Panel Discussion w Dr. Neal Davis, Laura Shin and Dr. Tomicah Tillemann, moderated

Speaker 1

First, let me say that Laura, Neil, and Tamica are the first time. I enjoyed your talks, and I know that, well, maybe not everybody, but everybody who talked to me about your talks enjoyed them. I got a lot of compliments for you. So, thank you very much for being here and for sharing what you have shared with us so far. We’re going to see if we can tease out more sharing from all of you right now. To get this going, I’d like to put you on the spot a little bit. And I hope that’s okay. And if it’s not, you can forgive me afterwards, and we can argue about it.

Speaker 1

I’d like to invite you to start by sharing your perspective on Mormonism. It’s the Mormon Trans Humanist Association. And of course, let me give you a little some demographics on that. Not all of the members of the Mormon Transhumanist Association are Mormons. About, I don’t know, 80% of us identify as Mormon based on historical survey. The other 20% are other people who have interest in the association that want to join because they support what we do, but don’t identify as more of themselves. We have Mormons that are part of the association who aren’t practicing Mormons. We have Mormons who are about 75%, based on historical data, that are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the largest Mormon denomination. And we even have some really strange Mormons, like atheist Mormons. We have Atheist Mormon members. And we so it’s a diverse group of people. And I want to set that as context because whatever you say is okay. What we want to know is genuinely what is your perspective on Mormonism? And I think we can start maybe with Tamaika and work over toward Neil.

Speaker 2

It’s probably not fair to start with me. Now, is my mic on? We’ll see. You guys can hear me? All right.

Speaker 2

So, I am a member of the church. I’m an active member of the church. And I’ll give as my answer to that just a little bit of family history, which provides a lot of The context for my feelings on this topic. My family has not been in the church for a long time. So my grandparents were Holocaust survivors that came over to the United States. After the Second World War, we lost virtually all of our family in the Second World War. And when my grandmother was growing up, she Eventually came to read the New Testament and gained, I think, a powerful impression of Jesus Christ and who Jesus is. Jesus Christ was, but she also, after she made it to the United States, received a prayer book that her father had dedicated to her prior to being carted away and killed. By the Nazis. And in that book, he said, I know there are storm clouds on the horizon, but I need you to be true to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And it had been for her for many years a real struggle to reconcile what she felt was a faith in Jesus Christ with this desire to be true to the God of Abraham. Isaac and Jacob. And it was only after a wonderful friend of hers, Edna Wheelwright, introduced her to the Book of Mormon, and she came to understand the core conception. In our faith, that Jesus Christ of the New Testament is Jehovah of the Old Testament, that you recognize there wasn’t conflict there. And so she subsequently was baptized by Bruce R. McConkey in Australia, which is another very long story. And my mom joined the church largely independently. Because my mom wasn’t raised in the church when she was in college.

Speaker 2

What I have gained from my faith in the church is two really important things. The first is a framework. for prioritizing what really matters in life and what really matters in the world. So family is really important to me. Trying to live our lives in a way that we leave a positive imprint on the systems and societies that we encounter is important to me. And that architecture is something that I trace directly back to My faith, and it’s something that has an impact on the decisions that I make every day.

Speaker 2

The other component of this, which I think is critical. Is I have not grown up really at any point in my life in an environment where members of the church were the majority. I’ve always been In a minority. I get that we’re a little weird in the eyes of the world, and I’m okay with that. But I also think that what we have is something that is. Uniquely relevant to many people at a time when bonds of trust and community are fraying. And we do that better than just about anybody on the planet. Uh my my old boss, Ben Horowitz, when I was at Andreessen Horowitz, uh would al often pull me aside and say, What you guys do on culture is just next level. Nobody else can create and build culture the way you build culture in the church. Church. Long answer, I apologize, but a lot to say on this subject.

Speaker 3

So I’m not going to claim to know that much about Mormonism beyond what I actually read on the website when I agreed to do this conference. But as you probably gleaned from my talk earlier, there was something that I noticed, which is that a lot of the principles that were discussed on the website were things that are similar to the way people talk about blockchains and kind of this idea about how it kind of enables more democratic groups. And that’s why I chose that as the theme. For my talk today.

