Integral Currency Matrix with Stephanie Lepp

Transcript

foreign [Music] ation on the Pod today we have Stephanie Lepp who is an award-winning producer and creator of the infinite lunchbox a Production Studio devoted to the acceleration of the evolution of culture in America former executive director at The Institute for cultural Evolution which is a non-profit Think Tank devoted to uh transcending polarization and before that she was an executive producer at the center for Humane technology which was the organization at the heart of the Netflix documentary the social dilemma um Stephanie has won a couple rewards Awards the webies for uh deep reckonings a series of uh of um videos that imagine

morally courageous versions of our public figures on this episode we talk about how crypto can solve problems associated with the meaning crisis with multi-polar traps um with social media and so in this episode we talk about different leadership styles uh how cryptocurrencies and the pluralistic mechanisms that they create are going to change the way the fabric of society and culture operates or they could and so I think this is really fruitful episode in thinking about how the stuff that Stephanie thinks about which is our social fabric evolution of of our social media intersects with the stuff that uh we coordination think about every day

which is cryptocurrencies and crypto economics and and using technology in order to create a more green-pilled regenerative world so really enjoyed this episode with Stephanie such a gig of brain and I think that you're going to enjoy this episode as well working in web3 is awesome but working outside of the typical W-2 employee structure is a deal breaker for so many opolis is helping the self-solving worker focus on what they do best their work tax time is coming up opolis helps professionalize your business by helping you form an entity generate proof of employment through pay stubs and receive a W-2 at the end of the tax year are you self-employed and forced to spend money on expensive Health Care insurance with limited coverage opolis leverages group buying power through a community employment

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alrighty what's up Stephanie how you doing hi Kevin I'm good I'm surrounded by non-stop rain um how are you things are good out here in Colorado are really interested to chat with you I think you and I have been going back and forth on Twitter for a long time leading up to this episode maybe a great place to tee off would be uh tell me about your work at the center for Humane technology and the uh the Deep Reckoning series excuse me deep reckonings series that you did store well those are separate because I did deep recordings before I got to CHT but maybe just to start with the center for Humane Tech yeah so for those of you who are not familiar the center for human technology was the organization that was featured at the heart of the

Netflix documentary the social dilemma founded by Tristan Harris who is a dear friend of mine and basically doing the work of trying to uh how might I put it rescue uh human consciousness from the onslaught of social media that is driving us down to the bottom of our brain stems um the center for human Tech does a lot of educational work and um Tristan has testified before Congress many times and and works with policy makers I was our executive producer so I was largely in charge of our podcast which is called your undivided attention I think is very worthy of your undivided attention um and also I worked on a few other media projects there but um

yeah that is the center for Humane Tech yeah so I just I just want to dive in on this idea by the way I'm a listener of undivided attention I was a huge fan of the social dilemma um the race to the bottom of the brain stem kind of refers to the phenomena where since we have an attention economy uh there's an economy that is racing to the bottom of the brain stem uh things like outrage and things that are very shocking to us it's almost like there's an economy that's that's uh trying to drive content in our Direction that's my understanding of the race to the bottom of the brain stem is is that how you would characterize it yeah I mean I guess the way to put it is uh if if uh if the way that social media makes its monies by keeping people engaged and

engaged as much as possible for as long as possible and what is the most engaging content often it's the content that angers us and outrages us and polarizes us and divides us there is so there's kind of a direct um tethering between the you know the growing of these companies and the and the way that they maximize their short-term profits and the driving us down to the bottom of our brain stems to being polarized and addicted and outraged and angry all the time and so one enormous area of innovation would be the business model right the business model of social media that is not predicated on Perpetual engagement but is predicated also upon uh you know

people's well-being and and actually and and and the Tristan coin the term time well spent to have our time spent on social media be time well spent and to maintain our capacity to choose not to spend time on social media if we decide that other things are more worthy of our time or are more worthy of our undivided attention beautiful I I one of my ways of conceiving our current culture war is being as a result of the race to the bottom of the brain stem if we're polarized in a part and we're just outraged all the time and at war with each other maybe we're profitable for these social media companies but it's kind of creating this culture War that's dividing the country curious what you think about that take

