Thanks, Zent. Yeah. So thank you. Thanks, everyone, for showing up. I really appreciate this. I saw so I'm an anthropologist. As I said earlier, I also work historically. And this book by Lorraine Daston, who's, what I find, like, a really amazing historian of science, came out earlier this summer. And I saw it and I I thought, oh my god. I have to read this because I'm interested in DAOs and I'm interested in governance. And it seems to me that people within DAOs and within governance, one of the things that they think about a lot are kind of rules and, you know, how do we make this community work? What kind of rules do we have to set up? What rules will, you know, determine who gets paid for what? How do we, you know, how do we, how do we program all of this? And how do we make it work perfectly so that we never have to touch it again? I guess it's one of the sort of aspirations that I feel exists in this space. And so I wanted to take this opportunity or I pitched this as a book club because I think last fall was it there was a book club of David Graber and David Wengrow's book. I don't know, The Origin of Something of Everything or something like that. That was a really fun and interesting conversation with people here in MediGov about sort of political order and inequality and what does it look like. And so I thought I'd try to, you know, get inputs from all you all and see what you have to think and say. I'm a little bit worried. So I'm actually, I, I, I teach also. I'm a postdoc at the University of Vienna, and, usually my students don't do their reading unless I make them get, like, do reading notes in advance. So I'm a little bit worried that, people didn't do the reading, but that's fine. There's also, I think I linked to a New Yorker article that's, that's like a nice little review of the book. So I'm, I wanna give you just sort of a brief, I guess, overview of what I find, I found most interesting, or the points that I took away with. Because, you know, every time, I don't know if you've had this experience, but there's not just one reading of a book, right? Like, we all come to readings with our own interests and questions. And so we get out of things, out of texts, very different kinds of things. And even I, like I'll sometimes, I've, I've read things multiple times throughout my career, but always have gotten something or like the same, like I've had the experience that I've read the same text at different points in my career and gotten thing, different things out of it because I was coming to the text with different questions. So what, basically what Dassin tries to do in this book is to say, to sort of, you know, give, give us a kind of large historical angle. And it's an eminently readable book that was part of her, part of her, motivation is to write a sort of, not, not just for the scholars, but for all peoples, who are interested in rules, a book that is very, very elegant. She is interested in, in, you know, rules that they're, you know, they exist cross culturally across history. And, we've been, you know, all peoples have always been vexed by the, the sort of the, the inherent paradox that we can have rules, but how to apply them and how they work usually depends on the context of their application. Right? So that's sort of a basic human conundrum. And then the other thing that she's interested in is looking at why does it happen that at some point we become convinced that we need to have rules that work even with without context or with like minimal context. So she gives us kind of, she, she presents rules as having certain kinds of qualities or characteristics. So, or three kinds. So there can be thin or thick rules. Thin rules are rules that are that apply to, like, a very kind of narrow use case, and thick rules kind of contain their own their own sort of the way that you might interpret them or apply them in various different kinds of contexts. And I'll, she gives some examples there that I will get to in a bit. Then rules can be rigid or flexible, and rules can have a narrow or wide form of application. And there's obviously all of these are sort of the poles of a spectrum. So rules are either thin or thick, rigid or flexible, narrow or wide, or rather we, you know, wanna see these as poles of a spectrum. So one, she, and this is always the problem when you assign readings before having done the reading yourself. I realized those, I picked the chapters that I did because they had to do with algorithms, and I thought you know these are computer people, I'm sure they want to know about algorithms. I thought it was these are interesting chapters about sort of the transformation of the algorithm as something that was really just arithmetic, you know, arithmetic and, like, problem sets and reasoning from example to example to a sort of more general, you know, command, this like computational command based understanding of an algorithm that an algorithm will do certain things under certain circumstances. But in the end so it was a lot of sort of the history of computation in the sense of, like, human computation and the efforts of, you know, royal this and that to calculate the winds and the weathers and the, and the, the tables of the, you know, ebb and flow and blah blah blah, for which they needed a lot of, they needed a lot of, people to do computations. And then at some point, you know, actual devices come out that, you know, promise to assist in that computational work. And the story ends up being that they have to, they have the, the people who are organizing all of this computation have to do a lot more work in order to sort of separate the steps of the process in order to incorporate the machines when previously that was like what people had been doing. Anyways, so it's an interesting story of like labor and cognition and sort of ideas of cognition and things like that. But the example that I kinda, that I wanna start with that I found really charming was, about St. Benedict's rule book. And I'm here trying to get, go through my notes and see if I can find something. Hey Nathan, maybe you have something to say about, St. Benedict's rule book. Apparently, I didn't know this, but I thought it was great. So the Benedictine Abbey. There's an an order of, you know, monks hanging out and, you know, doing God's work and stuff. And Saint Benedict came up with the rule of Saint Benedict, which were basically sort of the living standards at the, at the Abbey, and how to be a good monk. And what was interesting about these rules, there were like a whole lot of them, and they were very detailed. And they were all sort of like, you know, every monk gets this amount of food for breakfast and for dinner. You know, no exceptions, except when, you know, the monk is sick or, you know, tired or, you know, not doing well or something like that. And so this, she comments that the Saint Benedict's rule is, like, you know, the the he's he he should be the patron saint for the micromanagers. Because what's interesting about these rules is that they all sort of they, you know, appear to be very sort of unequivocal about what they say, but yet then they they contain sort of the exceptions and, you know, the the contextual application and how to interpret them within the each rule. So I don't know. Maybe that's a way to think about maybe there'll be Benedictine Dows at some point that, you know, that take on this model. Yes, Ed?

