Blue Skies and Social Media

hi everyone this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny colorado today is january 15th 2021 we are halfway through january already it's been a hell of a month a lot of fun really enjoyed it and i'm sure you guys have too so the topic of the hour is social media and i've made a few videos about it and what's really fun is that whenever you tweet anything there's a about a 50 chance crypto media is going to pick it up of course they never get it right so there's all these articles floating around about us building a decentralized twitter or competing with twitter building a social network and at the moment we're not doing that we are internally looking we have a lot of research projects many of my company has almost 300 people in it and about 100 work full time every day on cardano and they do great work we have people all across the spectrum who do work everywhere else we do we have people work in zero knowledge cryptography we have people who work in reputation systems and rating systems we do work in voting systems and we actually do think about media we do think about things like artificial intelligence and the veracity of information we do think a lot about ratings we do think a lot about proper information propagation and concepts like meaningful participation and one of the most prominent things that we've been working on has been catalyst now catalyst is a very unique piece of software because it's social software and in itself it's it's social network we have more than 5 000 people working within the idea skill platform augmented by a modified fork of german gander with specialized voting tools where people propose ideas they rise the challenges that are given and they actually vote to fund real projects and 11 have been funded with the closing of fun too thanks to the tireless work of door and his team and the many people in the community who have participated now that platform continues to grow and it's probably going to have at least eight or nine funds i think throughout this year if not more and they keep growing in size in fact the very next one i think is approaching a million dollars and they'll just continue to grow in scope and level of participation and so there you have ratings social accountability human interaction the discussion of complex ideas and then actual democratic processes to allow things to rise to the top and some things to fall and not get approved and of course you have toxic behavior those who haven't gotten funded perhaps they get very angry about it or maybe some people think that the process is not as inclusive as it needs to be so you actually have to have built within that system resilience and the ability to overcome that criticism so those social dynamics those information flows those discussions that occur are the bread and butter of a social network and this happens to be a democratic social network in that it's used for consent of the govern to fund projects but you could reapply those foundational tools that we're developing with catalyst to other social networks and we've been talking about that we've been thinking about that i it's no coincidence that i've been in the space for so long that i've seen things like bats and i've seen things like steam and i've seen things like hive and we've seen gab and we've seen mastodon and we've seen many efforts that exist to talk about decentralized social media and really what you have to do when you think about a model like that is you have to ask well what is productive okay so i like special purpose social networks a voting network or a network for science or a network for example like stack exchange for the curation development of code and asking questions and q a systems because you have a purpose for being there and there are things that are on topic versus things that are off topic the challenge with general purpose social media is that nothing is off limits and everybody's there and everybody's interacting and there's a blending of your social life with your family life with your religious life with your work life and it's not really clear where all those boundaries are and then people come and they try to curate it and it's just not working well for anyone and so it's one of the things that society has gotten to where we're having difficulty and what's happening is that instead of these networks elevating us increasing our collective empathy and wisdom these networks giving us access to more and better information it's actually causing us to get more divided it's reducing our empathy for people and tolerance of people it's making us behave in ways that we would never behave if we were talking to a person in person to their face and overall what's happening is we're seeing a grand radicalization of people throughout society okay and it's gotten to the point where we're not listening to each other anymore we're pre-judging people very rapidly we're taking very shallow appraisals we create strawmen parodies of those things and people we don't and then we attack them and we live in different realities i blame social media for this and i blame the algorithms that guide it and i blame broken incentive models for that so it's not good enough just to say let's build something decentralized because let's say you do that and you don't have the right social dynamics the right tools for discussion the right ability to promote information flows and curate information and things to the radicalized people what you're ending going to end up doing is just creating echo chambers so you'll end up having lots of these little social networks and each and every one of them will have a particular opinion it just so happens that twitter is an example of that it's a very left-leaning social network and it is populated by the elites of society the media fortune 500 companies politicians and it's an echo chamber so everything in trending is anti-republican and anti-right there's really nothing there on a day-to-day basis well i go in my experience reading these things that that has anything positive to say about anything other than a particular political philosophy so you can type in any right-leaning person regardless of who they are they can win a nobel prize they can cure cancer if they happen to not have the right politics there's just going to be an echo chamber of fifty thousand sixty thousand tweets saying how horrible they are as a human being and a person there's no value in a social network like that to society because even if you happen to agree with those politics there's no nuance in the conversation there's no acknowledgement that you're talking about a human being there's no discussion