Rebalancing Pyramids (Coordination)

# Table of Contents *There are two main parts to this article, "Theory of Coordination" covers the theoretical aspects and "The History of Alignment" covers the evolutionary stages of coordination throughout human history.* 1. [Introduction](#Introduction) 2. [Theory of Coordination](#Theory%20of%20Coordination) 1. [Desire and The Pyramid](#Desire%20and%20The%20Pyramid) 1. [Desire (Individual Interests)](#Desire%20(Individual%20Interests)) 2. [The Pyramid (Societal Interests)](#The%20Pyramid%20(Societal%20Interests)) 3. [Aligning Interests (Virtuous Cycle)](#Aligning%20Interests%20(Virtuous%20Cycle)) 4. [Rebalancing Pyramids](#Rebalancing%20Pyramids) 2. [Additional Coordination Concepts](#Additional%20Coordination%20Concepts) 1. [Tit-For-Tat](#Tit-For-Tat) 2. [The Sum of Your Thinking (Negative, Zero, and Positive Sum)](#The%20Sum%20of%20Your%20Thinking%20(Negative,%20Zero,%20and%20Positive%20Sum)) 3. [Societal Coordination vs Individual Privacy](#Societal%20Coordination%20vs%20Individual%20Privacy) 3. [The History of Alignment (Coordination)](#The%20History%20of%20Alignment%20(Coordination)) 1. [Primitive Pyramids (Muddy and Unstable)](#Primitive%20Pyramids%20(Muddy%20and%20Unstable)) 2. [Vertical Pyramids (Static)](#Vertical%20Pyramids%20(Static)) 3. [Horizontal Pyramids (Manually Adjustable)](#Horizontal%20Pyramids%20(Manually%20Adjustable)) 4. [Rebalancing Pyramids (Automated)](#Rebalancing%20Pyramids%20(Automated)) 1. [Blockchain Pyramids (Web3) vs Rebalancing Pyramids (Web4)](#Blockchain%20Pyramids%20(Web3)%20vs%20Rebalancing%20Pyramids%20(Web4)) 2. [The Advantages of Synchronized States (Web4)](#The%20Advantages%20of%20Synchronized%20States%20(Web4)) 3. [The Future of Human Coordination](#The%20Future%20of%20Human%20Coordination) 4. [Conclusion](#Conclusion) # Introduction _The superpower of humanity is coordination._ It’s the singular human trait that allowed us to achieve dominion over this planet. Complex coordination, using language initially around ~200,000 BCE, is what differentiated Homo sapiens from every other species in the animal kingdom[^1]. _Social hierarchies are the foundational root of all coordination. Without them, humans aren’t able to coordinate as a group (there would be no roles, everyone would do the same exact thing)._ _Social hierarchies are vital to our survival. Without the ability to form and update them effectively—we simply wouldn’t be here today._ _The root of all human coordination is being able to form distinct social hierarchies (also known as pecking orders)._ Absolutely every behavior humans do, and the way we do it, updates our social hierarchies. Each behavior _might_ additionally do other things, but absolutely every behavior also does just one thing: forms or updates social hierarchies. A behavior can do meaningfully nothing else and still be considered a valid behavior, as long as it meaningfully updates a social hierarchy (and many are like this). _Every behavior must consider social hierarchies before it can proceed to do anything functional. If its only purpose is to manipulate social hierarchies, that’s a valid behavior…but a functional behavior which doesn’t adequately form or update status hierarchies—is actually worse than useless. It disrupts our tribal coordination. Such behaviors are eradicated from human civilization by the forces of nature._ The ultimate goal of every human behavior isn’t to establish various social hierarchies. However, the prerequisite for any sustainable human behavior is to adequately affect social hierarchies, _before_ it can proceed to fulfill any of its functional purpose. _The functionality of a behavior can only be considered downstream of its social hierarchy aspects._ Because social hierarchies allow us to coordinate, organizing them effectively is generally the barrier between completing the actual functional tasks successfully or failure. _Have you ever seen someone fail their actual functional task intentionally, due to the social hierarchy coordination constraints placed on them?_ Without a pecking order, we cannot exist. Our social hierarchies shape our identities. Our society would be retarded, completely unable to work together. It would be pillaged and conquered by another non-retarded society, we would then become assimilated (usually enslaved) at the bottom of their pecking order[^2]. _So everyone gets a pecking order!_ ![[oprah-pecking.jpg|600]] So…the prerequisite to existing as a civilization, blocking the path of all decisions (our ability to scale as a civilization, form relationships, or chop wood)…_is that we must be able to establish and maintain social hierarchies_. _Every other behavior we partake in can only be considered as a part of this coordination mechanism._ There isn’t one supreme explicit social hierarchy. Social hierarchies are a fluid, multi-dimensional, and interweaving web of status relationships—happening in many orthogonal verticals at once[^3]. They must be formed and updated continuously to adequately reflect the reality of our abilities, in order to optimally facilitate societal coordination. _Social hierarchies are political._ When there isn’t a distinguished pecking order in verticals, battles must occur to establish one. Coincidentally, the most dangerous times for conflict are when multiple entities are relatively close in the status hierarchy…and aren’t sure about who will win in a battle, or how to establish it other than a battle (whether that be a physical war, diplomacy, or a governance decision). _If the social hierarchy is clear and uncontested, there is no need for this battle to occur. Wars and battles happen when entities are perceived to be close in the status hierarchy._ **What does it all mean?** It means that all our behaviors must constantly process that, adapt, play that game, make subtle adjustments, act in the correct way…Since status hierarchies are competitive with real benefits and costs, all humans who wish to survive and thrive must become adept at understanding and navigating them. **To become adept at skillfully navigating social hierarchies is a very complex game.** It takes up perhaps half or more of all human cognitive energy ever spent throughout history. This energetic cost is funneled into a zero-sum game, which cannot guarantee results for all participants. This massive energetic cost does not equal optimal coordination. It’s simply a game all humans must learn and partake in, in order to survive and coordinate as a species. This game often fills our minds with all sorts of useless garbage—and then still fails to produce results. Our status games[^4] are ultimately zero-sum coordination puzzles, and often result in perverse incentives[^5]. * * * **We cannot ever free people from communal coordination. _So how can we improve it?