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It is very nuanced, to be sure, but I have to say I agree with Musk far more than Peterson on this.

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We do too. But do you see the importance of creating some kind of decentralized trust system online? Online could be much more useful if we did.

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

It's not one-size-fits-all; you can have communities that allow anonymity, and communities where reputation and strong trust are expected. People will most likely be more careful in the anon space, but it can still have great value for the dissemination of information.

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It would have to be truly decentralized, but that sounds like a good idea.

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Exactly. Like Bitcoin

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I do indeed.: you know.. there is that Trust issue.. though.

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

Guys, I'm on a huge reading schedule for a father of two with a small mortgage and off-grid etc. I'm time poor but I've kept you subscribed and sometimes check in. This time I am so glad. I believe this piece is incredibly important and I thank you for the time and thought behind it. As a musician I am torn with 'coming out of the closet' as a free-thinker and critical thinker with my music and tempted to self-censor just to get algorithms to side with me. This issue is huge and I feel you guys have given some real solutions here. Anonymity for my political views is good but transparency for my party music is good as both protect my interests of self-expression and self-employment.

Strange times.

Right now my trust horizon doesn't go much past my kitchen sink.

Congrats

Here is my shadow banned song on Bankers and Lockstep for you entertainment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmAhPm8deMs

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A "new constitution" is something we need in your lyrics there. The current one needs a few amendments added. Like this: https://joshketry.substack.com/p/what-amendments-would-you-add-to

Nice accent and sound. And no, you do not sound vague.

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Jul 12, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

Well I was feeling a little rattled by events at the time. It was quite a while back I wrote the track. Thanks for listening and keep up the good thinking - I'll keep up the strong emotions. It is why we have the odd musician lying around...

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When you go on tour in America, hit us up. We have an amazing venue in Buffalo NY

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Hey Man, very exciting thought. I'm a year or 2 from that but I definitely will.

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Listening to Mock the set it up ! what about the FTX dude? prime example of depraved greed... and I am right w/ you. time limited: Strange times is an understatement. The issue w/ anon is almost moot.. because really super sophisticated users can by pass anything and any barrier; I don't fall in that category; my son could if he wanted to but he can be trusted: The core issue is that humans are corrupt in their goals and desires. As much as I want to believe that TRUST and Transparency can be exist in the same "virtual space" I don't believe it can happen. As a Christian, like the Rationalist (my friend) said.. think of people in your very life in whom you have placed TRUST and how many times has that trust been betrayed? I can count in my life which is long how many people I can TRUST that includes family members who cannot be trusted, neighbors etc and then some people one would never even think.. when push came to shove.. they stood their ground. I am not perfect but I know I can be trusted with whatever task is given to me and that is how I reared my sons who are trustworthy. My son who is a network architect and can navigate the world wide world and supervises a team of trustworthy superprogrammers has proven that to his employers who battle against the world wide hacks does not use any form EVER of social networking, ever.

He is extremely disciplined and principled. I KNOW I can trust him. Sidenote: as a "whistleblower" and scientist.. when I caught a chinese spy many years ago which I had to sign a life long non disclosure report which remains in effect until my death or so I was threatened at the time 2001. I could write more but this is very nuanced .. like you said thread. Yes I do think anonymity should be allowed.. but does not mean I will be anon online. I consider those people too weird.. I mean why do why want to be anon? Again, the heart of mankind is wicked and as much as I wish it were otherwise I recognize the difference between evil or wicked and goodness. Great POST.. take care.

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

Peterson is sounding a little too authoritarian for me. Didn’t he also suggest we should just take the shot and get out of Covid?

I’m with Elon on this.

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Shot mandates? Don’t believe so. But agreed on authoritarian, however this problem is a tricky one and the side of trust is very important as well. Just not more important than freedom

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

I saw the video where he says just get the shot (or at least to that effect if not those specific words) on JJ Couey's twitch channel. If I have time to look for it I'll post it.

Generally I like what Peterson has to say, but I always get concerned with "thought" leaders. He's human and as susceptible to ego and fear as anyone else.

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https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1868285766

go to 49:40 time stamp. He says he doesn't want to coerce but in the next breath says get the damn shot so we can get out of this...

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We don’t blame anyone who said that way back then when the propagandists and fear were full throttle. But now that the emperor has no clothes, anyone still supporting it is the only ones who should be held to an unforgiving standard. Especially with all of the new information.

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so he got the jab.. says it all.

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Once one gets old enough and doesn't worry what other people think, any longer. Saying what you want comes much easier.

There are some like Navalny, who seek to make a difference, even at the cost of their freedom and/or life. They have always been rare.

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

I choose anonymity because I don’t want to be doxxed and harassed. Commenting on social media postings is not worth that hassle. It would really only be worth exposing myself if I could make a living using my real name. Since I dont expect to do that, I don’t think it really matters if I’m anonymous.

