Culture – Gary Teh

July 21, 2022July 21, 2022

Thoughts on DAOs – Viral Loops, Dunbar number and Forking

Its has been really truly amazing experience to observe the population growth rate of TrueSight DAO ever since its inception in August 2021. The catalysts for its inception was the growing problem of fake news which have finally gained enough moment to the point of destabilizing liberal democratic systems worldwide. The most recent symptom was the storming of the US Capital Building on Jan 6th 2021.

This problem resonated with a lot of folks when I first spoke to them about it. In response, many have rallied their efforts to support its purpose, mission and vision.

Our Purpose is to build a Better World based on Verifiable Truth
Our Mission is to fight Fake News by providing individuals with the clarity to make critical decisions
Our Vision is a universal credibility protocol that allows subject matter experts to publicly establish their credibility using blockchain as a solution

The vision itself was a very tall order and the solution itself unclear at the onset. An initial investigative project was launched with the goal of discovering a solution that would best bring about our desired social change. This project became the focusing point by which all community members actively channeled their efforts.

To provide public recognition and encourage continued voluntary grass-root contributions, as well as to ensure transparency and accountability, members are awarded governance tokens in exchange for time, effort and money they contributed to further our cause. These voluntary contributions are recorded on our contribution ledger.

Due to the inherent viral loop that was baked into our operating model, the population size of our contributor grew rapidly. Along with its growth were serendipitous magical moments such as when our DAO got invited to present our cause at various Conferences and Key notes

As the population size of active contributors in our project grew beyond the Dunbar Number of 150, we started observing symptoms of decline that closely resembled the tail end of an S-curve.

Symptoms of organic network decline come in the form of high levels of frustration/stress due to indecision, miscommunication and misalignment. The underlying root cause of it were differing world views and operating styles.

Organic Network starts exhibiting signs of decline as it scales pass the Dunbar Number

As the population size of active contributors in our project grew beyond the Dunbar Number of 150, we started observing symptoms of decline

We tried multiple different approaches to get around the network decline phenomena while still abiding with our values

Our Values are Autonomy, Integrity and Diversity

Our most recent approach that seemed to work is Project Forking.

A contributor can choose to fork a new child project off the original parent project to explore a new direction

Socially this approach was modeled after traditional Amish practices. In traditional Amish societies when the population size of a village grew past 150, a portion of the village members will self select, up and migrate to setup a new village nearby one day.

An Amish family observed traveling to a nearby village on their horse cart

We introduced two types of Forking. These are the Hard Fork and the Soft Fork. Conceptually they are similar to codebase forking activities on GitHub

The characteristics of the Soft Fork are

Contributions to a child project is still recorded on the parent project’s ledger but labelled differently
Contributions to the child project are still awarded governance tokens associated with the parent project
Eventual revenue generated by child project are held in the parent project’s vault
The parent project acts as the sponsor of the child project

The characteristics of the Hard Fork are

Contributions to a child project is recorded on its own branched off version of the paren project’s ledger
Contributions to the child project are awarded governance tokens in the child project.
Revenue generated by child project are held in its own project vault
Child project has claim independence from the parent project

Project Forking within a DAO provides additional benefits on top of solving the original set of problems, these are

ensures all prior contributors’ efforts are acknowledged and equitably accounted for in new descendent projects
creates the space to explore into new terrains for solutions discovery
creates more surface area to attract engage new and existing volunteer efforts to fight “Fake News”
spreads DAO risk over multiple projects as opposed to consolidating all eggs in one basket (a single project)
allow DAO to remain decentralized while still enjoying the benefit of a strong core leadership for each project

There are two types of forking in DAOs, the hard fork and the soft fork. They are modeled after traditional Amish society and functions to get around the Dunbar Number constrain and function quite similar to codebase management features on GItHub

With this new Forking mechanism in place we are now open to enlisting more members to join our movement to save our Liberal Democratic Societies!

Support Us!

May 8, 2021

Single man flying suites: The future is here

We are now a few stages before single man flying suites become commercially available for the masses. In this stage of the technology life cycle, it is common to see multiple companies coming up with their own working prototype.

In the next stage, some number of companies will figure out the business model and marketing channels while a lot more will fail. Many of the viable ideas and employees from these failed companies will get absorbed into the surviving companies.

The final stage would be when the manufacturing gets outsourced to China. During this stage, cost of production will drop by 10X. That is when adoption gains traction amongst the early majority .

The stage after would be when government steps in to define regulations for proper use in public.

https://www.facebook.com/100056716005101/videos/236171661616699/

#business #manufacturing #innovation #supplychain

April 11, 2021April 13, 2021

An evening of insights with the Hutters

The optimized route for a startup is to first deploy a small skeleton crew to focus on mining for the insights on human behavior with cheap experiments that will support a viable business model before raising money and scaling up the operations.