oh no exactly and now you're speaking to more of my recent work kind of since my time at the center for Humane technology but yeah my work is largely focused on integration integration of different perspectives right now we often see these perspectives as at war or there being a tug of war it's either provex or anti-vax which is actually kind of meaningful meaningless sorry it's like we should be pro-vax in the circumstances in which vaccines should be used and anti-vaxx in the circumstances in which vaccines should not be I don't think I think most people are not prepared to say vaccines always in all circumstances or vaccines never in no circumstances and so we're all holding a piece of the puzzle let's say and we want to put them together and

develop an understanding of under which circumstances to use vaccines so yeah a lot of the polarization kind of in a way I mean maybe uh this might sound like an over idealistic way of thinking about it but we often end up with the with different pieces of the same puzzle right uh and so let's say and we'll get into this with current let's say in the world of cryptocurrencies it's not necessarily one currency versus another currency I could just say thank God for the diversity of currencies wow like good thing we have a diverse portfolio of ways of storing and exchanging value how grateful are we that we've given birth to so many ways of doing that so then the next question is under what

circumstances if any or under should these different ones be used or how can we mix and match you know how can we develop a meta of like a you know like a multi-currency way of you know rolling such that we are more resilient in the face of changing circumstances changing economic circumstances so uh yeah we get split up into these you know different whatever Echo Chambers polarized piece of it and so and I'm kind of my job or part of what I try to do culturally is bring the pieces together right man uh that's that's so interesting I'm reminded of this Sam Harris quote uh that goes something like nuances the enemy of common understanding and it feels like we're

kind of how do we go from these polarized Echo Chambers where it's just provax anti-vaxx but we can actually encapsulate the Nuance of oh we want vaccines in this scenario but not in this scenario um and then the other thing I heard in there was plurality creates anti-fragility um how do we move from a world in which we've got kind of uh we've got a plurality of ways of funding the commons and of representing our values and not just boiling down to the lowest common denominator of of social media but also but also economics those are two of the the threads that I that I want to pull in there as we get into the crypto conversation totally amen I mean you're speaking my love language how do we how

do we do this I mean that is the and I think part of it how do we let's say bring these pieces of the puzzle together I honestly I I don't I don't see that much of it out there but I do think um and I think I think like some of what I see out there let's say in the in the anti-polar polarization space um is still at the level of of kind of like both sides of them a little bit it's like we heard one side we heard the other side okay now we're done it's like no no we're not done yet where's the integration right or as Hegel would say where's the synthesis we got the thesis we got the antithesis where's the synthesis so um and I can describe or and maybe maybe we can get there later but uh yeah I can there are um many

projects in the works but that is that is essentially the goal is to start showing us teaching us how to do this and make it look more stunning and more beautiful than the only one sides kind of thing or then the both sizes them kind of thing right yeah so my next question will be ridiculously unsophisticated but I'm gonna go for it anyway how do how do we how do we do it and how does does crypto play a role at all yes okay totally so let's talk about crypto in this context of bringing the pieces together but I'm gonna I'm gonna get nerdy here I'm gonna introduce a um a framework it's a matrix and then we're going to use it we're going to apply it to crypto so

um and this is amazing I'm gonna I'm gonna call it I call it an integral Matrix so I'm just going to take a couple minutes and explain what it is and then we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna try to um we're gonna use it within the context of crypto and currencies so basically um here's the introduction so a cut like every couple months I'm going to use the the concept of leadership to explain how this Matrix works so every couple months uh the Harvard Business Review publishes an article that's like you know what are the top 10 qualities of being a good leader right as if there's like one way to be a good leader um and so a few years ago Daniel Goldman who's uh he's an expert in emotional

intelligence he did something that I found really brilliant where he thank you oh my god Kevin okay so Kevin has some stuff on the screen I'll explain it so for listeners um so Daniel Coleman he interviewed hundreds of leaders hundreds of Business Leaders specifically and he identified six distinct leadership styles and uh you don't have to you don't have to know what they all are but I'm just gonna say them out loud so commanding Visionary affiliative Democratic Pace setting and coaching and by the way the map is not the territory it's not that these are the sticks and only shakes it's like there were clusters in his interviews that he identified and they were this

