devansh on snowmoon ness

via random quote tweet [https://x.com/devanshmehta/status/2109551398480224736?s=20]:

After reading millie’s tweet i was fascinated enough to clear up last weekend to fully read all 32 chapters of snowmoon end to end

I remember vitalik’s point from a talk earlier that too many crypto bros fantasize about having their own country but not enough think about what would actually be different in it

or they do.. but it’s not legit diff.. ie: sans any form of m\a\p

snowmoon is his answer to that question

actually not.. if want legit diff..

findings (aka: the things i can’t unsee) from on the ground ness deep dive and why we need tech w/o judgment

ie: the dance won’t dance unless/until it’s 1\ all of us 2\ legit free

nothing to date (ever since that day) has gotten to that root of problem

legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do

The geopolitical setting of the novel is three primary groups: the arctic empire (a mix of russian expansionism with american exceptionalism), veridia (european equality with a cryptographic bureaucracy) and dzego (ukrainian resistance with asian ingenuity).

i see a *large impact of his novel as hyperstitioning the world we should create with the tech we’ve developed, so the rest of the post (spoilers ahead) **summarizes the technology, institutions and ideology strands in his narrative

*rather.. we could create if we tried/used tech/ai for the thing we can’t seem to do – rather than for perpetuating same song (aka: not diff).. ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening – so we can hear what’s already on each heart as global detox in order to org around legit needs

**this is why we need tech w/o judgment.. making ie: institutions/ideology/whatever else irrelevant s from the get go

A. Technology

1. Warfare has shifted almost entirely to drones.

2. Zk, zk everywhere: ..she asks for evidence and he gives a zk proof

3. Voice AI and personal agents feature prominently in the book.

4. Defi g..forgets to transfer funds into his wallet, so he simply takes out a loan against his reputation score to pay the vendor

5. There are 2 social media platforms in snowmoon, bluewhale which is proprietary and silverchat which is fully cryptographic.

The technology theme in the book is a useful guide for us, as we now just need to work backwards from snowmoon to work at their integration in daily life

if working backwards from tech gets you to institutions and ideology.. tech is still doing same things.. perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. perpetuating survival triage.. for (blank)’s sake..

B. Institutions This segment is really interesting in how Vitalik sees cryptographic institutions (called the steering) operating in the world. far from replacing parliament and other democratic structures, they instead work in parallel. The Steering has primarily 5 bureaucratic roles;

so same song

1. keepers design rubrics that incentivize

2. sentinels enforce these rubrics,

3. Next up are acolytes who train to be sentinels or keepers.

4. Heralds are members of the steering that have relinquished all their responsibility so that they can be a public face of the steering its interesting that a public presence is perceived as incompatible with impartially carrying out duties

5. finally, the funding organs are quadratic funding and graph funding.

C. Ideology This was maybe my favorite part of the book, what i loved was how the strongest version of arguments were presented instead of a strawman

1. the arctic empire argues for maximization of economic growth over all other objectives. the reason? other goals keep changing according to the winds of preferences, but compounding economic growth is a base that helps in pursuit of anything else which becomes the fashion of the day. so stop accelerating things that go in circles and focus on increasing economic output in my view none of the counters offered in the book invalidate the argument; a. health and education make people more productive

as if compounding econ growth; health; ed; .. et al.. don’t go in circles?.. oooof

2. the other big strand was veridia’s belief in equality of all and love unconditional on achievement the arctic empire argues against this belief by showing that it goes against the very idea of self improvement for example, if you are a better version today than you were yesterday, then surely equality is impossible?

none of this.. (and nothing to date) has been legit unconditional

overall definitely worth the weekend read, hope we see printed copies of it soon!

Maybe the biggest underexplored theme in the book which i’d have liked to see more of was around how the future of work changes in a world of LLMs

yeah.. we should stop trying to accelerate the thing that goes in circles.. ie: any form of m\a\p; econ output ness; productivity ness; et al

good bye cycle – aka: good bye any form of m\a\p

devansh was quote tweeting this tweet [https://x.com/llamaonthebrink/status/2106211141282357258?s=20]:

Last Sunday, Vitalik released the full version of Snowmoon.

An underpinning concept to many of the ideas in the story is something V calls “Coordination Quotient.”

Coordination Quotient is his invention, there’s no pre-existing literature on that exact idea!

In simple terms, CQ is a cure for the prisoner’s dilemma or tragedy of the commons.

myth of tragedy and lord.. only ‘cured’ if we let go enough to try the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness

[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]

there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance

ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition

otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. perpetuating survival triage.. for (blank)’s sake..

A community with high CQ is capable of defying its respective social or economic nash equilibrium.

aka: how to cope/live/perpetuate sea world

High CQ basically says that even if we are individually incentivized to act selfishly, we are effective at choosing to act in the collective interest without external forces pressuring us to.

how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..

My personal analogy is that a society with a perfect Coordination Quotient wouldn’t need formal laws or a governing body to function at scale because it would be so good at acting in good faith and achieving sophisticated positive-sum goals.