Hobbes, Locke & Montesquieu were right about crypto

Transcript

foreign good morning everyone um thank you for spending your Tuesday morning with me I heard ECC tickets sold out so it's nice to see 10 of you here today let's spend your Tuesday morning my name is Hannah Noor I'm from outly adventures and today we'll be talking about what my friend term as the most eclectic topic of the conference so you know I thought I'll present something a bit fluffy in the beginning before you go and hang out with the nerds with all the more technical talks um so today is going to get

philosophical yes um it's going to make me feel better about the University degree that I never use yes and hopefully you'll you know go away learning a thing or two about something different at the conference so what are we doing today um essentially I have one objective my goal is to draw parallels between the ideologies of the thinkers of the past with some of the ideologies underpinning crypto as we know it today so my argument is crypto is actually bigger than the future of the internet and some of the ideologies that we're experiencing today is pivotal to the changes in society so how do we do that so we are going to look at three areas first I will present

a high level Theory presented by these thinkers and then we will look at their relevance we will use our big wonderful brains to reimagine crypto through their eyes and then finally we will hypothesize what projects would be of interest to them had they been alive today um my my understanding of these philosophers begin with my obsession with hops hops actually is a really interesting thinker so to set a bit of context the foundational ideas in politics that we have today can be traced back to these three thinkers hops in Hops and lock in the 17th century and Montesquieu

pardon my friends in the 18th century um you know three white men similar like crypto they were instrumental in shaping the ways in which dominant societies are organized especially the Western societies from the framing of the U.S Constitution to the notion of Liberty freedom of speech freedom of press limited government every freedom that we experience and exercise today were at one point a very radical and unfathomable ideas of the past so beginning with hops notion of the state of nature in the 16th century to lox writing um influencing the American Revolution and montesquieu's philosophy being

imperative in shaping the U.S Constitution their writing has shipped and underpinned ideological movements in society no no how does this relate to crypto was crypto being a you know primarily technological driven industry from cryptographic Tech to blockchain technology I would argue that crypto goes beyond the future of the internet because many of you are here today because we want to solve a certain problem or believe in certain ideologies underpinned by the movement so decentralization censorship resistance identity and privacy taking ownership of your data and accountability we may think that this shifting ideas are like you know very very novel but actually

it's not all that novel it's if you look at it closely you can trace it back to you know philosophies of the past so we will begin with Thomas Hobbs so essentially there are three arguments that you need to know about Thomas Hobbs Thomas Hobbs right about the state of nature the social contract and the notion of self-preservation um hops was the OG he was influenced he was an influential philosopher in the 17th 17th century in which there was a Civil War in England between the public and the Monarch so his observation of um the state of nature in the Civil War relates him to argue about his primary argument according to Hops in the state of nature without a governing Authority people

would act in ways that promote their self-interest even if something seemed seemingly selfless like volunteering to speak at the biggest crypto conference in Europe there's always underpinning underlying motive like getting a free ticket to set conference so humans are inherently bad and because humans are inherently bad according to Hops people would act in a very chaotic and violent nature something that he argues to be nasty brutish and short therefore secondly he proposes the notion of the social contract so individuals like you and I Alice and Hanan voluntarily Giver of freedom and our our rights to a sovereign Authority

the Leviathan in exchange for protection and security um he argues that by exchanging this Arc by exchanging our rights to like the policemen to the government we can prevent the state of Anarchy in the modern term the term the usage of Leviathan can apply to anything from like big corporates to government to you know in organizations that control that have power and control over you so for example in order for you to enjoy the freedom to tweet your thoughts on Twitter you exchange some of your rights and ownership of your data and privacy finally Central to Hops argument is a notion of self-preservation so he argues that all individuals are fundamentally equal

um Hanan and another guy is equally physically and mentally equal and because we are equal equal we all have the right to solve preservation and in order to self-preserve we can pursue our self-interest he considered this as the most important the most fundamental right so what parallels can we draw between Hops and crypto today I think there's three elements that we can dig deeper into decentralization hops will absolutely hate it he will never tolerate decentralization in the same manner some government entities like the SEC think of crypto a challenge to social order privacy and anonymity not a chance he would argue that privacy that crypto