these six clusters and so just to give you a sense of the first three Styles commanding demands immediate compliance Visionary mobilizes people towards a vision an affiliative creates Harmony and builds emotional bonds so if you can imagine a matrix there's the sticks across the top and then there's the next um row underneath it uh let's say like describes them and then what Daniel Goldman did is he identified the circumstances in which each leadership style is most effective so commanding is really helpful in a crisis the Kickstart a turnaround or with problem employees Visionary is really helpful when changes

require a new vision or when clear direction is needed affiliative is really helpful to heal risk in a team or motivate people in stressful circumstances so he's basically identifying the circumstances in which each leadership style works the best which is already really helpful right he's not saying one way good other way bad different ones are helpful in different circumstances but he goes further and he identifies each leadership Style's impact on the overall organ organizational climate and so commanding surprise surprise has a really negative impact because it really does not feel good to be commanded Visionary has the most positive impact because it feels really good to mobilize

around a shared vision affiliative is also also feels positive it because it feels good to you know make up with people and get along so to summarize it's not that right commanding is always that and Visionary it's always good different circumstances call for different leadership styles but the leadership styles are more fun and fair and Equitable and enjoyable for everyone than others so if we're in a crisis let's say you know I can tell my team like yo I'm going to shift into hard ass mode for a second I'm going to become commanding in order to get us out of the crisis so that I don't have to be commanding anymore right I use we use the strategies we like less together to change the circumstance to get us into a

different circumstance so that we don't have to use them anymore and so pose is a question you could say under what circumstance if any should we use which strategy we have many strategies for achieving the same goal under which circumstances should we use which strategy in order to achieve the goal some for some things we might say none there are some things that we might say under no circumstances should that strategy be used slavery we're done none you know but it does shift from strategy right wrong or like it's X strategy good bad to under what circumstances if any which I think is a very helpful shift Daniel Goldman did not make this thinking of it as a template for doing

this what we might call integral strategy but that's what I would call it right because it integrates different strategies for achieving the same goal and and once you see the Matrix in this way are hard like once you see it you start to see it everywhere like energy sources under what circumstances coal nuclear solar wind birth control under what circumstances pill and or IUD and or natural you know track my cycles and or you like call me crazy but economic systems under what circumstances communism socialism capitalism you might think I'm insane but I honestly think that's part of what China is doing like they call themselves socialist but I think they're actually very opportunist

and they're just like shifting into whatever thing is going to help them achieve their goal right so so you know that is the that's kind of the the layout and what I was thinking we might do if you are willing to like get this nerdy together if you think it would be interesting for your audience is actually try to do this for different currencies including crypto right well that's amazing uh just to summarize uh back for the list listener there's six different leadership styles that uh Daniel Goldman came up with here commanding Visionary affiliative Democratic Pace setting coaching this is not all the leadership styles but it's just the sixth that were in this this chart that we were looking at and if

you're listening on audio that that's just basically all you need to know is that they're different they're good in different situations and for different types of problem Styles so uh commanding is really good for in a crisis kick starting a turnaround uh whereas more uh coaching is is better for long-term relationships and has positive externalities to the organization so the way we transpose this to the question that I asked you how crypto can help solve some of these problems is um at least the way I interpret it is that okay so since we can program our values into our money we can build online communities and design them intentionally uh maybe we could kind of look at different pluralistic ways to

have different leadership styles that you you build a dowel that that solves through the rates to the bottom of the brain stem might look different than a dowel that solves for climate change might look different than an educational Dow uh did I encapsulate that in a way since you yeah and I think the other kind of like way that it let's say like connects to create is like then when someone asks like why crypto you have a very clear answer to that question right it's like crypto under these circumstances in which other currencies are just not uniquely designed to be effective though it just becomes a really it's yeah there's like a very specific answer to the why crypto question

what would you place I mean just the major currencies in the world I'm thinking U.S dollar would you my first reaction to that is that it's commanding um would call itself a democracy Bitcoin uh you know like are there are all of the currencies that exist in the Fiat world in the same category you know where would you sort of place the major the highest cap uh currencies leadership style oh I I wouldn't have even thought to try to kind of like combine it with a leadership style but that's um I mean maybe I mean I think I think I think the question you're asking though is like you know for this for in this chart the first row in The Matrix the first row I think is actually modus