Speaker 3

And I will say that I’m actually a very spiritual person. For those of you who listen to my podcast, you know, I’m kind of big into meditation, and I actually really love all sorts of religious Of things, which is very strange and unusual, I think, because people tend to think of the crypto world as being like highly intellectual and stuff like that. But I guess when you spend so much Time of your day, like in your brain, it’s kind of nice to just go to another space. And I think maybe that’s why I really gravitate toward those things. So I actually was kind of excited to participate for that reason. Because in general, I’m really into religious stuff. So that’s my perspective.

Speaker 1

Like which religious stuff? I give some examples of.

Speaker 3

Oh, like prayer, meditation, just. Yeah, like like just thinking about kind of why we’re all here, humanity, um like like just a lot of the themes I read about in the website about um you know inclusivity or decentralization like I mean probably they’re the same reasons that I’m interested in crypto too, actually. So, yeah, that was what my takeaway was from reading the website.

Speaker 4

Cool, thank you, Laura. Neil.

Speaker 5

So I grew up in Arkansas where Mormonism was definitely the outsider religion and there was a Pretty strong us versus them dynamic that came into play growing up in the South that way. And I think one of the healthy things that that did for me was it made me really dive into what I might find that I would value about my Mormon identity. I think as I’ve grown up and the things that have shaped my life the most since then, one of them is an appreciation of

Speaker 5

What I call in Joseph Smith the identification of the scientist God. There’s these two competing notions of God in Mormonism that are in tension. The kind of almost the timeless classical omniscient, omnipotent God that really speaks strongly through parts of the Bible and parts of the Book of Mormon. And the God that Joseph Smith was particularly discussing towards the end of his life, the God who, you know, in the Book of Abraham sense, he Found spirits, you know, found himself among spirits and set up laws whereby they may advance. And there’s this sense that God or the council of gods or however you want to describe it was figuring it out and producing an understanding and a working model of the universe that would allow them to propagate that goodness forward. And so I’ve found that extremely valuable in my perspective, in my relationship to the universe, and the body of human knowledge, and the body of theological knowledge.

Speaker 5

The other thing that I’ve really appreciated about it is what I think in church circles would most often be called something like eternal identity, but what I like to think of as hyper-individualism. It’s the idea that you have something unique that you bring to creation from all time and all eternity. Like you are special and unique, and you matter, and what you do matters. And you may not always see this, right? You don’t always have that perspective, and you don’t see how everything interlocks together. But there’s a reason that you were put where you were, and there’s a reason that you have an interaction that you have with the other people around you. So, for me, those are the things that when I look at Mormonism, that’s what I value about Mormonism. That’s what it brings to my life and the way that I try to relate to people.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Neil.

Speaker 1

All right, we’re going to continue to put you on the spot. And I don’t know if this will be harder or easier. We’re about to find out. What’s your perspective on transhumanism?

Speaker 2

So I may be in the reverse position from Laura. I know a lot less about transhumanism than I do about the church. And again, I am I’m delighted to have this opportunity to learn, but what I have been most impressed by thus far has been The willingness to juxtapose matters of faith and matters of technology and science in a way that I think is far too rare within our society. We tend to view these discussions as very separate things.

Speaker 2

I remember a remark that I think it was Bruce Armaconke made at a BYU graduation many years ago, in which, as he looked out on All of the faculty in their academic regalia said, Here we are arrayed in the robes of the false priesthood. And Hugh Nibley, thank you. Appreciate the fact check from the audience. And I think that has largely been the approach that many communities have taken, many communities of faith have taken. when it comes to matters of science, technology and innovation, that somehow it’s separate, we want to stay far away from that, and we don’t want to engage. And I think that is a mistake, to the point that was made just a moment ago. We are instructed in our faith to experiment upon the word. And that process of questioning, discovery, and continual expansion of the perimeter of our knowledge of the world. Is really foundational to our theology as well. And so the ability to have that conversation Out in the open, put it all on the table, I think is healthy and something that happens far too infrequently in our society.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Tamica. Laura.