Advocates increase opportunities for criminal activities and lack of accountability censorship resistant future probably not he would probably be more in favor of anything that can track your data and privacy because to Hops crypto is nasty crypto is brutish and people have been shorting tokens left right and Center so if hops were to be reincarnated today I think he would absolutely look like that he we could argue that the SEC SEC series of attacks on crypto is underpinned by A Series of Unfortunate attempts to retain social order you and I have no idea on how we can retain our

financial freedom and we had a contract therefore serve it to the government in the big Banks um so if hubs were to be alive today hypothetically what the projects would he invest in so these are my arguments I think hops would invest in stable coins but not the usdc usdt kind the cbdc kind he would definitely participate in Darwin governance only if he had 51 of the votes and probably he would invest in like data and transaction more transaction monitoring tool like a side said wallet that can like be anonymize your identity you know sounds familiar um but all is not lost there's actually an

escape clause in hop stinking so he argues because self-preservation is super important when the Leviathan violated the social contract the right to self-preservation supersedes the Leviathan so um is it five minutes okay the because until that social contract is restored self-preservation becomes Paramount so what does soft custody look like in the today's day and age self-preservation um for me self-preservation looked like uh one could argue that South custody is a form of self-preservation smart contract is a modern interpretation of social contract using cryptocurrency as a you note to like listen decentralized

government and big banks that support tyrannical governments like people rising against brutality in Russia in Belarus in Nigeria do not see crypto or like probably wouldn't agree with crypto as a mission but see crypto as a tool to facilitate their mission to tie all this together I think hops is right about crypto because I think it's a reflection of what we're experiencing in today's day and age it's a little bit uncanny however I would argue do not lose hope because John Locke much like our political system the ideas in crypto evolve so John Locke has three arguments he argues about natural right property rights and limited government he proposes the theory of naturalized

meaning from birth you and I Hanan and the rest of the world from birth has the light to Liberty to privacy and property and these rights are not granted by government but are born in the state of nature finally secondly he also argues that um every human being has the right to property so long as you work for it and you have the right to acquire this property through your labor and the third argument would be hops argue for argued for limited government government has should have clearly defined Powers delegated to them by the people and they should not infringe upon our Private Affairs as individuals

so I want to bring you back to this quote by one of my Founders that we invested at my company um he quoted you have no idea what it feels like to wake up one morning and become 10 poorer not because of your own doing but because the devaluation of your currency or things that you have no control about so in some sense um cryptocurrency provide the ability for people to take ownership and control on their Financial Freedom the individual liberty that luck argued for so had lot been alive today I hundred percent think that he would be an nft bro he would um look at activities that enhance privacy and security he would definitely invest in digital assets real

world asset and all those you know nft that provide Liberty and ownership back to the creators and he would argue for balance regulation and free from surveillance from the government and then thirdly we're going to talk about Montesquieu so a lot actually provides the foundational ideas to like political systems that we have in the US today but montesquos provide the foundational ideas in executing them he argues for three things first one the separation of powers leading to the balance of powers the rule of law and the virtual citizenship citizenship Montesquieu advocated for the separation

of powers between the legislative executive and judicial branches of government so according to him different branches should act as a check and balance for the government and the other entities so how is this relevant to crypto I think by reducing Reliance on centralized Network through distributed Ledger reducing intimidaries these Technologies may offer a way to distribute distribute power more broadly to individuals cryptos transparency and immutability can provide a mechanism for auditing and verifying transaction however the notion of check and balance can also be applicable to the notion of

decentralized purism there's this notion that we want everything to be decentralized but it doesn't have to be some use cases is relevant to be decentralized but other use cases especially in relations to Consumer adoption consumer protection should be sent utilized in some manner so this check and balance is what Montesquieu were advocating for and Central to his second argument is the principle of the rule of law he believed the um there's a need for rule of law and it's important for a well-defined illegal system and rule of law should be clear consistent and known to all citizens so I think you know the rishis who knocks of the governments of

the world have applied this thinking but some other governments have a long way to go in applying his notion um and then finally the virtue of virtuous citizenship a virtuous citizen according to Montesquieu is someone who actively participates in the political life of the community and is committed to the common good so he argues that if you engage in the community to voting to participating in activities that bring the greater good to your Society then you're a virtuous Citizen and I can see this being applied a lot in cryptocurrency through Dao and other governance so to tie all this together oh before that he would be he would definitely be

a Dao bro um to tie all this together I hope that this talk would bring two things to you one I hope that it presents you with a framework when interacting with a lot of diverse people in crypto and others outside of bubble in terms of their thinking some of them could be the Gary ganslers of the world some of them could be the locks of the world and some of them could be the montesquies of the will in the way that they think and secondly I urge you to think about your role underpinning the movement that we have I know this all sounds very fluffy but if you look at the trajectory between what happened in the 17th and 18th century to why crypto is experiencing now there are a lot of

parallels because if history doesn't repeat it Rhymes thank you [Applause] no time for questions if you go you can come and ask directly to her thank you talk [Music]

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