operandi it's like how does this leadership style work and I think the question that you're kind of asking it's like how does Fiat money work it's kind of a question we don't really ask ourselves because it's like a fish and water it's like for most of us it's the only thing we've ever had so yeah it's like what is the personality of Fiat money like what how does it work like how you know does it like preclude us it is it is commanding in the sense that like it doesn't I don't know I mean I don't know does it kind of force us to make money in it in order to it's kind of like a close I I don't know I mean that would be a question like what is the person how would you characterize Fiat money what are its characteristics

yeah well I mean I think that you know for me something like the US dollar is so domineering and you know it's the world's currency and it has such a network effect that um you know maybe it started out as Visionary but now it's just commanding of and Pace setting for the world of of how the world works but the opportunity that I see is what if we're moving to a world in which every local community um and I'm using local in both the geographic way but also like the across uh memetic niches uh ways like what if each each subreddit had its own currency and could program its values into its money you all of a sudden you have a pluralistic pluralistic ecosystem of local currencies local both mimetically and geographically what is the pluralism

of that does that create a counterbalance to like the commanding style of the US dollar um you know maybe I'm leading the witness a little bit here but that's that's at least how I think about about us starting to create a diversity of pluralistic mechanisms to solve some of these problems that we started the episode with yeah I mean I mean one one characteristic let's say a Fiat money that kind of like comes to mind for me and this is very like I'm going to be very much deferring to you here but you know it's um like time let's say like as compared to let's say time banking or I don't know maybe that's not so true or local currency let's um is that um when shh um if if a lot of your money is like

coming from way way far away and being sent way way far I mean I I don't know it just it seems very it seems very unresilient in a crisis yeah currency although I don't have um I don't I don't have I don't have the I don't have enough of a way to explain why but whereas um let's say you were kind of doing what you were just describing with your local and both senses kind of economy um you would be a little bit more resilient like in moments of crisis something like that yeah like but I I think it's like a really pristine question right now is how do we create more resiliency in our economies like you know and I are recording this in a

week and which has been a bunch of Bank runs across the United States for the last couple weeks and um there's something about pluralism and intact agility that I think gets really gets really interesting there totally yeah and one way you create resilience is having a dive having a diverse portfolio of everything of anything of just making sure you don't have all your eggs in one basket so already it's just like putting all your eggs in any one currency sounds like a dangerous proposition irrespective of what that currency is but I you know if you were to and you can like stop me if this is not the direction but if you if we were to put four three or four or let's say just currencies on the top of this imaginary

integral currency Matrix and they were you know Fiat money crypto name to like time Banking and something else and we were to actually try to go through and kind of fill it out is that uh do you want to do that it's really up to you you want to do that let's do it yeah so Fiat money crypto time banking what was the fourth one um you tell me I mean um [Music] is that on the table still those kinds of uh sure what else is on the or are we yeah or we can do those three

that sounds great okay uh so let's start with Fiat money and let's maybe just choose the US dollar since that's the one there yeah I think we're both most familiar with and I'm gonna uh if you're following Along on video I'm just gonna share my screen but we'll we'll be talking through everything uh for the audio listeners as well this is awesome I so by the way I love that you're down to do this okay Sophia money so what what would we say are like what's the mo you know Fiat money it's like um I think it's got the largest Network effects I don't want to leave the witness here you could I'll just be the the typer you can you you can say what attributes jump

to mind for you though well we can say it's not like springing forth from like nature it's like it doesn't grow on trees like you kind of have to do something like like time like we all have time over two of being alive um I don't know how yeah it doesn't grow on trees may not be but it's like you have to do you have to do it's like a connived um I want to say it's like Fiat means by faith right so it's it's kind of like back backed by trust in your government yeah

which also means it's um it's prone to I don't know it's um its value Rises and falls with you know geopolitics and great all right so maybe yeah okay yeah so maybe crypto um most of our audiences in the eth ecosystem um we could do eth to the extent that that feels comfortable to you do you want me to leave this section since I think that I'm the one who knows yeah okay so um eth as a cryptocurrency was

the original utility was um you're paying for computation time um on the ethereum main net so basically if I call Smart contract function then it takes a certain amount of eth in order to do that um since then uh eth has become money to anything in the ecosystem so it's kind of like with US Dollars the original use case was paying taxes in US dollars but then it's kind of become money within anything that's built on top of US Dollars um and I think the value Rises and falls with geopolitics but I also think that it rises and falls with the utility

