Amazing. Thank you, Seth. Yeah. One thing I'll say is, I I felt often for years that I was operating in a in relative isolation with these interests that I felt people would give me funny looks over. And I think coming to Medigob has been great because I really do feel like this is a group of people that are very sympathetic. And I also wanna acknowledge Seth who's on the call as as being one of my collaborators on this project, and so he made a lot of contributions to the work that I'm gonna discuss today. So with that, I'm gonna share my screen. I'm gonna try to keep this talk to about twenty minutes so we don't overrun discussion like last time. And then, yeah, that'll do that. So there we go. And slideshow mode. And we should be do we see the talk? Yeah.

Great. So this talk is called Chores, a chore wheel for the twenty first century. The overview of what we're gonna discuss is that I'll discuss kind of the problem of chores, why I think it's actually very interesting and fundamental and I think often overlooked. I'll talk about some of the influences that that we drew upon to to develop the solution and then kind of how we got to where we did. I'll describe the mechanism itself in some detail. I'll actually share some testimonials. I know Seth earlier said, you know, there's a a lot of mechanisms out there that people think are really exciting themselves because they develop them, but what's much more interesting is people who use them being excited about them. So I went out and I I tried to get some testimonials from folks who actually were using the system and liking it. I'll I'll share some discussion points and then open it up to the floor for q and a. Oh, and this, by the way, is this is a a section from, a paper by Stafford Beer who is a famous cyberneticist in Britain about designing freedom, which I really got a kick out of and I really enjoyed. So just to kind of give you a flavor and to set set set the tone a bit, this is kinda what we're doing here. So the problem is that there's this famous line from Dorothy Day who's an activist with the Catholic Workers Movement. You know, everyone knows it's everybody wants revolution, but nobody wants to do the dishes. And the kind of the the sentiment here is that, you know, a lot of people are really enamored with this idea of a huge systemic change, but ultimately, are less excited about the, like, boring and mundane nitty gritty work it takes to to maintain and produce, an organization or a society. And, you know, I think that in society, there's the there are these tropes, you know, roommates fight over dishes. If you never live with your roommates, you'll never live with your friends because you'll end up not being friends because you'll get into fights over the dishes. You know, there's also a major gender component. My cup my my friends who are now married will often say, you know, like, the often the the the the female gendered one will end up doing most of the work, and I think many people have experienced the fact that domestic labor tends to fall on female identified. And that's a whole dimension that of of of power there. There's often class components, who's doing the work in the home. So there's a lot really wrapped up in domestic labor. In this case, you know, dishes is is the iconic, but really domestic labor writ large. There's a lot here, And people often treat it almost as like an axiom of life. You know? I think that just like there's, like, this is how it is. You know? Even when I worked on my project, you know, my family, they were like, we just think that you're ridiculous. You know? Like, what you're describing is impossible. You know? Like, it it it literally cannot be done, and you'll realize that it can't be done, in time. But it's okay that you have this cute idea that you're excited about, you know. I tell people I run a Culliving House, and they look at me as if they're giving me some, like, deep insights saying, you know, cleaning's really important. That's gonna be the hardest part as if I'd never thought about that. So it's just it's interesting how deeply ingrained this is in our consciousness and how ingrained in a way that this is almost it almost feels like it's beyond change. It's like it's it's an axiom. It's like, you know, it's like a, you know, a triangle will have angles of 180 degrees, and people will fight over dishes. It's like Euclid, you know. So I obviously disagreed. And I'm gonna talk about some of the influences that came into the, into the solutions. The first one was, when I was in college, I lived in the the student housing co ops at Berkeley where I actually were was where I met Seth. That was a really exciting time. A couple things about them was, they they had a weekly work shift, and so I kind of there there was an example of a labor system and practice that worked to a various degree. And and through that, they were able to have low cost, and I thought a very fun culture. And that I thought was very exciting and worth really protecting and promoting. I got involved in the crypto world, got exposed to ideas of decentralized governance, the idea of a very incentivized system that worked relatively autonomously. I got some exposure to cybernetics, the idea of dynamic evolving systems. The idea of really the computer being an essential input, not just sort of like a fluff on the