Shorttalks 20220706 Metagov
Speaker 1: K. So welcome, everyone, to the second MediGOV short talk series in 2022. Today, we're joined by Joshua Tan, who's going to be presenting on the MediGOV pivot. Connor McCormack, who's gonna be asking how might we design credible neutral governance processes that are open to anyone. And Jonathan Kung, who's gonna be talking about seasonal governance frameworks and sandboxes and some...
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Transcript
K. So welcome, everyone, to the second MediGOV short talk series in 2022. Today, we're joined by Joshua Tan, who's going to be presenting on the MediGOV pivot. Connor McCormack, who's gonna be asking how might we design credible neutral governance processes that are open to anyone. And Jonathan Kung, who's gonna be talking about seasonal governance frameworks and sandboxes and some different approaches to meaningful reputation and scientific publication maintenance. So, we're gonna have five minutes for presentation, twelve minutes for discussion, and we'll go ahead and get started with Connor. I'm just gonna pick these at random. So, Connor, are you ready?
Sure. I'll let's go for it.
Okay.
Tell me when to be I see that the timer has started. So this might actually be less than five minutes here because, initially, when I was thinking about doing this presentation, I was going to do it on a slightly different topic. But I think it takes more than five minutes. So instead, I wanna kind of, focus in on a question that I have about, and kind of like a complaint I have with the universe about governance, about governance, how governance tends to work. And maybe the best way to intro this, is to talk a little bit about, using prediction markets. And, there's there's this, idea called Futarchy. Is anyone, like can if you can react with a raise of hands, is anyone familiar with Futarchy? Okay. I don't see any. Yeah? Future key. We got Joshua. The the basic idea of future key is that prediction markets are really valuable ways to aggregate information from many different people. And so Futarchy presents the idea as by a professor named Robin Hanson, presents the idea that what if we governed by way of prediction markets? So what if we said, you know, this mayor is going to have 15% less crime than her opponent. And so she should become mayor. Right? As as, like, if everything was was based on just that one metric. And you might have many of these metrics, and then people might even bet on which is going to be more beneficial. Ultimately, what Robin argues for is that that you would try and aggregate these down to, like, one metric, like human well-being. Right? Like, future plus arty. Exactly. And so the the the challenge of and so at at first blush, this is a really interesting concept, but it runs into these challenges. Like, a famous challenge that it runs into is sabotage. If you have this prediction that this mayor is going to reduce crime by 15% compared to the alternatives and you know the base rate of crime right now, then an easy way to, you know, manipulate the system is to have someone, who you know will credibly go and pay a bunch of of criminals to, like, break windows. Right? And it doesn't the one of the things about, sabotage is it's pretty cheap to get really bad outcomes. This is a great example of it. And, so Robin Hanson's solution to this is what he calls trusted judges or conditionals, is that you have some people that are in place in order to, select, whether or not, you know, the the whether or not there was sabotage. Like, was this a good or a safe or a correct result, or did somebody you know, did someone pay someone else to go and and and commit sabotage? Another another example of the kind of thing that you might use a prediction market for is, will this project finish on time? Maybe it's a massive project. So this is related to I forgot your name. I'm sorry. But but you were just talking about the first person who spoke, you know, about if you have a massive project, when is it going to complete? You might have a prediction market around that. But what if someone who makes a a bet goes in and, intentionally sabotages the system so that the project doesn't finish on time so that they make a whole bunch of money off of it. This is this is like the moral hazard version of, of sabotage. And so my question is, how might we avoid this problem of needing trusted judges? Because it seems like the judges are the linchpin, and it opens up this whole question of how did they become the judges. And it's somewhat relevant to what's happening in The United States today. We have a set of trusted judges that, that and regardless of what you think about the most recent Supreme Court decision, it seems very strange that there's a small category of people that make sweeping decisions for the rest of the country. So trusted judges have have problems on on, many different like, how they got selected is a major governance issue. So, what I'm interested in is what alternatives might we come up with to do, to select to select these kinds of judges, or can we avoid judges altogether? You know, in in the last thirty seconds, a proposal for how might we might avoid judges altogether is a decentralized adversarial inference, process where different people based on their their, like, game theoretic incentives make competing claims about what they believe is is is the case. And then you create this massive tree of, of claims that compete with one another. That's it. That's the that's the question. How might we do decentralized adversarial inference?
Thanks so much, Connor. In the future, I'd like to pick, like, a stack so that we can go through questions in a more orderly manner. But for today, we'll just open up the floor to anyone in the call who wants to reflect comments with this question. SEP has raised my hand.