Okay. I'm trying to

Yeah. Does anybody have any comment at this point outside of the text?

Sure. I I can finish.

Okay. So so the I mean, the story is pretty big, and it's a little bit hard to summarize. But basically, she observes that, the, the sort of central conundrum, right, that any rule, sort of implies its own context and to pretend that rules can work or be applied without context is really difficult. Yet, she she asked the question, like, why does it become at some point that, like, we think that we need rules that can be applied without interpretation, right, without judgment, without without sort of this, flexible look towards like, you know, does applying the rule in this way still fulfill the purpose of the rule, right? So there's a whole discussion about law and equity. I'm sure, you know, things like that. And there's a whole, you know, she observes this sort of concern with, you know, corruption and exactly that we don't, we don't trust future people. We don't trust other people. And if I have a moment later, I'll, I'll pick out some amazing quotes for you. But so, like, where does that come about? And, and her argument is that it's sort of, you know, comes with an emergent, you know, modernity and a drive towards standardization and towards making things the same and regularizable and quantifiable and predictable, right? So if we look at, you know, the, you know, history, then we, you know, we are living in sort of what, what is, what is maybe, I don't know, some people call it the tail end, some people call it post or whatever. Anyways, we live in a world that is definitely shaped by a drive to standardize and to make things the same and make them predictable, right? And it is in that kind of a context that you can have rules or make rules that, you know, can be applied without any kind of discretion or judgment. Yeah. Discretion is an important word. Because we are worried about, you know, power, you know, people in positions of power exploiting that that role. Right? Then there's a whole discussion of yeah. Well, there's there's a whole discussion about laws and the sovereign. And I don't know if you are into any of the, you know, Schmidtian political theory about the sovereign is he who decides on the exception and things like that. So is the sovereign above the law or is he still subject to the law? So there's all these discussions in here. But I guess the, what I wanted to, so the part that I really enjoyed was there's one thing that made me that made me think of the DAO hack. Let me look at my notes so that I can find this. Sorry, guys. Okay. So there's, you know, there's something understood to be the prerogative of the sovereign, which is to intervene in a moment that's, like, out of control and unpredictable in order to save sort of the underlying order. Right? So the citation here, and I'll post it in the, I'll paste it in the chat if I can. Just as equity intervened in unusual cases to save the courts from committing injustice, prerogative intervened in a general emergency to save the polity from disaster. In both cases, circumstances unforeseen by the rule required action that bent or broke the rule. So actually the chapter, if you are interested in reading any of this, now that I've told you a little bit about it, the chapter that I found most fascinating is the the last full chapter. So it's about, like, bending and breaking rules

I think you might find useful to think about. So maybe the general question is what do we, you know, what do we do? Are are we currently living in in a time that we think is predictable and orderly and standardized and quantifiable so that we can apply thin rules to how we, you know, work as humans? Or do do you think I mean, this is just, like, what is your sense? Are we living in a world that is disorderly, unpredictable, chaotic? I don't know. And do we need maybe to think about flexible and qualified rules, and how do we manage that?

