Plurality, Tokyo & Taipei
Notes & Thoughts from Plurality Tokyo
At 3pm, SmartNews' office in Shibuya was packed with people. Several Taiwanese were trying to find their way around when they were stopped by a familiar voice. Yuki-san warmly greeted them and gave them a name tag for the event. He then took them to their seats next to the stage and introduced them to the organizer, Hal-san. The event had about 180 attendees from around the world, and despite being in several languages, the question that everyone had was the same: "What the heck is Plurality?"
I don't know how Hal-san managed to get 180 people to attend an event where nobody knew exactly what was going to be discussed, but it definitely made me wonder how to replicate the mysterious charm of the organizing team.
What is Plurality?
Plurality is a concept proposed by Audrey Tang, Glen Weyl, and the RadicalxChange community. The concept emphasizes the use of technology to promote collaboration and diversity across social and cultural differences.
With internet of things, let make it internet of beings.
With virtual reality, let’s make it a shared reality.
With machine learning, let’s make it collaborative learning.
With user experience, let’s make it about human experience.
And whenever we hear, that the singularity is near,
Let’s always remember, the plurality is here.
In her speech, Tang mentioned that Taiwan is experimenting with DAO, quadratic funding, retroactive funding, and impact bonds. She encouraged people around the world to join Taiwan in advancing the concept of Plurality and to work together to create meaningful change.
According to Tang and Weyl's work, the definition of Plurality is "the use of identity, respect, and empowering technologies to bridge social and cultural differences through collaborative action." Tang's colleague, Mashbean, noted that the key difference between Plurality and diversity is that Plurality emphasizes the technical methods used to achieve diversity.
Joi Ito’s Plurality
Joi Ito is the director of the MIT Media Lab. Not only did he come from a gang of crazy geniuses, but he also became the leader of these geniuses, which is quite impressive from afar. Why are these geniuses fascinated by Plurality? Joi Ito also vividly explained to us what he thinks Plurality is.
Proposed by Yale political scientist Bruce Ackerman, "constitutional moment” is a concept referring specifically to the special moment when technology or other factors cause the theory and reality of democracy to deviate and laws have to catch up with reality. Joi Ito seems to be hinting at the possibility that we are currently at such a moment.
Meanwhile, Tang and Weyl's book also states that while powerful technologies such as artificial intelligence make power in society more concentrated and intense competition for capital (whether in the cryptocurrency industry or elsewhere) only makes participants in the market more likely to ignore the negative impact they may have on society (e.g. social anxiety caused by social media platforms, carbon emissions in developing countries). With regard to this, democratic governments (at present and in a near future) don’t have much choice but to respond with regulation. We need to rethink about this future of mutual collision; we need to find an alternative narrative.
To make Plurality more understandable, Joi Ito presented a negative example that reflects the problems caused by “reductionism” in our society.
He mentioned that people often ask him: "How can he be smart? He isn’t rich!" The mindset behind this simple question highlights how reductionism simplifies everything to monetary value, ignoring the intricacies of the world and the difference between simplifying numbers and the whole truth. Plurality, on the other hand, attempts to respect and recognize diversity, to amplify the potential of different valuation and motivation, and to build bridges.
"If the goal of society is to maximize representative numbers of capital, then AI can probably help a lot. But similarly, if we try to maximize the positive psychology that psychologists have been promoting in recent years - human flourishing - AI can also be very helpful. How we set goals and how we use technology to help will greatly influence the future of human society."
An example I have mentioned before is the invention of Monopoly to educate people about potential extreme consequences of over-pursuing capitalism. However, when Hasbro bought the game, they changed the narrative, making the goal to force friends into bankruptcy and creating a zero-sum world.
The intent of technology development is important.
How would you take the word “Plurality”?
For the sake of diversity, our panel moderator Mariko threw out all the questions we had prepared beforehand, which was actually a good thing. After all, Slido is always a good friend of all forums to bring out the unplanned, and Mariko moderated it perfectly.
Sitting next to me was Aya-san, a legendary figure in the Ethereum Foundation. Mashbean said that without her, there would be no Ethereum today. Fortunately, I remembered to help her find a microphone and didn't embarrass myself too much. Aya-san talked about the concept of “infinite garden” (not a train, but a movie that will be released this winter) the Ethereum community has been advocated:
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning; An infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the play
The rules of finite games may not change; the rules of infinite games must change
Finite players play within boundaries; Infinite players play without boundaries
Finite players are serious; Infinite players are playful
Finite players play to win titles; Infinite players have nothing but their names
A finite player plays to be powerful; an infinite player plays with strength
Finite players are theatrical; infinite players are dramatic
A finite player consumes time; an infinite player generates time
The finite players aims to win eternal life; the infinite player aims for eternal birth
Regardless of whether you understand the description of the infinite garden, you should be able to imagine how the behavior of making the world sustainable may differ from the conventional social norms. I think Aya-san sees herself and the foundation as gardeners. They carefully control the irrigation of sunshine, air, and water in the Ethereum ecology, while carefully self-reflect their own intention at the same time, to maintain diversity and to avoid pesticides only to promote short-term growth. In this way, the garden can exist sustainably.