Hey. Yeah. Thanks for presenting this, and I like the frame of, like it's not quite as simple as it may appear on the surface. Something that Shauna brought up in a previous conversation, which obviously you weren't there for. So I'll try to paraphrase a little bit, but was the idea that, like, at some point, you just gotta make a decision. Like, at some like, you can have processes for governance, and you can have layers and layers and layers, but at some point, you have to accept that you're just going with something. And I'm curious, you know, especially in that last point that you mentioned around avoiding having judges. Like, it seems like fundamentally at some point along the way, there there's not to say there's not value in procedure, but, like, at some point, you do just kinda have to accept something. And since you opened by saying that one of the things you've been thinking about is, you know, what are these, how did you describe it, primitives of things that can work on a small scale or can work at a national or international scale. You know, there's this kind of question of, you know, can the, like, just go with it attitude work better when you're, like, in a in a small group of friends versus, you know, trying to, like, deal with the entire population of a planet or something like that.
Yeah. I think especially for a small group of friends, that that seems right. And, Yanis, I have no slides. This is this is impromptu and extemporaneous as of as of one hour ago. The the the question around, like, how do you actually end up making decisions because you have to make decisions at some point is that the idea would be that based on the moves that people make on kinda this, like, belief chessboard, there would be some state of the of the network. And that, you know, you can imagine you have some decision that's in a pipeline, and it's due at midnight on Thursday. And whatever the state of the chessboard is at that time, you know, that's the moment. It it just selects whatever the network has has, competed to select. So I I think that that's that's the way that that I would imagine handling something like that if you if you're doing, like, collective inference. Does that seem plausible? Yeah. Josh or Joshua.
Yeah. This is Josh. So quick question. The so prediction markets, I guess there's some sort of adversarialness built in. Right? And it's a market system. There are rewards for, like, what are participating in it. So is your sort of, like, description of, like, an adversarial inference? Is it just another way of talking about prediction markets, or do you have a, like, a different algorithm or scheme in mind?
I have a slightly different I mean, I I wanna kinda open it up to a more generic case because I think that, so, like, one of the problems with prediction markets is that if you have, let's say I'm a really wealthy actor, I can use my wealth to influence the, way that things resolve just like we talked about with the sabotage and the mayor gets elected, because, one of her opponents paid a whole bunch of people to go and, commit crime. So that would then also allocate more money to that person, right, because they had sabotaged the network. And if you can imagine that that plays out, in perpetuity, that that the more wealth that you have, the more that you can influence outcomes, which means the more wealth that you have. So I'm really concerned about that feedback loop, and I think that maybe that merits asking for a more generic, adversarial, interaction. But I think that markets are a great initial analogy, to get into that idea.
Any other thoughts from people on the call? Feel free to just unmute and speak if you like.
I have a question, I suppose, regarding the comment with judges being kind of a weak point. I think you know, when I think about governance and I think about democratic governance, one of the challenges you run into is so many of the members aren't capable of actually, like, weighing the trade offs because they simply don't have the education. And so the concept of the judges are they're the few people who are actually provably educated on the subjects pertinent to making these enormous societal level decisions. And although it's imperfect, the idea of trying to sort of average out uneducated people's I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but do you know what I mean regarding these subjects, average out and then come to a better conclusion. I'm not convinced that I, you know, know of a model in which that's actually the case as opposed to judges. So I don't know what your thoughts are on that.
Yeah. I think that that's right. I mean, I like to, tell the the story about, in in Colorado where I live, we get a blue book every year, and the blue book has, like, these are all the issues to pay attention to and to vote on, and it's supposed to educate you. And I remember reading through that blue book and being so confused about what is a mill levy, how does it relate to all these other issues, How should I vote on this complex issue? I am not, like, just feeling you know, you talked about uneducated people. I was that uneducated person, and I knew it. And and all I wanted to do was to delegate my, you know, my influence to somebody who I could trust. And I think that there's some wisdom in that. And and so, yeah, I think that that is an important criteria for the system is that I I I'm I'm cautious around expertise because it tends to reward pedigree, as if as if pedigree is is, worthiness. I would say that pedigree is oftentimes the enemy of meritocracy, and and, but that there are indeed people out there who are good at finding out that they're wrong about a certain issue, And then those are the people that we would like to make decisions, if we can select them. There are some you know, like, liquid democracy is an example of a of a method, but liquid democracy is weak to populism. And so you wanna be careful with with using pure liquid democracy. But I think that there might be mechanisms that enable the voter to still be incented to be accurate while still selecting someone who is, you know, like, delegating to somebody else. In fact, I think that it could be the heart of the solution is that if the voter is incented to be accurate, then they will have an incentive to hand over their influence to somebody who will be more likely to get an accurate vote or how whatever the mechanism is. Make more more likely just in the same way that we give our money to financial advisors, and and they help us, you know, allocate our risk because we're not experts in that.
