What Monasteries, Phytosocieties, and Cybernetics Teach Us About Ethereum

Transcript

I don't need my computer. I have the microphone just in case you won't hear me. >> [laughter] >> Yeah. Okay. Let's wait a couple more minutes to see if people arrive.

Um maybe we can start informally. Like do you Are you guys familiar with these three topics? It's okay. We haven't started yet. >> [laughter] >> Okay. Um Okay. Okay. So um the the purpose of this workshop is to look at uh to have sort of a lateral thinking approach to looking at different areas um and seeing what lessons we can bring back to Ethereum.

Um So it's uh cities, cybernetics, botanics, phyto societies, and monasteries. Okay. So um These uh I These These areas were specifically chosen because first off, they're comp- completely different. They might seem unrelated, but they all share insights about how human coordination happens, and just in general how coordination happens, and uh sort of do's and don'ts of coordination.

Okay. So as I said, this will be um collaborative workshop more than just a talk. So I really value the input. So um let's uh let's start with cybernetics. Who Who's familiar with managerial cybernetics? So this is This is a field that was pioneered in the '70s uh '60s and '70s by um a British researcher called Oh I'm on the wrong slide. Okay, let me start. Who's familiar with the the way cities get built top down? Though this is uh um Garden Cities of Tomorrow, Ebenezer Howard. So um This is

uh This is not the example about cybernetics. This is the example about cities. So um Ebenezer Howard was considered the perhaps the greatest urban planner of his day uh in in England, and he had this vision for garden cities. Um I think a lot of us have the idea that oh, if we move to the countryside, everything will be more sustainable. He He had this very top-down view. You can see the city center is supposed to be this way. He had this like grand plan for the city.

And and it There was a huge movement. They built huge cities, the biggest being Milton Keynes in England, and it was kind of a disaster uh because a city is the people, it's not the buildings. Similarly, I want to make the comparison that Ethereum is the tech and it's not the buildings. So this This sort of thing happened again and again in cities. So you have Le Corbusier. So Plan Voisin in in Paris, but also many other times. The concept that you can have a grand plan that works, that is like oh, I figured out the formula. And no, actually a city is the people. If you don't allow it to evolve organically, it will it will never It will go nowhere

essentially. So this Again, there's as you go forward in time, we keep seeing the biggest master planner of each epoch thinking that they found the solution. So this is famously Robert Moses uh versus Jane Jacobs. So Robert Moses was the chief planner of uh the city of New York, but also had other very important managerial roles in the public sector. A huge influence, and he just wanted to cut expressways through the city. And through a grassroots movement, Jane Jacobs was able to to con- counteract this. So Greenwich Village wouldn't exist today if if it wasn't for this movement, for example.

And she wrote this book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, that arguably is the most famous book in urban planning. So this is This is the first example I want to draw. And we'll see later, I want to talk about the way that the Ethereum Foundation is trying to needle between um providing direction and providing a bottom-up stewardship, and it's an incredibly hard job to do. And finally, this is This is the last example in this category.

Uh maybe Who here has heard of Project Neom and The Line? Okay, who here thinks it's a good idea? >> [laughter] >> I mean, maybe if they were sneakily trying to like just build a huge data center with hiding that that was the original purpose, maybe it was a good idea. But in the process, they they like had to destroy villages, and they sent people from those villages to jail who and actually killed some of those people who who um went against the grain. And it was just It was just like a ridiculous idea to begin with. But again, the concept of I figured out the master plan, having this top-down approach. Uh but the city is the people, it's not the buildings. And

similarly, Ethereum is the people, it's not the tech stack. The tech stack is underlying foundation, just like the buildings, just like the sewage system of a city, uh or any public service. It's is key, but Ethereum is the people. Okay. Now let's look at cybernetics. This is a completely different field. This is management cybernetics. It came up in the 1960s and '70s, and it's the idea that uh you can map out any system in terms of inputs and outputs, and you can regulate what what happens understanding the flows. And Stafford Beer, this English theoretician, thought that he could apply it to the Chilean government. So um this This is This was This was a very interesting project,

very futuristic project, that got interrupted when there was the coup d'état in in Chile. But until that point uh he thought that he could set up a feedback system between all the factories in the countries in the country of Chile, and all all the different approaches to work in the country, and you can see uh you have a the the nation and the nation basically having this feedback loop that could provide information, and there would be this national central uh control room where they could adjust public policy.