Aya-san told good stories. However, I am still worried about the powerful influence that Sam Altman and his team have gathered in the world, as much as I don't understand the end of intense capital competition. I will take the Plurality multiverse as a necessary alternative solution for public interests. At the same time, I also regard Plurality as the kindness of humanitarianism. How can we accommodate more people? How can we meet the needs of more people? What is the more humane thing to do, in order to create a sustainable future?
Given that Plurality implies infinite elaboration, I think I’ll give it a try to define it as well:
Plurality is the necessary humanity of our future society.
Practical Plurality
For the reason that Mashbean said that Plurality values methods/methodology more, let us take a look at some technologies that may be helpful in practice.
I plan to use a simplified loop to show how several diverse technological tools can help. But of course, this loop is only one of the possibilities of multiple solutions. The purpose here is to show how diverse technologies can complement each other, and not to consider practical implementation issues for the time being.
Consensus technology
vTaiwan is a frequently cited example. A few years ago, during the dispute between Uber and taxi drivers, vTaiwan succeeded in demonstrating how to obtain public consensus and participate in the legislative process. Now, projects like The Narwhal Project use AI to help groups reach consensus more quickly in a wider range of contexts. vTaiwan is a successful prototype, and the development path to accommodate opinions and obtain consensus is also clear.
However, the challenge for vTaiwan in recent years is that no one can bring consensus into the legislative arena like key figures in the past. After people reach consensus, who can execute it? How to supervise responsibility? How to reward contributions?
DAO: Tools for coordination
Although the practice of "code is law" has been popular recently (in fact, most teams have found it almost impossible in practice), the so-called “decentralized coordination” in human organization is not quite an accomplishment by the technology tools, but most of the time the adjustment and modification of organizational philosophies and social relationships.
Good decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) can provide contributors with greater flexibility, establish their own rules, and allow individuals to play to their strengths, collaborate globally, and explore possibilities everywhere. The most important thing here is to strengthen human agency to solve the execution problem mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Retroactive funding
Retroactive funding can reward positive social impacts after the fact. Hypercerts is the best example. The real benefit of Hypercerts is that it solves the startup problem for many projects, allowing project initiators to invite like-minded collaborators to do good things together. Assuming that the impact created is greater, the potential profit is also greater. At the same time, these social start-ups are like general start-ups in that most of them will fail, but some will succeed. The results of multiple attempts are usually better than putting all the eggs in one basket.
Decentralized identification (DID)
Identity plays an important role in this, especially when trying to reach consensus. How do I know that every opinion submitted is from a real human rather than an AI? How do I know that I am not under a Sibyl attack or that someone creating multiple false identities is not taking away more rewards? Of course, DID has some very complicated issues, but we will only discuss the actual possibilities of multiple technologies.
Beyond the cycle
Certainly, in addition to the above four, there are countless other multiple technologies that can be used. For example, quadratic crowdfunding or quadratic voting is one of the best representatives of this Plurality multiverse as well. A few weeks ago, Dark Matter Labs shared their current project with the da0 community, where they hope to use AI to speak for the rivers, to bring “opinions” and “ideas” (in a perspective manner) of a river into human discussions. This idea directly breaks the boundaries and frameworks of "diversity" belonging only to humans, although this is more of a philosophical issue than a technological one.
Joi Ito also introduced his "Henkaku" community, which does not use any convertible tokens. He believes that obtaining many tokens just to sell them is a waste of time (please imagine for yourself). However, they issue soul-bound tokens (SBTs), which are only issued to individuals who have contributed over 100 hours. This is like a doctorate degree, which is difficult to obtain. Once obtained, it becomes a symbol recognized by the community (and society), which also motivates people to contribute.
How Might We Reach Plurality?
Imagine a new collective emerging and charging into the realm of public goods, just like they have charged into AI and the cryptocurrency industry. Imagine graduates from prestigious universities such as the University of Tokyo, National Taiwan University, Harvard, and Stanford no longer treating public or non-profit projects as mere summer internships but as lifelong career pursuits. What changes might happen if this shift unfold?
One day, if positive social impacts inscribed by the Hypercerts were bought back at prices in millions of dollars, could it potentially turn the society around towards better momentum to contribute to the public interest?
I think it's possible.
When I talk to some of my younger friends about these issues, their responses are surprisingly consistent. "I want to do something meaningful for society, but I still need to survive." This is totally understandable. And the challenge ahead is thus very obvious too: How might we help them not only survive, but thrive?
The technology that has propelled humanity towards the moon and beyond has been called "poetic technology" in the past. These technologies do not directly create capital gains or compete with one another; rather, they aim to push human society forward as a whole. Perhaps the Plurality is the poetic shore we should be heading towards next.
Thank you to Hal's team for organizing this event and inviting us. If anyone is interested in hosting Plurality Taipei, please find us at da0 (da0.g0v.tw).