulers, not no rules), views of institution-as-practice or custom can be collected under the term “counterpower”

Institutionally, counterpower takes the form of what we would call institutions of direct democracy, consensus and mediation; that is, ==ways of publicly negotiating and controlling that inevitable internal tumult and transforming it into social states (or if you like, forms of value) that society sees as the most desirable:== conviviality, unanimity, fertility, prosperity, beauty, however it may be framed.

Focussing in on the notion of custom and conviviality, we can tur to Ivan Illich for another important perspective on the critical words for this week, commons and custom:

A commons is not a public space. ==A commons is a space which is established by custom.== It cannot be regulated by law. The law would never be able to give sufficient details to regulate a commons. A typical tree on the commons of a village has by custom very different uses for different people. The widows may take the dry branches for burning. The children may collect the twigs, and the pastor gets the flowers when it flowers, and the nuts from it are assigned to the village poor, and the shadow may be for the shepherds who come through, except on Sundays, when the Council is held in the shadow of the tree.

The concept of the commons is not that of a resource; a commons comes from a totally different way of being in the world where it is not production which counts, but bodily, physical use according to rules that are established by custom, which never recognizes equality of all subjects because different people follow different customs. Their differences can be recognized in the way they share the commons.

• Andy Tudhope
• Mariano Conti
• Dandelion Mane

People think governance is hard. Which is correct - it’s the most complex topic in Web 3. This is because, ==by virtue of complementary opposites, it is also the most simple.== It is so obvious that everyone misses it. Lao Tzu explains best:

To give no trust is to get no trust.

When the work’s done right, with no fuss or boasting, ordinary people say, Oh, we did it.

• The Cypherpunks were almost all anarchists
• They believed that, ==if you build tools which give people the means to govern themselves, then good governance at higher levels is the inevitable result.==
  • Individual sovereignty allows for emergent forms of organization which are more responsive to the needs of groups and more productive at the level of societies.
• The aim is not to build better tools for governing; ==it is to build tools that let people govern themselves.==
• This is both practical and psychological, for in order to have healthy communities, we first need healthy individuals.
• Importantly, this is not about pulling down fences - something anarchists are often accused of wanting to do. Don’t fight the system. Just abandon it is a more apt slogan.

• Anarchy does not mean the tyranny of structurelessness. To us, it means…
  • ==sovereign individuals== collaborating of their own volition on projects they choose to undertake
  • ==emergent forms of organization== that need not be permanent, because they’re not premised on personal power, but rather arise as a response to the needs of a group in a particular moment.
• The best example of this kind of internet age governance is, unsurprisingly, the IETF:

We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code.

• Alegal systems are those that ==“can’t care” about the human context== of the information they process
• Think back to what is valuable - the legal fiction of the firm (i.e. that it has a kind of personhood) allowed for orders of magnitude improvement in our organizational efficiency as a species.
• Alegal fictions are the next evolution.
  • For the first time in history, we need not revolt against a ==system of violent legal enforcement. ==
  • We can abandon it for ==openly verifiable mathematics==, which we subscribe to by acts of our own volition.

💡 This is because, in the world wide web, running code is more powerful than holding elections.

• In exactly the same way that we obviate the need to trust protocols by defining and encoding what it means to cheat; we can build systems that obviate the need to govern communities by ==encoding the means for individual sovereignty. ==
• This is what it really means to explore new kinds of interpersonal trust enabled by trustless protocols: ==if we give everyone the ability to govern themselves, do we trust ourselves to be responsible?== Lao Tzu did, and so do we.

To follow the way yourself is real power. To follow it in the family is abundant power. To follow it in the community is steady power. To follow it in the whole country is lasting power. To follow it in the world is universal power.

So in myself I see what self is, in my household I see what family is, in my town I see what community is in my nation I see what a country is, in the world I see what is under heaven.

How do I know the world is so? By this.

– [Lao Tzu]( https://tinyurl.com/le-guins-tao

A Conservative Anarchist Digital Minister

Gitcoin & Computer-Aided Governance

Progressive Decentralization

• In order to frame these kinds of shared stories, we need to ask better questions that go the heart of our intentions and stem from honesty about, and humility arising from, our limits as human beings.
• This inner orientation, combined with technologies that encourage interpersonal trust between sovereign individuals, can be used to create emergent, responsive, communal structures better suited to coping with the complexity of the modern world than our current institutions.