that perhaps this person's not evil or disgusting or terrible it's a dog pile however on just how bad a person is so you're not really going to build bridges and and it just forces everybody just pick their sides if you try to stop it you get dog piled as well so either you stay silent or you can donate and if you happen to be on the receiving side makes you really angry that people are treating you so unfairly so you just generalize every single person who happens to have those beliefs and put them into one category you label them as intolerant and so as a consequence we stop listening to each other we stop trying to understand each other we stop trying to collaborate with each other and you see the cycle go on and on and on and get worse and worse and worse so it makes no sense at all to attempt to create a decentralized social network unless you solve the bigger problem of how do you de-radicalize people and promote effective communication and collective empathy amongst people that's where you start and it doesn't matter if the platform centralized or decentralized decentralization reinforces resilience and prevents censorship but it in no way gives you utility or social benefit to any of these things okay all it does is just prevent you from being de-platform but there's no use to the network if the network just talks about one thing it would be beautiful is for any event i could get in one place a diverse set of opinions well balanced with consensus on the facts and circumstances of the event we can't get that anymore if someone gets shot by the police in the united states how that is going to be reported has nothing to do with the facts and circumstances and everything to do with who that person is and what group they belong to that's the reality that we live in and people's opinion about that is pretty fixed that's a problem of propaganda and it is just a terrible terrible reality and it's so incredibly dehumanizing and you go to any event economic events environmental catastrophes like lead in the water to oil spills you can go down to even forest fires and debased upon where it happened the politics and these types of things everything gets interpreted one way or the other i would love to have objective reality where an event happens and before we talk about opinion before we talk about how to analyze this and talk about how society is so horrible we can just get a baseline of what actually happened and what do we know for certainty what is the difference between objective reality and subjective opinion we don't get that anymore in mass media everything is through a lens in a spectrum my industry is a great example of that for over 12 years we've had to endure relentless media criticism of cryptocurrencies i remember the early days of bitcoin any mention of bitcoin had to be followed by used for drugs terrorism child pornography the purchase of illegal goods you could go to every article written about bitcoin from 2009 2010 2011 2012 by mainstream media and it had to include at least a tacit acknowledgement that that's the primary use case of our industry we're a trillion dollar industry that now central banks are taking reserves in and many of the wealthiest people in the world hold and is fundamentally changing the way that the world financial systems work but in the beginning four years all of us in the bitcoin movement had to live with the association that any time bitcoin was mentioned we were either condoning child pornography condoning weapons dealing condoning drug trafficking or some other nefarious activity and there was no apologies hundreds of obituaries written this was the media response it was unbelievable to me we'd always try to talk about the good things how instantaneous settlement probably a good idea the fundamental changes to identity and property rights and so forth none of that matter the only narrative that mattered were those negative things and over time the narrative changed and certain things became socially acceptable now i am seeing the same thing done to any discussion about an alternative platform for discussion and de-radicalization you support nazis white supremacists violence terrorism if you have the audacity to say anything that competes with facebook twitter and social media is is a good idea in principle this is no way to run a society this is no way to run reality we will not survive as a species without catastrophic war and death if we are incapable of finding common threads and listening to each other and our ideologies and our opinions not based in fact but propaganda lead us every time that's happened it's led to disaster in human history the weapons are better there's more of us and the technology is far more advanced the destruction we can wreak upon each other is so vast now and the stakes are so much higher now a small group of people with access to good labs and a little bit of knowledge could create the next pandemic with a 30 mortality rate if they wanted to within the next 20 years not to mention all the other horrors that technology is going to produce if you create systems that all they do is radicalize radicalize radicalize and then you make decisions to isolate entire cliques of your population and make them feel that they have no voice no political representation no place in society and that violence is the only answer guess what you're going to get exactly what you paid for and what you created violence it's just that simple we've seen this across the arc of history in every marginalized group or perceived marginalized group and at some point it breaks and so we as a society we stand and have to ask ourselves where's the wisdom any of these things the whole cryptocurrency space taught us that we can do things differently we don't have to ask for permission to be our own bank we don't have to ask for permission to store value that doesn't decay every year as the government continues to print trillions of dollars we don't have to ask permission to pay people abroad for the services that they perform for us and the products they make for us we don't have to ask permission to be our own payment system we don't have to ask permission to create our own legal systems we don't have to ask permission to create our own securities or our own commodities or our own lending services or insurance services we can just go do that and somehow through the magic of the invisible hand of an actual true real free market regulated by code not man it somehow just works out and no violence or force of thr or threats of force are involved in any way shape or form so isn't it logical that if we have been able to go from nothing under massive criticism and debate to a