[Music]
okay so in many ways I think
non-financial use cases the first non
Financial use case for blockchains is
actually public infrastructure so and
it's it's important that we think about
in this use case what neutrality means
and what decentralization means so the
the program has changed a little bit and
we're going to talk about that uh Paula
do you want to get get us
started our clicker is not super working
but um okay so as Pua was saying uh
we're here to talk about digital
infrastructure and um what does that
mean not only uh in the blockchain space
uh there are all kinds of digital
infrastructure but of course ethereum is
often envisioned as a potential uh
digital public infrastructure that can
be used ubiquitously around the world so
the idea is to do some collective
deliberation together on what does that
mean and what are some of the
requirements for protocols and standards
that are serving this function
so um the agenda for today is we're
going to Kickstart this with two short
talks first uh Puja is going to talk
about
decentralization and then Glenn is going
to talk about different um approaches to
neutrality and what are some of the
conflicts between them and after that if
the slides work we're going to use a
tool called police to do a deliberation
together and this tool I'll explain this
to you in a moment but it's a tool that
uses Advanced statistics and machine
learning to gain some nuanced insights
in a digital conversation and so we'll
take these insights then we'll have have
an inperson discussion since that's a
benefit of being here at Devcon and
we'll come back to polce we'll do one
one more iteration reflecting some of
the uh learnings and then we'll look at
the results um together so in essence
this is going to be um an exercise in
deliberation about digital
infrastructure um so hand it over to Pua
to get us started okay great um I like
to walk around when I talk
so as I said I want to talk about first
decentralization and then it's working
okay great and uh and Glenn will follow
up with a prompt on neutrality so um
because not everybody has read uh the
paper I want to kind of give first
principles of how I think about
decentral decentralization and really
the question is how do we build bottom
up decentralized networks and there are
all kinds of like networks right we have
energy infrastructure we have physical
networks we have Internet infrastructure
inter uh networks starlink we also have
blockchains we have social media these
are all networks and the question is
oops uh how do we get bottomup
coordination of individuals who are part
of communities to compose into larger
pluralistic networks of coordination
that can solve problems at different
social
scales um that is how I have
conceptualized the question of
decentralization doing this in a
decentralized way how does this work so
what do we before I give like a kind of
first articulation uh of the principle
let's just pump our intuitions and think
about what do we not mean by
decentralization so you know an autocrat
controlling energy infrastructure not
decentralization a benevolent
entrepreneur controlling internet
infrastructure not great either uh you
know a group of sort of uh mining pools
that control a lot of mining power hash
power or stake not great for
decentralization and you know corporate
monopolies not great for
decentralization and of course there's
political centralization as well and you
know there's tyranny of the majority
which we're all familiar with in the
Civil Rights Movement there's tyranny of
a political Elite and technocratic Elite
and there's also tyranny of a cultural
Elite that and enforce their norms and
language Norms on people who don't
necessarily um you know
agree but I think decentralization is a
much more subtle question because we
also have very very uh tacit and subtle
what I call accidental overcoordination
because of correlated interests and we
see this in particular and very cutely
and Glenn was the first one who brought
this to my attention in his book radical
markets in traditional financial markets
and so in traditional markets a lot of
people you know if you're a retail
investor you give your money to an asset
manager like Black Rock and Fidelity and
what that asset manager will do will buy
Stakes across rivals in a particular
industry so say Stakes across like every
Airline right but in doing that they
have an incentive to vote as a
shareholder to pressure CEOs to take
anti-competitive practices lower prices
excuse me raise prices lower salaries
not invest in R&D not invest in
Innovation and this is like not really
great for markets and if you have a
bunch of groups like Fidelity Black Rock
You Know State Street Vanguard all doing
this um it ends up being a kind of
oops uniform anti-competitive pressure
on the entire market and on the entire
industry um and you what you get is the
appearance of competition across Rivals
and appearance of competition across
asset managers but really what you get
is a behavior
monopolist
so using this to pump our intuitions uh
one of the principles we articulated in
the doo paper was this principle of
consensus across difference and the idea
of consensus across difference is that
you rather get consensus between
differently Affiliated people or just
very different people to surface
consensus and that would be a better
signal of a plural shared good across
broader groups than say consensus
amongst a narrow group of individuals
who might be sort of intentionally
colluding or accidentally over
coordinating in the way the the Black
Rock andell example
Illustrated is there any questions about
this
principle go ahead is consensus
fascist consensus between whom
people uhhuh
yeah you don't have to agree but if you
get agreement across the the idea is
that agreement across very different
people is more likely to Signal
something that's good for you know
broader groups than rather consensus
amongst people who are very similar
right which might be
more
sorry of think
it's yeah we can do fting wild
fighting so okay I will I will move on
we can we can leave it can I just make
one comment that I actually think you're
highlighting a good thing which is that
the point of pluralism is simultaneously
identifying areas of cooperation across
difference and identifying the areas of
difference so like you can't have one
without the other in in the dance of
decentralization and pluralism and we're
going to talk about that like we're
going to highlight that in the exercise
we're going to do later so I think both
are like really important yeah I'll say
this like a lot of a lot of discussion
in um or a lot of memes in crypto are
about coordination and cooperation but
they don't really address the question
of conflict right and so consensus
across difference is a principle that
highlights and surfaces like our
differences right but finds those
consensus amongst the most diversely
Affiliated
um so how did we as a first
approximation Express this principle in
the paper well we first introduced this
primitive called soulbound tokens or
non-transferable nfts to represent
memberships to social groups or
represent
affiliations and then as a second step
we propose this mechanism of using
quadratic voting or funding how many
people have heard of quadratic voting
and funding just raise your head okay so
you're familiar right and and the nice
thing about this mechanism is it um you
know reflects some magnitude not just
direction of individual preferences
encounters some tyranny of the majority
but as sort of the Black Rock example
highlights you know we're individuals
we're social beings we're in groups
we're sometimes intentionally colluding
sometimes were accidentally over
coordinating and you need to Discount
the influence of correlated social
groups or in the kind of spirit of
quadratic funding and and voting take a