of the ethereum ecosystem so basically what dapps are built on top of it and what are the economics of them what's your reaction to that what would you say is the biggest difference between Fiat and crypto algorithmic monetary policies in crypto and Fiat money is uh the monetary policy is based on the FED decisions I'd also say that the tech is somewhat different uh the tech is World War II era with Fiat money and then with

with eth I'd say the tech is novel as the the tech is is internet native let's call it and when you say algorithmic monetary policies that means like it kind of like inherently adapts or something in a way that like the FED like theoretically adapts but is also like a like I don't know like constrained in a way by politics yeah so I'm just pulling up for the listeners who are on audio ultrasound Dot money which is a site that tracks eth's monetary Supply and um basically there's an algorithmic monetary policy in which there's a certain amount of inflation but it's offset by people by by the burning of eth when the network

gets really busy and so at the time of recording where we've burned about 67 000 eth since uh the merge which was this event where ethereum went to proof of stake so um the the ethereum ecosystem is like this highly tuned engine this machine that the monetary policy either inflates or deflates depending on how congested the network is um whereas the the US dollar inflates or deflates based off of decisions by the FED which is you know kind of a political private institution totally okay answer your question yeah yeah totally I think that's great Okay cool

so which you know and we can kind of start to kind of like you know think ahead a little bit and it's like you know this adaptive thing this if this sounds kind of actually ideal under normal circumstances actually to just have it like run on its own and adapt to what is actually happening in like a data-driven way whereas the Fiat thing actually sounds like what should be used in more of like I don't know like a crack something where like someone would need to step in and override the algorithm and be like whoa there's something that you might not understand that's going on you know or something but anyway anyway okay so yeah let's look at time let's look at times I think yeah I actually do so could you just explain what time banking

is because I don't know yeah currency is time it's you I mean historically and this I'm definitely no expert but historically the idea was you have a local time bank where let's say and the and the currency is ours and everyone's hours are equal and so if I put in three hours of babysitting time someone else can you know like take out three out or what you know I I Then I then I have a three hour IOU that I can use you know and and and and the ID and like everyone's time being made equal is absolutely not I mean that is like the opposite of I'm not the opposite of Fiat money is like like three hours of like a schweight shoot you know shoe law firms

whatever versus three hours of a plumber which maybe makes sense under some circumstances to really value those like extraordinarily differently and then there are maybe other circumstances right and we can define those when we might say you know what we're in a certain like everyone's time got to be equal for a second in order to get us out of this situation or because whatever whatever whatever but so that's kind of a that's the idea right uh this this might be sort of a post but could I call this an algorithmic monetary policy also I mean there's only a certain amount of time sort of derived from the universe maybe it's a very if it's an algorithmic

monetary policy it's just a rudimentary uh one hour equals one hour time equal everyone kind of monetary policy yeah and me and so and I should say I mean I don't there maybe there are time banks in which they've like calculated that some people's time is worth twice as much but I think that's actually part of the value of this currency and again like going back to the you want to have a diverse portfolio of like you know that's part of what makes it useful is that it is so different um I was like traveling in Europe with my dad after we graduated from school and I remember him saying that like time is the great equalizer because everyone has

the same like it even the rich and the poor the time passes the same for them and I thought that was like relatively profound that no matter how rich you get uh or how poor you get uh you have the same amount of time I mean it's it's not necessarily true when you think about like rich people being able to buy more time if they have cancer terminal disease or anything like that but uh at least when you're young and healthy time being the great equalizer I I found like something interesting and profound about that karmically yeah and that's that's perhaps the that's kind of that throws the idea that time banks are partially built on is let's let's use the fact that we all have you know hours to kind of um kind of equalize things a little bit

between us economically yeah cool well um maybe you should round It Out by doing Ithaca dollars yeah which again I don't I'm not but I I understand that the idea is is a local currency so I guess it's similar to Sia except for the fact that you can only use it in your actual Geographic local community and Ithaca is a town in New York that notoriously developed ethic dollars and I think they became pretty successful I don't actually know if they still exist I should have maybe looked into that thank you um but um yeah then it just keeps the money of Youth form released in Ithaca