Speaker 1

I will have to admit, to Micah, you are incorrect in that I might have more information about this, because now I’m realizing that maybe what I was reading on the website was about transhumanism, and I’m not quite sure. So, you know. Some of us aren’t sure there’s any difference either.

Speaker 3

Yeah, whatever the distinction is, it’s probably lost on me. And, you know, I’m sorry that I’m not able to speak about it very much, but I will say.

Speaker 3

that some of the views that Neil expressed are things that I believe, that each individual person was put on the planet for a reason, has something special to offer. And because of my spiritual views, I do think that You know, each person is like a child of God and has something to offer in that way. And that’s why, like, you might hear me give career advice to people where it’s like You know, you should follow your own passion and joy and not do what you think other people think you should do or whatever. And part of the reason is because of my spiritual beliefs. I feel like. If God gave you those talents, then you should work on those and you should offer those to the world and not do whatever it is that your fill-in-the-blank person in your life thinks you should be doing.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Laura. Neil.

Speaker 5

I think I’m in favor of transhumanism, inasmuch as the emphasis is on the humanism. In the sense that To the extent that we’re using technology to alter or supersede our nature, I think we make a mistake. To the extent that we can use it to better fulfill, you know, like the quote earlier about the better angels of our nature, right? To the extent that we can fulfill and better enable us to reach that kind of human sociality, I’m infinitely in favor of it. But as with everything else, technology is a tool, and it’s how we actually use it at the end of the day that’s going to define the kind of relationship that we forge with other people.

Speaker 5

We see this now with the fact that I think that it’s probably not controversial today to say that social media has been an unmitigated disaster It’s not devoid of value, but by and large, the way that it’s been used has been a wedge. Between humans, right? Like we’re creating all manner of ites in the Book of Mormon phrase. And we have all manner of isms in the world. I’m definitely in favor of us creating discrete, you know, I talked about villages this morning, right? I want more villages, I want more village greens, and I want a commons for them to meet on, but I want them to be human. I want them to be humane. And I want them to be humanist in the sense that they’re recognizing that we have things to build and add together as we work on this.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Neil.

Speaker 1

What will the world look like 100 years from now, probably? Now, when we think about this often. We like think best case and worst case scenario. We think best case, oh, it’ll be heaven on earth. Worst case, like we’re gone, right? We nuked each other, we’re just gone. I’m not asking you for the best case and worst case. Given your background, given your perspective on life, your faith, your hope, your knowledge. What you see around you, what is the most probable? And this is super hard, I know. I mean, trying to predict five years from now is like next to impossible. I’m asking you 100. So I’m asking you to be a little bit visionary intentionally here. And this I suspect this reveals something about us, right? So what will we probably look like 100 years from now?

Speaker 2

I resent the fact that you guys get an extra two, three minutes to think of the answers on this, and I have to go first each time. Let me cite, I think, three possible developments out of a wide array of potential developments that we Could find.

Speaker 2

For the last hundred, seventy years or so, we have organized the vast preponderance of human endeavor in the context of the corporation. And the Common Stock Corporation has been the vehicle that we’ve used to bring together capital and labor to get stuff done. There are some exceptions to that, but those exceptions are kind of outliers. That model, I think, is nearing the end of its useful lifespan for a variety of different reasons. I think we are likely to see new data architecture emerge that enables us and new resource architecture emerge that enables us to solve problems far more effectively and combine talent, technology, resources, and partners far more effectively than we can right now. So that’s point number one is I think our tools for problem solving will have evolved dramatically and profoundly. Beyond where we are today.

Speaker 2

Tool number two is: I think we will have created enough wealth within society to have. a really meaningful discussion about how we want to prioritize our lives. We will have automated a lot of the jobs that are just kind of obnoxious jobs that we have to do. Right now, and so we’re going to be able to think really clearly about the highest and best uses for human potential and human capital. And we may not love all of the answers that emerge from that process, but The nature of employment and the way that we engage with the economy will have shifted really dramatically.