square root over the social group and
this gives us a kind of degressive
proportionality which we want because
otherwise coordinated groups tend to
drown out uh you know less coordinated
groups in
voice so to kind of summarize to get us
our bottomup coordination the mechanism
we proposed is well first of all seeing
individuals as nested within communities
and communities being constitutive of
their individuals and capturing the
intensity of individual preferences with
quadratic funding and voting but also
discounting correlations and say
overcoordination accidental or
intentional uh with with social
correlation discounts and with this
mechanism what we're hoping to do and
this is again just a first approximation
is to get this kind of nice intersecting
partially nested structure of everg
growing Network cooperation extending
across you know digital and physical
infrastructure and importantly a a
paradigm where par power is not discret
it's not binary it's not rigid but
rather continuous partial and uh
recomposing and
fluid so this is a a broad in very broad
Strokes an explanation of you know the
conception of decentralization that
we've ushered forward I'm going to hand
it over to Glenn now and he's going to
talk about reconciling this with
neutrality and start pumping our
intuitions there and asking us important
questions yeah so uh Pua did a beautiful
job but went quite quickly over this
notion of degressive proportionality and
I want to sort of ease into it by just
um like pressuring some things that
sound natural but are all contradictory
with each other so they sort of create a
paradox that forces us to think a step
later is there a slide for this um poo
on the neutrality stuff or yeah yeah
okay so what is neutrality so like
here's a bunch of different NS of
neutrality which like lots of people and
maybe the same people in many different
context all go raah rah for but like
actually can't be consistent with each
other so like one notion of neutrality
is like every country should be treated
the
same but then you're like well what
about some countries are much bigger
than others and maybe some countries are
much richer than others and oh well I
don't know okay and then like resources
should be treated the same like packets
of information or or units of compute or
units of stake should all be treated
symmetrically but wait like some people
have a lot more of that than other
people and is that fair and like maybe
it's concentrated in certain countries
and maybe those countries are all really
coordinated maybe that's not good and
then the US and China will just dominate
everyone and hm and then like another
version is individuals so like proof of
personhood people are like really into
like you know every person should have
the same rights and you know it's really
unfair that the Electoral College gives
more like voice to certain people and
and whatever but then you're like oh but
like you know what if that just leads
like the majority of white people to
totally screw over black people in the
US or like you know uh Hindus and um you
know Muslims in India and and like well
we also care about resources as well and
we care about what countries people so
anyways the point is that there's a
bunch of different Notions of neutrality
that we invoke in different contexts
often very similar contexts and that are
like pretty directly in conflict with
each other um and I think there's like a
really profound
idea that starts to point the way to
like how we might try to reconcile these
that comes from this statistician named
Lionel
Penrose so what what Lionel Penrose said
is that um if you have coordinated
correlated things
um and then a bunch of uncoordinated
things the coordinated things get heard
much more than proportional to like how
loud they speak or How much votes they
have or whatever um and and that comes
from a very basic statistical principle
which is if they you have uncorrelated
things they tend to cancel each other
out and so like their aggregate size
only grows as the square root of the
number of uncorrelated things whereas a
single correlated thing that scales up
grows linearly
in its strength and um that might sound
like a little bit abstract statistics
but like it's something that literally
you can just recognize from dinner
conversation so like if you go to a
crowded restaurant um there will be all
sorts of people talking right and like
the total volume of all the people
talking will be like massively louder
than the person you're trying to listen
to next to you and yet somehow you can
still hear that person because they're
just slightly louder than any of the
individual other
voices and your brain
like the whole mechanism of noise is to
like take things that are uncoordinated
and a little bit softer and cancel them
out and like have that one coordinated
thing that's slightly louder stick out
right and um so Penrose originally
applied this uh as a way to think about
how votes should be given to countries
or you know provinces within a federal
union based on the population of the
subunit so he said no it shouldn't be
neutral across people because those
people are coordinated with each other
by their joint membership of the country
or the subunit and no it shouldn't be
neutral across units because units have
different numbers of people in them
instead the right principle is
degressive proportionality which is that
um the allocation should be based on the
square root of the number of people
within the
country
um
yeah is this like punishing fascism
because more people are working together
the more they get penalized kind of yeah
that sounds great yeah uh it's kind of
like that so so the the point is that um
so so he just and in fact this principle
was adopted so the N treaty the the
Polish delegation of the European Union
uh proposed that they should literally
use the square root but people thought
that was weird or whatever and so it
turns out that they put in a system
where like if you look at the
correlation between the square root and
the number of like votes allocated It's
like got a 99% correlation to that rule
but it doesn't literally use that rule
because people thought that was too
nerdy but anyway basically that's the
principle that's been used by the
European Union um and the the thing is
like quadratic voting is just another
application of that same principle it's
an application of that principle
acknowledging that one site of
correlation and coordination is
individuals and an individual with a
bunch of stake or a bunch of voice
credits or a bunch of whatever whatever
it is that they use to express stronger
intensity is like a sight of that sort
of coordination and you want to
downweight that in this square root way
because coordination can occur within
that individual but coordination can
also occur within groups and and really
what I want to suggest is that all the
correlation discount stuff that Pua is
going at is just like a more General
application of that principle it's like
looking for all all the different sites
of social coordination whether they be
within groups or individuals based on
stake or people or whatever and trying
to downweight that
coordination so that we ensure that
voices are heard in a more Fair Way um
anyway that's that's the basic frame
that I want to give and then there's a
lot to talk about because we don't know
how to do that yet that's these are all
just illustrations of possible things in
that direction and uh we're groping our
way towards figuring it all
yes and um as we continue groping our
way forward uh we'll have a deliberation
together here about um about what it
means and how should we be thinking
about digital infrastructure
so um we're going to do that using a
tool called police which is a uh plural
social technology so I'll just uh take a
moment to explain what we mean by that
so social Technologies are voting public