it was one of the longest running local currency systems no longer in circulation yeah but the idea was they wanted to keep like you can like think about think about what you do for a living and where think about where your money comes from and where your money goes geographically speaking my money you know my I mean I do spend quite a lot of my I do spend quite a bit of money locally but I also spend it I like you know buying things for my cake like I don't know like you know it's like I do actually I that would be I'm sure there are some uh you know like money tracking apps that show you your Geographic spread but um in my Geographics right I imagine is pretty I don't even know so the idea with local

currencies is let's just keep it all let's just keep it all local like keep it here like support your everything it's like your local businesses your local schools your local like just take it and invest locally and there's actually speaking now I'm getting a little ahead of myself with the Matrix but one anecdote that I think will be interesting there was a an Eco Village in Italy called dominor that had a local currency so everyone I think most people worked outside of the Eco Village so they would get paid in Fiat money they would come to their little local they would convert their their euros into the local currency and only use the local currency between each other which meant they were growing this huge pool of Euros that they were getting paid in and

not using and then when they wanted to make a big capital investment like buy a new plot of land or something they had all of these Euros saved up so you can also mix and match you can like play the currencies against each other like get some save it because you figured out with group of people how to self-organize and get things done together and then you have the you know so so that's kind of a yeah you can't it's not one or the other two yeah yeah it feels like we're designing for a Wilderness there's a pluralism of currencies and you know what's so interesting to me is having identified those problems at the top of the episode around the race to the bottom of the brain stem and false information and the culture wars and all that kind of stuff is like what would have to be true to

invent a currency that gets passed along on social media that's based off of oh I don't know the value you create in the world as opposed to like whether or not you can trigger a dopamine Rush at the bottom of the brain stem and what way can we rewrite economies to be oriented around their actual human values as opposed to what's profitable for the tech companies this is the way for me that we intersect where we started the episode with where we are now is designing economies that uh that instead of racing to the bottom of the brainstorm we're racing towards whatever our Our Community Values are and creating like a shelling point around around those things that's the way I connect them please please do that I would be a much more um successful producer if you did create that currency and the question I then

want to ask you though is do you think that I think I maybe already asked you and I think I kind of know you but do you think that Fiat money under no circumstances do you think we should actually like wind it down entirely if you had a magic wand well I think there are people who think that way I think that one of the beauties of the internet and the pluralism of cryptocurrencies is that we have this Infinite Canvas to design better mousetraps on and and I think that basically well you know I'm a software engineer not an economist not financially advice et cetera et cetera but you know if we can program our values into our money

then we let the market compete for which money has value and is ascendant and um if Fiat money gets out competed by things that are algorithmically denominated and um you know like local you know how I said like nuances the enemy of common understanding like I think of US dollar as like the ultimate Nuance uh Destroyer like everything devolves down to um I don't know like Budweiser and like advertising dollars in the US because it's so network based and so commoditized but you know a world in which most of our like a good portion of our income comes in like local community currencies like public goods coin or Ithaca dollars that incentivizes us to

be active in our local communities to me feels like a really interesting counterweight to the US dollar in terms of its commoditization and have it creating a market where where those things can actually compete to me seems really interesting but um you know I think that I'm uh you're on my podcast and I'm interviewing you so I'll take the question back to you you know what would be ideal uh like currency experiment look like to you and especially knowing that we want to solve these problems that you identified at the top of the episode what do you think yeah I mean I tend to be can you put your um what you had back up on the screen I mean my my general sense is that when we're giving birth to something new we kind of have to throw

spaghetti at the wall you know it's like when we're trying when we're giving birth to a new way of doing something like I'm let's experiment you know like I don't need and it's okay to me that if we try crypto on too many things and it doesn't work on everything or that's part of what learning is like we're just trying it on everything so I feel like I think we're just in the beginning of this like wild experimentation time and we should just let us let it roll like let's try let's thank God really that we're giving birth to a new car a new way of doing this we've had we've been very like you know maybe once upon a time there were many ways or there was bartering or whatever with different kinds of and then there has been a whole

