Three Things #16: May 1, 2022
On trilemmas, the nature of evil, and books
Thing #1: A New Trilemma
I find the idea of a trilemma endlessly fascinating. The world is full of dilemmas (you can have this thing, but not that; you can’t have your cake and eat it too), but trilemmas are inherently rarer and more interesting. They feel like riddles without one solution.
The basic form of the trilemma is, Of these three desirable things, pick any two. In reality, though, it’s usually easier to think of a trilemma as a triangular problem space. You can pick any point you want in the space, but, since the space is two dimensional, not three, no matter what solution spot you pick you’re by definition going to be compromising on at least one and possibly all three of the dimensions. Pick one of the corners and you get full marks in two of the dimensions, but zero on the third. Pick the center of the triangle and you get equal, partial marks on all three, and so on.
The most famous trilemma in the blockchain space is the scalability trilemma, which sums up why it’s so hard to scale a blockchain. If your network is maximally decentralized and safe (like Bitcoin), it’s going to have a very low throughput (i.e., it isn’t scalable). If it’s maximally decentralized and scalable, then it’s not going to be very safe (it’s easier to attack, like many multi-chain ecosystems). If it’s maximally safe and scalable, then by definition it’s not decentralized (like many “centralized” chains that run on DPoS or proof of authority, where users have to trust a small number of nodes). In practice, most modern blockchains choose to compromise a little on all three of these dimensions.
Another classic trilemma is Zooko’s triangle, which posits that no network can allow a system of names that are 1. Human-readable, 2. Secure, and 3. Decentralized. While I find this trilemma very interesting in theory, and it was a conundrum when it was first proposed over 20 years ago, in fact modern blockchain-based systems such as ENS have since proven that this trilemma can in fact be solved in a relatively straightforward fashion using modern blockchain technology.
Then there’s the CAP theorem, which explains why distributed data stores cannot be simultaneously consistent, available, and tolerant to partitions. And the related, more generic project management trilemma of “fast, cheap, good: choose any two,” which applies equally to data storage and to design and coding work.
The most famous trilemma in economics, and maybe the most famous trilemma of all, is the impossible trinity. It says that it’s impossible for a country to maintain 1. A fixed foreign exchange rate, 2. Free capital movement, and 3. An independent monetary policy. This trilemma, which is both a theoretical construct and an empirical observation, has some real implications on modern governments, central banks, and economic policymakers. (For the record, it’s as true for blockchains and cryptocurrencies as it is for nation states!)
I’d like to propose a new trilemma related to cryptoeconomics. I think a lot about the design of blockchains and other incentivized, cryptoeconomic networks and protocols, and it seems very difficult to get the initial distribution of value and power in these networks correct. I’ve written about this problem at length and have firsthand experience in a number of projects and ecosystems that struggled with this. The trilemma is as follows. No cryptoeconomic network can have all three of the following:
A broad, fair distribution of wealth or power
Sybil resistance
Decentralization
A network that chooses (1) and (2) relies on a centralized authority to maintain Sybil resistance and ensure fair distribution of coins. A network that chooses (1) and (3) is, by definition, not Sybil resistant, because whatever decentralized method is chosen to identify whom to grant coins to (“proof of unique human/proof of personhood”) can be Sybil attacked (and, thus, would fail to achieve the first objective anyway). A network that chooses (2) and (3) would use a Sybil resistance mechanism akin to Bitcoin’s Nakamoto consensus and proof of work: rather than one person one vote, Nakamoto consensus grants votes proportional to the amount of compute power dedicated to the network. This is a clever mechanism and works well for Bitcoin but the result is that wealthy insiders can game the algorithm and win most of the coins, failing to satisfy (1).
The best that modern networks can choose is (1) a broad, fair distribution, coupled with (2) strong Sybil resistance, and limited decentralization in the beginning, hopefully increasing over time.
For more: Read this fascinating collection of trilemmas. Can you think of any that are missing?
Thing #2: The Nature of Evil
I also find the concept of evil fascinating. It’s an abstract social concept that we’re all familiar with, and a term that we throw around casually, but I’ll bet you’ve never stopped to really consider what it means. How would you define evil?
Most of the definitions I’ve found take two forms. One is a negative definition, in that evil is defined in terms of what it is not: evil is the absence of good. The second: evil is a social, ethical, and/or religious construct, defined as “profound immorality and wickedness.” But I’m less interested in the definition of the term than I am in how it’s used.
What examples of evil exist in the world today—be they ideas, people, companies, or something else entirely? Is Google evil? Is Vladimir Putin evil? Is the Chinese Communist Party evil? In trying to answer these questions, the above definitions are pretty unhelpful. The idea of evil is subjective, contextual, and slippery.
It’s difficult even to apply it unambiguously to historical characters that we typically regard as evil. Dan Carlin offers a useful comparison: we tend to think of Hitler as the embodiment of evil, whereas we regard Alexander the Great more with curiosity and fascination. Yet, if we believe his own writing, Hitler was acting out of love for and the desire to save Germany. And if historical accounts are to be believed, Alexander had no such noble aim: he was seeking glory for himself. Does this mean that Alexander was more evil than Hitler? And then there’s Stalin, another modern embodiment of evil, who was also convinced that he was doing good for the world and for his people.