Yeah. We have a question here from Marcus, and I would really appreciate if Marcus would is able to elaborate on it. Would an example of this be blockchain oracles? Marcus, do you wanna elaborate at all, or or do you wanna just pick that up?
Marcus, if you wanna jump in, feel free. But, you know, like, I'm nodding enthusiastically because I think that, you know, it's kinda like in oh, do I hear you?
No. It's Do
I hear you? Yeah. Sorry if I'm the reason I wasn't on the video is because I'm currently in that place. No worries. So I hope you guys kinda send me.
But, yeah,
I was wondering what you were specifically envisioning for for the solution you proposed and whether you've looked into blockchain oracles as one of them. Yeah. So, like, examples of blockchain oracles that I've looked at are, what is it, Gnosis Guild, Eragon, Court, Claros. Obviously, you also have some betting ones like, Augur. And I think all of them are I like, in other words, I am describing an oracle, but I I think that, I'm tying, the oracle directly to to, policy. And and oftentimes, you know, oracle is a hand wavy way of saying, like, this is a mechanism for selecting for selecting judges. And oftentimes oftentimes, they have their their own oh, Joshua says DAO stack. I have yet to find a Oracle that I, like, that I feel, I don't know, comfortable trusting. Prediction markets for policy decisions. Oh, that's cool.
The short story that you
recommend, Marcus? Oh, sorry.
I'll just say Sorry. What was the question?
No. Josh, you go.
Oh, I'll just say, the short story about DAO stack, is that it didn't actually work. The basically, the the experiment was we're gonna use prediction markets, something called holographic consensus to make it easier for people to kind of incentivize policy making and governance decision making without
forcing everybody to participate.
Right? Which governance decision making without forcing everybody to participate, right, which is, again, trying to solve this expertise issue. But it was just a problem, and maybe it was just like a timing thing. I don't know. But it was essentially, like, holographic consensus didn't do enough to, like, engage people to participate. Such somehow the incentives weren't really set up well enough such they're just, like, assume too much engagement for the actual sort of prediction mark to to effectively function. And what ultimately happened is just, like, it would regress to essentially, like, you know, large stakeholder governance.
Yep. I mean, it sounds familiar. And I and I think that I think this is one of those domains where
I just wanna briefly interject. We're we're we're running up on the minute. And there's a lot of great discussion happening. Maybe we can kind of start moving that over to the chat. And there's also a lot of really nice comments here from some other people in the chat. And maybe also Connor, I think you had, at some point, showed me a demo of how some of this kind of stuff might work. If you feel comfortable, welcome to share that with people in the chat as well. Sure. And maybe kind of carry it on there and also move it over to the Slack afterwards if you're you're interested in carrying on this conversation. It seems like it's been really fruitful and generative for for everyone involved.
Yeah. I love that. Great. Okay. I'll I'll do that. Thank you all.
Yeah.
This was fun. I found governance nerds.
Alright. So next up, we're gonna go with Josh. He's gonna be presenting on the MediGov pivot. We'll go ahead and
Instead of talking about
the MediGov pivot,
I'm actually gonna talk about a project that just got released. It's a bit more timely.
Perfect.