Speaker 2

And the last piece of this is, I think, that the institutions of the state are still likely to be needed. There is, and I’m going to. I’m sure offend a couple of people in this room. There is a school of thought that is not it’s it’s prominent within the the blockchain community Of folks who’ve read the sovereign individual and think that that’s the way things are going. I think that’s dead wrong for a variety of reasons, and I’m happy to discuss that further. We will still need the institutions of state and the institutions of governance. We are not going to be islands. We are going to be operating in the context of communities. the institutions will have either evolved dramatically or become irrelevant. And we will see big shifts in the way that society is organized as a consequence of that.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Tamica. Laura.

Speaker 3

So my belief is hello? So my belief is that in a hundred years, things will be In a better place than they are now. And the basic reason is for that, it for that is that when you look back at history, generally over time things improve. So I’m kind of an optimist in that regard. But when I say better, what I mean is, we have talked at least the questions during my talk were about inclusivity and stuff like that. And I do think that already we can See in our society, even just in my lifetime, that that’s become more of a priority. It’s something people talk about at least and are interested in. So just having awareness of that is obviously going to make things better on that score.

Speaker 3

And then like to Micah, I agree that people are going to be able to better organize themselves, and I think much of that will happen online. I think already we’re seeing so much of our lives is shifting to online. We engage in online communities, we organize ourselves online. Obviously, the pandemic has just accelerated the shift with remote work and things like that. And so I think many decisions of groups will just be made in that digital world. And that’s part of what I was talking about when I was talking about DAOs earlier. But I agree with Samica that I don’t think this means that governments are going to go away or anything, especially not within 100 years. That’s like way too short of a time line if that were to ever happen. But so I think we kind of by and large agree.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Laura. Neil.

Speaker 5

2122, the war rig crosses the desert towards Bullet Town.

Speaker 5

If you look at the history of previous industrial revolutions, you’ve typically had some sort of major technological innovation that has upended society in some deep way. And then you’ve had a generation of two of it’s not quite integration yet because that doesn’t happen until later. What I’m thinking about are the ways that you have coal miners and you had the gin craze in England in the 1600s, and people have not dealt very well with dramatic technological change that upends their society. And the models and the scripts for living that they’re used to dealing with. I think we’re going through one of those periods right now.

Speaker 5

I don’t know I mean, in 100 years, probably we’re past that point, but I will admit myself a little bit of a pessimist in that I think that our tendency as apes to chase the shiniest berry means that many of us are many people are not going to successfully make the transition into What comes next? And that doesn’t mean they get wiped out. It just means that they don’t fully adapt to the reality of living in a more heavily technologized world. And there’s a lot of tension around what governments and corporations are asking of in terms of automation and productivity, and what can we ask people to do.

Speaker 5

On the bright side, we were on one kind of road before COVID hit, and now we’re going through what they’re calling the great resignation, which is a lot of people reexamining their lives, deciding that what they’re doing doesn’t align with what they want to do. And they’re going and doing something else. And that’s extremely hardening. Even if it puts a crunch on HR in the short term, it means that people at least had that shock, that moment, to say, do I really want to do this for the next 30 years? And for many of them, the answer was no. And now we’re seeing all sorts of fights about do we come back to the office? Do we stay remote? Are we a fully remote company? What does that mean? How do we enculturate people? 100 years from now, the logic will have played out. I mean, 100 years is a long time. I mean, the Great Depression wasn’t 100 years ago. In that time span, I’m not 100% sure. I hope we figure these things out, but I think it’s going to be a rocky road getting there without thereby willing to speak that into existence.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Neil.

Speaker 1

All right, this is our last question before we let the hordes invade us. This question is about us and what you’ve observed from us and read about us or thought or felt about us, what advice do you have for Mormon transhumanists? In the context of this future that you think is probable that you’ve described

Speaker 2

I would say that you occupy a very unique space in the Venn diagram of people who think deeply about matters of faith. Deeply about matters of technology. And in my experience, breakthroughs happen at the intersections of different fields. And so I would kind of triple down on On that unusual little corner of real estate and occupy that corner of real estate, because that is where the most exciting Innovations are going to occur is as you bring together communities and concepts that would not otherwise collide, and you’re all uniquely positioned to do that.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Tamika. Laura?