A more helpful definition of evil comes from the excellent Finite and Infinite Games, by James P. Carse:
Infinite players understand the inescapable likelihood of evil. They therefore do not attempt to eliminate evil in others, for to do so is the very impulse of evil itself, and therefore a contradiction. They only attempt paradoxically to recognize in themselves the evil that takes the form of attempting to eliminate evil elsewhere.
In other words: evil is the impulse to eliminate evil in others. It’s a circular definition, but it’s the best one I’ve ever seen. According to Carse, it manifests itself as “[the] belief that history can be tidied up, brought to a sensible conclusion” such as “a return to Zion, or… the classless society, or… the Islamicization of all living infidels.” Evil is radicalism, extremism, absolutism, zealotry, millenarianism. It’s the belief that you have all the answers. It maps very closely to the dark triad personality traits: narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy.
Which means that the antidote to evil is pluralism, panarchy, intersubjectivity, polypolitanism. Also, curiosity, empathy and open-mindedness (i.e., the opposite of the dark triad). It’s finding better ways to live together and to solve collective action problems, in spite of our differences. It’s finding better ways to communicate, and to understand one another, especially people that think very differently than we do. That’s a pretty workable definition of good.
For more: Listen to this conversation on the question of evil in the context of historical figures.
Thing #3: In Defense of Books
This week a friend told me, “I read, but I don’t read books.” It was the most tragic thing I heard all week.
There is definitely a trend: collectively, we seem to be getting lazy, moving further and further away from long form content, and towards shorter form content. The most obvious (anecdotal, non-scientific) example is that we’re reading less books, and more clickbait articles and tweets. The same thing seems to be true for audio and video content, too—and maybe for other mediums as well! (Someone who knows the art world better than I do could speak to evolving preferences in consumption of art, but the trend towards digital rocks is somewhat troubling.)
On the one hand, I understand this. We all have absurd amounts of information flying at us all day, every day. It’s like drinking from a firehose and we have to be selective, in the name of productivity if not also of maintaining our sanity. Tweets and short articles can be consumed quickly, on the spot, without much preparation or investment. They’re less distracting and don’t take us away from our day. We can consume them on the toilet, on the bus, or while waiting in line. They’re the “candy content” of our content diet: quick, easy, and tasty, but without much nutrition.
But, at what cost? In spite of easy, cheap access to the entire repository of human knowledge, in the form of books, articles, and other content, we have short memories and, as a result, are surprised by things that shouldn’t surprise us, and are woefully unprepared for tragedies that strike regularly but infrequently (such as once-in-a-century earthquakes, floods, pandemics, etc.). If we give up on books entirely in favor of tweets and clickbait, then I think we can more or less say goodbye to human society as we know it.
I find myself moving in exactly the opposite direction: the more popular Twitter, Tiktok, and clickbait become, the more I find myself drawn to long-form articles, podcasts, and good old fashioned books. This makes sense to me because of two simple facts. One, the most useful, thoughtful content requires time for understanding, reflection, and analysis to take place before it’s produced. Two, the best content will stand the test of time (the Lindy effect). In other words, time matters.
In more concrete terms, when something big happens in the world, there are several ways you can learn about it. You might get an immediate push notification or alert, along the lines of “ZOMG BIG THING HAPPENED, POLICE INVESTIGATING STAY TUNED!!!” Except in the scenario where I’m in immediate personal danger, I don’t find these headlines helpful at all. They’re distracting and they cause FUD, but provide almost no useful information.
A little later you may see someone tweet about the same thing. This is better than the knee-jerk headlines, and probably provides more information and context, but it’s still shallow and lacks nuance. Assuming the event in question is significant enough, you may read headlines in newspapers in the days following, with the same pattern: gradually more context, more information. Then, a weekly or monthly magazine like Wired or The Economist might cover the same story, with yet more depth and analysis. The deepest, most canonical form of knowledge happens when someone chooses to write a book or research paper, or produce a documentary on the topic. Of course, this takes time, on the order of months or years. But a book is far and away the best way to learn about a topic. It represents orders of magnitude more depth of analysis, more thoughtfulness, and more context than you’ll get from a tweet or clickbait headline.
Of course, reading a book also requires a lot more commitment on your part to consume it. I’d rather go deeper on a smaller number of more interesting, more important, more well-researched topics than consume tweets and Tiktok videos all day. Candy content has its place, too, but real, long-form content is the only way we ever really understand something deeply enough to debate about it, improve upon it, or more generally contribute to the cultural conversation.
One more important note on books: several apps have emerged, which purport to allow you to consume just the “key ideas” of a book. I hate these with a passion. When someone commits to spending months or years of their precious, limited time to craft a story in a particular way, and you choose to consume it, in my opinion you have a sacred obligation to consume it in precisely the way the author intended. Anything less is desecration of art, in my mind.
For more: Try to block some time, even just a few minutes, each day to read long-form content such as books. I find the time just before going to sleep works well, and even 10-20 minutes a day adds up over time.