22 Comments
Nov 15, 2022Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

I agree about transparency. For ordinary people have any effective participation in public life we must know exactly what our leaders are actually doing. But it’s not going to be easy to get there.

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It's in all governments' nature to keep secrets and deceive. They will never ever agree to any kind of transparency condition. The only way this could possibly happen is if the whole system explodes and things have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

In the meantime, I think we should focus on making the government obsolete. We need to withdraw from the rigged game that they have created and learn to depend on *ourselves*, not outside forces who probably don't have our best interests in mind. If we return to classical American values -- self-reliance, hard work, and skepticism about authority -- we can win this war.

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We can’t make it obsolete if it rules over us with guns Fat Rabbit. We need to dissolve it with decentralization first.

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I think our fundamental point of disagreement is that I view decentralization as the end goal, the final result of a larger cultural transformation. You seem to view it as the means of bringing about this transformation. I think it's more practical and healthy to focus on concrete things that we can all do *today*.

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I do think this because I have been witness to it. You should really check out the book the Starfish and the Spider. Think of the music industry how they lost billions of dollars because of Napster and Kazaa. Or look at Legacy Media right now - down hundreds of billions of dollars thanks to decentralized media like podcasts and substack writers and YouTube.

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I get it. But since I'm not a software engineer, I have to wait around until somebody else invents these things for me. In the meantime, I think there's a lot that we can do to decentralize our *physical* and *mental* existences.

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Very true. And both are important.

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Nov 15, 2022Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

agree ... we need to find rituals as a remedy to the centrifugal forces (due to the most dominant ritual: which is Money) to strengthen common sense and trust

would suggest TRUST as a currency to invest in : www.trustos.org... more herehttps://commonworks-23333.medium.com/can-an-algorithm-for-trust-strengthen-democracy-d1e410d1f4db

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What about as a currency not to invest in, but to run a whole new world wide decentralized community on? The most important social token you can earn is trust. And we have too many criminals in power who never earned it

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thanks for replying ... sure ... any time.....my e-mail is at the end of the article

yeah there are multiple opportunities..... my favorite would be a Satoshi Nakamoto type viral event .... nobody knows where it comes from ... :)

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Read the article and heard about your idea a while ago. I love it. Let me buy you lunch downtown Buffalo sometime Doc?

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this is a great idea! though i think i'm one of those uncomfortable skeptics, as my immediate thought was "what a great data mining operation" ... i don't think this is what you are doing, and i'm gonna look into it more (it looks like that tchat thing is no longer functioning though?)

...as you mention in the writing, it can sort of evolve as it goes, and i'm wondering if this could build into a sort of tiered system where earned trust can yield entry to more private communities based on a reputation built over time? in this way, it would sort of be like a long-form multi-factor authorization for verifying legitimately good intentions vs sowing chaos; a filtering process for those interested in growth over the long term ...

just my initial thoughts. loving all these ideas.

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tchat ... expired due to lack fo use .... (maybe clubhouse is a good substitute) but the idea of 'Trust as a currency' in my eyes is the best if it is very simple .... I am basically looking for a code which enables a ritual being viral to strengthen Trust and common sense.....

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i've been wondering lately if it's possible to build a platform that can recognize authenticity while sniffing out manufactured controlled opposition - because otherwise there will always be people with legitimate beliefs getting swooned by those sowing deceit, for the purposes of disrupting any sort of cohesive movement for change. i am curious where you are heading with this...

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It already happens. Look when you make a purchase on Amazon. How do you know who to trust? It is easy. The person with the highest rating by the users. The same could happen with trust in any decentralized platform. We can rate each other with trust tokens kept on chain. Like what Dr Marcus touched on above

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Nov 15, 2022Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

actually the amazon comparison is interesting to bring up ... i don't trust the numbers on stars anymore. my go to approach now is to look at the 3 star reviews to get a balance of pros and cons, which usually has more rational feedback than the knee-jerk emotional responses of the 1 or 5 stars.

and i think the lesson there for me is that the methodology for gauging trust will always be shifting, especially over the next few years. because many of the 1 and 5 star reviews are generated by organizations either looking to trash or glorify a particular product, for obvious reasons. that's been the game for years now, and this seem inevitable to happen again in any new platform, as Grape Soda comments as well, just like in real life.

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Have you been fooled on Amazon or eBay to the point of you stopped using them? In a well managed community you should care about your trustworthiness. No? It brings value to future iterations

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Nov 15, 2022Liked by The Society of Problem Solvers

A question worth asking. Doubt there’s an easy answer. It’s just like real life: sometimes you get fooled, especially by those with an interest in doing so

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We do it with Amazon and Ebay sellers. We can figure it out,

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I agree with your third sentence especially. But it is unlikely.

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So, we could call it something like, 'Worthy Individual Today Award (WITA). It would have to be reversible, as many of those sowing deceit start out with bits or seeds of truth to reel others in and if you have already given your trust, you would need to be able to take it back and have that show and everyone would need to be limited to only so many in a day so it's not just given out by hucksters/bots. But the overall totals rec'd should show (like how many <3 you get on substack.

Sounds like something Elon could easily implement on X, esp if he limited it to those who have blue checks; not everyone uses X, but can view posts there and count the reposts. Or could even be used by Substack.

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Re: "Trust." Definition: "Belief, faith, or confidence in the honesty, integrity, reliability, justice, etc. of another person or thing." So, kind of like a religion? Like assuming "truth" is an absolute?

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