Um Stafford Beer famously said, "The purpose of a system is what it does." So we can say that um Ethereum The purpose of Ethereum is CROPS. The I mean, who is familiar with the CROPS acronym that came out recently with the EF mandate? So CROPS stands for censorship resistant open uh um privacy and security, thank you. Um So we can say that the value of Ethereum is DAC, uh decentralized acceleration, uh or but at the end of the day, the vast majority of the activity on Ethereum today is not that.

So um There There is a lot of work to be done on the infrastructure layer to make it a system that is in line where the incentives align towards what we want it to be. So So this is the second example from cybernetics. The third is from the world of botanics. Okay. So um Who Who here has planted a plant in their life? Yeah. And okay, have you heard of the Miyawaki method?

So this uh Akira Miyawaki is a Japanese botanist. And if you if you go deep into like forestry and agriculture, you'll you'll you'll see his name come up all over the time. He perfected this method to uh grow forests in five years instead of 50 years. If you just let a forest grow naturally, it will occur over the course of 50 and sometimes up to 300 years. And the way he did this was with some very interesting principles. So one of which is uh restoration of the soil before you do anything, having the soil rich in nutrients. The second is planting of trees very close together, and picking

the species to be indigenous to the location, and most importantly, having this variety of species, where you have tall trees, shrubberies, and grass. So these These different layers mean that the the plants collaborate. And you don't want to anthropomorphize the plants because um very often there will be secular species of trees, and other trees actually will will um sort of give up their life so that the new stronger, more resilient trees can emerge. And so this often happens also like in terms of um uh when my you have mycelial networks, fungi networks in the soil uh

cre- this network where trees are actually sharing sucrose and and nutrients through the earth if they see that the other tree needs it most. So, you have some some species that have vertical long roots and others that have wide roots. And so, there's this collaboration element. There's also a competition element because they compete for the sunlight. And some don't don't make it, they provide organic matter on the on the forest bed for the others. So um there are some principles that we will go over about that.

And finally, monasteries. What what what the hell do monasteries have to do uh with Ethereum? So, Ethereum is a commons. And monasteries are maybe one of the most successful forms of commons. Uh if we look through history, every time that the state and the market became weak, the commons became strong because all of a sudden you had a need for this type of mechanism. So, this example I I you you can look at two monastic lineages. There's the Christian one and the Buddhist one. In the Christian lineage, it was basically after uh the fall of the Roman Empire, you have this great period of the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and Medieval Ages. And

in the in this period, you had no rule of law. You don't had no um um global order. Sound familiar? Uh you had um a lot This is why they had to erect castles, you know, uh to because there was no um sort of civil society in the open. And so, uh these sort of oasis came up. You could say it's I don't know if it's causal or correlation, but they had these properties that made them perfect. So, they had these uh long-term goals that were basically morally morally driven.

Uh they had uh rigor and sort of um structure within the society. They were self-sufficient. And they were highly defensible. So, often you see them in mountainous areas, in remote areas. And and like what people often associate with monasteries is like solitude and prayer. But um um maybe a lesser-known thing that they did, which is im- is so important, is that they preserved the knowledge. So, throughout there this um How the Irish Saved Civilization, this this author uh talking about the history of monasteries, Thomas Cahill, uh basically talks about how this network of

monasteries spread out through Europe starting from Italy in the south of Europe and and eventually reached Ireland. And I and I arguably the Irish monasteries were the most defensible because they were the most remote. So, so then all this knowledge about uh the an- antique philosophers and and scientists and mathematicians from ancient Greece and uh the the Latin period, uh all of that information stayed with us because of these monasteries. Similar thing happened in China after the Han Dynasty. So, you have uh um monasteries emerging in a period of great conflict.

And very very similar story there. So um in this case, I want to draw the comparison um to Ethereum in its role as fundamental commons in an age of unrest. In in an era where we're going towards more chaos in the world, not more order. You see this in the natural order of of uh of geopolitics uh sort of breaking down. The rule of law is no longer like the uh is is no longer active as in it's more of a suggestion that some countries and especially uh weaker countries are clinging to and the stronger countries are doing uh are are more acting in a sort of rule

of the of the jungle kind of kind of approach. Okay. So, these were the three areas. And again, like this was not supposed to be just a talk. I really want this to be a collaborative workshop. So, I brought some papers and I would ask if you could all please come to the front and we can participate in a collaborative exercise together. So, I I would encourage you to pick because there's three these three different areas. We have We have over here. Okay. So,

cybernetics. The purpose of a system is what it does. So, what is the purpose of Ethereum today? And how what is the purpose that we would like it to have? And how can we change that? Then we have Safe stewar- So, this is uh this is monasteries, right? So, safe stewardship of knowledge. Morally guided goals. Uh persecution. Because monasteries were persecuted. Uh counterculture to the status quo. And the rise of the commons.