Oh, it's just Mark.

Mark, you muted yourself.

I'd like to just respond quickly because I think, Mark, I'm really interested in the book that you mentioned. I read French. So if I I'd love to if you can write that put that citation in chat, that would be great. I think there's also a sectarian history here. I mean, the, Daston mentions this, that one of the people that responds to, well, she talks about and like the sort of practice among Jesuits to say, you know, oh, here's, you know, here's a context, here's a situation. How do we apply the rule in this sense? And then there's a bunch of reasoning, like what's the context, like a bunch of question asking to sort of understand the mitigating circumstances to figure out some kind of, like, how to apply the rule, which then Auguste Conte, basically skewers and says, like, you know, these these Jesuits will just like bend the rules to whatever context and people can get away with anything, you know. And I think that there and and so she notes that it's the like there's this, you know, there's a bunch of Protestants or, you know, big, you know, social thinkers, philosophers, enlightenment scientists who are thinking at this time about social order who have, you know, a far, like a more rigid and like, I guess, unflexible view of looking at roles. And I think this is what we see then, which also gets translated into, you know, the kind of capitalism that we know. Right? So labor and dah dah dah. But maybe, Nathan, you have something to say about that too?

Well, yeah, I wonder how it plays in, but, you know, there are a few dynamics I I think are I'd love to just surface around the the rule of Benedict. Just you know? And I confess to you know, it is an important text in in my own life. And, you know, for instance, the the idea of community rule, like holding up rule as a thing that that communities achieve for themselves kind of comes out of that that tradition for me. And the rule is you know, the the way of using rule as a kind of noun that refers to actually to, like, bylaws or constitution or something like that, I think is really kind of interesting kind of piece of language. And, you know, of course, comes comes from Latin, from, regular. But, there are two tensions in the rule of Saint Benedict that I think are really interesting to think about in terms of how we behave around our rules. So on the one hand, there is on the side of that micromanaging. It's like it goes even deeper. It's like when you're in a a Benedictine monastery, in in certain traditions, and and this is spelled out in the rule too, they read the rule at lunch often. You know? So the rule is read, like, while you're eating, and and and it's read alongside interchanged with other holy texts. So it's treated really as a kind of scripture in a, you know, almost like someone, you know, who is kind of carries the constitution in their pocket or something like that. It is this it is this kind of sacred thing. So there's this ritual context around it that I think is is important to consider. And and for you know, raises the question for us of, like, if we're building communities, are there ritual relationships that we wanna cultivate, you know, with with the rules? Are there things that help inculcate those rules as not only sources of of, you know, regulation that you turn to when things get weird, but actually as, like, as as moral and and spiritual texts. At the same time, Benedict stresses, like, this is a rule for beginners. Right? So there is this, like that's where he gives that give introduces that give into the text that, like, you know, well, you know, this is just a starting point. And and, you know, through your experience in life, you know, you'll kind of find the real rules. You know? And and finally, on the the the context of of the Franciscans you mentioned. You know, there's a great Agamben book called The Highest Poverty that explores the tensions around the the Franciscan rules that's that's that's really wonderful. But but also, I I've especially focused on the rule of Saint Clare, which is the the rule for the for the woman's Franciscan order. And it was it's very powerful in that Clare the the rule was initially written by the pope or approved by the pope, and it had no form of self governance in it. And Clare insisted on inserting self governance. It has this beautiful line about how, you know, God speaks for through the least of us. And and and and there is actually really significant also in the rule of Saint Benedict component of self governance that the monks meet every week after Sunday mass and what's called chapter. And and there is this kind of dictatorial structure to it, but there's also the sense and the fact that the monks meet to discuss issues and also elect their abbot. So the abbot is kind of a dictator over them, but is also elected. So so there's this, you know, with every kind of hard edge in the rule, there's also this kind of there's also this kind of mitigating side of it. And, anyway, I'm just fascinated by these rules because, you know, they have lasted for so long. And, you know, whereas, you know, so many intentional communities of so many kinds, like, famously dissipate in five minutes, you know, these are things that have, you know, that that that have survived so much longer than than, you know, so many other kinds of communities. So I'm sorry to take up so much space.