top, but really computational tools being actually part of a paradigm shift in society was something that I really took from that. And I think ultimately bringing it all full circle to saying, hey. Like, you know, I meet all these people thinking all these big thoughts, but, you know, we're in a housing crisis. And, you know, I I've had this experience of housing as being this place where people can live cheaply and and and and a high quality. You know, why not try to bring these ideas, these abstract big ideas into something very concrete? So that was kind of how we got to to this to this mechanism. And I made this sort of a little triforce to kind of bring it together saying, you know, we've got the budget box algorithm, which we described last week as, like, the governance tool. We've got cybernetics as, like, a framework sort of saying the computer can actually guide and and help govern as as a key input. And then co living as, like, this is the setting where we deploy the tool, where it's gonna be most fit to purpose. So that's kind of like the try force that everything kinda came together in. So I'll describe the mechanism itself, which I touched on a bit in my last talk, but I think this time we'll get a lot more of a close treatment. So the basic idea is, you know, in in in in the Berkeley co ops, everyone owed five hours a week. And so you owed time. Here, we're gonna actually abstract and say everyone owes points. So everyone owes 100 points per month, and that gives us fairness and accountability. Right? Everyone owes a 100 points. That that's kind of the the expectation. But the amount of points that people the amount of points that a chore is worth or the amount of time it takes to earn points can become highly variable. And that's, I think, an important innovation here is that getting your 100 points can be done many ways, and can take different amounts of time depending on what you do. So there's a little bit of a flexibility there that we didn't get with hours. So every chore, a task that needs to be done, like doing the dishes or taking out the trash, accumulates points over time, and then someone will do the chore to claim the points and then the value resets. So if you got this ongoing accumulation of points and then this sort of, like, this scattered claiming of of chores as as need arises. The nice thing about that is that there's, there's no schedule. Right? Schedules, I think, are are are somewhat primitive and that they can be restrictive. You know, I wanna go out with my friends on Thursday, but I can't because it's my scheduled night to do a a task, I think is is is unappealing. And so there's no schedule, and you can think of every chore as being continuously auctioned off to the residents. And they will basically pick and choose when when and how to do chores using ultimately local knowledge that they have because they're living there on the grounds, and they can actually see what needs to be done. And there's a bit of an arbitrage where it's like, okay. I I think that this chore is being overvalued, or I think this is actually gonna take me not that much time. Let me do that. So you've got a whole host of people going around trying to get points as efficiently as possible, and the result is actually very efficient use of people's time. I think people in this house, I think in general, will do between two and four hours a month of chores, and the house remains relatively clean. So there's it's actually quite efficient in practice. And then, the the governance comes into the idea of the accumulation rates of the points. Right? Because some chores are more important or need to be done more often. And so the people in the house can actually adjust how many points different chores are worth over time to then help coordinate and organize the house to do work, where it's needed most. So that's kind of the mechanism as a whole. There's the the doing the chores yourself angle, and there's the governing the the the accumulation rates angle, which is more governance. And this is a, here's a diagram of the, like, the whole sort of point flow. So we see the total points are fixed. Right? Because ultimately points here, just like just like rational numbers, you know, the the root of the word rational comes from ratio, which means, like, in the mind. Right? The idea the reason why they're called rational numbers is because they they have no existence in in the physical world. They only exist as a concept. Right? They're they're only meaningful as as a as a relationship with two other things. So the amount of points is is is not important. Right? A 100, it could have been a thousand. It could have been 10. It could have been 50. Right? That's not the important thing. The important thing is how the points are distributed and then acquired among the participants. So we have, let's say, a thousand points a month that are allocated continuously into different chore instances. Right? So, you know, one point, two points, five points to various degrees. And then the residents all owe their 100 points. Right? So I guess, you know, nine residents, 900 points. Everyone owes 100 points. They'll get their 100 points by doing different chores, and you can see kind of this, like, the many the the the the the many to many here where, you know so the top chart can be done by a number of people