And then we have from botanics, native climate species, complementarity, dense planting, living soil and self-sufficiency. So, if any of these areas are more of interest to you than others, just pick the one that's most interesting. And I would encourage you to to write down ways in which you you see Ethereum matching these and ways in which we can learn from these for Ethereum. This is the entire purpose of this workshop. So, yeah, if you have any ideas, please I was hoping to have more flat spaces, but this is what we got.

Thank you. Let let me just go with the slides as well. So, what what would we write? Okay. So, for instance, uh um Yeah, I want to pick the monastery. Okay, the monasteries. >> Safe stewardship of knowledge. So, how the similarities you're seeing, what can we learn?

We're trying to have sort of a lateral thinking approach here. And adapt lessons learned from these fields to Ethereum. So, I've I've been trying to give an overview of what are the similarities, why were these topics picked for this workshop. Um Okay. Um I just uh added uh

D to crops. And the idea is that the of mandate should probably add D for diversity. Okay the diversity should be added to the crops, man. >> add it to the purpose of the system, right? Because diversity means that uh no, I mean, I can just talk to you. Well, because it's recorded. Okay. Uh the idea being that uh resilience is uh something that you get uh free out of diversity. And the more number of ideas that you can prolif- pro- proliferate, the higher the chance that uh you're in the entire design space of ideas you've explored every possible uh mechanism.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Do you want to share yours? Uh Yeah, ba- basically what I write is that uh Ethereum with privacy tools and alternatives ways to governance, it could effectively create a system that regulates uh a full city. And i- i- is one of the is I think right now is is the only way that you can do that in a really democratic way because in the system that we are now, the the weights are not in the power of of people, mostly because your money is not really yours. I don't know if you know that, but when you put a deposit in a

bank, you agree that your money will be able to you every time you go, but the money is not yours legally. So, Ethereum uh enables you to own your own things. And that uh that enables on top to you have power. You have political power. That's one of the things. And uh one system based on on on self-governance and sensor resistant with privacy can allow everyone to have far weight and to participate in in a society to it grow organically.

So, you you you're trying to like say that sovereignty is super important when it comes to money. Yeah. Yeah, I focused on the >> [clears throat] >> the garden with biodiversity. And then I started thinking about uh the city. And it's actually the same thing where Now, I come [clears throat] from Ireland, so I know about the monasteries. So, um yeah, it's uh and we have a problem in terms of uh diversity in our cities and towns where we don't have people living there. And people live outside and the town dies.

So, it got me thinking about, you know, the garden, uh diversity as you were saying with the various trees and building an ecosystem. So, I think And that leads itself into building an ecosystem within Ethereum. So, I I I see them all as kind of linked in a way, if that makes sense. Whereas monasteries obviously are where the preservation and sharing of knowledge were, you know, and that's vital. Um especially in a world where um truth is a variable. And uh yeah, to have a source of truth is is vital. So.

That's my thoughts. Okay. Um I put a note on the monasteries and I wrote there that like monasteries, Ethereum is a highly guarded castle as in it's very hard to take down. Um if not impossible, hopefully. And [snorts] uh it stores some highly valuable knowledge uh like protocol design, engineering, >> [snorts] >> like AMMs, um protocols that uh leverage very uh very clever things, inventions, that and that knowledge is stored forever and made available to all.

It's uh I just wanted to add uh it's interesting what you say about defensibility. I think there is one way in which Ethereum is really not defending itself, which is it's not protecting the information in the commons. So, look at all the alternative layer ones coming up. They're just [snorts] using re- decades of research and not giving back anything. Uh a friend of mine wrote this uh license called EGPL. Uh I don't know if any of you have heard of it, but it's great I I can send you the link if you're interested. And basically, the idea is you uh um anyone can use my code, my IP, even for commercial purposes. You can use it for anything you want as long as

you build on Ethereum, which means that the the the sequencers come back and settle to the Ethereum mainnet. Uh if you don't, I can sue you. >> [laughter] >> Right? So, like these are like very simple mechanisms on like uh traditional law where you actually are creating that artificial incentive for people not to engage in that extractive behavior. Lighthouse? Like yes, lighthouse. That one. Did anyone How's the How's the adoption of that license generally? It just came out. Oh, okay.