period that has been so constrained and that's super as we talked that's super unresilient that's so uh fragile and so yeah let there be experimentation in this domain please like yes let it be safe and responsible but you know I would I would pray that we would kind of come out of this period and are you familiar with the hype cycle maybe that's a the Gartner hype cycle yeah and just explain it really quickly for listeners it's a it's just a it's just the frame it's just an idea of the different phases that technology go through and there are so the first phase thank you for say to the technology trigger which is just the introduction of the technology the technology is introduced the second phase is the peak

of inflated expectations where like this technology is amazing it can do everything it's going to save the world it's gonna you know like restore democracy it's gonna solve poverty you know because we try using the technology on everything because we're so excited about it and then inevitably we hit the trough of disillusionment it doesn't work on everything and so we're like oh my God this technology is destroying it's destroying our families look at the way kids talk to grown-ups these days like it's ruined the world you know and then and then we realize what it's good for we've realized what it's not good for so then we get to ascend the slope of Enlightenment we're really like you know what this technology is useful for some things not useful for other things it's either for what it's useful for and then we hit the plateau of productivity

where we just like use it for what it's useful for and it kind of plateaus I mean I don't know how much you like like whatever resonate with that but I would hope that we are gonna move and now that we've gone through this so many times with so many Technologies you would think we'd be like wait I'm noticing a pattern here and we could like accelerate to the slope of Enlightenment a little bit faster I don't know if we'd be able to do that but either way you know I would pray that we would get to a slope of Enlightenment where we have like yeah identified the circumstances in which crypto are useful which I think are probably many more circumstances than Fiat money it could be that that is the dominant way that becomes more of the operating system and Fiat money really actually becomes more of like a

plan b or a plan C or like only in emergency circumstances would we shift into commanding leadership and Fiat money and we will only do it to get ourselves out of the circumstances so you can go back to crypto and Visionary which is more fun enjoyable and fair for everyone yeah it's it's beautiful the way you're sort of synthesizing those Concepts I think we talked about what's the thesis what's the antithesis what's what's the synthesis um I guess my yes and on top of that would be that I think a web 3 is evolutionary um and we have the Byzantine generals problem solved which is basically the double spend problem in a decentralized system that gave right to rise to bitcoin and Bitcoin had its own inflated expectations and trough of

disillusionment and through many Market cycles of it going through that we had ethereum and uh Bitcoin cash and Litecoin and Z cash um and then we have on top of that uh as Evolution continues we have these bull bear Cycles between fear and greed uh that are basically like their own little Gartner hype Cycles inflated expectations and trough of disillusionment and through that Evolution we have these questions yeah no I just mean that like these these these currencies are all competing with each other and now we're starting to get more like Advanced nuances nuanced currencies like things like uh molok Dao and and um maker Dow and get coined out and coordinate and and so so now we've got

this whole like evolutionary ecosystem that's rising and falling together but it's all kind of like competing with each other and um and so you know I'd be interested like you run the experiment a thousand times is it the more democratic or Visionary experiments that always win are there scenarios in which the commanding uh ones kind of win and you know just that evolutionary I'm trying to extend your thinking by adding like an evolutionary frame to uh you know to like the Battleground between currencies but like what are the ways that we could design an evolutionary ecosystem where we end up at like solving for the bottom of the brain stem problem and culture wars and stuff like that because I think that that's a really important existential uh question as crypto becomes more

influential is like how do we rotate capital and talent from like bigger decentralized casinos and Ponzi schemes which like a lot of crypto is that to be honest to the more regen stuff that gives new business models to social media into journalists and stuff like that I guess that would be my question back to you is like you know how do we how do we route multipolar traps yeah exactly and maybe we should even explain what a multipolar trap is I'm not sure the whole all the audience would know go for it oh I am yeah I mean if you don't mind oh yeah so tragedy of the commons is an example of a multi-polar trap it's when it behooves I mean actually social media is a perfect example of this it's because it's because if I don't do it

the other guy will right and so all the companies are competing to get more and more and more and more and more attention until game over right for everyone or tragedy of the commons competing to you know fish in this you know like fish all the fish until game over there's no more fish and now you've destroyed it you've destroyed the entire game so the question like how do we make the game more infinite you know how to given given these you know how to or or as maybe as a well so the yeah how I mean this is uh and and I should be clear some technologies never make it to the slope of Enlightenment they die in the trough of disillusionment and so it is it can be dangerous um but um