Yeah. Thanks, Nathan. Let's that I'm so glad that you're here for this conversation, but let's move on. Yeah.

Thanks. Yeah. I really like that comment you made. I I spend a lot of time worrying about how increased automation does potentially, like, create lock in effects. Although it certainly isn't just an artifact of automation, but, you know, like, sometimes it's just convenient to standardize things. Like, maybe the there are there might be rules around what type of, you know, frequency our alternating currents run at or whatever, but but it's also, like, really handy for the world to have some things that you don't have to think about. And I wonder to respond to Anna's question a little bit. Also, I wonder if there's a degree which, even though on a personal level, I'm like, oh my gosh. We're living in such tumultuous chaotic times. Like, I wonder if part of the desire to standardize or remove interpretation is also just, like, you have more and more stuff to think about as a society or you're trying to do more advanced things with more people involved and, like, having some parts of a system that you don't have to question or interrogate as much, can allow you to do other things. That doesn't mean that it's always good to not question those elements, but, like, I think about how much the stock market, for instance, is a reflection of, like, collective ideas about, like, the stability of the future. Like, for instance, sometimes something really bad will happen and the stock market will, like, be fine or even do well because it's like, oh, this we can predict what'll happen next. Like, we know what's gonna happen. And so there's, like, a desire for, like, just, like, predictability and knowability about the future. And so in a way, maybe creating rules or creating rules that require less interpretation give you, like, a a sense of, like, calm or ease that you you you might not like it, but at least you know what the outcome is likely to be. And I think that that relates to what some folks were saying as well about, like, the the more people that are involved or the further removed you are from the relationships with the people, the less you might feel confident that you can predict what the outcome is. But I also had a question as someone who also did not read this because I didn't realize there was a reading before this seminar. It's, like, hearing you all talk about Benedict's rules, and I think about, like, famously, like, Hammurabi's code or whatever, like, other things that maybe to me seem like, oh, those also seem sort of, like, funny, like, highly specific rules or laws. I'm curious, like, is the dis is one of the distinctions in Benedict rules in the Benedict rules that they are not like, for instance, the Hammuramic code sort of is sort of like, if you do this, then bad thing will happen. Whereas the Benedict rules are more like, you should do this preemptively. Like, here's what you should do. So I just had a curious about, like, the history and emergence of rules that are, like, consequence based versus sort of, like, instructive.

Yeah. Much more instructive. Yeah. And and they they they they attempt to craft not just, you know, the the things, the the guardrails of society, but what what is called in that culture a form of life, which which means, you know, a a much more robust picture about what your life how your life is organized and and where it is centered.

Is there anyone else who on the list, stack, sent? Can I say something?