So I'm just gonna post this here. It's called the constitutions of web three. So this is a a private draft, so don't necessarily share it, but it'll it'll like, the entire project will be released relatively soon. But in the meantime, we'll have to sort of get some comments and feedback on this project. But, essentially, what this project is doing you can also there's a slightly sort of like more fun website that are designed here at constitutions.medical.org. And this is essentially what we've done is we've taken, a dataset of DAO constitutions. So these are written digital constitutions that have been written and, you know, like, enacted by different DAOs. And the what we do is just try to understand, like, what is their sort of role? Like, what are the patterns currently extent in these projects, in these documents? What kind of values are DAOs committing to? By the way, a DAO, if you're not familiar with it, stands for decentralized autonomous organization. It's kind of like a crypto native organization built on top of a smart contract. And that's kinda, like, the unique thing about what that distinguishes the DAO from any other kind of, like, a typical online meeting is that there is some sort of, like, smart contract being used or involved in its governance. So we looked at this, like, dataset of DAO constitutions. Remember, like, this is not the smart contract. This is the digital supplement, essentially, with the some sort of digital constitution representing the the goals, the values, and the rights associated to that DAO. Did some analysis, also interviewed some of the people writing these constitutions, but understand the motivations and the outcomes of actually publishing these things. And then we sort of defined a set of recommendations. The before writing these constitutions, how they should be structured. And the five recommendations that we came out with, and I'm kinda curious whether you think, you know, these are appropriate or, you know, just how you react to them. Number one let me see if make sure I get them actually correct. So the first okay. Let me just list out the five. So we recommend that constitutions be one, digital, two, amendable, three, short, four, expository, and five, early. So by digital, we mean the, that the constitution is fundamentally, in these settings is a digital document. Right? It should lean into that fact somehow. So it should be hosted at a URI, like a, you know, a stable URL, as a sort of, like, let's say, a dot m d file, markdown file, or a text file, or something that's, like, HTML, something that's, like, accessible digitally. It should make use of hyperlinks. So you should be linking to example policies. You should be linking to smart contracts that are relevant. Or you could just link to examples of, like, okay. You know, we came up with this thing because of this. Right? Because, like, this shit happened back in the day when we were trying to do this and, like, something that just you can usually link to the proposal because these are, you know, online communities. So that's something that's, I think, quite important that obviously are not traditionally features of national constitutions, which motivate, I think, from which we derive many of our intuitions about sort of, like, these kinds of governance documents. Of course, like national constitutions, we believe these things should be amendable. However, that amendability can be quite different depending on what you mean. Running slowly out of time, so I'll just sort of give the short version of this is that. Amendability, yeah, you can sort of mention that in a particular section of your, you know, constitution. We can also just use something like GitHub. The important thing is that there are clear and transparent ways in which, like, these documents are changed. It shouldn't be just like some, you know, HTML file hosted on some private servers, like who or what controls this. It's unclear. If you put on GitHub like that, it comes with procedures for changing these things. So just something that's sort of the note that the context is important. They should be short. This is, like, there are lots of reasons for this. I'll just say that for smart contracts, especially for DAOs, a lot of the governance is built into these smart contracts and or into the digital platforms that these communities use. So there's no need to over specify on rules and procedures, which a lot of constitutions and charters do in real life and IRL organizations. Lastly, they should be expository because, you know, this is a good idea. And just last sentence, they should be early. And since that constitutions should be written, basically, if you introduce these things too late, it'll be it's really, really hard to change the norms and the direction of a community. So you really should try to get these things out as soon as possible, even if in a slightly not quite digested format.
Great. Thank you so much, Josh. Maybe, Dee, would you like to start us off? I we see that you made a a comment here that there's some parallels with what Josh is talking in with case law. I wonder if you would like to elaborate on that.
Yeah. I mean, I I'm not a lawyer. So yeah. But I did write legislation, which is freaky, that you can do that. But, you know, one of the things I I spent the last year working in congress, and one of the things that was challenging about that space well, there are many things that are challenging about that space. A few of the things that are, like, mechanically challenging is that when you don't have those hyperlinks, you don't you have things that reference other pieces of legislation, but you can't easily see what that legislation is or how it's been changed over time. But I really love the example or the the idea of sharing examples of what prompted this, you know, like, why there's all the stories we tell around, like, why we did a thing. But it's interesting to be explicit and say, we did this because, you know, we saw this bad thing go down or we saw this awesome thing happen and we wanna, you know, facilitate more of that. I think that, you know, if I think about a place like Congress, people intentionally don't link to where they got stuff from. They intentionally don't cite their sources. Like, everything is Frankenstein together and copy pasted out of other people's work. And part of why that is is because you don't want the baggage of somebody else's politics. Like if someone writes a really good definition and you want to use that definition later, you don't want people to think like, oh, that's so and so's definition. Cause then they're going to have all kinds of attitudes about it. If it's just like a good thing standing on its own. But the flip side of that is that, of course, you lose that that sense of connection and that sense of history. And so I think it's really interesting to have this idea of, like, naming explicitly the things you do and don't want to happen and the thing that prompted it because something that happens as, you know, legislation gets amended, for instance, is that people sort of lose sight of, like, why a thing was done in the first place, and then try to make changes to it. And so having those concrete anchors, to the the why of the situation, I think is a really cool idea.
It's such a small thing. Such a small thing. Just add some hyperlinks. That's all.
Good. Yeah. It briefly reminds me of, Amelia. I remember her last name, but she came and didn't talk about, dependencies, in open source software and how to kind of have, like, rights set up so that you could, like maybe someone else remembers, but it's just a like, there's, like it's interesting this question is, like there's an interesting connection between, like, the dependencies and, like, how we're linking and then how we're kind of, like, provoking or retracting those differences at different points that I think connects really nicely with what what he was talking about. I'll try to pull up that seminar. Was it Anant who was about to speak? Right cut off?
Yeah. I I was And
we'll pass the comment after that. Yeah.