over time. Everyone gets their points, and then at the end, the amount of points that has left the system or has been claimed is equal to the amount of points that have entered the system. Right? So the amount of points entering and exiting are fixed. What is variable is how many points chores are gonna be worth, and how often and what chores residents do. And, you know, I was actually kind of pleased to be able to have an example of continuous versus continual, which I always have to Google even today. You know, points are allocated continuously, meaning every hour points are allocated to chores. And then chores are performed continually, meaning they're done at irregular intervals but still ongoing. So I actually was kinda proud. I did that just before the talk. I realized that I could do a continuous continual thing. But yeah. So there's continuous allocation computationally. There's continual performance in real life, and ultimately the system as a whole remains balanced. And so here's more of, like, the the the the academic discussion of the system. And I guess first, I'll talk about this this choice. So this this diagram here represents more of the budget box. Right? So here we have the chores, and this is a I realized this this this diagram could maybe have a little bit more explanatory text, but the arrows here represent not doing a chore, but the the the budget box preferencing. Right? So the bigger chores are the ones that are most preferred. They're the ones that are the most prioritized. And the smaller, chores here are the ones that are less prioritized. And so the bigger the circle is here, the more quickly points will accumulate to that chore. And then residents can basically provide these arrows as inputs to do the governance of the system. Right? So I can go in and say, I would like to to to redirect more more more points over time to one chore over another. And I will make this chore gain less points and that chore gain more points via a pairwise interface. And and the algorithm that is being used is the same algorithm that Griff described last week, which is budget to box. So that's that. In terms of some of the benefits of the scheme, I think also compared to to budgeting other budgeting systems, I think these are some reasons why I think this one is very compelling. One, the governance is very flexible. Right? When you have this sort of the budget box graph based, scheme, items can be added and removed without really affecting the rest of the the rest of the of the of the allocations. Right? You can easily add one node into a graph and the allocations will be automatically adjusted to reflect that new member. Can remove an item for a graph, and the rest of the inputs remain, they remain coherent. They're not delegitimized or we don't have to recalculate, we don't have to revote if we add or remove an item. The system remains coherent, as items are added and removed. The governance is distributed because individual people, right, it's not as if we have to have a meeting and say I vote or like I moved to make dishes worth more. It's I can as one individual go in and input my preferences unilaterally, asynchronously, then they'll be automatically aggregated with everyone else's preferences to make the result. Right? So we have collective governance that is, individual and decentralized. I also think it's fairly intuitive in that, you know, what then this this has been a bit of a struggle on on the UI angle is that I I don't think that my presentation of this to the residents has has been perfected. I think that it's getting there, but it's a little bit requires some training. But I think over time, it'll be less and less. So I think that the the promise I haven't quite achieved yet, but, it is relatively intuitive. It's like, okay. I'm, like, I'm going downstairs. I see that the sink is dirty or I see that the dining room or the living room is is is dirtier than I would like it to be. Right? So there there's a real world trigger. Event it's event driven. I wanna make the change in my physical space. I then go and say, okay. I would like the dining room cleaning chore to become more valuable because I can see that the dining room is dirty in my opinion. So I go and say, okay. I wanna make the dining room clean more, done more often. I'm gonna make that faster is the metaphor I've chosen. And I'm gonna make, say, outdoor cleaning and maybe one of the bathrooms slower because I think that those are being done too often, or I think those are being overvalued. And then I hit enter, and then that's the end. Right? I I say governance is ex ante, which is, and what I mean by that is, there is no valley wing of a chore after it is done. There is no one someone saying, hey, I did the dishes. I believe that I want 20 points for the dishes. We vote to give me 20 points. That interaction is the one that I thought would have been really problematic because it would have introduced a lot of politics. The fact that chores gain points x anti x anti as in before they're done, and then someone claims the chore at its given value means that there's really very little politicking around how much the chore is worth. Like, a chore is this is how much a chore is worth. Take it or leave it. And I think that's that avoids a lot of politicking that we would have had if it was, hey. I just did a