trillion dollar industry that the very same techniques and tools could be applied to the civil discourse with just a little bit more magic of cryptography and a little bit more care made to how things should be put together seems logical to me seems it's a good idea to me yet people are so stuck in their propaganda that this actually seems to be in many cases a difficult leap i think it's a natural extension and we've learned so much from these experiments like hive and steam and bats and so forth everything about how do you monetize information how do you monetize the collection and distribution of data and the micro targeting of consumers for commercial activity to how do you create marketplaces we've learned a huge amount from open bazaar to how do you create better primitives for privacy as we've seen and learned with things like zcash and monero and dash to things like how do you identify people in a decentralized way as we've seen with self-sovereign identity how do you vote and curate and rate things and how do you incentivize people to pay attention over a longer term instead of a shorter term these are fundamental capabilities that were are systematically as an industry building in an open source way with no patents no overriding or agency or authority no intellectual property they're open to the commons they're free for every single person and you see projects like jack dorsey says we're gonna do blue sky i don't care if it's an open source project i don't care if they have five developers or whatever the hell they've hired working on that nothing there will actually turn into anything good because that entire mindset is wrong it's not about freedom it's not about finding a way to evolve the discourse to include empathy and wisdom and try to create a diversity of opinions and try to get to objective reality as a starting point it's just there's a wave here and let's try to extend what we've already done as long as it fits within the california groupthink that we already have and if we have any audacity to move away from that then it's a cesspool of pick your favorite pejorative white supremacists nazis al qaeda terrorists drug dealers and so forth you see the advantage of being one of the original people in the cryptocurrency spaces i've already been covered in that tar and those feathers i've already endured the mockery of the media i've already been called crazy by my family members and friends and associates and so forth i don't care about being a pariah or an exile because that was never what it was about it's not about making people happy or fitting in in society it's about looking to the future and asking yourself is it moral when you see a potential future that results in death chaos catastrophe and terrible outcomes for the majority of us to just allow that to happen when you have a potential to stand up and speak and say something about it germany just review in berlin unveiled a monument to i believe was over 90 lawmakers during the war mark republic who stood up and opposed hitler and this came at great personal cost i believe all of them were systematically executed over the coming years as retribution for standing up against the nazi party and rightly so the german people decided to honor them and say these people have courage and our own minds we all would like to believe we come from that group but the reality is most of us don't that's a truth that we have to acknowledge even the people in that group were not in that group for all things some of them didn't speak up against racism some of them didn't speak up for equal rights for women some of them didn't speak up when relatives abused other relatives they just stayed silent so yes in that particular event that they did but it's human nature to want to get along and belong it's human nature for us to try to accommodate the unreasonable the vast majority of people in the united states in 1850 had either a negative to a abolitionist view of slavery including people in the southern states the people who benefited from it the landowners of course were very pro-slavery but the rank and file either were ambivalent or they at least would acknowledge it's a distasteful profession very few would publicly stand up against it because they were afraid of the social consequences of it this is the fundamental problem with why we continue to regress into totalitarianism and tyranny and the control of the few and sacrifice our freedoms and liberties as a society it's because in our own minds we think that we can stand up but in reality we often don't and we're afraid of being criticized we're afraid of appearing as the other as one of the crazies as one of the people on the outside and the problem is that society is built in the way that the ones who do stand up who win they get indoctrinated they get wealth rewards they get things that matter to them they get famous and then the next time that they're called upon to go out there and stand up they have something to lose they have something that they care about more than their principles and their ideas and they don't want to give away might be the relationships they're in might be the money in their bank account might be the social status they've gained as a hero so they stay quiet the second time we have to figure out as a society how we grow beyond that we have to figure out as a society how we can have real conversations with each other about ethics and morality and the objectivity or subjectivity thereof we have to figure out as a society how we can separate the objective from the subjective we have to figure out as a society what our fundamental human rights in the 21st century and what are not and we have to be willing to get uncomfortable in these conversations we have to be willing to entertain that perhaps the values and notions that we have are not necessarily the only values and notions that matter and in some cases may be totally wrong if we are incapable of doing that we will never be able to evolve to the next level and the problem is there's a gap forming the technology evolves too quickly now and we keep adding capabilities to human race frankly should not have unless it is paired with good judgment and good wisdom just we invent the safety belt after we invent the car and crash a car similarly all these new things that are coming we're not prepared for we were as a society not prepared for the consequences of the internet and social media but here we are and we're now starting to see the end results of these things the unraveling of society the radicalization of society and so forth so the highest pursuit is the self-awareness of the problems that are before us and the humility to admit