Alright. Yeah. Thank you. So I had a couple of perspectives, right, on, you know, the properties of the constitution that Nuresh was talking about. One thing I would say is, like, regarding the shortness of things, we we need to kind of see, like, when you have a few short rules, right, you can generate enormous complexity from the way these rules interact. I think one commonly, you know, used example that I've heard is, orthodox Judaism. Right? The thousands of laws that they follow are basically derived from the interaction of a few, you know, that those 10 commandments and all that. So that, you know, you you you start looking at situations in which these laws interact, and that gives rise to sub laws and sub laws of the sub laws, etcetera. Right? So that can lead to enormous complexity. But still, I I still kind of philosophically align with the need to make it short. And that's also kind of very a very kind of interesting kind of you know, segue into case law. Right? I mean, case law or common law is basically judge me as law law. Right? So if you have a few, you know, in the common law regime, right, The UK, United States, and so on, It's about judges interpreting a few principles and then that being the precedent, you know, for other interpretations and so on, which is why when we go to a lawyer's or a judge's office, you know, you just see this kind of letter bound books lining the laws. Right? Okay. You might have started with five laws, but that has led to this whole thing. You know? And I think that's something that we need to keep in mind, you know, as as as we are designing these constitutions and so on that these few things, surprisingly enough, could lead to even more complexity than if you had a few more, you know, more complex laws to start with. So it's kind of like the balance. Right?
I think one quick response to that is that we, yeah, you can definitely generate complexity. But also, like these, what's the right way of saying this? Complexity is not necessarily a bad thing. Right? These communities are often interacting, they're going to be like sort of in complicated sort of very situated situations, like very contextualized. And these relatively few principles, if they're broadly designed and they're sort of interact with each other, can offer, like, you know, appropriate guidelines that, you know, try to sort of, like, balance various trade offs that you have to make in these kind of, like, adjudicating these situations. Also, in short, I just think, like, as you'll see kind of in the paper, what it kinda, like, emphasizes is that constitutions. Like, the reason, like, the sort of the the germ or the sort of the seed behind all these principles is that we want the constitutions to be actually used. Right? And I think, like, being able to sort of create complexity or complex and supple governance structure out of relatively few principles is a power these constitutions can, should have.
Yeah. I'll I'll just I'll just say something briefly. Right? And then I'll be done. So you're you're you're right, Joshua. I mean, that complexity is not something to be scared of. I mean, we live in complex systems, but I guess the thing is to make complex systems adaptable. Right? And from the complex systems perspective, I guess, the study of complex adaptive systems, you know, by these interactions, you know, they settle in a zone of convergence, and they're able to stay in that zone of convergence because of their ability to adapt to the environment that changes around them. So I think from a complex systems perspective, you know, that's kind of how we would think about it.
Thanks. I'd like to pass to Connor, and then, I'd like to also get some time in for Yannis to maybe voice some of their comments that they've been leaving in the chat.
Yeah. I'm I'm jamming on Yannis's Yannis's con trips in chat. It's great. I have two questions. First is, are constitutions still applicable in an era of, digital governance? Are they something that we are they an analogy that we are now, like, modernizing, or are they something are they of an era when the printing press was, innovative and now we need something new? That's question one.
Could you repeat the question? It's the fur like, it's the first part.
Why are constitutions still applicable? Are they the way to to govern communities?
Yeah. Thanks, Pete.
I I think that I mean, even take taking constitutions out of the physical form in which they're represented. Right? The the form, you know, a set of guiding goals and a set of more specific laws. Right? That's kind of, broadly speaking, the two functions that they serve. And if you are bringing a community together, you need to have a minimum set of rules of engagement, and you need to have a set of goals that brings them together. So if, you know, can you have a community without goals and a minimum set of rules is the question that you're asking, essentially. Right? Or did I not frame that right?
No. I I mean, I don't think that not having a constitution means you don't have rules. Right? I mean, we know of many, many communities. Probably your friend group is an example of a community that has norms, which you you likely have no constitution. Right? And we now live in a in an era of of yeah. I want to know that too about you, Bee. What's your name? We now live in an era where we have mechanisms that we can design. And so okay. We just call Bee Bee. I love it. If we live in an era with with mechanisms, can we use that instead?
I think the question is if these mechanisms are codified or informally understood. Right? Because in the group of friends that you you you're talking about, I mean, there are still rules which are not actually written down, but, you know, these are generally understood kind of, you know, dynamics within that group. Often, you know, societal norms and also, like, the kind of, you know, norms between that group of friends. Right? I think the thing about the constitution is do we write that down in some way, or do we just let it evolve in an unwritten manner so that there is, you know, a evolving understanding, which is not set in stone, essentially. Is that kind of how we look there?