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

There is also the danger of conformity. Think the Asche Experiment, also McCarthyism and the Witch Burnings. Are the CIA bots going to get hammered down or will the Assanges?

Think the RESTRICT Act. When one needs ID to access internet at all, to make payments of any sort, to access any services.... Then what? In many ways this part of the argument is similar to argunments against CBDC scenearios. The whole point of ID is to enforce conformity.

If there is any "foul" for lack of ID, then the judge (well, actually the judge will be a language model AI) is existing powers-that-be and authority. That ALONE is enough reason to oppose. Many will feel safe in that situation, because they conform.

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Good points indeed

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

{...but on the fake accounts, people don't hold back. Shielded by anonymity, they can say what they really want to say...}

There's something terribly wrong and utterly sick with the society you're living in if it is anonymity only that you can rely on to make you feel safe when sincerely exposing your views; whatever they are ...

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100% agree.

But that doesn't change the truth that it exists.

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

Intriguing. Virtue surely lies on both sides of the question. On one hand, putting one’s personal reputation on the line in a public forum is bold and admirable. On the other hand, some issues are bigger than reputations and personalities. “Elon said” and “Dr. Peterson said” bring preconceptions and bias into the discussion. Anonymity is an equalizer, and I suspect we’re all sharper analytically when it’s not about “me.”

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

Interesting thoughts on a tricky subject - thanks.

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

Anonymity seems so modern and libertarian. Trust is built out of the number and type of people or parties involved. I think the quality of trust in an IMDb rating is on a lesser scale. There are epistemic requirements; there is the matter of validating or at least sourcing statements to give them value. Watch out when asking for more security. One might wind up deserving neither liberty nor security (Ben Franklin).

People might want anonymity to post (verifiable) evidence that they got from somewhere else. That would be like a secret source at the NY Times or such. That's edgy material. Well, it's an edgy world when dancing with the criminals. Maybe we should band together, so that an organization can act, for anyone who is willing to be a part.

An Open Letter to Educated Persons of the Modern World: https://markgmeyers.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-the-educated-persons

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When you talk about a 4th estate, do you mean like a 4th branch of governance?

A citizen’s assembly is a good place to start.

But any new system needs to be decentralized or it will just become corrupted again.

We did an article about creating a new decentralized 4th branch of government here, which included a decentralized press: https://open.substack.com/pub/joshketry/p/lets-build-a-4th-branch-of-government?r=7oa9d&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

The village square heritage of New England, eventually spread, but not exactly, to the rest of the colonies. In some cities, they have elections to the city council by district, there is no reason there could not be district meetings on board issues, prior to the board meeting. On some subjects it could be more than one.

Election a council member is one thing, keeping them involved with their public voting group, is quite another.

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Your solutions are clearly decentralized, or we could say anarchistic. In this paper, "Architectural Values", i talk about what I consider to be really important in democratic architecture: https://markgmeyers.substack.com/p/architectural-values

I recommend that you complement that creative writing of yours with deeper reading. In trying to stay in keeping with the annals of democratic architecture, I start at the 'grassroots', which is the individual. We can focus more locally, and have greater awareness, interaction, and experience at that scale (local). "Local" will be local to the individual.

After localization, "distribution" is for me a most important architectural term. This refers to distribution of power. Voting in a group, for example, applies maximum distribution, where n is the number of members, and 1/n is the amount of power each member has. Another highly effective form of distribution comes with districting. For example, when the US began, a federal district was 30,000 people. This ended in 1929 with the freezing of the districts at 435, and so US districts today average 750,000 people. In this example distribution has gone down.

In my overall thesis, the failure in politics occurs in the fourth estate, which is the estate of freedom of speech; it is the estate of the media and the press. It is more informally regarding as another branch of checks in the system to have such a thing. For example, for "fourth estate" the dictionary says, "the press; the profession of journalism.".

And so what I am saying is that failure occurs in the "free press". When people's minds are being propagandized, then they don't know about the criminals (in govt). He who owns the press owns the minds of the people. Once the people's minds are owned by these consolidated private interests, then there is no system of govt that will work. They won't even know their own laws unless you say so. In the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Shortly, the public will be unable to reason or think for themselves. They'll only be able to parrot the information they've been given on the previous night's news."

I actually think while our system of government needs to be cleaned up, its basic structure is fine, and I would use it. This includes its 3 branches, and all the districting, for example. I'm fine with that.

Your thesis is that decentralization is necessary. That's political anarchism, and Noam Chomsky talks about that, and how people try to go in that direction in Eastern Europe and Russia. The problem with pure decentralization is its power vacuum, and needing to decentralize central things, (like oil fields). Total centralization also won't work. As Alvin Toffler and many others have said, there needs to be a degree of centralization, and a degree of decentralization. But this, to me, is all peripheral in relation to my core concerns.

My approach is democratic. The organization I have written about adding to society is purely democratic. It defines (and confines) itself to monitoring and redressing universally recognized government injustices. The universal recogniztion comes with at least 2/3 support.