goods funding identity money these are
all tools that we use to relate to each
other and coordinate um in society and
what we're doing at radical exchange is
we're trying to bring um about a new
paradigm for technology that has a
philosophy underlying it and that
philosophy is the philosophy of
plurality so I want H go too much into
it but when we're instantiating a
pluralistic social philosophy in in
technology there are two things that we
want to be looking for one is we want
technologies that help recognize and
sort of provide better uh resolution
into the different social Dimensions
that exist within a community and then
we want uh Technologies to also Foster
cooperation across social difference and
sometimes that means fostering or
Illuminating the the points of common
ground and sometimes that means
Illuminating the points of Divergence so
that they can be worked out
um so police is a very simple tool but
uh before I give this explanation I know
that our Wi-Fi is not so great so I'll
I'll skip ahead and ask you to point
your phones to this QR code so that in a
few minutes from now you will all have
it on your phone and then I'll come back
and explain it well as they say in Latin
America OHA
God
okay so what is police now come back
here we have a recommendation from shre
if you sign into the workshop Wi-Fi with
the password build it 2020 it's much
faster than the conference Wi-Fi 22
22 okay well uh Workshop Wi-Fi password
Devcon Workshop build it all lowercase
22 thanks sh um okay so no need to go
into it right now uh come back here and
I I'll just tell you a little bit about
this to and then we'll um start
exploring it together so the first thing
is that it starts with an open question
and then um the participants can uh
write statements in response to it and
each statement will generate a card like
this and the other participants are
going to be able to agree disagree or
pass um each of the comments and then
what poce does is that it takes all of
the data and then it clusters all of the
participants into different opinion
bubbles so according to um the opinion
bubbles are defined according to how
similarly these people uh voted so you
can see what are the different social
dimensions and dimensions of opinions uh
within a group and then uh the last
thing that it does is that it brings to
the surface what are the points uh of
common ground that these groups that
have diverging views share so one
example of how this has been used in the
past um is in Taiwan uh this is used in
Taiwan
at the national level and they use it a
few years ago to um try to understand
how to regulate right sharing companies
so in Brazil where I'm from this was a
super polarized debate and I'm sure in
many other places and there it was as
well and there was a strong Pro Uber
Camp strong anti-uber camp and then what
police uh did there but its surface was
just good common sense so the things
that came up were that taxi capab should
no longer be orange everyone agreed to
that before they had to be orange in
Taiwan um that this was an opportunity
to review uh passenger safety uh
regulations and uh questions of
liability insurance so just good common
sense that usually in the technologies
that we use uh we don't have that we
have the exact opposite we have the the
polarizing statements are the ones that
come to the surface and we we are uh
stuck in our ability to to come together
and debate uh productively as a society
so this this is U an example of a plural
social technology and we're going to
experiment with it together right now
um and this is our question how should
we think about neutrality in digital
infrastructure so the first thing that
we'll do is we'll take five minutes um
to evaluate some of the comments that
are already there so you can go to the
link and then um I'll be back with you
in a
moment all right um so we'll now move to
the next step which is um sorry for the
next five minutes we'll add new
statements so here's what makes a good
statement for this exercise the first
thing is that it needs to be a
standalone idea because if you have true
ideas in one statement then the other
participants won't be able to evaluate
uh them they might agree with one and
disagree with other so it's complicated
so one idea per statement um these need
to be short statements up to 140
characters clear concise um and
hopefully raising New Perspectives um so
let's take another five to to add
statements in response to to our
question okay so now
um let's look at our report and then
police generates a lot of data
umps it collapsed to two groups wow okay
groups collap so we had five groups and
then it collapsed into two groups super
interesting um and so police generates a
lot of data um and we won't be able to
have a super sort of in-depth analysis
but we'll present the structure of the
report and see what are some of the high
level in sites that police provided to
us so
um to the folks back there uh
Tech
refresh but aren't I controlling it or
no no you're not controlling it you're
you're just seeing so it's
e okay so so let's first look at uh some
some of the obvious things so we had so
so first of all I think we should just
tell people what's in this report so
yeah yeah okay yeah so let's let's first
look into the structure and uh and then
we'll get to to some of the insights
later so the first thing that it does is
um here's some data 118 people voted um
and out of that group
109 uh were clustered into different
opinion bubbles we had 3,800 votes
evaluations of statements 78 statements
uh 38 votes per person so you got to a
little less than half of the statements
uh but there's probably many redundant
statements so it's it shouldn't be so
bad um and then if you
can so here uh polic is putting each
each state each of these these dots
corresponds to a statement and it's
putting all of the statements on a
spectrum from consensus statements to
divisive statements and as you can see
we have a lot more consensus than than
divisiveness so it's just one thing that
is interesting to notice is how social
media distorts that picture for us and
makes us believe that we have a lot more
divisions but really we have a lot more
consensus
so
graas okay let's see what's the most
divisive statement uh neutrality means
treating every country the same even if
one country is richer than the
other means treating every unique person
the same
um neutrality means treating every
blockchain and protocol the same and
enabling interoperability between them
so these are get getting to sort of
similar things and as you can see what
police is doing now we have three groups
very dynamically changing so group a has
44 people Group B has 26 people and
Group C has 39 people and on group a uh
which has 44 65% of of uh the members of
group a agreed with it where whereas
everyone on Group B disagreed with it
and the majority the large majority of
people in group C disagrees with it so
here it's it's an example of like
surfacing what are the areas of
divisiveness and the importance of sort
of Illuminating uh what are the points
of conflict because this gives a clear
opportunity to have a more informed
conversation about this specific topic
why is it that the folks on group a
think that and why is it that the folks
on Group B and C uh disagree
so
let's see what what what we agree about
neutrality is context dependent and this
questions um lack enough context to be
useful okay quite
thanking
um
H neutrality is different from
fairness um what else we're we're
groping towards something be be patient
with us um we're trying okay
[Music]
so um neutrality is not about removing
biases it's about embracing them all um
so we can see H what
does yeah people didn't answer but out
of those who answered um about 40% of of
people in just to be clear when you have
very large number of people you should