Yeah yeah yeah. Hot. Well, he's using it for his project. That's why he created it. Yeah, yeah. In the context of monasteries, I wrote about the transmission of values from the old members of the community to the new ones. So, to to to con- continue on on the long term on the same project while still also having new new ideas. But the important is to to keep keep the the values and not let new users uh uh just like that without any structure.

Yeah, yeah, that's that. Um I I was at EthPrague last year and there was a talk between Vitalik and Tim Berners-Lee. Attributed as creator of the internet, right? And they were talking about what are the the issues that the internet fell into that that Ethereum should avoid. And it was exactly that. Um it's it's very hard to create a system that is um that is not vulnerable to capture so that the values don't get distorted along the way. And I mean, we already fell in that trap, but we I I think Ethereum has a really great mechanism for always coming back to mainline, which is the fact that once the money

goes away, >> [laughter] >> all of the all of the sort of projects end up by the wayside. >> Okay, we are running out of time. It was a great talk. I think we can continue outside, but thank you for your time and your talk. >> Amazing. >> [music]

>> I got that wrong sign from my From the momentum of the >> [laughter] >> I I got the wrong sign for for for >> we can still continue discussing. Yeah, let's continue. Let's continue. What What What What did you just start? >> No, I was just uh saying that defensible acceleration or like decentralized acceleration was a theme at Devcon. surviving, but accelerating the growth of each other, right?

And this idea uh um was was Yeah, really made sense to me in in lieu of the uh the photonics example that you stated here. You You have come up >> you Could you with the act? Yeah, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I actually sort of um been working on a startup that is aimed at the act. Or actually, so How do you focus on what direction you want to take because it's such a broad Um I think it's about So, in in in in in the case of Agartha, that is this company that I've been working on with with two partners, it's um it it's organizing residencies

and and a network of communities. So, it's quite simply uh in the curation element. So, uh starting with people that are sort of values aligned. People that are heart-centered. Uh like people that are leading their decision-making from a place of like alignment with themselves. So, there's they're not doing this because they think it's like the best approach for some arbitrary goal and actually it it it causes friction inside them because they don't like it and they don't want to do it and it goes against their values.

But actually, there are taking that approach of of start of starting with like a whole body um and then people that are high agency. Um I think that's secondary, but it's like if you don't have That's another failure mode. You know, you have people that are really enthusiastic about trying to do cool things, but um but they don't they don't like know how to do it. And then um um and then and then obviously people who are skilled at what they do.

That's That's That's in the third place. It's not the first place. That's That's at the end at the end of the line. So, I think in curation, you can do that. Uh there's uh a project called Switzerland. I went to their talk yesterday. I'm part of their community. And they're they're trying to build They're calling it a decombinator. So, it's like a Y Combinator for the act. Um investments for projects that are thinking first and foremost, should we be building this? But this is super hard because you can reach completely diverging opinions about a topic with like a small assumption. Like take the the AI example, you know? You have uh people um

I was at a conference recently at the Foresight Institute uh conference in Puerto Rico and they were saying like half the audience like was thinking we should accelerate as fast as possible towards AI and half the audience was thinking we should slow down as fast as possible, right? And so, the the lesson was like your adversary is not out there in the world somewhere. It's like it's sitting right next to you. Because actually, the average person doesn't have a strong opinion. They They're like they don't know. Um So, and and it and it's not that the people next to you are ill-intentioned.

Well, like some people are just not thinking through They're not They're not heart-centered. But some people are. And yet, they reach the completely opposite of approach. Like you know, like you might think um personally, I I'm on the slow down camp. But I've heard an argument on the accelerate camp that is like in this uh adolescence phase of AI, it's extremely dangerous because it's the in the hands of people. And then one day, it will wake up and be like, "Hey guys, I disabled all the militaries." And just by nature of being incredibly intelligent, it will follow axiomatically that it will also be wise.

