Why care about blockchains?

Blockchains represent a new age, a significant precursor (or even requirement) to elevating the individual and the world at large. This piece of technology is the key to solving civilization's grand challenges - and I think this awareness is severely underestimated by many.

The power of the blockchain is simple - it is a distributed worldwide computing solution that enables any individuals and communities to own, participate, and build stuff together - all without heavy centralization. As more blockchains are developed, linked, and utilized, we will see a great shift in the power structures of the world.

Individuals can finally, be truly sovereign again. A web of cryptocurrencies running through a globally-distributed supercomputer will be the background-process that is continuously improved, directly or indirectly through our thoughts and actions. Best of all, the future will be highly decentralized and customizable for the individual. And with that, freedom should come with a globally conscious, transparent, and malleable invisible hand.

---

Problem-solving with blockchains.

To further understand the importance of blockchains, let's first understand the problems we have at hand. By identifying problems, we may start to formulate remedies that blockchains may provide. Roughly using first principles, below are three main problems of humanity:-

• Grand challenges of civilization.
• Human nature and human condition.
• Individualism and collectivism.

I will attempt to elaborate these problems, and later condense them into simpler forms, before attempting to address these problems with a blockchain-response in Part 2.

Grand challenges of civilization -

The major challenge, I would say, is to consolidate individual sovereignty in a collective-oriented, social space. But that deals more with the individual, and will be addressed in the next section. For this section, I would like to present Singularity University's Global Grand Challenges (GGC). I think they made a pretty good list. These GGCs revolve around three perspectives:-

• Ensuring basic needs are met for all people.
• Sustaining and improving quality of life.
• Mitigating future risks.

The twelve GGCs identified by Singularity University are aptly categorized below (you may find it at their website here - https://su.org/about/global-grand-challenges/):-

Images and text sourced from Singularity University

Seeing these GGCs, it could be argued that part of it could be very well solved by the individual. By learning to grow our own food, control our wastage, and such - yes, a wave of positive changes could happen. But, we are not like that. The free-market exists because we simply cannot cover all angles as individuals, so we trade collectively to build a (hopefully sustainable) civilization.

Other than the GGCs, I believe that blockchains are able to complement the downsides of human nature. So let's get to it.

Human nature and human condition -

Each individual is limited in all areas - perception, attention, skills, time, and knowledge. Our pursuit of happiness has always been very broad-stroked. It is to maximize everything that benefits us. Given that human beings are social beings in a finite world of resources, we have over the centuries, organized ourselves into communities and governments. Pretty much out of thin air, with plenty of politics, poverty, and war in between.

The individual is at odds with the collective. Why? Everyone represents different sets of values, and values of the collective may not sync well with individuals. It is hard to please everyone, so to speak. Here's a breakdown of human nature's various problems, in terms of the individual versus the collective:-

• Limited in capacity - perception / attention / skills / time / knowledge.
• Lazy. This, however, is highly subjective. Some activities that are purposeful for certain individuals may be entirely useless for others. We can be too focused on our needs, or wants, or even stretch ourselves too thin across the board in pursuit of holistic development. Who is lazy? There are no clear distinctions in this day and age. Are you lazy if you don't, or can't grow your own vegetables? What if I just sign papers all day? Am I lazy? I'm just signing papers here. In my opinion, laziness lies in the free-market, and not the individual. The better way to frame this: we have an incentive / motivation problem.
• Short-sighted. Our order of importance starts from the self, onwards to the various extensions - from friends, family, community, and into the global collective. Short-term gain is the preferred feedback.
• Contradictory. We, as individuals, don't like fixing the sinking ship - aka - the inevitable deterioration of the planet and negligence of the GGCs. Basically, we want to do whatever we like, and hope others will solve the big issues. Plus we yearn for a better tomorrow, yet we are highly resistant to change.
• Overall, we are irrational. This is the heart of the human condition.

Individualism and collectivism -

How do we have a world that is able to solve the big issues autonomously with minimal disturbance to the sovereignty of the individual? Most would say that the free-market will iron itself out over time. Well, artificial or not, as a collective, we have self-organized into governments, institutions, and taxes.

I tend to avoid using the words "artificial" and "natural" when describing stuff, for a good reason. People tend to correlate those words to good or bad effects. I consider everything to be natural. Birds build nests with dry leaves and twigs - it's natural. Human beings construct buildings with metal and concrete - it's natural too. But we have a cognitive tendency to think that it's artificial, and hence, bad.

Just like anything thoughtfully engineered, and planned out with organized effort - I think we shouldn't place such solutions in rigid boxes that colour our perception of right or wrong. What's more important is to identify the positives of collectivism, and also, to identify the negatives that we, as individuals, dislike about it.

It's also easy to come up with platitudes to promote favourable actions of the individual and collective. But more often than not, we really just don't care. We are, and should be, free to do anything we want as long it's not detrimental to the others. In fact, most of us aren't extreme consequentialists. We really don't care much about the effects of our lifestyles, especially with regards to long-term consequences, given the lack of immediate feedback.

We can philosophize all we want and preach the word for others to change. But the best way to change behaviour, in my opinion, is through social design. It can be engineered non-pervasively through the use of blockchains. Control can be engineered in such a way that decisions are not centralized, but it could be through consensus of a decentralized web of state machines, continuously worked on by individuals and collectives all around the world.

---

Problem statements: re-framed, improved, simplified.

To recap, we have identified three key problems:-

• Grand challenges of civilization.
• Human nature and condition.
• Individualism and collectivism.

Also, keep in mind that solutions should revolve around the following perspectives:-

• Ensuring basic needs are met for all people.
• Sustaining and improving quality of life.
• Mitigating future risks.

Re-framing problem statements -

In an attempt to re-frame the problems in ways that will be better understood for blockchain solutions, I will re-list down the following problem statements:-

• The free-market, and feedback loops between entities are inefficient. An entity could mean an individual, a family, a company, a city, a country, a social cause, and such. Entities could mean anything with perceivable input and output. This could be better defined for blockchain solutions. Without blockchains, there really isn't any concrete way of codifying entities, and without that, how do we even begin to connect a web of interactive entities, gearing them up for mass collaboration?
• Our non-blockchained platforms do not represent us all that well. For example, a country's currency is a broad abstraction of the many social interactions that happen in a society, and does not reflect the social values of individuals in any capacity. Our centralized and error-prone processes in today's world does not allow for mass customization for the many different individuals.
• Let's just say that we have a dehumanization problem in systems design. Our common systems design usually define us as cogs in giant machines. There is a lack of emphasis on autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Simplified problem statement -

Turns out, civilization is currently lacking a (interconnected, mesh-like) platform that enables mass customization of individuals to work themselves into mass collaboration, autonomously. I think this is better framing compared to the simple blockchain adage - "Decentralize everything!".

It still boils down to the same thing, but I would like to emphasize on mass customization and mass collaboration, as the central theme for a blockchain-response. Institutions rise and fall. But to what degree does it affect the individual, and the greater collective?

---

Before Part Two.

By writing this series, I wish to add to the discussion and at the same time, hope to inspire others to reflect on it. So how will blockchains save the day, in light of all the problems I've mentioned? That will come in Part 2, to be published within the week. It will contain a number of self-made images to illustrate my thoughts on the potential solutions. Plus, there will be a section dedicated for Steem / Steemit.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!

What are your thoughts on the subject matter?

PS: I apologize if there are typos and long-windedness. Will edit to make a better copy after I get some sleep!

---

Images are from Pixabay. Animated GIF is from Giphy.

---

---

Follow me @kevinwong