Eric - I really appreciate your thorough information on this topic, you have clearly considered it seriously for some time.
> I would say that Ronin agrees with the sense of value, and doesn’t > take for granted having to give it up. Their main architecture is the > internet interface and the legal services of a 501C3 and whatever > journal etc. accesses they can get. But they are hosting an > increasing number of web-mediated seminars, general chat sessions they > call “watercooler” chats on the slack platform, and in-person > “meetups” a few times a year, whenever someone takes the initiative to > organize one somewhere. Many of those who are within geographical > proximity also have the option for more regular contacts. It is a > light level of in-person access, stabilized by the low cost and > general-purpose internet platform, rather than having the in-person > mode be the major center of stabilization. > > Although, per-exchange, an internet-mediated interaction won’t have > much depth, they are aiming for regularity and predictability as a way > to engender longer-term relations, and also to mediate active > scientific collaborations, so that people come to get a deeper > understanding of each other’s minds. I can accept these trade offs and in fact find my own effective collaborations to be equally distributed between people I can spend facetime with easily and those halfway around the world who I cannot but whose unique skills or perspective makes up for it. >> >> I assume your (Nick's) reference to journal access is to >> the http://unpaywall.org/ links? LANL (Paul Ginsparg) pioneered the >> use of WWW for open access to journal articles via the xxx.lanl.gov >> <http://xxx.lanl.gov/> "physics preprint" server (with an FTP and >> Gopher server predating that by a couple of years). I don't know >> the full implication or utility of the subsequent arXiv.org >> <http://arxiv.org/> system but in principle it feels like the >> "perfect" workaround for the Journal system. I think Grigori >> Perleman's example (publishing two deeply pivotal papers in >> mathematics *without* a peer-review journal/process) is significant. >> I'm surprised it didn't revolutionize academia and publication more >> than it did. Is it inertia or something more fundamental? >> > I think not only inertia. The idea that you can find, through ad hoc > networks, and fully understand by your own agency, everything you > should want to work with or use, to my mind vastly truncates the set > of possibilities for work. For every step you extend your scope into > areas you don’t understand, you add fragility and create problems of > validation of qualitatively new types, but you open combinatorial > possibilities for guessing and discovery that do not exist at smaller > scales. > > The new qualitative problems turn (in my view) fundamentally on the > limits of human time, attention, knowledge, etc. This is why a > library is not the same as a mere warehouse full of books, a (real) > librarian is not merely a person tasked with keeping others quiet, > etc. Search, sorting, classification, vetting and gatekeeping, are > fundamental services. Each of them has fragilities and each of them > is indispensable to all but the most localized tasks. There are > failure modes in all of these, which blamers love to blame, but I > don’t think those invalidate the concepts; they dictate the problems > that need work and insights. Since my earliest encounter with “web of > trust” cryptographic ideas, I have felt that the interlinked concepts > of identity and reputation are vastly richer than these engineering > inventions suggest, and it would be great to get more conceptual > clarity about their nature. I have taken some tilts at that problem > over 20 years, but never produced anything of any worth. It does seem > that the social disruption and AI innovations are bringing that > discussion to life now in a big way, and I can imagine there will be > interesting concepts turned up by it. > > I feel like this mismatch between conceptually simple technical > problems, and conceptually deep and difficult social system problems, > arises for many topics that are of interest to this list. We have > seen articles in which people take polarized positions on Bitcoin as > being either a new paradigm for money or nearly a scam. I don’t see > it as either. It is a cryptographic solution to a specific problem of > achieving a certain property in an information system that was once > sought in material systems: asymmetric ease of verifiability with > difficulty of counterfeiting, and having a predictable supply. But > anybody who is serious about what money is would (should, IMO) say > that those technical properties are no more the essence of money than > the physical properties of Au are the essence of money. There are > cognitive, social, and political foundations in real money and credit > systems, which employ material or informational properties as a kind > of substrate. One doesn’t want to confuse the building medium with > the built artifact. BitCoin aside (or at best a semi-tangible example for many), the underlying distributed ledger idea seems to reinforce/formalize/extend a social paradigm that worked well in Dunbar Number scale societies without any significant technology to support it. > So here’s another model in case it is of interest: > > https://www.yhousenyc.org/ > > This one is spearheaded by Piet Hut of IAS Princeton, with significant > participation from some Columbia people and several others. > > Piet is willing to opine that the university as we currently conceive > it is an institution that societies will be unwilling or unable to > support on a timescale as short as 25 years. To me that seems > unrealistically close, because (as above) they are so interlocked in > processes of reputation and vetting with the whole rest of the > society, that I think the institutional creep will be slow and it will > be much longer before they are cut loose. > > But whether right or wrong, that view motivates Piet to build a model > for what takes over the academic job when universities no longer do. > He conceives something that is more socially embedded, more ad hoc in > its membership, somehow negotiates academic autonomy while getting > sponsorship from businesses, and I guess some other structural stuff. > His test case is about origin of consciousness, which for Piet is the > third great Origins problem following OoMatter and OoLife. We can see > if he can make this work, and what is learned from the experiment. > > The ambitions of Ronin and YHouse could naturally be synergistic, and > they know about each other, but I think they are both still solving > local problems. The styles of the founders are very different, and > the visions and designs as well. > > > One can imagine a loose affiliation by which there are many local > experiments addressing “organically” understood needs by a collection > of entrepreneurs, which keep each other in view for support and > stability. Something like the clearinghouse of civil society > organizations that Paul Hawken wanted to provide: > https://www.blessedunrest.com/ > All this, very interesting/heartening, especially for my grandchildren who have not (yet) been raised under the old paradigms... no disrespect to the old paradigms, they just seem to be shifting/dissolving/involuting in the presence of the "universal solvent" of ubiquitous and instantaneous global communication. > > Dunno. Much to do. I like to repeat Steven Levine's mantra "Just this much" when I notice this... Carry On, - Steve PS to Nick... thanks (as always) for triggering all of this
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