kylefisk on Nostr: A thought experiment to try to understand the fundamentals of social networks… ...

A thought experiment to try to understand the fundamentals of social networks…

Every social network is a voting machine.

Refined down to these basic principles:
⁃ votes are exchanged between people in a network
⁃ People make actions
⁃ People judge actions
⁃ Actions are judged good or bad
⁃ People give votes to eachother
⁃ People get votes for good actions
⁃ People get no votes for bad actions
⁃ People with more votes viewed as more good

More votes trend towards rewarding people who make more good actions

Positive sum networks uses votes to direct actions towards a net positive fulfillment of total human needs.

Zero sum networks use votes to direct actions towards a net negative fulfillment of total human needs.

The more votes you earn, the more you are viewed as good by the network ie you have more social influence in the network

Votes = Power

Some conclusions from this... economics is just one big voting machine and the votes are just symbolic to what actually matters and that's taking actions towards increasing subjective good that is determined by humans in the network. The subjective good imo is increasing available resources for human survival

And I think you can replace votes with money or with shells or with whatever symbol you want to showcase good action

Caveat: for a network to maintain “truth” you want a voting machine where votes can’t be created by central actors to dilute other people's voting power in the network. Also, if you make giving out votes more limited, then it makes people more critical in judgement to give out votes for good behavior.

Because votes are centrally issued in our fiat system, this creates an imbalance in the system where the central issuers can have more judgement power on what’s good or bad at the expense of other people in the network losing judgement power. Value is distorted. The people that don’t provide value to the central issuer don’t get as many votes as they would in a network where the judgement power is fairly distributed. Ie the working class don’t have as much access to vote with their actions.

Basically what’s happening with fiat is that the elites close to the money printer are taking most of the resources and leaving the rest of us to compete over a smaller portion. The elite lever up by either getting printed money directly or indirectly through financial assets.

Proof of work is when you get votes for using energy to provide security of maintaining the rules of the network.