Big organizations tend to forget the insights that lead to the founding of the company. That is how large companies get disrupted by new entrants who “rediscover” them.

If there is a company out there that is solving a problem you are trying to find a solution for but you cannot think of it off the top of your head, they might as well have been dead.

What you think might work will usually not. It is only when you land up in a promising domain and start mining for insights in that domain do you start finding ones that are useful for building a company with.

Screenwriting is probably the only occupation where you can envision how all the moving pieces fits together while you are lying in bed. Writing a business plan is a very useless undertaking because unless you have tested your business model to get actual market response, you will not know if it would work or not work. This is much of other inductive processes where much of the building blocks required to work are out there in the environment yet know and to be discovered.

Do not be fixated on what should but be instead embrace on what is and work for there when it comes to human nature.

Humans are motivated beyond pain and pleasure.

No one has considered hyperlinks themselves as important data elements.

It is usually the simplest actions backed by the most fundamental insights that drives the largest consumer adoption.

People feel that sense of accomplishment when they gather stuff thanks to our hunter gathering roots. They might not even need it at the end of the day.

Social book marking just died when most of their operators pivoted away from the central idea in 2005

Stumble upon
Digg
Reddit
Pintrest
Trello

The mass adoption of Slack and Quip might be a great channel for growing such an idea again but for the enterprise space.

The success of YouTube can be speculated to be due to:

In baked flash media code into browsers
Increase in bandwidth
Delaying the payment of royalty fees and taking down of copyrighted contents
They got sold for 1.2billion but paid of 750million in terms of royalties

Mark Cuban is a fake billionaire for selling Real networks to AOL which eventually got shut down after six months. Reason for Real Network being empty is because while it looking really impressive on the outside, it did not capture any of the user behaviors.

People only build shared reality with others they consider part of their own tribe. They might interact with others who are not considered part of their own tribe but will not go about building a shared reality with them. This is how echo chambers happen.

The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of life

Shamanic world view

The practitioner of the shamanic tradition at once sees the world as it is as well as a manifestation of infinite energy that is is constant flux.

The sequence of four enemies a knowledge seeker must inevitably face

Fear: The fear of uncertainty and the unknown is the first enemy a knowledge seeker must face. As he progresses along his journey, he will be faced with fear over an over again. The work is to face the fear and keep moving forward in the question for knowledge. With time, this fear will dissipate and he will get clarity
Clarity: Clarity is a subtle enemy. Succumbing to this enemy means the inability to decipher real clarity from one’s egotistical illusion. The work is to constantly question the perceive clarity while moving forward in the quest for knowledge. With time comes true clarity which brings with it a lot of power
Power: Power is a very seductive enemy. With great power comes the temptation to abuse this power. Succumbing to this enemy brings around rampant destruction due to abusive use of power. The work is to constantly keep power in check while continuing the pursuit and application of knowledge. With time, comes the final enemy, old age.
Old age: Is an enemy that can only be conquered temporarily. The work is to constantly fight the desire to lie and rest. Yielding to this enemy will result in no further pursuit and application of the knowledge acquired.

Noteworthy plants

Jimson weed: Psychedelic to help you relive and see your past memories
Peyote: Another plant to aid in the communion with the spirits
Mescalito: Hallucinogenic drug made from the flowering heads of cactus

January 21, 2021January 21, 2021

Permain basis observations

American frontier society principles and worldview

Trump is the best president that God has given to America
God’s deeds are done in actions not words
If you do not appreciate what God has given, it was be taken away and replaced with something not as good
God created put the government in place to maintain law and order
Your purpose is to become the best possible version of yourself in service to God
What you can do you keep. This is how you keep cash in the business
Observe the actions not the words. When you follow your line of reasoning from actions that actually happened, the outcome of your thought process must be true
Apply the principles of auto-suggestion. People will more readily to respond to your actions than your words. Never use it for evil. Examples:
- stand by the road on the highway holding an empty tank and chances are someone would stop by and offer you a ride to get gas
- setup a table properly with all the meal and bring out a container showing empty butter and the guest will likely volunteer to go get butter

Economic environment in Permian basin

Permian basin is the heart of America’s oil supply. It has gone through multiple cycles of boom and bust over the past 20 years. Each bust cycle typically last for a year.
Property valuation. and taxes
- before 2018
  - Valuation USD150,000
  - Taxation US1500
- 2018
  - Valuation USD4,000,000
  - Taxation USD40000
Boom years
- Total revenue for Roper motel was above USD1,000,000 during 2018 when demand for oil was strong.
- Property taxes is calculated based on property valuation. Property valuation is assess every year.
- Government started including motel furniture installations as part of annual property taxes as it was considered capitalized expenditure used for the purpose of generating revenue
- Water taxes increased as usage was categorized as commercial leading to a doubling of water bills
- Motels are charged USD200 a month for ambulance service in town
Post COVID era
- while taxes were increased during the boom years, downwards adjustments were slow. Pecos is ailing for heightened level of taxes and low oil demand