expect that white section to take up
almost all the space because the whole
point is that you get a random selection
of things and it tries to pick up the
underlying statistical correlations
rather than like literally having
everyone go through every statement
that's the whole point of the could
everyone hear
that okay um so
now this was just to give a few like a
taste of like what what are some what
were some of the divisive and and uh and
consensual uh agreements but
uh we'll look into them and sort of
analyze it more afterwards but now let's
look into what are some of the opinion
bubbles
what mass
mass everyone disagrees is that a form
of consensus yes and here like the other
one that says that has everything in red
the one on the top can you explain that
a little bit like how which one on the
top the one that was in the consensus uh
so if if if it was everything red it
means that everyone in that opinion
group disagreed with that
statement
um so let's see how many clusters we
have now uh okay so we have three
clusters let's look at um what the the
folks now it's we're back to two the
latest
update
refresh
and you know this is a demonstration of
course um you know this tool has been
used over days so you can sort of work
through the data much better um and
usually very very clear patterns emerge
but um um let's you know we're we'll
we'll do some we'll try to take some
high level insights I have a pretty
clear interpretation of the two groups
yeah okay so you want
to let's go through it
a
mes or is it always
like so so one really important thing to
understand is I think PO is amazing it's
super cool it's a huge impact in the
world it's also like absolute first like
think of it as the like Bitcoin of like
this kind of
percent this this is not at all
optimized there's like anyone who's
smart technologist in the room is going
to think of like seven things that could
be improved features not all of which
would work out but like it's just it's a
it's like the most basic proof of
concept of this type of idea
so yeah um okay so in group a we have um
59
participants um let's see uh what do
they agree about so about half of them
think that neutrality means TR treating
every unique person the same whereas on
Group B oh no sorry I read it wrong 85%
of people in group a thinks that
neutrality means treating every unique
person the same whereas um 76% of people
in group b disagree with that so that
that already sort of
characterizes uh these different groups
but maybe if we look into it more we can
start to understand why uh let's see so
neutrality means treating all
transactions the same sort of similar
principles neutrality means treating
every country the same
um neutrality means that the rules are
set to not privilege any specific
participant uh there's more shared
agreement on that but those three first
statements already sort of indicate um
this division between groups A and B
they're um it's very binary in the end
yeah
so the well why don't we go through it
and I'll give an interpretation uh so
let's go down to Group B now uh to look
into that so group E has 50 participants
and Group B seems
um interesting so Group B is largely
clustered around this agreements so the
the Reds um and it's the disagreements
to the to the three statements or
statements in similar spirit so
neutrality means treating transactions
the same as long as they can afford gas
that was uh not in in the other one
above and uh the majority of people
Group B disagree with that um and let's
look at the first two neutrality in
certain cases can be evaluated at a
group level and not at an individual
level um 94% of group of people in group
b agrees with that um and they disagree
that it means uh neutrality means
treating every unique person the same so
you can see a pattern there and then
different forms of neutrality make sense
in different contexts for example some
should distinguish humans and Bots
others uh should not I guess was the
last word that is missing um 85% of
people in groupy agree agrees with that
so
now majority majority
per um so here actually majority is not
a good word because uh what this is
showing is the plural majority so what
are the statements that groups A and B
despite their divergences where where is
it that they can find common ground
so
um neutrality means that uh means the
rules are set to not privilege any
specific participant 81% overall agrees
with that uh 93 on group a 69 on Group B
all human beings are rational uh
everyone agreed that this was a a bit of
a weird
statement personal Liberty should be
protected above corporate good
um everyone agrees different forms of of
neutrality Mak sense in different
contexts for example some should
distinguish humans and B some should
others not should not uh fascism is
needed to achieve
neutrality um yeah uh lots of
disagreements there and neutrality is
different from
fairness that's an important point so
uh this is what's interesting about this
is that despite the
divergences these are the areas uh of
Common Ground out of which you can start
a conversation so um I'll hand it over
to Glenn to share a few thoughts on on
the analysis uh he was thinking about it
here and then also if anyone has any any
comments uh we'll hand it back to
you grou
I just
gr gra okay um
so this group has statements like
neutrality and they agree with well the
other group disagrees with it statements
like neutrality means treating every
person the same neutrality means
treating every transaction the same
neutrality means treating everyone in
the same country the same uh sorry
treating every country the same Etc and
so what I would describe
as this group as is sort of like
the uh maybe feel-good group or
something like that it's like there's
many different forms of neutrality which
I was trying to argue were in tension
with each other and this group seems to
be composed of people who kind of like
all of them you know they're like M I
don't want them to be in ttention with
each other or they all sound good to me
or something like that like
that that's sort of the the the vibe I
get from group a um Group B on the other
hand
uhara
gr Perfecto um this one really likes
statements like neutrality in certain
cases can't be evaluated at group can be
evaluated group in level and not
individual level or um different forms
of neutrality make sense in different
context um and doesn't like neutrality
is you know treating all the gas the
same neutrality is treating all the
people the same so the way I would
characterize this is group a is like I
like it all and Group B is like it's
really complicated you know what I mean
um and so the the the main divides into
to be like group a is kind of embracing
the contradictions and Group B is like
trying to say in the face of these
contradictions we've got to do a lot of
really complicated thinking and I
probably can't in a tweet length thing
even express what I think the next steps
of that are or something like that
that's my interpretation in that Spirit
um does anyone here feels like they
identify with group a and want to wants
to share uh elaborate a bit on their
views and share with the rest of the
group or group
b any volunteers okay so are you on
group a or Group
B I'm on the group b and uh I like I saw
it like from a perspec itive from like a
tolerance and I I think like now group a
like the neutrality yes was like close
or embraced as as a tolerance by the
group a that's that's how I feel it like
we tolerate everything and try to
neutralize
thanks uh yeah uh darl Malone uh I think
I would have been in group a I guess um
and I I think I would say
that
the the complexity of neutrality kind of
comes out if you look at it as a very
specific thing that applies to those
that are maintaining the function of a
system and not necessarily looking at
the decisions of a system um and I think
that kind
of for me makes makes it a lot simpler