Speaker 3

I would say that people that it’s a good idea to kind of Go all in on the faith issue. I have noticed in my own life that my faith has absolutely transformed so many aspects of my life. Like I honestly actually believe, like I’ve just had a dream of a book launch. Like every single day, the last few weeks has brought me more gifts and more wonderful things. I I truly actually believe that this is something that’s happened because of my faith. And from reading the website, as I mentioned earlier, it does appear to me that kind of the general beliefs of this community Align really well with blockchain technology. And so, you know, in that regard, I do feel, like Tamika said, that you’re well positioned, but I would just urge you to go all in on the faith bit.

Speaker 4

Go in all in on the faith. Thank you, Laura. Neil?

Speaker 5

It feels to me from what I’ve seen of Mormon transhumanism over the years that it is still to some extent a descriptive aspirational worldview. And I’d like to see it become more prescriptive, right? More active, more saying, this is the thing that we should be aiming for. It’s saying that, but it’s also saying, how do we get there? In concrete ways. There’s been a lot of that today, a lot of suggestions on different things. But now it’s also less about. Individual suggestions and going and building things, right?

Speaker 5

I mean, we’ve talked about DAOs as a means for humans to interact and build new kinds of things. So, you know, why not have a Harburger’s Law DAO? Right, where if you hold the token, you have a responsibility that’s tied to it, but anyone can come pay the price and take your token at any time. That’s a fantastic social experiment. I mean, it should be done. It should be done by a university, and the fact that it has in it is an indictment of university economics. But it’s something that we could. You could build it in this room. You could imagine most of the technical discussion at the dinner tonight. And you have a thing like that. And there’s dozens of things like that that are still relatively low-lying fruit. And it’s a matter of now. Organizing and saying, here are the pieces that we think we need to pick up and attack and do, and they’re proofs of concept for the way that we’re going to build a new world that embodies what Mormon transhumanism is seeking.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Neil. So we need to practice what we preach. Maybe start some projects tonight at dinner. All right. We are going to take questions now. And let me maybe Carl was going to say this, but I’m just going to say it. If you would please think about your question before you get the microphone and make it really a question, because there’s going to be lots of people that want to use some time. So think about it in advance, ask the question, and we will talk about it.

Speaker 6

Great. So I wanted to just thank Neil for the recommendation and just mention that we’re talking about ways that we can more concretely incorporate some blockchain technology into the actual structure of the organization of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. So thank you. I also want to say I had no idea you had an LDS background. I just didn’t Saw your paper and thought it was great. So that’s a really interesting connection. Yeah, yeah, you did. Thank you. So I just wanted to ask if in your various work that you’re doing in blockchain-related technology or whatever field of research you consider yourself to be doing, What are some of the most intriguing or interest what is one of the most intriguing or interesting things you’ve come across that has just said, wow, gee whiz, that’s really, really neat?

Speaker 5

I like what’s happening with sort of self-organizing Almost autonomous groups on the internet. Things like Weird Sun Twitter and Romilia Collective, and there’s a few others that pop up here and there. Most of them are very transient, but they have this kind of supra-individual or supra-human aspect to them. And it’s fascinating to watch these things Bubble up and then survive for a few months and then disappear. And it’s always this interesting transient sociological phenomenon that you have to be watching, or you blink and you miss it. And I think a lot of this is never going to be captured in the record. So you may as well enjoy it whenever you happen across some little subculture like that.

Speaker 3

So I um honestly if I were to just purely answer this it would Frankly, be DAOs and some of the DAOs that I did talk about when I spoke. But since I already covered that territory, and in particular, I think actually The one thing that I would call out as being something that I’ve been interested in is, as I mentioned, just noticing that there’s all these women that are getting involved in the DAO space. You know, like I said, I’ve covered this for almost seven years. My audience has been like 90 plus percent men or 90 maybe now, which is A slight improvement, but noticing, oh, there’s suddenly more women, that’s definitely interesting to me. But in order to mention something different, I will say I’m about so I have launched this like premium offering where you can get the pre-interviews that I do for the show and I’m about to come out with an interview with somebody that has blended NFTs and AI in a very interesting way, and they’re sort of these little AIs that you can train to be sort of like an avatar for yourself in online environments. And it was very fascinating discussing this with this person. It was something like Altered State Machine, I think, was the name, and they’re about to launch a token and stuff like that. But I think it’s still very nascent, but it was a very fascinating conversation, and it will be out. think Monday-ish.