task. I want it to be worth 30 points. So and so's friends support them. Other people say, you know what? I think you're kind of kind of being self serving here that none of that is is present here in a way that I think avoids a lot of drama. And then the allocation is continuous in that the points are given out. Hourly is the is the interval that I've chosen for just efficiency reasons, but it could have been, you know, you can think of it as being per second or even per millisecond. Right? The allocation is continuous at whatever interval makes sense for your implementation. But, the system is being driven. The system is driving forward without the need for ongoing input from participants. And that's the kind of cybernetic that's the kind of cybernetic angle that I'm was really excited about. So to kinda bring it back, I saw a tweet once about, like, time to first to Austin reference in any governance talk. So, like, I don't know. This is, I guess, we're what? Like, twelve minutes? So I just did to kinda put it in that frame. Right? So, you know, we got the constitutional layer, which is designing of the software, which is currently kind of my project, and I run it as a benevolent dictator. You know, I acknowledge the limitations of that. I think that as the project matures and we get more people online, I would like to shift that to more of a a more of a a group software governance scheme, but for now, it's kind of me. And then the governance layer in the house is the setting of the accumulation rates through the budget box input that I described. And the operational layer would be individual people doing the chores for points. Right? So in governance, they basically determine the parameters that that guide their interactions, and then they personally go out and do chores. And there's a bit of an upstream where people will propose feature changes. I I will sort of run that process as a a bit unilaterally. But obviously, you know, market for dictators, right, like, if I become too self serving, then people will cease to cooperate. So I am incentivized to do everything that I can to respond to people's requests and needs, acknowledging that there's a bit of, like, a context differential that I have to respect as well. And so Seth told me to, you know, add some testimonials because it's important to to like, that's more important than I can talk about why I think my system is cool, but it's irrelevant if no one likes it. So, you know, I have two testimonials. This one, you know, kind of what what would I what I would have hoped to see saying, you know, normally I am the clean one. I feel taken advantage of, but here I know that I'm not gonna be the only one. You know, and here's some more screenshots of just the app in action just to kind of fill the slide. And then, the second one, which is a quite a bit longer is, this is from someone who lived in many housing co ops in their university days and, has been, I think, very, you know, has been very taken by what by what we're doing in our house, and I think really appreciates it. So I'll give you thirty seconds to kind of read this one because I think there's a lot of content here that's worth worth seeing while I check my time. K. Perfect. Seventeen minutes. Probably another fifteen seconds and I'll move on to the next slide. Alright. I'm gonna move on to the next slide. So, some discussion. So, you know, I, I decided to make a comparison. I remember early on in my software career, I went to a talk at, like, a local Python conference. And, someone one of this guy was giving a talk and, you know, he he made this point, which is if you're ever gonna present, like, a plot for your project, make sure that your project looks the best. You know, it's like, make sure that if you're if it's a line plot, make sure that your project's at the top, you know. So obviously, I did that. You know, I I I I chose what things to emphasize, whatever. But anyway, it look like if you look at a chore wheel, right, which is just we're gonna write the chores, everyone's name every week, we're gonna rotate. That's what we're gonna do. It is decentralized. No one's managing it. It is accountable. You have to do your chore, but it's not very flexible. The workshop system like I saw on the co ops, there's a manager that determines the schedule. You have to do what you're scheduled to do, but there is accountability. Right? If you don't do your chore, you're gonna there'll be some consequence. I know a lot of houses now that are on Slack, you know, have have a bragging board where they have a channel saying, like, I took out the dishes. Everyone gives them sparkles and fire emojis. The idea there is, you know, if there's some sort of transparent if there's some sort of visibility, people will spontaneously and generously contribute. That works to an extent. It is decentralized. It is flexible. People can do whatever they want, but there is no accountability. And every time I've heard that system put into practice, at some point, they're like, gosh, someone's just gonna do less and whatever, whatever. Right? Obviously, the choice system that I've described in my mind that achieves all three goals, you know, we can all we people can disagree, but in my presentation, I'm gonna go ahead and say that it does. It is decentralized. There's no one running it. It is flexible. People