I mean there's so many I I mean I I don't know I think that the the what's coming up in my mind now is just that because I hear this question you know framed in terms of you know do we do we like take over the existing systems or do we build new systems and my general answer is like everything all of the above we're all kind of perfectly positioned wherever we are to be doing you know if our work is in line with let's say uh the frame I can give her in as the in line is making the game more infinite let's say um then I all of the above you know like so like if you're if you're if you feel you're Dharma is to try to go inside of the big dinosaurs and try to change their hearts like please by all means

and if there's also the Buckminster Fuller of just you build your own thing and make those old things obsolete you know I would say do it all you know the goal for me as far as I understand it is you know to grow the team bigger and bigger until it includes as much of life as possible so I don't I tend to be not like an US versus them kind of mentality um but I also very much understand where that comes from and I mean not where I operate tends to be at the level of culture of just like how we think um but um yeah but uh yeah I think it's gonna take awesome experience yeah so to me like the way I Define multi-polar traps is that like there's a

first attractor which is like I'm gonna do what's right for me selfishly but then if I do that it undermines the system upon which the game relies and then that's like the second trap where you have a collapse and you know the example that they use in meditations on molok which is this famous uh essay on on multiplayer traps is that say you have a pond in which there's five fishermen that are all uh fishing upon where there's 500 fish per year that you could fish sustainably and each person gets a hundred but like fisherman a realizes oh I could get 150 fish if I deplete but like I'm depleting the pond uh for everyone else and then fisherman B says oh this other one's getting 150.

this other Fisherman's getting 150 I'm going to get 150 and then everyone threw their own selfish incentives uh erodes the foundation upon which they could sustainably be fishing this Pond and that's the second poll of the multi-polar Trap is that you get systemic collapse and then no one gets as many fish as they would have if they at all just agreed to fish sustainably and solving that multi-polar trap is like a cultural problem of how do we get the fishermen to work together to only do things sustainably but it's also like an incentive problem where you can say if someone defects from the game and they start overfishing the pond then all the other fishermen know about it and they can fishermen or Fisher people uh can can remedy it by uh by by basically taking like graduated sanctions against

the people who are abusing the commons and so for me the question is how do we create currency systems and cultures in which these people can coordinate instead of defect against each other and um once you see the multi-polar Trap you see it everywhere you see it in social media you see it in flying across the world in order to go to a conference while you're polluting the atmosphere with carbon and I think multi-polar traps are just super important thing for people to to understand as a framework for solving the problems that we detailed at the top so there's my there's my swing at it thank you yeah and and maybe the one thing that was perfect like that was beautiful and then maybe one kind of little detail I would add on the analogy so it's also the case that some fishermen let's say or Fisher

people are much more powerful than others and maybe are so powerful that they have the power to design the game or change the game and so there's this idea you know don't don't hate the players change the game which I love beautiful thank you Liv bori is the person who says that um don't hate the players change the game and some players have power over the game and so it could be that that's part of the ask like let's say like if I were to make it you know we didn't talk about deep reckonings but if my imaginary Mark Zuckerberg would actually take responsibility for changing the system that prevents him from having the kind of impact he says he wants to have

yeah I think that um that problem isn't going to even get worse as we see AIS that are 100 times smarter than than people in the next couple years it won't just be on the financial Vector it'll be on the brains Vector as well all right well I guess maybe like a parting thing I can leave is um we didn't quite um yeah for if if like yeah the invitation would be to kind of think think for yourselves as you go about the world using crypto using Fiat kind of Imagine for yourself like like these different currencies even if I just think of Fiat and crypto and not necessarily including time banking or

ethic dollars but how would I think about the circumstances in which these different currencies should be used and how might I think about like having like uh you're putting them together in some kind of like pragmatically pluralistic meta currency strategy that can kind of yeah be available to us as we pursue the infinite game in service of the infinite game yeah beautiful place to leave it I will have a link to the Dao leadership style uh tweet that you sent in the show notes and then where can people find you online if they want to learn more about your work oh yes yes finally on Twitter at Steph

well I've really enjoyed our conversations and I think that the work that you're doing is so important for the future of humanity and I hope that it intersects with crypto more and more in the the reason me too so that'd be great me too thank you Kevin thank you for having me yeah thanks so much for coming peace and love peace and love foreign [Music]