Speaker 2

And I would say the intersection of privacy preserving digital identity, payments and data. And if we’re able to get those three right, we are going to unleash human productivity in a way that the world has never seen it previously. And will also be able to deploy what will effectively be institutions in a box that will help people all over the world that have never had access to high-quality rule of law and never had access to high-quality governance. participate in be able to gain access to a lot of things that we take for granted every day and that are foundational to the lives and freedoms that we enjoy. So that would be my slightly Far-reaching answer to a very good question.

Speaker 1

Thank you all. Caleb?

Speaker 7

Yeah, so I I was curious if you could speak to the generational aspect of this. We talked about economies and governance and education and all these different facets of what it means. To belong to a society, and a lot of younger generations feel very left out or left behind in the way that trends have gone Are you seeing that reflected in the interest? As it seemed to be a lot of younger generations are seeing this as a tool to bring back into those spheres? Thanks.

Speaker 3

I mean, I can tell you, like, I’m only Gen X, but I definitely noticed that there’s a difference between, like, for instance, me and my who’s assistant, who’s You know, a couple decades younger than me, like, I already feel that there are just certain things that he sort of gets in a way. Like, frankly, Discord is a good example. I know that’s not super crypto, but like, Discord is like a mystery to me. And yeah, and even just like basic transact like I remember I bought my agent in NFT for Christmas. And it took me like an hour because it was on Polygon and it was yeah, he he’s a sports fan, so it was like his sports team that he loves. I but I it was on Polycon and then like figuring out the whole like ETH to Polygon that I mean it literally it took me so long and I felt embarrassed because you know my Asian thinks I’m a crypto expert and I was like You guys. So, yeah, I definitely feel like there is a generational difference. Like, sometimes I do these interviews with these young entrepreneurs and builders, and They’re just, you know, so in this world. I mean, granted, I have to write and do other things. I can’t be like coding all day or whatever it is that they’re doing. But I do feel that part of it is like an age gap issue.

Speaker 2

Just a quick data point on this. I commissioned a poll on this at Andreessen Horowitz, where we looked at generational attitudes, among a lot of other variables, toward the technology. And our pollster came back and said that they have never, on any issue that they have worked on for many, many years, seen as steep a drop off in generational perception. uh as they had on blockchain and digital assets. Uh and the magic number is fifty. Um so over fifty people tend to be Far, far more negative, frankly. Under 50, they tend to be pretty favorable. But it was extraordinary. I think there was an 80-point swing, which is just unheard of when you’re doing public opinion research.

Speaker 8

I don’t know that I have anything to add. Fantastic. Neil has nothing. Chris.

Speaker 9

what important problems will not be solved by blockchain and its successors? And how should that inform our perception of blockchain technology and its successors?

Speaker 2

I would say most important problems will not be solved by blockchain and its successors. And we need to be honest about that. What blockchain is, is a Really, really exciting new record-keeping system. And record keeping systems are very important. They are foundational, as I said. to the way we operate as a species, but there are a lot of other things that are foundational to the way we operate as a species that don’t depend on that. And certainly The most important things, arguably, the way we treat each other, the way we treat those close to us, are not, by and large, dependent on that. So there are still going to be many, many problems that are going to be with us. Hopefully, we’ve been able to make a lot of headway. in terms of how we account for externalities in the world, which is something we’re really bad at right now. Hopefully, we’re able to make some progress in terms of how we allocate the benefits of innovation and progress, but the vast preponderance of the challenges that we face today, I fear, are still going to be with us in a while. Hopefully, somebody can give a more optimistic answer.

Speaker 3

I just feel like this is one of those questions that’s kind of impossible to answer. I mean, the technology right now is at such a nascent stage. It’s just really, really, really new. And so I feel like at this stage, it’s more about just experimentation and being open to what might be possible with it, getting creative and trying and failing and just sort of, yeah, like kind of a trial and error phase.