can work when and how they want to, and there is solely accountability. So I think that's pretty cool. Oh, yeah. So this is the kind of the last sort of my personal reflections on the system so far. The computation key, the cybernetics key is key. This is not the first point system. This image is from a a a philanthropy, which is a four a project. You know, in the nineteenth century, there were a lot of utopian experiments in The US and I think also in Europe. And and and Freya also developed a point system for chores. But I think because this was two hundred years ago, the amount of time it took for admin and people would have these longer meetings to, like, calculate and do everything, which says to turn off, but ultimately, the system never got off the ground. So having the computer do the bookkeeping is actually essential. It's not just like a it's not just like a small efficiency. There's an essential input. After launching, there were some, like, tweaks. Right? The idea of gifting points was not something that I initially conceived of, but ends up allowing for a lot of latitude. The idea of being able to go out of town and have the amount of points in the system be reduced commensurately was an important thing. Keeping the economy balanced has been very interesting. You know, I think that this is kind of where I have to push back on the residents because they'll often have suggestions that I I believe would, would break the economy. And I have to sort of say, you know, I don't think that like, let's develop this idea more or I worry this would throw the system off. And that's been a bit of a tricky thing just because, you know, I I don't wanna come off as clearly as condescending because their experience is is really in many ways more important than mine. But, you know, I do feel like balancing the economy is something that I I I can't allow the economy to be become broken. And one thing that I'm very pleased with is the system is actually not broken. And I was talking to a buddy of mine, and he was like, you know, it's hard to make something that's not immediately broken. And the fact that this system seems to have actually been pretty hard to gain is something I'm quite proud of. So keeping that balance has been a dimension in terms of my interactions that I have to keep in mind. I'm also pleased at how intuitive it's overall been. I've never had to explain anyone how to do chores. They'll move it in, and within two days, we'll have figured it out. The the tuning the governance aspect and the tuning of the speeds, I haven't quite nailed down the presentation. I think that's a little bit confusing to people still. You know, one once I once I've given them a five to ten minute explanation in person, they all they tend to get it, but, like, the actual just presentation in the app is not quite there yet, and so that's an ongoing project for me. And I think there's more that could be done with the gifting economy. I think that in my mind, I thought people could basically do more people get more points than they need, and then basically offer people points to do things that they that they would wanna do kind of an arbitrary, like, secondary gift economy that has yet to emerge, which I kinda wonder about. Yeah. And and the last two things, you know, I think that, like, I I really clearly believe in this project, and I and I think that its reach is actually pretty broad. You know, I think that I do, you know, I do I do think that this could be something that is adopted by just roommates across the world. You know, I think that in two to five years' time, if, you know, you're living with two or three people, it's like we just have a Slack for the house and we have chores and scores no longer a problem. I think that's a little bit aspirational, but, you know, I think that there's no reason why this couldn't become just like a household tool. And also I think, and this is the the governance paradigm. I think that and this is something we talked about last week. You know, like how I really do think that right now we're using this to to to to to value chores. But, I see no reason why we couldn't use a similar sort of interface to funds a federal government. And I think that, you know, we look at defunding the police, that slogan from a couple years ago. I think that I think that there is this idea latent right now that, you know, through budgeting, we can actually govern large complex organizations in a decentralized way. I think that we're really getting there. And I think that this mechanism, while currently being used as a chore system, I really think could become much broader. And that's something that I actually mean very seriously. And I think that that's a project for ten to twenty years. But I think if you look at the fundamentals, they're all there. And that brings us to the end of the talk. I have some references if you want more reading, the budget box paper, my own graduate work, which led to some of this, the cybernetics paper, and the paper on cooperatives, which I think really has a lot to offer about just the value of shared labor in cultivating individual skills, which I also believe in. So those are kind of the some references, and then I'll I'll leave it over to q and a. I think I was able to do it in twenty five minutes, which pretty good. Twenty four minutes. Alright.