Social environment in the Permian Basin

Hispanics hold a large majority in the city council
Public usage of funds have often not be very transparent
The entire city council was arrested in Crystal City for corruption scandal

October 21, 2020October 21, 2020

Weapons of Math destruction by Cathy O’Neil

Key take aways

Human values like justice and mercy is hard if not impossible to encode as rules
Data scientist use proxies as an approximate gauge for the existence of values. These are inherently inaccurate if not downright wrong
While using of race as a feature to determine if loan should be approve is obviously racist, the use zip codes though not obvious is equally racist since race tends to segregate around geographical territories
Models are increasingly used to across various domains to help increase the speed of decision making. This increases the negative impact of badly designed models will have on humans
A feedback is necessary to ensure continuous correction of badly design models – transparency of how your credit score is calculated
Regulations are necessary on the use of models as companies driven by quarterly reporting requirements of shareholders are primarily be focused on the bottom line

October 21, 2020

Diogenes the Cynic: The war against the world

The building blocks of Diogenes’ philosophy

Self sufficiency: only need yourself and dispense with societal support
Shamelessness: be willing to break even the most sacrosanct rules to express absolute freedom
Indifference: be unconcerned with things not within your control
Insensibility: to become insensible to both pain and pleasure
Ignorance: To limit intellectual activities to those that are of immediate value for human life
Disciplined training:
- commit to a program of self training that strengthens his character,
- lessens dependencies on social and physical needs,
- maintain his desires and impulses under strict rational control
Strength of character:
- aspire to develop in himself a character and physical constitution like those associated with Hercules
- that renders him impervious to vicissitudes and sufferings of human life
Poverty:
- understand that virtue and happiness cannot be found in the search and acquisition of physical possessions
- divest himself of as many things as possible,
- retaining the bare necessities to keep him alive and that assure him the freedom that Hercules esteemed as the most precious thing in the world
Philanthrophy
- Recognize his moral obligation to make himself useful in the task of dispelling illusions that rob people of their ability to be happy and live in accordance with nature
Contempt for the opinions of many
- renounce the need to be honored or appreciated by others
- welcome repudiation and insults
- look with contempt or suspicion at the values and customs by which people guide themselves

August 16, 2020August 16, 2020

Realizations from nights spent isolated in the wilderness

There are only so many nights you can spend alone in isolation out in the wilderness before your brain fully discards all the faulty wirings imprinted by Hollywood’s horror movies.

What’s left is this primal realization that human is a very vicious predator perched pretty high up on the food chain. Further arm him with tools and he ends up right at the top of the food chain.

It is easy to forget about this fact when you have spent much of your life living in the city amongst other men following man made rules while attempting to play “civilized”.

Between groups of men there always exist collaboration and competition for resources extracted from nature. There also exist this constant jostling of position, usually labelled “politicking”, to gain more of these resources while exerting the same amount of effort. The bulk of the “stress” of “modern life” stems from “acquiring” what you need through the collective efforts of the group.

Between men and nature, the relationship appears simpler. The rules are pretty much fixed at the on set by nature. Man’s primary task is to figure out if the season is conducive for the activity being undertaken. Nature’s feedback is usually pretty immediate.

Key takeaways from the meaning of vanlife

The Van Life idea seems like an ember that will eventually grow to become like what manifested as the Hippies movement of the 60s, the Burning Man festival and before that the Scouts movement.

One recurring theme observed between Van Life and Burning Man is the notion of “Coming Home”, where man steps away from the artificial construct he spent generations building up to finally return to nature.

Humans in the aggregate do behave somewhat like a self adjusting thermostat forever oscillating between extremes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8dN4jP3OZQ

Future concerns

One of the primary fear of the future an average man has stems from the “abstract idea” of how physical discomfort would feel like during old age just prior to the point of death and how terrible it might be.

This primary fear is the main driver behind the average man’s continued effort to accumulate resources of various forms. It is done with hopes to alleviate that “discomfort” when it does eventually come.

The problem with that mode of thinking is the future is unknowable and man ends up wasting his precious limited life span over provisioning, not to mention it’s overall negative impact on the environment.

An alternate approach as practiced in various ascetic traditions is to steadily build the ability to keep equanimity at various thresholds of discomfort through daily practice. This curtails over-provisioning , frees up precious time to do more meaningful stuff and is generally good for the environment.

Related references:

– Diogenes
– Seneca
– Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
– Vipassana mediation
– TaoDeChing, Lao Tze
– The Tiger’s Cave, Trevor Leggett
– Zen mind, Beginner’s mind, Shinryu Suzuki
– The book of five rings, Musashi

Category: Culture