• We need to use modern mathematical tools to model **optimal collective decision making. **
• The best means put forward so far is the mechanism of Liberal Radicalism, whose goal is “to create a funding system that is as flexible and responsive as the market, but avoids free-rider problems”.
• It’s not enough to build tools that let people govern themselves, we have to craft the ==incentive structures which encourage the majority to behave in everyone’s better interests. ==
  • This is how healthy communities actually emerge: ==sovereign tools which encourage collaboration without compulsion. ==
  • Malicious behaviour is just provably more expensive than its effects.
• If individuals contribute to the public goods they use and the funding principle underlying the market is nonlinear, then we can make sure that “==small contributions are heavily subsidized== (as these are the most likely to be distorted by free-riding incentives) while ==large ones are least subsidized==, as these are more likely private goods.”

• Classical capitalism deals poorly with public goods problems because each individual, if she acts selfishly, ==only accounts for her own benefits and not the benefits to all others.==
  • We can do better now that we have a world computer which allows us to agree always on the history and validity of our transactions, and which is open to anyone anywhere the internet is.
• Making optimal decisions about public goods and how to fund them is hard
  • the math is as complicated as elliptic curve cryptography.
  • we just want to model citizens’ ==different preferences==; their ability to make ==negative contributions==; and we don’t want to ==assume prior centralized knowledge== about what good to fund.
• The math just proves that ensuring “the amount received by the project is (proportional to) the square of the sum of the square roots of contributions” is the most optimal means of making large-scale economic decisions about public goods.
  • Such a design also means that ==“holding fixed the amount of the contribution, the funding received grows as the square of the community size” ==which kicks capitalism’s ass, especially when it comes to funding goods on the margin.

TL;DR To make optimal collective decisions, the funding principle underlying the market must be ==nonlinear==. This means that it subsidizes small contributions. This incentivises many such contributions from ==“the edge”== of a network, so the funding received grows as the square of the community size.

• LR does not prejudge the optimal size of communities, but instead ==“offers a mechanism that creates truly neutral incentives among social organization of different sizes”==.
• It also has the property that it “reverts to a standard private good in the case that a single citizen attempts to use the mechanism for her own enrichment.”

“To summarize, the mechanism provides ==much greater funding to many small contributions== than to a few large ones. This is not for any reason of equity or distributive justice, though there may be good reasons from those perspectives to admire the outcome it delivers.

• This is a critical point: ==egalitarianism, or equitable outcome, is a great success metric==: it is not a good design goal (precisely because there are so many ways to measure outcomes).
  • Bitcoin makes no assumptions about equality: it just implements a system for “peer-to-peer electronic payments” in a credibly neutral fashion.
  • The rest is on us, and how we model the most efficient means of using technology.

Liberal Radicalism:

“seeks to achieve ==liberal ends in a fundamentally social world.== In this sense it is also ‘radical’ in the original meaning: it gets to the roots of what liberalism is about, namely an anti-authoritarian commitment to neutrality across ways of living and valuing.”

How Art Can Transform the Internet

Art is that which gets us to question value and meaning most deeply. This video - itself a series of artful expressions cut together with digital tools - describes a number of interesting pieces which would not be possible without the internet. It reveals what ==we can craft with careful intention, attention, and a deep appreciation for the meaning of our media environments.==

• Art is not created as you are painting, or writing, or composing, or sculpting, or coding. It occurs when ==your work brings someone else to experience a state of consciousness they would not have otherwise known.==

  • Art begins with work which throws a veil over the invisible so its outline may be seen.
  • It is brought to completion in the moment of encounter with an other.
  • Art is both something we do and encounter.

• At its best, ==art transmits what cannot be said, or sung, or heard, or felt.==

• ==Technological innovations in the tools we use to express ourselves often result in significant artistic advances== in sight, perception, philosophy and - ultimately - culture.

  • E.G. the invention of metal ferrules - the little bit that connects the bristles to the shaft - which led to the flat paint brushes so beloved by Impressionist painters, who used them to capture the effects of light in different environments.

• We invite you to question what new realities flat networks for value - which operate by means of a world wide web that enables light-speed communication - will allow us to envision.

• Mother Earth Mother Board: If you want to explore what we’re actually throwing a veil over, this is as good a place to start as any.

• Artificiality: Put the art back in artificiality with Werner Herzog. Search for “The Inner Chronicle of What We Are” if you enjoy this.

• The quality of their expressive intention