hi guys my name is fucho I think I
associate myself with groupy more
because in a complex system it's really
difficult to evaluate neutrality
when when some uh agents some people
provide more value than
others hey I'm Phil so I agree with
Glenn's notion about the many different
uh conflicting neutralities and I think
that makes any decision taken on the
basis of neutrality kind of reductionist
so I kind of vibe with the like its
complicated uh you know description I
think that's kind of
accurate hey this is ham one thing that
I'm interested to understand is like how
would we solve the like when like each
all countries would be treated the same
aren't we better off splitting United
States to 50 country and and so on you
know like it's how would we solve such
kind of attack which is like you're you
will coordinate again in a different way
so you will take
advantage with B yeah
obviously okay oh one
more
hi um I'm saffron I um I probably was in
group b definitely um and I think maybe
this means that we can't say that um a
system a system as a whole is or isn't
neutral but that we can evaluate some
degree of neutrality along a particular
axis um and kind of look at it in a very
multi-dimensional
way okay two
more um I was in group a and uh the way
I what I thought about the groupings was
kind of um it aligned with a vitalic
paper about uh VTO fitocracy and
bulldozzer political access and I feel
like group a is like the VTO veto ocracy
and Group B is maybe more the the
bulldozer political
access for those who haven't read uh can
you just elaborate a little bit on
on
that from what I remember it
was the VTO ocracy was more like if
there's a lot of people um who are
equally weighted they'll be able to keep
back kind of a tyranny of bulldozers but
bulldozers are needed in order to get a
lot of stuff done so you kind of need
both both groups to balance the system
that's what I
remember all right one more does anyone
feel like they have
something Victory Lee I'm in group b um
two thoughts is that um one is probably
some other people already mentioned that
um it the social difference there's many
D Dimension you cannot achieve
neutrality on Old Dimension at the same
time so it's it's a constrained
neutrality maybe in one or two uh Axis
or Dimension do achievable and also that
to to achieve the neutrality you require
a value judgment right um in what what
make it neutral uh is just treat them
all the same or sometime maybe require
treating differently in order to be
neutral that require Val judgment that
also very difficult that's why I'm in
the group
b okay question yes what would be your
what would be your take on only Group B
commenting like like the vast majority
of the people that have actually
are um yeah I think it's an interesting
question I wonder maybe if someone from
group a um would like to elaborate a
little bit more on their views um and
share with the rest of the
group um um well okay was bigger
than if so you know your group a if you
when you look at the statements from
group a that people all agreed on if you
all if you agreed on most of those
statements then you're basically a group
a
person oh does it
um yeah for me I was in group a and I
just found myself um maybe a little bit
naively having a bias towards just
wanting to agree with all the statements
I I mean I kind of saw some of the
tension between the statements but I
also um just feel like there's a lot of
different interpretations of what
neutrality is and kind of just found
myself agreeing with all of
them
okay
I'm I'm trying to wrap my head around
the terms equity and equality and I'm
would like to know from your
perspective uh if those uh if any of
those is actually a neutral one in any
of these
senses just one thing one thing to say
about equity and in equality I'm not
sure but I think that people are
referring to a particular meme that
defines those in a particular way uh not
necessarily to like some abstract
version of it um do you know the meme
that I'm talking about yeah probably
that uh there's like a fence and then
you have like people with different
heights and B is that the meme that
you're talking about can you elaborate
on that one Al so so like for example
let's say uh let's go to the statement
that says how many people have seen that
Meme raise your hand okay most people
have seen that Meme so I won't like
explain what it what it shows but I just
think that's what people are literally
referring to and I don't want to
elaborate on it because I don't you know
you can do whatever you want but I think
that's what people are thinking of but
when we say neutrality means treating
every unique person the same are we
taking into consideration that or not
and what and what are the things that we
should be taking into consideration when
we say treating the same good
question oh let's uh continue developing
this conversation the idea for now the
next oh sorry you asked one final
statement tranquil I just wanted to say
that I have a little bit of a I have a
little bit of a difficulty wrapping my
head around the term neutrality because
like uh you mentioned uh neutrality only
exists in different context and when
we're trying to build systems that are
supposed to be neutral then that means
that there's a certain bias to gain
positive impact to get negative impact
or whatever and when we're not building
these systems by ourselves we're
building them together and how can we
make sure that we have as less bias as
we can or we don't corrupt that bias
when we're building the
system it's an a great
question folks um the idea for now uh I
want to stick to our agenda so that we
can make the best use of our time
together the idea for now this was a
prompt um and hopefully an exercise that
shows some of the different views and uh
I have to say I'm I'm I'm a bit
impressed because usually um I it felt
very binary you know the the results
here um now three groups by the way what
it's now three groups it's now three
groups okay you want to refresh it so we
take a look at what what group C is
about quickly
um what is Group C about so so a is the
same as before basically but I'm trying
to understand what group b and Group C
are
now okay uh we'll come back with a few
more comments but the idea for now is
just for you at your tables for us to
take 10 minutes to discuss this and then
as you you can share your visions and uh
some of some of the questions that this
this conversation and police brought up
to mind uh to you and then what we'll do
is we'll take uh we'll do another
iteration on Poli this uh it becomes a
lot more interesting when we iterate on
it because we can see both sides we can
think about it um in a more informed way
and then the idea is to try to um
understand where are the bridges what
are the areas of Common Ground what are
some of some of the statements new
statements that can be added that can
help breach these groups so uh let's
just take 10 minutes uh to discuss at
our tables um what is it how is it that
we should be thinking about neity and
your impressions about the exercise so
far uh okay so
folks come back here with me who's
hearing me clap one
time who's with me clap
twice um okay sorry one second
um so what I'd like to do right now is
to uh have some of you so we we asked
you to
share uh what was your reason for being
in group a or group b but is there
anyone here who has very strong views on
what neutrality is uh and wants to
convey that to the rest of the
group hi guys so our talk was primarily
focused on debating neutrality within
democracy uh he is from Colombia I'm
from Mexico he's from the US Canada and
what we all talked about was that it's
really
complicated to have to wait each vote
the same
when some of the democracy is corrupted
from the from the campaign uh from the
campaign start for example in Mexico
right now we have uh amlo as our