the Yes. I will do that. I will do that now. I'll stop my I guess I'll stop the screen share.

I mean, I'll show the presentations afterwards. How about that?

Cool.

Cool. Alright.

back over.

It's a great question. I think that so I I think that so I guess the example that I would think of is, is a is a federal budget. Right? I think one thing I will say is, you know, the the amount of pairs grows as a square over the number of options. And, so I think that generally sets of 10 to 20 items is probably the sweet spot. I think if you had a set of a 100 items, you would probably just need too much input. But I think I think I think if you had imagine you had a a, tiered federal budget where you have at the top level education, defense, infrastructure, you know, you can imagine a couple other categories, and then you could have people saying, like, instead of, you know, voting for president, we're actually saying, I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna basically put in my preferences for the federal budget. I want I want more infrastructure. I want infrastructure over defense. I want, education over defense and, you know, maybe some other options. And then now you have an allocation and you can have every citizen putting in their allocation. They're then aggregated. And now we have a federal budget where it's maybe, you know, 50% infrastructure, 35% defense, you know, 40%. I don't know if those those add up, but whatever. And then that becomes the federal budget. And now those will then be the constraints in which other agencies start to operate. That's how that's one way I could imagine it working. And and, you know, there there are ways you can tune and adjust the inputs so that you avoid, like, you you can constrain the outcome spacing. We don't want any agency to have less than 20%. You know, do you have a lot of options for constraining the behavior of of this sort of mechanic? But I think that that is like a that is the core experience. I think I don't see why that wouldn't be reasonable, with with appropriate modification constraint. I think that, you know, we're having this conversation now around the role of policing, which is not I don't wanna get into all those details because there's a lot to it. But, you know, I you can imagine then there's like a controversy and you could say people people would say, hey, you know, I think that we are giving too many resources to this this to this institution. I think that there's a little bit of capture here, and I think that we should allocate resources elsewhere until we're happy that this institution is is is aligned with us socially. I could imagine that being something that happens in the future.

Yeah. It's a very good question. So, you know, as I mentioned at the beginning, Seth has been advising this project the whole time. And so, you know, not only the the software, but also the actual house getting up and running, he's really seen everything happen. And a big conversation that we have is what is the role of in person meetings? I think initially, I was very meeting minimalist. I was like, no meetings. You know, everything happens on Slack, you know. Because I think in in my experience, meetings can be, like, tedious waste of time. So I really wanted to get away from that. But, I think, you know, in practice, meetings play a huge role. I think meet meetings have two parts. They're both a place to do business, and they're a place to get together and establish culture and and and norms and values. And I think that the business role of meetings, I do think should be minimized because we have these new interfaces that are arguably better. But the the the norms and values and culture aspect, I don't think can be replaced fully by an asynchronous sort of chat app. So I I think that I I don't think that having one person be put in charge is what I would want, but I do think that having meetings or dialogue where people say, Hey, I think the dishes are being undervalued. I think that we should add a chore. Those conversations informally occur in person, and then people afterwards would go in and input their own preferences. So I think that I think that business being done individually and asynchronously remains a value. But I think that having meetings where people discuss kinda what we wanna do as a house, and then people after the meeting can decide individually what they wanna do, I think is a, very reasonable sort of synthesis of this kind of dialectic of, individual asynchronous and, like, collective synchronous. I think that a meeting to discuss values and desires and then people go off and make the decision, I think is, is is a I think that's the synthesis that I would pursue.

Alright. So I wanna know how this has affected group meals, like and also particularly the issues of things like, obviously, you know, if someone makes a big meal and makes a giant mess, there's still some sort of private requirements to clean up your mess and how you deal with those sorts of things. Also, aspirations you have in the group meal department, and, what are some of those bad suggestions that residents gave you?

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because someone had initially so I guess when when I first conceived of this chore system, one of the requirements is that every chore should be able to be done at arbitrary intervals, and they should be things that people didn't really quote unquote want to do. Right. And so, someone suggested adding cooking as a chore. Initially, I said kind of no. I think that that's the kind of thing that should be done through generosity. I don't wanna have that be part of the chore system because everyone's gonna wanna only cook and no one's gonna wanna do anything else. But ultimately I said, you know what? Let's go for it. And so cooking is now a chore and, it gets done. I would say, I would say we have a, I would say we have a dinner probably twice a month. Someone will make dinner for the house and that ends up being kind of a fun event. It's not scheduled. One of them, a very important value for me was that there was no events manager. I didn't want any, I it's almost funny. So I've I've, you know, as a as a as a when I was younger, I was really into gaming and this is, you know, clearly a games influence here. I didn't want any NPCs. I don't want anyone to be, to be acting, to have a job that wasn't just their personal their, like, actual desire. I wanted everyone to be a a a a a a a real person and not just doing a job. And so I really wanted to avoid anyone being given, like, a a a job or a role, like a event manager. So there there's cooking as a chore, and then people basically make a meal for the house as they would any other chore saying, hey. Like, chores cooking is worth fifty, seventy points. I would like to make a meal for the house, whatever, whatever. You know, then it'll be $5 for ingredients, and then we have a house dinner. And that's been working, I would say, pretty well. I think on some level, you know, I think I I will I would have preferred it to be happening more often, but at the same time, that's not really my decision to make. So that's kind of, that's kind of how cooking has worked out. The question of, was there there was a second question, the second part of the question. Like, what are the bad ideas?