B, because you were you were talking about lock in. I I mean, I totally agree. Right? There's certain things we kinda wanna settle in order to get on with, like, other important things. And I think that's maybe part of the reason why intentional communities fail or, you know, any kind of, I mean, you know, I don't know if you've been part of a community organizing or something like that when a group can't even get off the ground because they can't agree on sort of the basics, like who's gonna take notes and how we're gonna organize that, then, you know, you can't do other things either. So, obviously, there's there's some interest and benefit from that kind of standardizing or that kind of agreement. I guess, though, what I I did wanna or what you said about, like, you know, we want some things to be settled in order to think about other things reminded me of a quote at the end of that the epilogue of of Dustin's book where she basically says I'm sorry. That every time we are with that, every time we seek to follow or evade a rule, we are honing the very faculties explicit rules banished. Right? Judgment, discretion, analogy. And that we're doing this without even thinking about it. Right? We don't even realize that every time we look at a rule, we're like, you know, quickly, you know, an unwittingly to us, like interpreting it. How do I, you know, maybe I don't know, parking rules, things like that. You're, you know, allowed to two hours here, two hours there, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. But that this is just like a part of how we encounter rules and engage them in in our life. And that there's there's always this process just because it's not, you know, conscious or because it happens quickly or something like that. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Right? So I guess maybe it's sort of about the amount of friction or the amount of energy that goes into interpreting a rule. Okay. Things happening in the chat. And Nathan, I want, I wanted to also respond to something that you said, or I think something also be you talked about lock in, but there's or I don't know if it was Sarah. There's something about the, you know, the the Benedictine rules. If we think about that community. Right? It's not it, there's a process to get in, right? Like you have to, you can't just show up one day and be like, Hey, I wanna be a monk now. Like you have to kind of like prove yourself and be socialized into this. Right. And sim and so it becomes like once you're in, right, like the rules have a kind of have a force over you because you have committed to them as well. Right? Like, you know what you've signed up for. You know what this, you know, you're you, this is how you want to lead your life. Right? Like, this is the the life that, you've chosen for yourself. So leaving becomes much harder. And I think this is something relevant for thinking about DAOs and, you know, and and obviously, you know, the proof of stake, blah blah blah. That kind of thing is is supposed to, sort of, engage that kind of, like, a form of commitment to a thing. Right? So that you can't just as soon as you don't like a rule, you can leave. Right? Which is sort of, you know, comes from a kind of vision of, you know, freedom and autonomy. And, of course, we all want to have that kind that as well and be able to express that as well. But I think there's something there's an interesting thing in here about creating communities that require some sort of commitment. Right? If you think about kinship as a form of community that locks you in to a certain extent, like, it's, you know, it's costly thinking and talking in economic terms to leave your kinship group if you rely on them for a lot of, you know, your, you know, your social, your economic well-being. And one thing I've been thinking about is, like, how can we, you know, how can you create communities where you you there's a there's, you know, a certain barrier to entry as well in order to sort of prove your commitment. And how do you and the sort of a sort of barrier to exit. I guess this is the, you know, conversations about rage quit and things like that. And how do you, do that without it becoming really sinister and weird? You know, I mean, we all, we're all part of communities that have like costs of entry and costs of exit. And, you know, I guess most of the time we don't think of them as sinister and weird. So in like, what, what, what are the, what are the qualities that those communities sort of cultivate, or what are their characteristics that make them not sinister and weird? Or maybe this is a dead end question where I have to wait longer. Be comfortable with silence.

Can you say more about what the what an example of sinister weirdness is?

I guess, I mean, cults. Right? If we think about, that those become the kinds of communities that, at least from the outside, right, they're, they have certain cost of entry, cost of exit. And if you hear stories about people who are part of cults or who grew up in cults, you know, like they become very sort of insular or like, you know, I mean, people talk about it as brainwashing or, or things like that. But, I mean, I'm an academic and there are people who talk about academia as a kind of cult. Right? That, like, we tell ourselves this is like a really great place to live. And then we, you know, suffer all of these, like, horrible indignities. You know, you're like nearly 40 and you still don't have like a, you know, a long term job. So I mean, you know, there's things like that you could think about. So what are, what are, I don't know what yeah. What are some ways to like have, like, I guess, robust forms of commitment that never that still allow you, you know, a reasonable out.

Can you can you put the citation in the chat? That sounds really great. I wanna read that.

Thanks, Patrick. This is yeah. This is a really great input. It also reminds me there's another section. So I think it is in this last chapter in the in the book about the rule and rule breaking and rule following. And she's she also reflects on, like, how when rules change too quickly in, you know, then we can we, you know, they they become, like, meaningless. And one of her examples so she has one chapter that's really fun. It's about sumptuary rules. So, you know, rules about what to wear and that were, I guess, established in order to sometimes, I guess, there are different there are different reasons. One was to sort of moderate the certain classes from spending too much money on clothes or but also to sort of fix some kind of forms of social hierarchy. But the point or that that she makes is that, you know, there were so many and so many detailed rules that were it was really hard to sort of catch up with, you know, only people of this class are allowed to wear, you know, frocks with like frilly things on the collar or something like that. So this is sort of the kind of ridiculousness of that. But then the other example is, like rules about behavior on the like, a proper urban population in, you know, I think seventeenth century Paris. And that, you know, we should try you know, people should stop emptying their bedpans, you know, onto the street, things like that, which also, you know, there were these rules were in place for, like, many, many years before people then sort of, like, naturalized them. And this is also something she talks about that, like, certain rules. You know, the most effective rules are the ones that, like, you don't even think of as rules that are just, like, the way that you behave. Well,

Also Makes sense.

This was so fun. Thank you everyone for showing up and participating. I hope that you got something out of it, and I'm happy to chat, follow-up on this. If you have any other further questions or things you wanna talk about, I'd love to continue the conversation.