In reaction to my morning dose of negativity from [blogger’s name redacted], I am compelled to share some contrarian optimism:
I see a decent chance of significant improvements to the human condition in the near future due to breakthroughs in social technology. The historical precedent that comes to mind is the widespread adoption of insurance some hundreds of years ago. (Disclaimer: I skimmed the wikipedia article on insurance a while back and don’t really remember it all that well. Corrections welcome.) Prior to insurance contracts, your only option for hedging against catastrophes was to build up social capital with family & neighbors. Maybe people could expect more automatic community support back then, but this was at a time of drastically lower social and geographic mobility. I’m really glad that I live in a world with markets for explicit insurance policies (even if those policies and markets could be a lot better).
So I have to wonder if at least one of {dominant assurance contracts, quadratic funding, prediction markets, ring signatures, attention auctions, retroactive public goods funding, demand offsets, smart contracts in general, the Prósperan legal system} might catch on and be as much of a game changer as formalized insurance contracts have been.
Sometimes I read someone and think “Well no wonder you’re always so pessimistic & sarcastic...for you, the phrase ‘new technology’ only evokes smartphone addiction, so you keep hanging all your hopes for the future on the vagaries of national politics.”
I’m motivated to say all this because I recently read a blog post about the collapse of legacy journalism (a hot topic in my echo chamber). The writer said that journalism has devolved into a monoculture of low-paid cultural elites, who are bound by reality very much less than they are bound by their social cliques. He’s not wrong, but...he said it all with a such heavy note of despair in his voice. Meanwhile, I personally can’t help but imagine what crazy, cool, more incentive-aligned media model might rise from the ashes of the current system.
Optimism about Social Technology
In reaction to my morning dose of negativity from [blogger’s name redacted], I am compelled to share some contrarian optimism:
I see a decent chance of significant improvements to the human condition in the near future due to breakthroughs in social technology. The historical precedent that comes to mind is the widespread adoption of insurance some hundreds of years ago. (Disclaimer: I skimmed the wikipedia article on insurance a while back and don’t really remember it all that well. Corrections welcome.) Prior to insurance contracts, your only option for hedging against catastrophes was to build up social capital with family & neighbors. Maybe people could expect more automatic community support back then, but this was at a time of drastically lower social and geographic mobility. I’m really glad that I live in a world with markets for explicit insurance policies (even if those policies and markets could be a lot better).
So I have to wonder if at least one of {dominant assurance contracts, quadratic funding, prediction markets, ring signatures, attention auctions, retroactive public goods funding, demand offsets, smart contracts in general, the Prósperan legal system} might catch on and be as much of a game changer as formalized insurance contracts have been.
Sometimes I read someone and think “Well no wonder you’re always so pessimistic & sarcastic...for you, the phrase ‘new technology’ only evokes smartphone addiction, so you keep hanging all your hopes for the future on the vagaries of national politics.”
I’m motivated to say all this because I recently read a blog post about the collapse of legacy journalism (a hot topic in my echo chamber). The writer said that journalism has devolved into a monoculture of low-paid cultural elites, who are bound by reality very much less than they are bound by their social cliques. He’s not wrong, but...he said it all with a such heavy note of despair in his voice. Meanwhile, I personally can’t help but imagine what crazy, cool, more incentive-aligned media model might rise from the ashes of the current system.