Yeah. What are the bad ideas? Also, what is your living there? You don't yeah. I don't know. Are you living there continuously?

Are you

So I I I I do live there. It was important to me to to move in to the house to sort of help just make sure that everything got off the ground well. I think now I'm planning on moving out because I do feel like at this point, my presence inhibits other people from feeling a sense of ownership. I think that at the beginning when it was all very new and I had a very specific vision, I I had a role to play. But But I think that now people feel like it's very much their place and my presence. As much as I, you know, act like just one of the gang, and I really do as I really I mean, I do take that very seriously. I think the fact that I do, you know, develop the software means that there is a power dynamic that, ultimately is resolved when I leave. And so I have a my partner's in New York, and so I am planning on getting out. And I think that, I think probably in a few months, I'll I'll move out and let the house sort of come onto itself, and then I can manage it much more from a distance. That's kind of it. But, yeah, I have lived there, and it's been really fun. I mean, I I've really enjoyed, obviously, watching this vision come into fruition. Yeah. And as far as Alright.

And we we can expect you in New York soon.

Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm I'm live from Greenwich Village. It's, you know, MediGo seminar.

Oh, oh, you're you're already in New York now? Yeah.

I'm in New York right now. Alright.

Oh, yeah. Because you're going to to Europe and so forth. Exactly.

when's that happening? Tonight. Tonight. Alright. Yeah.

Yes. I had some question on more more or less technicals. One question was how people could accumulate points. You know? Some people do a lot of dishes, for example, and they accumulate points. And and they may they might upset other people. But also accumulating point gives you some power. You can block some some activities or and on the other hand, is there a possibility to transfer, points from one person to another?

Yeah. It's a it's a it's a these are great questions. These are all things that that were very important choices that we gave a lot of thought to. So in in in regards to doing more or less dishes, for example, so some people will do dishes, you know, maybe 10 times a month or even 20 times a month for five to 10 points a pop. And that's what they choose to do. Right? So, you know, again, going back to the chores being done at intervals, right? Dishes are done at least once a day, if not twice a day for values of points between five and ten points. And so that that is, some people choose to do the dishes more often. Others say, you know what? I would like to do a bathroom once or twice a month. And so bathrooms will often go for 50 points or 60 points, and they'll be done often about once a month, the bathroom will get cleaned. And so you have a sense of like, oh, someone says, well, I would rather spend less clock time doing chores. So I will choose to do a chore that is less desirable, quote, unquote. And for that, I will receive more points for that chore. And so going back to the thing I said about points in time not being linked, people can get points in less time by doing a chore that is, you know, quote unquote less desirable. So that that's an important thing. I I I wanted to I really wanted to avoid opportunities for strategic behavior. And so I actually really minimized the use of points. You know, I think you can gift points to others, but, having points does not give you any special affordances in the house. I think that that's a that's a conversation that that that is something in the back of my mind if you wanted to make the system more complex. If more complexity was needed, there'd be ways to tie in your points balance to other things. I did introduce, like, a very slight achievement system, just I thought for fun. Right? So when you've done 20 points of a chore of one chore over however much time you, get a bronze, if you get a 100 points, you get a silver. If you get 500 points in a six month window of one tree, you get a gold, which I thought was just something that ultimately, you know, it was it was it was ornamental. And so I thought fine, but I I've tried to, I've tried to minimize the mechanics because ultimately minimizing the mechanics minimizes the interactions that I haven't, I haven't, planned for. Right. So, at the end of the month, your points expire. They just go to zero. They're just gone into the ether and everything starts over. So there's no accumulation of points in perpetuity, which I thought was a good idea because I would avoid like a points leaderboard if someone's saying I have the most points ever. At the end of the month, points just vanish and everyone starts over. And so in a sense, points are ephemeral. And I think that prevents the opportunity for unintended strategic behaviors to emerge, which I think was important. Because as I said, the system isn't broken. And, I'm very proud of that, and I really wanna keep it that way because, it would be very easy to just throw in a couple of mechanics that weren't fully thought through and have the system get broken. And then having to roll that back would be a pain. And I think something Seth advised early on was, you know, start off with the simplest mechanism and then see where it fails. Because if you start off with a complicated mechanism, you'll have to both figure out where it's failing and where it's, like, creating its own failure behaviors. And that's just gonna be way more work. So, yeah, that's kinda where that's at.