president and he's building a lot of
infrastructure projects that don't make
sense and more than 60% of the
population agree with him but it's
really difficult for people who well
it's it's really difficult for the right
incentives to guide the correct policies
because when somebody can quickly say
okay I'm going to give you uh this
short-term reward for your vote well
that's difficult so what we were
basically talking about
was neutrality in different
contexts uh basically makes
it
yeah it's it's very difficult to have a
neutrality when the people acting on it
have different incentives
yeah okay sure so I'm from Colombia and
here in Colombia a big social
problematic is buying votes so people
although we debated about how it ended
up affecting the policies and the actual
morality of it at the end of the day
it's not the right incentive it's an
incentive
external to
the to the one that should be which is
the actual policies and beliefs of the
governor so weighing those people who
are kind of neutral and don't know who
to vote for or don't are not really
interested in voting for and you offer
them an incentive uh economic
incentive then it becomes like their
vote is not for the people it's for them
and their vote is not actually for what
you're voting for which is the governor
but for the whatever money they gave you
so should that vote be taken into
account because according to a neutral
perspective it should but I at least
doubt it
should
thanks
um so I think at our table we all agreed
that it's not an easy thing to Define
especially coming from like foreign
languages we had like a and English as a
second language was like we had a hard
time even like reading those statements
and comprehending them and processing uh
but one thing that we all agree that
natural naturality is um pretty much
a a status of here and now uh even with
like what you just said about political
vote like here and now you're natural
but maybe within like a few weeks you
have an opinion and you will be agreeing
or disagreeing so it's a almost like a
you cannot keep the state forever it's
just a Here and Now how you feel and
it's yes exactly so we kind of had the
same um feelings about like this
exercise and like how we think about it
and it changes for sure it's not
something we can have
forever this is super interesting sort
of speaking to the needs for sort of
continuous adaptation
adaptability um okay so now I'm curious
if uh was was there any of you who were
either on group a or group b and after
this conversation sort of gained a new
understanding of the other group's
perspective that you didn't have before
um and maybe change your mind a little
bit or just had a bit more Nuance in
your views and would like to share that
with the rest of the group
yeah I that really stood out to me um
Alex by the way um that as I was sort of
watching these questions and how people
were describing neutrality and siding
with it I feel like neutrality for one
uh took a lens where neutrality was very
close to goodness like as if some people
were already feeling like neutrality was
good and that's how they were voting and
another perspective which started
clearly like forming for me as we were
doing this was that
some people at least to how I see it now
seem to take neutrality
as a rule we apply regardless of context
which if you're going to strictly
logically Define things like I think
that makes a lot of sense um but yeah
not everybody's going to view it that
way and then if you get into complexity
and no it's context dependent then you
get a very clear uh split so it's really
interesting to see multiple shifts in
what I understood to be neutrality
happen as we were going through how
other people's observed
it
uh yeah so kind of referring to what I
was saying before I mean like one
observation like hearing here and like
here discussion at the table was that um
like very often like we want to tolerate
someone else opinion we want to be like
U good in a society but uh I mean me
being part of the group b yes kind of
like you know opposing to say that okay
we can't neutralize things we can't
tolerate everything yes like uh bad
things should be called out
right like uh neutralizing the value
meaning like know getting rid of our
civilization kind of the thing right so
yes it's complex but you know um the the
problem is that U like at some uh extrem
yes like neutral thing can be in my
opinion right if we like really
know like take the value out of it right
um yeah but I think like that's the
problem does anyone else has some uh
bridging
Reflections
okay
thanks I'm lunardo and I was thinking
about because we are all talking about
neutrality like just
neutrality but the question it says
about digital neutrality right so I was
thinking about if it
is like maybe a difference or something
very specific to digital because
thinking about digital it's so
that digital it maybe refers in general
to Binary data info right and it it is
be like that mainly for communicating so
maybe if we talk about digital
neutrality we are talking about
communication across networks so from
that point I see that maybe it's not
like that complex the the term of
neutrality because if you talk about
communicating over networks it could be
like any peer has the same chance to
Comm communicates with other other PE
right so at that point I think that I
was the group a because I didn't see
like a bigger complex problem but
something in a in a specific context
then if we talk about neutrality as
general everything neutrality I think
that we get to that point where it can
be many different things and have many
different ways to express neutrality
right yeah and to emphasize that our our
question is directed towards digital
neutrality so that's um digital public
infrastructure um neutrality in digital
infrastructure um does anyone has any
other uh sort of insights or bridging
comments that they want to
share
okay um I thought that was a very
insightful um exercise and um I think I
was more associating myself with the
group a at the start and then they were
discussing and I was hearing other
people giving feedback and I think I
mean as just a human being uh it's very
hard to make binary choices like uh just
100% yes 100% no and um for me it was
like I would agree with the like most of
the maybe uh questions that the group a
was agreeing but unless there's some
exceptional circumstances kind of the
situation so for me it was um I was more
um you know it was closer to me to vote
on a group because uh like maybe 80% I
would agree that as basic rule and basic
understanding of neutrality but then
also leaving a room for you know I don't
know exception in special cases rather
than just saying completely no and
disagreeing so yeah so this is actually
a wonderful point because we'll we'll
iterate on the platform one more one
more time after all of these discussions
and in this iteration this is the
opportunity for you to add that extra
Nuance that you felt was missing in the
former statement so
neutrality unless so you can you can add
that nuance and that complexity uh in
this in this second
iteration this is a little bit of a
troll point but it did change my views
so someone said the word neutralize
earlier and I I made the connection
between neutrality and neutralization
like wouldn't the most neutral thing in
the world just be if none of us really
existed that would be super Fair it' be
super conformant with all of group A's
statements vacuously satisfy any
definition of Neutrality um so just
putting that out there as an
idea
okay just what he said I just thought of
something like when we talk about
digital neutrality right it obviously
becomes a lot easier to enforce because
you could like create things of protocol
levels which humans cannot change
obviously that is not we don't exist but
we lock out a lot of choices that you
could otherwise have in that and then in