Speaker 3

One thing that I do think a lot about though is this really great book called, and Tomica probably knows better than me, is it Financial Capital and Technological Revolutions, the Carlotta Perez book? Yeah, it’s either technological revolutions comes first, or anyway, I forget what the order is, but the point is that in this book, she talks about how new technologies get adopted. She talks about when they’re sort of like new, then there’s this massive speculative mania where like all this capital floods in, and then that triggers a building phase. And then there’s kind of an adoption phase, and then there’s like the phase where the technology is mature, and then you start to see what the downsides are. So I’ve already been trying to think, well, what are the downsides going to be? And one thing that I thought about is When you have tokens, obviously it creates incentives. But at the same time, then what that means is that it’s kind of like if you have a child and you’re trying to motivate them to Study hard and get good grades, right? It’s that question: like, should you offer them money, you know, and say, if you get these grades, I’ll pay you money. Because then it just takes away that kind of natural incentive to learn, because then it becomes This other thing. And so that is something that I think about with blockchain technology. That, and we already see this: like people or protocols develop what they call liquidity mining schemes where they’re like incentivizing people. To have economic activity on their networks. And people often talk about how one of the issues is that then you attract mercenaries, not missionaries as they call them, and so then they try to. the program to get people who are true believers that have the anti- So already these issues are kind of cropping up. So that’s kind of how I would rather think about the question. But yeah, it’s hard to say like what will this not solve when the technology right now is just truly available. Baby?

Speaker 5

I think what it can help solve is clearing up some issues around The way that freedom of transaction, incentive alignment, for instance, work, you’re not going to solve a biotech problem using a blockchain. But if you can fiddle with the way that you’re organizing and structuring the human incentives around solving that problem You may be able to get to a way of better arranging what you’re doing to solve that problem. And that may get you to a solution.

Speaker 5

There are certain categories of problems that I think, in particular, the question of fiat money is going to be severely scrambled by Bitcoin and others. Going forward. This is going to introduce other new problems like what do we do if there’s a major deflationary currency What do you do with taxation? Because is it a currency or is it a security or is it an are these problems that our legal system hasn’t really grappled with yet, but it’s sort of taking Some aspects of the question of monetary policy out of the hands of governments altogether. So it solves those kinds of problems. It doesn’t solve a lot of other kinds of problems. And so if it touches transactions, if it touches human incentives, I think it’s got a reasonably good shot of solving those kinds of things. Other things, like the engineering and the wicked problems, you know, it’s not going to do so much for us there.

Speaker 4

Sylvia.

Speaker 10

I was intrigued by your visions of the future. Specifically, I think inequality is one of the biggest concerns we have right now. I’m sorry, but we can’t really. Thank you. Am I not tall enough? Okay, so I was really intrigued by your visions of the future, and I think inequality is one of the biggest concerns we have right now for the future. So basically, we have the largest wealth inequality we’ve seen ever in human history. We also are not projected to reach gender equality for another two hundred years. So my question is, what do you see as the relationship, if there is one, between inequality and decentralization? And what specific steps or considerations do you think we need to take for these technologies to potentially foment equality in our society?

Speaker 2

So the world that we live in right now in the United States has a big foundational problem in my mind, and that is that folks have figured out how to convert financial resources into political power, and that political power then shapes the landscape of all of our institutions. And once you figure out how to do that, it’s really, really hard to go back to a more equitable system because the resources serve as the wellspring of the power. There is a shot at reshaping some of this in the digital realm. And I’m worried about where we are on this right now. Because in DAO governance and in a lot of other spaces, The voting power is directly proportional to the number of tokens that you own and not to who you are as an individual or the fact that you are an individual. And I think we’re going to need to have a hard conversation within the Web3 community about how we want to ensure that the structures that evolve are going to be genuinely democratized and not just democratized in the sense that we were replacing an old set of oligarchic overlords for a new set of oligarchic overlords. There’s a shot to Change the game right now. So I’m not saying that this can’t be done. But the key in my mind is going to be returning. Political power back to the individual and decoupling it, ironically in some ways, from resources, which is where it is largely right now.