I wanna get, Ganes in on this Yeah. Just a little bit. So maybe some of this can spill into the chat as well on the Slack as well. Ganes?
Yes. I had one small point to this contribution about her work in congress and people not wanting to provide sources or links. And I think quite often I mean, it sounds from an academic viewpoint that actually that's not good because you want the sources. You want to have the the conceptual lineage to where your thought has led you. However, in in a political context, actually, that may be counterproductive because may people may overlook your logic and say, oh, you got this from so and so, this nineteenth century. Oh, and I don't like him or I think of him as an as an ideological opponent, and then you can kill good ideas because people have their prejudices and and biases. So I just wanna throw it in as it's not a black and white. You know, it's somewhere somewhere in between, and there there is logic. White hiding one sources could be lead to a more robust and fruitful deliberation. Now on well, my question on the
Yeah. And this I'm afraid I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to we're coming up on ten seconds. So Cool. Please I mean
Yeah. Go ahead.
I would say if you if you've already posed the question in the chat, Josh, if you get a chance to to, address it there, that'd be great. I also wanna encourage everyone to look at the document, the Google Doc that Josh shared, and continue leaving comments, suggestions in that document. And, Josh, if if you have any thoughts on what you've been hearing, the conversation that's been happening around you and this the the work that you've been doing, that'd be great. Also, if you can post in the chat who you've been working on this project with, it'd be really great to to shout out, your collaborators who are also part of MediGov and the MediGov DAO research project. So get some get love for the community going there too. Okay. So next up, we have and thank you, everyone. Really, it hurts me so much to cut the conversation off when it's going like that. The next person we have up is Jonathan Kung, who is going to be talking about seasonal governance frameworks and different approaches to reputation and incentive maintenance and or maybe something around that. So I'll let them go ahead and start presenting whenever they're ready.
Well, I'm gonna share my screen.
We see it. Alright. Cool.
Oh, you guys actually for you. You guys you guys see my presentation style as opposed to probably. Right. Well, that's weird. Okay. Well, let's see here. Well, let's see. I'm just gonna do it this way then. So probably hide all of you guys. Alright. Well
I think it's okay other way. I mean, people can see the slides.
Alright. Cool. Well, yeah, name's Jonathan. I'm a former material scientist working in decentralized science ecosystem at the moment as a DAO researcher. So I started the science publishing DAO. So I guess, you know, this this group is I'll like, a lot of the questions that were brought up today were really quite interesting. And I guess this is what we've been kind of working on
is
basically very value kind of, like, focus. So, like, what Josh was talking about starting off constitutions, but the idea is, like, we want to build things that are valuable, but the idea is obviously this conversation is, con is very abstract, and it continues to be interpretable. And the idea is at different times in our evolution, as a species, we basically have different implementations and interpretations of those values. So values tend to be a more cohesive in the long run, of, kind of these objects that may continue to be interpreted upon, that we can figure out the tools to attach that in ways that we understand it in those the the times that we have. So at this point in time in governance, especially, we're transitioning to a very decentralized kind of form of governance versus the, governance systems that we're more familiar with, even though decentralized governance systems have been around for a very long time. Specifics are hard at this point in time, and, you know, people are experimenting with QDarkly, like Connor was saying. But at the same time, like, you know, everything is so fuzzy and messy. So, you know, at least values like Josh was talking about is I think, continues to be a good reference point since they are a lot more polymorphic or flexible than, the specific implementations that we're looking for. So I guess, you know, in The US, we generally focus on the letter of the law, but at the same time, now things are messy enough where I think it's easier for us to try to rein things back to focus more on the spirit of the law. And what we're trying to do, my group and I are trying to do, is build out a system that is like an abstracted kind of, like, tunable structure that, helps you gives you tools to where you can write down your list of principles that, you know, I kind of wrote some of them the the values that our ecosystem values at the moment, the discursive principles, basically. So, you know, radical first principles thinking, radical contrarianism or, you know, constructive contrarianism, etcetera, etcetera. And then we basically built, an abstracted tool structure that can manage help manage that. And I guess, part of the conversation we think is important is, meaningful reputation. So I guess, from all the different governance research that has been done, meaningful reputation seems like it is required for some sort of stability. In terms of how that ends up looking, it seems like the two main kind of, like, groups that I've seen do this is one, the group that I'm working with at the moment where we kind of have a hyperinflationary reputation system to prevent centralization. And then, soulbound tokens, which basically was a paper that was, published by Vitalik Buterin and company, basically, are is based off of a quadratic footing system. So, you know, there's kind of two sides of the same coin, but kind of doing slightly different things. And I guess the question is whether or not we can think about seasonal governance because no single voting structure can consistently reflect the bill of its people and its experts. The question is how can we kinda rotate through different governance structures?
Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I know five minutes is such a short amount of time, Jonathan. Yeah. But but we do have a question there that's open for discussion.
Gonna leave it here. There's the question that I'm gonna leave the group with.
Yeah. Would anyone like to yeah, we have a comment here from Josh saying that SBTs wouldn't say that SBTs are based on quadratic system. I yeah. I think I think maybe I'm sure you have some comments on that. Jonathan, do you wanna kinda maybe it's an opportunity to flesh out some of your thinking as well?
Let me just take a look at the question.
Awesome. Can you post the that text in the chat, and then maybe we can go back to away from presenter mode, please?
Sorry. It didn't quite you kinda broke up for a second.
Oh, sorry. Yeah. I just it's nice to see everyone's faces. Can we can we take the question that's in the slide and then just post it into the chat and then Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Presenter mode. Okay.
There you go. Let me stop sharing. Alright. Cool. I guess the idea is kind of managing soul based tokens are, you know, just a a token base that they're trying to create meaningful reputation, but it is using a lot of the mathematical background is also they're trying to build into it. How do you use these this type of reputation where it also helps preventing centralization and their kind of methodology, it seems to prevent centralization is to make them nontradable and also quadratic. So that means that, you know, even if you're able to accumulate yeah. You can have, like, a bunch of soulbound tokens kind of type situation, and you can kind of potentially use them for voting or whatever circumstances. Yeah. They have a number of different kind of ways of well, basically, if you are able to impose how much voting power you can have with those tokens by, you know, putting a square root over it so that, you know, it kind of, like, binds the ultimate kind of control over an ecosystem that you can have or at least makes it infinitely more difficult to actually have runaway kind of, like, control over a system. And I guess our ecosystem uses a hyperinflationary method where, for example, it's actually every single time you do something, you are minting new tokens. So you're still kind of, like, have an absolute value, for example. But at the same time, if the network is doing well and people are posting and communicating and you're then there's gonna be more tokens that are gonna be minted. But at the same time, every single time that you're minting new tokens, you are diluting the ultimate capacity for any single player in the ecosystem to control the ecosystem. So, I guess this is where we were using you know, a lot of people have been in the ecosystem. And Web three have been allergic to the idea of hyperinflationary, but I think, you know, hyperinflationary can also be used, well to manage, centralization forces. Connor? Yep.
Is there a, is there, like, a visual or a quick demo or a link I could follow to, to see it in action?
To see it in action?
To just just to follow the math.
Right. Yeah. So I have a paper that I can post. Let me quickly find it. Yeah anyway, I guess, I can someone wants to ask another question I can just like while I quickly look for this paper.
I suppose it's to see it in action that you want to have the sandbox. Right?
I Yeah. I guess regarding a sandbox, I guess the question is, how do we actually experiment with different types of governance structures? So for example, I'm in the decentralized science community, and everyone has their their own governance structure they want to try out. But at the same time, we are trying to build, the because the nature of science is naturally decentralized. So it's like if we're trying to all building these, like, separate, kind of governance infrastructures, we also as a community, we don't know the answers. And so the question is, like, can we actually also practice what we're preaching in a lot of ways? Because we don't know. We're in the mode of discovery. We need to be kind of collaborating as a community in the ways that we would like to see scientists kind of collaborate and then have the data to kind of back it up as opposed to just being able to run simulations. So the question is, you know, even though the governance structures that my group and I are building out kind of have a natural, like, kind of governance kind of cycling or seasonal governance built into it. The idea is whether or not we can build, you know, a a meta governance structure where basically for maybe three months at a time, different groups in the organization can test and comment and battle harden, like, each other's, like, kind of projects. Because at the end of the day right now, just like there's so many open questions we don't know, but we need to actually collaborate to to make progress. And not only that, but actually kind of create these governance structures that, yeah, we were we can actually face scientists and be like, hey, by the way, collect the data and we're collaborating in this way, and this is how we've how we've done it. And we think that, you that scientists can more or less self govern their own reputation moving forward. So, yeah, very much. Would you like to
to jump in on either that topic or a different one?
Let me see. I'm I'm just gonna still haven't found the the paper yet. So if yeah. Someone has another question. I'm just gonna
CP has their hand up.