a sense you are like a lot of like
freedom of choice is gone and thereby
it's a lot more neutral which is not
like very far from what he
said I just wanted to make a bridging
comment because as you pointed out I was
a little bit dismissive of group a and
and identified with Group B but just to
like I thought your comment was very
insightful which is um I think that many
of people in group a seem to have
thought of each statement is having much
more implied
context than like I was thinking like
they were they might have been stated in
a universal way but a lot of people
thought well of course they must be
talking about context X or context Y and
so I'm in agreement with the statement
because I see that implied context but
if we draw that out maybe there wouldn't
be a as much disagreement between the
two groups because Group B was
really thinking of them as very broad
statements and group a was thinking of
them as specific to the context where
that principle is
appropriate so now in the spirit of
adaptability uh I want us to I I'm sorry
I can take more uh inputs because I want
us to take the time to do one more round
uh let's let's see how this how these
Notions um evolve by going back to the
platform and adding bridging statements
uh statements that have richer contexts
and that add the exceptions to the rule
and that you feel um can sort
of um reflect anything that you might
have learned uh about someone else's
point of view uh today or anything else
that you might that you might want to
add you know uh it's not a uh tyranny
but uh uh I think one of the
particularly interesting things is to
try to add that additional context and
nuance and
um and try to bridge uh what are some of
those different views now that you've
been more exposed to to them so let's
take uh five minutes for
that okay
um let's come back to to the report and
see how things have evolved
so you know this is interesting I've
I've done this uh Workshop I've used it
this tool a number of times and I have
to say that this was definitely the most
binary conversation and the most binary
group that I've ever um worked with and
have sort of seen represented in in this
tool which to me what that says is that
this ecosystem needs a lot more of these
kinds of tools and sort of conversations
because it feels
like yeah it's just very binary but uh
We've evolved we have a solid third
group right now uh so I think group a um
remains uh with similar views group be
sort of skeptical and saying it's
complex it's complicated but not really
articulating uh what what that complex
vision is and then uh kuros to group C
who is starting starting to um create
some of these articulations so let's
look into uh Group C together uh this
was really interesting so Group
C uh is saying neutrality must be
putting in a context um otherwise it
doesn't make sense neutrality is not an
optimal solution for the evolution of
the human race incentives are inherently
non-neutral um and they super disagree
with uh treating every country the same
and every every unique person the same
so they're saying you know you need
contacts you need uh to take into
account different incentives
and
um you need new I think that what's I I
won't put my interpretation of the
comment about ending the human races
that sort of affirming that uh that you
want plurality right you you want to
have diversity you don't want to um
collapse so is there any conception of
neutrality that can also make room for
um
pluralism um remains to be seen but I
think that this statement is expressed
that this is a desirable uh thing um so
yeah this let me do one more refresh
here to see if anything uh different
came on Group
B the guy that said we must all perish
to achieve neutrality made a good
point um and let's look at the uh
Spectrum here so a lot more
concentration here on consensus
um neutrality why important is not the
only go neutrality is layered some
layers of the system should should
strive to be neutral um and some layers
can be biased we should continue to ex
should continue this exercise in a with
drinks um okay so let's go let's see um
what is it that all three groups can
agree neutrality means rules are set to
not privilege any specific participants
neutrality is different from
fairness um individuals should have
autonomy over what products and services
they use and neutrality while important
is not the only goal of a society and is
to be balanced with other
priorities um and then what are some of
the things that it's interesting because
there's almost usually in the um plural
majority section there's more agreements
than disagreements this is pretty half
and half there's a lot of areas of
common ground of disagreements
neutrality is fascist neutrality is
fascist um neutrality means indifference
not caring a lot of people disagree with
that super interesting the group is
never right against the
individual um so um as I mentioned you
know this this is super rich and they're
you know it Merit doing a proper
analysis that we can't do uh right here
but hopefully this was an interesting
exercise neutrality is a huge value uh
in this ecosystem and uh it's one that
has very very serious and important
implications so
um I'm I'm curious to hear any thoughts
Reflections comments on this exercise or
anything that you might have uh learned
and um and we'll be posting a a more
sort of thoughtful report um of how this
went uh online so you can look for it on
the radical exchange Twitter or you can
come up uh to the table and um just send
me just give me your email and uh yeah
hopefully this was this was a good
exercise I'll take a few comments and
then we'll wrap
up actually it's a question about the
tool on the ex size I wanted to know if
um in the second round did we vote again
on the same statements or the votes we
already had uh issued of the statements
on the first round stayed the same
because like from a deliberative uh
Democratic perspective it would be
interesting to vote again on on those
issues like after
debating yeah police is open- Source
software so it needs uh a lot it needs a
lot of work um but no the the votes
Remain the same the votes remain the
same so I thought that was an
interesting experiment I guess one
question is um I think this group is
like all coming here with good faith and
good intentions um and one thing I
noticed is like as people answered
questions even if I wasn't answering a
question the groups could like pretty
quickly kind of shift and also my
position in the groups kind of could
quickly shift so are you thinking about
this in the context of like people who
might want to like intentionally create
those shifts or like kind of a more
adversarial mindset and how would you
mitigate that I
guess no yesterday we were giving this
Workshop to a group of organizations
that are working on uh citizen
participation in the Southern Southern
Hemisphere and they were like my God
this is like such a good tool for
political manipulation and you can use
it for good or bad I mean it can go in
any direction but
um part part of the thing behind uh
trying to advance a paradigm with more
pluralistic social technology is that if
we if we can um provide more resolution
into the different social Dimensions
that exist within a community then
that's that's the only thing that we
will unlock good governance and uh our
ability to find to cooperate across
diversity so uh you know it comes it's a
double-edged uh sword I'm not sure if
that answered your question say Phil is
that um it's just really interesting
that like in this sort of
socially conscious way of approaching
things as supposed to like ones that are
modeled purely on marketing incentives
we just have like no analyses whatsoever
in any field of like incentive Dynamics
and ATT like just doesn't exist and like
that's a really interesting challenge
here like what is the incentive model