that perhaps we don't have the answers to solve them yet and to ask for help so my life's work has to be about waking up every day and confronting these problems head on and admitting well we don't have solutions to them having the courage to pursue attempts even if those attempts fail understanding that at times it makes me a pariah at a time it makes me look like one of the crazy ones and what's so magical about what we've accomplished with cardano ethereum and other things that i've been involved in is it has attracted literally millions of people to start thinking this way too and that alone has removed any dimension of cynicism from me and it's put me in a situation where i honestly believe that as bad as these things will be and the things that will come and the things that could go wrong that we as a society will find a way to get out of it not by the bold leadership of a single visionary person but rather by the collective swarm of millions of frustrated but passionate people who want to do things differently and now have been empowered to do so because they've tasted the tools of freedom and liberty these protocols we build are not about money they're not about making you rich they've never been about that because in the beginning they didn't have those capabilities bitcoin was worthless these protocols that we build are about inviting each and every person who uses them just for a moment to realize that we have a chance to evolve as a society and do things differently think differently interact differently entertain completely new business models ignore the it doesn't work that way or that's just not how humans work or no one will let you or whatever conspiratorial thinking of the week convinces you that some unknown power will prevent you it's to say what i'm going to live in the present i'm going to use it and just find a way to make this work and each and every one of us has a small part a small piece a small brick in this wall but together we can build anything so in the coming years yeah we definitely will do something in social media don't know when we're thinking about it we have people in my company that every day wake up and this is what they do myself included in addition to a lot of other things that i work on on a daily basis and one day we'll be able to come up with a protocol that we feel actually can solve real problems and of course we'll launch that and we'll see what happens with it it may succeed it may fail but it will inspire countless thousands if not millions just as cardano has done and inspired so many to say perhaps we can contribute to and i believe that the collective whole working directed and tirelessly over a long enough time will get us out of all of this and end the oligarchy of silicon valley and and all this centralization of information and power and control and the world will be a better place a wiser place and we'll have a little bit more empathy and that is a good life don't know how long we have to work at this before we'll actually solve it could take 50 years to take 60 years but what the hell else am i going to do honestly what the hell else can any of us do what kind of a world would we live in if we don't solve these problems one where we're not allowed to have our own opinions and thoughts we live in constant fear of offending someone in power so we say nothing there was a whole society that endured that fate during the 20th century there is a reason why people in russia are incredibly careful with their friends and their opinions it's a cultural thing because they were reminded for decade after decade after decade by a government that didn't care about any humanity that by sharing those opinions there will be consequences if they're inconvenient to people you've never met and know very little about i don't want to live in a world where that becomes the standard across the world and it is for billions of people today right here right now it is our duty as humans who care about each other and want to live in a great society that we transcend these things so each and every one of us must work towards that end if we want to live a good life if not for ourselves then for those we leave behind and for those things we do care about and if anything because it's challenging and it's an unending task that's the point of these protocols it's a reminder to all those who believe that this time they can dominate and control forever for our greater good that the only greater good is to put everyone in charge of their own lives and for us to live well together so i just wanted to make a quick video about this and talk about this and i think it's one of the most important topics our industry has ever broached and we have been as an industry for over a decade mentioning this and it's the first time ever that people are really starting to pay attention usually because their favorite political voice has been i have to admit i was deeply saddened when i heard that ron paul an 85 year old man who's harmless was d platform from facebook after so much outraged occurred that facebook had the gall to say it was a mistake and walk it back no it wasn't they just decided they didn't want that fight today but i firmly believe they'll indulge it someday later when there's less scrutiny it's not about the people who are de-platformed in the moment whether you think they're good people or bad people it's about the fact that these networks cannot find a way to admit these people and make them productive or at least expose the issues they have and de-radicalize the people around them that's a failure of the platform and silencing people accomplishes nothing you don't cut a man's tongue out unless you're afraid of what he has to say it's just that simple all right so just a quick video on that and i hope it brings some clarity no social network is coming soon it's something we're thinking about and we'll continue thinking about it and as catalyst evolves it's a brick as prism evolves brick has cardano evolves it's another brick as privacy technology evolves that's another brick lot to talk and of course we're in dialogues with minds and gab and all these other people we know people at all these ventures and they tell us what they're doing and what they're not doing and what they've learned and problems they're occurring and of course we think about the social dynamics and of course we think about the governance and of course we read alex petlin's work and talk about social physics and all these things there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of places to aggregate but it's a lifelong effort if one actually wants to do it well and it's all of our effort thanks for listening