Speaker 3

Yeah, and I actually feel this goes back to my talk. One of the challenges, I think, is that I don’t actually think what we want is kind of like true equality in the sense of like everybody literally being the same. What we want is a sense of fairness and kind of equality of opportunity. And obviously, I think most of us probably enjoy living in a capitalist society and think that that’s a good idea. probably there’s this sense that now there isn’t a fair system, that things are sort of the scale’s already tipped in favor of certain people. as especially those who already have a lot. So it’s probably more about that. And it kind of goes back to what I was discussing my talk about, how the processes and kind of the values and articulating that and getting everybody to agree on that from the outset is really what matters more.

Speaker 3

In terms of the issue though about gender equality in the space, like you know, being a woman in the space, I definitely this is something I think about a lot because Yeah, there just isn’t a lot of participation from women. I mean, one thing that I am heartened by is that I do think NFTs are drawing a lot more women in. And I personally don’t think that the space is going to have mainstream adoption until women are interested, obviously, because we’re half the population. And women, I think, make. tend to make more of the financial decisions in households. So until this is seen as like something that is an everyday thing that people might spend money on, I think it’s not going to hit the mainstream. But like I was saying earlier, I do think it’s more about the processes and not about like just making things like literally equal.

Speaker 5

I’m going to do the professor thing where I answer your question with a question. So, and this is the question I really have. Like, this is a hard question, which is. And I think you have to answer it to solve the equality issue writ broadly, which is

Speaker 5

If money, so money in classic capitalist economic thought, is literally functioning as an intelligent system. It’s functioning as a nervous system. It’s giving you information about the relative allocation of resources in whatever system you’re functioning in. And the problem, the thing that we have to figure out is if we want a different outcome, how do we change the signals that are feeding into that system in such a way to aim at a particular target outcome? We’ve gotten moderately good at doing this with regulatory incentives and fines and punishments. I would like us to do better than stick to solve all of our problems if we could actually have carrots to direct attention and resources in this direction of solving these fundamental equity issues.

Speaker 5

In the nation, in the world, in the community. If we’re going to have communities that are building and designing their own governance protocols, which has been alluded to several times today, then What say do outside actors have on the way that that community decides to self-govern itself? Does anything go as long as exit is allowed, for instance? These are hard questions. I don’t know the answers to these, but I think we have to be able to start working through these theoretically before we’re going to find a solution. And the problem with with money as the with de facto acting as the nervous system today is that particularly on the quarterly system, it’s heavily loaded towards solving with locally greedy optima. It’s always looking for how do I maximize my return in the next three months or the next year, never for what’s the 20-year game, what’s the 100-year game. So that’s another problem that we have. But the flaw in trying to answer that is that we haven’t found a better coordinating mechanism than money, which is why we’re capitalist, whether we like it or not.

Speaker 6

So I just wanted to say maybe what we could do, since we ran out of time here and we have a few last questions. is just like have everyone say one quick sentence without any responses from you all, just to hear what’s on their minds in the next thirty seconds. Can you guys do that? Can you manage that? Do it.

Speaker 12

Important events or milestones separating us from today to a fully decentralized future and your thoughts on when those events might occur.

Speaker 13

Do you believe adopting a unified identity protocol is a game changer or a mistake?

Speaker 14

Do you think the US dollar is at risk as the world reserve currency? And is Bitcoin capable or likely to replace it?

Speaker 15

Mine’s similar. When the petrol dollar goes away, what in the crypto space will help give us a soft landing, if anything?

Speaker 6

Brandy’s a cheater, but I’ll let him go.

Speaker 16

Do you think we’re really arguing against the Republican form of government? Expertise is dead. Somehow it’s just everybody can say with equal value. Something. And I think that’s a deep question. That’s enough. Are you asking the experts? All right.

Speaker 17

Thank you so much. Let’s clear the room and go. Laura will try to sign your book in the next half an hour. So, head over to the bullock room. Please vacate the room so we can make it up for dinner. Thank you all. Thank you so much.