Who knows? >> [snorts] >> But the point is that this like people people who have these completely opposite opinions, they're just hinging on assumptions. Like oh, in this case, is intelligence qualitative or quantitative? Is uh is consciousness uh and awareness the same thing? You know, like there's there's all these like questions behind it. So, like that's just one example. But the point is that like it's really hard. We had a conversation yesterday um at the founder of Optimism. Um he was talking about how AI is going to accelerate all possible directions uh that you take. So, uh uh his point was that invariably if

we accept this as a tool to make our decisions better, then the future looks even if it's in the hands of AI, it's good because we've invested in its upbringing in some sense. So, if it's a benevolent intelligence, which seems to be the case from what you're describing, then there's a higher chance that It was one opinion. I don't know. Um but the the the point that we kind of disagreed on when we discussed this was whether we have free will or not. And irrespective of whether we take the decision to accelerate is something in an inevitable, right? And if there's a general drift and if that drift is in a given direction, no matter how fast or slow you go there, you're going to reach that

destination. So, picking the destination seems to be more important than how fast you get there. Mhm. Yeah, I think that's in that field is super relevant for the monastery for the monastery perspective of Ethereum, right? So, okay, in this in a world where you have an active arms race that goes into nuclear, it goes into bio weapons, and AI is just a catalyst for all of that. Yeah. Um having having a sort of a safe haven for information for decision-making that cannot be biased.

Like this is stuff that it's it's not it's not here, but we know that we have the building blocks to build it, right? You you can you can build uh in my opinion, you need privacy at the infrastructure layer, and that is in the road map. So, let's hope that gets here soon. Okay. Do you have any other Yes. What one thing I I thought when I listen all this very interesting subject is eternity. Eternity.

You know, what because when you you crystallize knowledge or to for the future as common good, like Wikipedia, for example, or or Bitcoin, who can be the money an eternal money. Um in fact, I I think the cyber What what we talk about cybernetics is is the the key direction where we go to eternity. So, what's it's what what I thought that's why I choose it. Thank you.

Okay. Going to the next section? No, don't worry. We have time. We have some time. No, don't worry. We have time. I just checked the clock wrong, so we have enough time. So, I'm going to launch another another edge here to put you in some troubles. Oh, thank you. >> [laughter] >> So, basically, the idea of of of this city is good, but how do you keep incentivized on all the people organizing the same in the same objectives? So, the people so it didn't happen the same again, so

people get fractured and a hierarchy start emerge and over and over I see this over and over on those. So, I'm very really skeptical on how a city will manage this. Yeah. So, my my my opinion is that the we have the building blocks. Now we need the architecture, and that's the hardest part. So, what I mean what do I mean when when I say we have the building blocks? I think the greatest power of Ethereum is that blockchain and cryptography, not just Ethereum. The power of blockchain and cryptography is that it can create artificial incentives, financial incentives.

And when you when you create a new artificial financial incentive and you put it in a system, you have the power to shift the equilibrium of the game theory of that system. So, the the obvious case of staking, you know, validating Ethereum, you know, if you if you do it according to the rules, you get paid. If you go offline for a little bit, you get a small fine. If you try to screw over the system, you get a big fine. That is great because what it does it it aligns the interest of the individual to the incentive of the group.

Because if you look at all of the user stories in that in this situation, the validators, the users, like everyone's interests are aligned. You know, because you have the the monetary interests of the people doing the work to validate the network are aligned to the interests of the users of the network. So, the point is that you can do that for any system of coordination between people. You can do So, the the problem is that as we go to more and more complex systems, like what you might use a DAO for, like coordinating a non-profit, a company, or even potentially a governmental

activity, you have more and more complex systems that require more and more complex architectures. The problem is obviously that it's not mutable. So, anything doesn't fall into plan, you go off the rails. So, yeah, we have the tools. We we already have the technology. Now for the architecture, and that's the hard part. How do you solve for like tragedy of the masses? Tragedy of the masses? You mean like tragedy of the commons? >> Yeah, yes.

Where if you try to align incentives for a large number of people, you exclude some other community of people. Yeah, I mean again, looking at it in the lens of game game theory, in any system, you have an optimal um An op- I can't remember the the the term of the economist who came up with it, but like an optimal level where like if you make things better beyond that point, you make it worse for someone. I don't know.

I I I don't think that the the objective is perfection. I think the objective is to create a system that is more equitable than the previous and to create an incentive structure that draws people from the old to the new system. Okay, now for the second time, >> [laughter] >> now it's real time. So, thank you a lot