My architecture has no money in elections, in has high distribution, and high awareness among membership, due to the topic of the organization, which includes compiling information on government injustices. The reason why people act democratically, is because they have common cause. These are the crimes being committed against all of us.

And so effectively a government watchdog, which is what I propose in an NGO, would classify as falling in the fourth estate, because it would exercise freedom of speech, and operate in the same area as a journalist would, but bear in mind, the entire world of political actions and news will still burgeon, even when the government is just. It will still be a busy place, where this organization has nothing to say, because it is confined to universally recognized government injustices.

I would start by creating one of the districts locally, and then using that as an example of what people in other districts need to do there. After that, each district puts forth a rep, and that would be a national legislature. It could lead on monitoring and redressed federal injustices.

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You realize what has happened to the media though, right? No one trusts it anymore. So ratings and thus control over the narrative are down 90% and counting. It is the DECENTRALIZED news that is taking over. Podcasts that get millions of views, articles like this one that get thousands of views, and individual other substacks, YouTube channels, and more.

What would you suggest we read?

For you, the book The Starfish and The Spider might be a good one. We don't need to use one of the existing archaic systems when we can make a new one that makes the old ones obsolete.

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People still read MSM and the propaganda works just as well. Think about WHO are the talking heads allowed, think about how much time the Alt Media puts into debunking NYTIMES, when the NYTIMES is a repeat, known perjurer. This is the Gellman effect.

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I don't think you know enough about your own architecture to have seen the rules of conducting a meeting. You will find democratic method in that, and it is done many, many times. From the APA, “[NGOs include] international charities such as OXFAM and Save the Children, research institutes, churches, community-based organizations, lobby groups and professional associations.”… And I would add credit unions.

The rules of meetings and committees is widespread, and you may find this is a more widespread approach than you know. You call the American system "archaic", when modern man is the one who failed in politics.

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This is one of our main questions. If we want to band together, where do we go?

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Sorry, I didn't word a direct response fully. A local district would recruit people locally who agree to claim govt injustices and to stand for the redress of them. Membership agrees to this, and to a democratic approach. In my latest article:

https://markgmeyers.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-the-educated-persons

there was the talk about parliamentary rule, where a group of people can operate as a democratic assembly, and make proposals, and vote on them. They can write their own bylaws that way, too, which will no longer need the rules of democratic assembly; bylaws will simply be carried out, or operated in accordance with.

A district should have its own lead point of contact for recruits. I think a person could be elected as a "lister", and support a home page for the district. They may also vow to keep links to district contact lists on the Internet, hosted regionally or nationally.

Another person could be elected to keep a list of members (names, contact, address).

This goes deeper, but it's how to create the thing. It starts small and locally, and then repeating this across districts produces a national org. The trick is a sufficiently written set of rules to do this much to get it started. I think it could specify, for example, that when there enough members, a ward map could be created in the district, and each ward could elect its own rep, and the district would have its own legislature made of ward reps. They would not need rules written previously for this level of operation. They would be in a position to draft a district set of bylaws, and to amend them.

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I am a fan of the old Confederation (1776-91), which had a legislature, but was really only comprised of sovereign states. I think that is very close to a decentralized system. It's anti-federalist, and I like it. So each district elects to this body, which is a pretty simple system.

The Confederation was created by forming delegates from each of the colonies, and I believe this broke down more locally from there. I think banding together happens locally, in this approach. When we agree on the equal-population districting, or equal representation ratios we have, then we can form a national legislature of our own.

They could propose and vote upon claims of injustices, and actions to take to redress them, and members who volunteer in support could carry actions out. In one's own local district, there is also doing this on a local scale, with local government. But I also think any one district could redress national grievances as well, as they wish, in their own political process.

I have also given some thought, which I haven't yet published about, as to how various self-forming districts would be able to get together, or trust each other at the start. This is actually not hard to do. An exchange of member lists with contact info can be made, and randomly-selected persons from these lists can be contacted, and checked to see if they are real and willing members of said district. Over time, there could be an accumulation of trust-approved districts that acts as the main trusting network for later districts coming into existence, to join them.

When at least 90% of districts have joined, I think a national body can form, and draft national bylaws. The districts would continue to be self-governing, outside of but in accordance with the national bylaws. Structurally, this is like US states with the 10th amendment, but the districts are local (because some US states are just too big to be called that). And so, the UNIT of the national org is the local DISTRICT.

Cheers.

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Jul 11, 2023Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

I really like the juxtaposition. They’re both right exploring concepts. Peterson is really *really* right on decentralization.

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Thanks for listening. Yes the trust horizon - I guess has to emanate from a position of a somewhat healed mind. You have to be able to handle having trust broken to give it out in a way - but the hard systems of law and politics etc leave me cold in this space. I sometimes worry that more totalitarian systems evolve with the populace and they retroactively persecute the thought criminals...

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Thanks .. I am paying attention; great article. my comment posted below..:)

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