that you want to use to analyze this is
it based on individual attacks B group
attacks is it like and what are the
optimal I I don't even know I have no
idea like it's really interesting
question
so just to share my perspective on the
highlighted statement I thought this the
other priorities are more like today
versus the future like if you ask me
should the world today be neutral yes of
course there should be fairness had the
world been neutral from day one of
existence would be reach here I don't
know so I mean I don't have an answer
obviously but like I thought that's what
like that statement is all about like
today's neutrality versus neutrality as
a tool to forward the human
race I have some comments on on on the
exercise itself I think that the
exercise heavily depends on the quality
of the questions and probably we need to
have some um approach to exclude some
some of these questions when we see some
white areas there probably those those
questions were not very you know um so
people didn't want to to answer this
question probably we should exclude them
or probably we should have another
options on the on the poll so where
people voting so they can kind of
exclude or report against this
question thanks um we uh radical
exchange we do develop a few
Technologies but this is not developed
by us is by the amazing Folks at the
computational Democracy project um and
and it's an open source software uh you
can make a pool request or give them
some support and share your feedback uh
but yeah as as Glenn was saying this is
a very very primitive tool but it is
better than most of the things that
we're using in trying to you know
identify social groups and and uh
illuminate areas of common ground and
disagreement um and it it's it's
something to it's remarkable how how
primitive it is and and the fact that
it's still one of the best tools that we
have so we need to continue uh
developing this can I jump in
yeah
helloo yeah so going back to the earlier
part of the I I I find it interesting
because I tried to Prime the discussion
with like a conception of
decentralization um and uh so we could
actually use some of those if somebody
want if you know if any here is a
activist and wants to improve polus we
could actually import some of those
Concepts there like for example having
non-transferable nfts to represent your
groups in allowing contract voting and
then we could have a much richer
perspective of clustering there um but
the SE the second observation I wanted
to make like Glenn you gave your
perspective on the clustering but I
actually I think the difference between
group a and Group B was like a was sort
of more biased towards thinking about
neutrality um in the in the sort of
voice Camp of Voice versus exit and
thinking about equality and Notions of
fairness and being like yeah yeah of
course like individuals nation states
right and then I think Group B was maybe
more focused on like neutrality as an
exit I should be able to be able to send
my information packet wherever I want to
or like you know transactions
independent of gas or with the exception
of gas sorry with gas is the only
limitation so I thought that was that's
kind of I think there's some broad
Strokes that can be made there on like
Voice versus exit how that how where
where you kind of are on that um might
inform your view of of
neutrality also looking
for uh yeah I just wanted to talk about
like you know um using some learnings
from I mean this Workshop into the da
like da tooling specifically right so
like very often in Dao that you know um
the questions we asking the Dow maybe
not the right it's not not very often
the right one like for example yesterday
we had a workshop with um with maker on
like how to optimize their governance
process and like you know there was some
drama related to uh yeah basically some
voting uh currently in Cosmos we have um
like this huge proposal for atom 2.0 and
uh yes like uh very often we cannot like
know uh get an agreement because uh the
scope of uh of decision is huge right so
like applying these tools for D to make
more I mean to break them down and more
make more uh
specific uh decisions yes I guess that
would really help
in uh I mean activist in in the room
wanting to contribute to police and I
know that there was one
um integration with web 3 wallets um
that was made last year um but uh we
ended up not using it but I'm happy to
connect you uh with the folks who worked
on it and as Glenn was saying I mean if
this was if you could quadratically vote
on the statements uh this would be
incredible if you could also connect it
with spts that are being used today for
example for um at the Govern platform
that creates uh spts for d contributions
and then you have internal uh clusters
you have external clusters you know
there's there are many ways in which
this can develop I'll go to some of the
other
folks I mean what do you mean of
quadratic voting for like yes has no
question I mean
it's I mean mention that you thought
that it was too binary yes or no and so
it would be good to this I'm real this
is really my thing this I'm weekly in
favor of but you know I don't really
know so instead of like 01 to have like
more be able to express the intensity of
how how much you agree or disagree but
it can have a quadratic system with it
you can have like credit credits that um
that you can
spend oh um if you have a set budget to
spend don't you have to see everything
at the same time to figure out how to
allocate your
budget um we we have a software for
quadratic voting that we developed at
radical exchange and the way that this
happens is that you usually go through
it through the different proposals a
couple times and you sort of distribute
it once and then you sort of continue
readjusting it a few times which means
that you probably need some way of
curating a smaller number of statements
um or you have a couple of rounds and
like after the first round the you
redistribute the
credit yeah our sort of way to hack
around this is that in many workshops
that we do at radical exchange we first
do a a police conversation then we do we
curate a ballot and then we put it in
the quadratic voting platform and then
we do a vote um so we do this
deliberation then there's also a
delegation step so you have some credits
then you delegate them around then you
then we do a police deliberation and
then a quadratic vote in the end and it
works pretty well like in groups that
are actually like trying to um work
around a a solution um we've seen groups
that have sort of been having a very
hard time in advancing on a particular
issue for months and then they did a
workshop in one and a half hours using
these three tools and uh they sort of
unlock locked a few things so it it's a
pretty good idea but it would be better
to have them more
integrated did you guys also think there
were some like broad Strokes differences
in one group thinking about the idea of
neutrality versus one group thinking how
would neutrality be applied in the real
or the digital
world what do you
think what you say
question like did you guys think that
one group maybe especially in the first
one one group thinking about neutrality
as an idea and another group was
thinking about neutrality like in
practice like how would this translate
okay like it sounds good but like
because this would not translate well
thereby we disagree with it or agree
with it
whatever might be folks we have five
more seconds in this Workshop so I just
want to thank everyone um and I also
want to say we we
have amazing infinite adversity in
Infinite combination stickers here so
you can come grab them and um and if
you'd like to to get the report of this
exercise we'll post it on the radical
exchange Twitter but um I can send it to
your email as well just come over and
send me and give me your email address
um and thank you so
much