Thanks. I I you had previewed to us maybe in another call. I don't know. Somewhere, you had mentioned this concept of seasonal governance, and I think it was you anyway. Someone was talking about seasonal governance and how, like, in some communities, there'd be, like, you know, certain times of the year where it made sense to have, certain certain governance processes or, like, if you're in, you know, a battle, and now you need to have, like, very quick snappy decision making and you maybe defer to an executive. And I'm curious what like, are you're talking about scientific communities. Can you help paint a picture of what the seasons are? Like, what are the circumstances, or what are the changes, or what are the cycles that makes sense to have maybe these different governance patterns?
Right. So I guess, you know, I guess, you know, maybe, we're trying to create an abstracted, like, structure that is applicable to any kind of decentralized system, but we're kind of our first application is going to be with the scientific community. So, for example, I'm gonna use, like, a very crude reference, but the idea is, say, like, you know, you have some sort of hyperparameter, like, where one is a dictatorship and infinity is like an anarchy kind of type situation. And we find that, you know, between two and ten, like, you know, that metric is like, you know, really like a good range of numbers for people to kind of experiment with. And, basically, you have different values. The values that you're interested in, you can basically figure out, at each number how those numbers would be kind of executed at those different numbers. And then, basically, you can have an oscillation between those numbers based off of the the circumstances. Right? Or it could even be stochastic so that people are less likely to try to gain the system as opposed to just focusing on the spirit of the law. So making things dynamic enough so that people aren't kind of like, you know, yeah, just trying to focus too much on the specific numbers as opposed to just doing good work in general. So I guess in this particular way, when it comes to the application of science, for example, we are thinking of replication and innovation seasons. Right? Because there's a lot of people there are times when some breakthroughs happen, and then there are times when there's just like a lot lot of lull time. And so the question is, we've been having science has been having lots of replication crisis problems over the last twenty years or so. So where, for example, I'm using cancer research as an example. 53 out there were 53 landmark papers that people were basing a lot of their research for many years. And then but nothing no not a whole lot of progress is happening. Then there was a replication study that was done like to see if, like, well, can we actually replicate any of these? How many of these landmark studies are replicable? And only six out of 53 were replicable. So I was just like, okay. Well, maybe we should have instead of just everyone trying to come up with new stuff, maybe there are seasons where we should just, review and do a lot of the boring work. So something like that where, and also the idea that there's no single governance structure that can consistently find the will of its people and its experts. So the question is, you know, just like, you know, both Josh and Connor had brought up. It's just like we are, you know, pretty comp and I think it also Yana has brought up, you know, Godel's theorem and such. And I'm like, yeah. It's correct. Like, there's no single static system that is ever going to consistently work all the time. So the question is, how can we build a more fluid kind of polymorphic kind of governance structure where it doesn't become operationally impossible?
I wonder if, you know, could I try to tie in Yanis' point here about effectively sortition and, like, trying to kind of maximize the expertness of the citizenry. I I wonder if you could talk a little bit just briefly about, like, kind of the mechanisms for those parameters of governance changing. Like, is it kind of, like, a cybernetic feedback loop where extern like, externalities are coming in and affecting it, autonomously or automatically, or is it are this a is there a kind of deliberative process within the publication system? How how are those changes kind of playing out?
I guess, mainly, we've been focusing on governance and values. And so that kind of makes it, yeah, that makes it kind of, like, more easy to be flexible. Right? So we're kind so for example, you know, part of the the system that we're basing it off of is, like, there were four voting topologies that the European Union had come up with back in, like, you know, at the, like, mid two thousands. And so the idea is like, okay. Well, there's these four different voting topologies. Under what situations do different, you know, should we employ them? And in what ways can we even, like, you know, string them string different ones together in sequence so that we can have, new voting structures, right, altogether? So that's kind of in ways how we're looking at, you know, I so the idea of having, like, things be dynamic is, yeah, is just, like, how we're trying to keep things as dynamic dynamic as possible. But the actual interface from a voting perspective is just, like, you're still probably just, like, ranking and saying, like, oh, I like, you know, I I like this project. I don't like this project, etcetera, etcetera. So in terms of the interface, it shouldn't be, like, super obnoxious.
Great. Thank you for that, and thank you to all of our presenters today. It's really great to have everyone come and talk about the work that they're doing and to see such a lively conversation in the chat. We're always also always very happy to see people starting up informal working groups around the topics that they're discussing here. So if there's interest, please carry on the discussion in seminar discussion or in the general chat and see where some more affinity slide between everyone. And then, Jonathan, also, if you'd like to share your slides, please do so afterwards. And thanks, everyone. I shared a link earlier on, but I can share it again. If you are ever interested in presenting for one of these, there's a link where you can sign up, and you can have a really good sense for the format. And it'd be really great to have some people there monthly, first Wednesday of the month. So with that, we'll adjourn. Thank you, everyone, and enjoy the rest of your week.
Thank you. Thanks.
Thanks.