Yes. And the last question was the the quality control of the the shores.

Yeah. That's this is very important.

And maybe related to this is how you manage of of the program, of the application, all the the managing problems you have? Yeah. So great questions.

I might

of enforcement?

Yeah. So I guess, so basically, so every chore and this is the can I I took this directly from the the the student co ops because this is how they did it? Right? Every chore has a description. Right? So doing the dishes means, you know, emptying out the dishwasher. It means, you know, anything in the sink is cleaned. It means anything in the drying rack is put back into place. Right? So, you know, cleaning the front yard means sweeping the walk, you know, watering the plants. It means, you know, sweeping the driveway, you know, whatever, whatever. Right? So every every chore has bullet points that define it. And doing the chore means doing those things. That's the first thing. The second thing is that when someone does a chore and if you go back to some of the slides, you can see images, there's a peer verification. So someone has to basically emoji vote you, thumbs up, thumbs down, you do the chore or not. So if someone just lies, claims the chore, does nothing, you know, the ability for them to get away with that is very minor. And I think this is actually there's a there's an angle here, which is that because people are physically co located, the house is very legible. And so it's very difficult for people to cheat, right? If someone just straight up lies about doing something, it will be discovered. And then people will be obviously very upset. And then in the future, that person will not be trusted. So it's there's very little incentive to attempt to cheat. I think that, you know, I think ultimately, you know, there is some subjectivity there, which is if someone does, like, an okay job and everyone says, okay, this is fine, then it's fine. And I don't think that's a failure. I think that if everyone by and large feels like everyone else is by and large doing their part, then I think everyone I think that is sort of the that is sort of the level that I think is realistic right now. You know, I don't think that everyone's gonna do every job totally perfectly. I think sometimes there'll be some more motivation, sometimes there'll be less motivation. But by and large, every chore is defined as a set of bullet point tasks, and every chore is pure validated. And you have to have at least one person validate you, otherwise it doesn't count, which is just like a little bit of a extra check. So that's the enforcement mechanism. In terms of people not being into it, it's a great question. It's something that I obviously worry about a lot. So far, we haven't had any real uncooperative people, and I I've obviously planned a lot for that eventuality, but so far I've been lucky. I think part of it is the recruitment, or I say, hey. You know, this is where you're moving into. This is what we do. Is this something you're gonna be okay with? And everyone has said yes. So, you know, someone could lie about that. Someone could move in and say, you know what? I'm really not into this. So there if someone doesn't do chores, there, there is a sort of graduated sanction aspect to that, which is, there's a different mechanism that I didn't discuss today where there's basically a strike system for the house. And if you don't do your chores, you like get a strike, a strike, a strike. And if you run if you get three strikes, then eventually it's like, I have basically a, a, it's a conversation, which is like, what are you doing here? And then eventually I I I ask you slash force you to move out. I think I think that the forced move out is not something that I really wanna do anytime soon because that I think is gonna be challenging. I think when it comes to housing, getting people to leave, who don't wanna leave is, is difficult because there's, housing laws around that, which I think are very valuable. I mean, that's a conversation for another day. But, but I think there, there are, I mean, I do have a plan for these eventualities. I prefer to avoid them, but, I do have plans for those things. It's not just, I'm not just like Yolo. Everyone's gonna be polite, well behaved. I don't, I think that's not a good attitude, You know? And so so far, people have been very nice.

Fantastic. And with