_** [Individuals’ identities are ultimately derived from the State structure they live in](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+Sovereign+Individual+(Identity)). Therefore, creating better coordinated societal State structures for civilization is _ultimately the only way to increase the potential of human identities_. All identities within a State superstructure are limited by the State's abilities to coordinate. Society Protocol (SP) is primarily in the business of improving human coordination. This is achieved by transforming the structure of the State from a Nation State into a Synchronized State...thus, allowing more sophisticated identities to exist, and allowing human civilizations’ coordination to evolve. Throughout history, humanity, not too long ago, was hardly able to coordinate at all—unable to scale past small primitive tribes. Each epoch of human societal evolution has increased our abilities to coordinate. Society Protocol will unlock the ability for automated interplanetary coordination. The need for coordination isn’t going away, but in the upcoming triple-entry accounting age (TEAA) humanity will possess the technology needed to coordinate entire civilizations semi-automatically, synchronously, and fairly in the background. This will free up every individual’s cognitive resources to participate in higher level endeavors and focus on more important tasks. The crux of coordination is this: humans aren’t very effectively coordinated compared to our potential. We naturally do things that are best for ourselves, rather than what is best for our society. _This lack of coordination costs us 99%+ of our potential._ People aren't naturally able to coordinate effectively, and as a result the whole civilization suffers. Imagine a planet where all humans coordinated optimally, sharing the same synchronized reality, like efficient machines, in order to enhance each others lives. That would be the top of our coordination potential, and we’re less than 1% of the way there. ![[future of coordination or trashheap.png|]] *Caption: Coordination is the only difference between this and this: This transformation doesn't innately require smarter people, more natural resources, or better weapons. It takes more sophisticated coordination.* We’re now standing at the threshold of the most profound transformation in human coordination since the start of the double-entry accounting age (DEAA) around 2,000 years ago. _The way that we coordinate as a civilization is about to fundamentally be reshaped—changing how societies are organized, power is distributed, and each individual’s abilities and worth are determined._ If you can understand that's where the real gains are to be had, with lots of potential, you understand that your whole life should be spent here with us, achieving those gains. Instead of playing the zero-sum games you're currently playing. You can either play a zero-sum game trying to gain a coordination edge in a status hierarchy of Nation States, which are already reaching their coordination limits of potential and sustainability (making it neutral [expected value](https://www.statisticshowto.com/probability-and-statistics/expected-value/) (EV) to participate)...or contribute towards building Synchronized States, which are able to scale humanity’s population 10-100x (10-100x EV for everyone involved)—improving everyone’s identities in the process. No matter how incredibly good you are at status games (you’re likely not, it’s likely just the ego), the math is clear. # Theory of Coordination ## Desire and The Pyramid One day, I wondered, “Why don’t humans all work together and coordinate optimally...? Wouldn’t everyone live better as a result, and isn’t that what everyone wants? ...Wouldn’t even those people at the bottom of the societal hierarchy live better than the kings of today? If that’s the case, what exactly is it that’s holding everyone back, why aren’t they coordinating like that?”. **The answer is a** [**prisoner's dilemma**](https://youtu.be/mScpHTIi-kM)**.** We are many individuals with distinct self-interests, sharing the same world—simultaneously competing and cooperating for a scarce amount of resources. At every societal interaction, we remain vulnerable to betrayal. This vulnerability, inherent to the prisoner's dilemma, prevents us from cooperating blindly. [_Why we so often fail to work together_](https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/why-we-so-often-fail-to-work-together) _by Lionel Page excellently explains these dynamics._ **Civilization is one giant prisoner's dilemma.** > A group of employees may want to secure a contract, but each member wants their individual contribution to be recognized. A football team wants to win a match, but each striker prefers to score rather than pass the ball. A political party wants to win an election, but each contender for top political positions focuses on strengthening their own bargaining position in case their party wins.\[@pageWhyWeOften2024\] ![[Individual Interests & Societal Pyramid.excalidraw.png|700]] To talk about aligning status hierarchies, we are always simultaneously considering two sides: the **individual interests (desire)** and the **collective interests (pyramid)**. Individual actors all have individual interests (desires), and their purpose is always to use whatever means are available to them to achieve those desires. As a societal coalition, we have collective interests. It’s in our collective interests: to align the selfish individual interests of each participating individual into something that is valuable for the coalition. Otherwise, all our selfish interests would conflict—making us unable to coordinate effectively. ![[Misaligned Interests – Alignment.excalidraw.png|700]] To coordinate as a group, we must move with social cohesion. The only way to do this is to align the individual interests of participants in the group together with the collective interests. Each individual actor always maintains their own individual interests inside the pyramid structure. No amount of social cohesion eliminates those, it's their individual purpose. All we can do as a coalition, is to manipulate each individual's game-theoretic optimal (GTO) decisions to get their individual interests closer to the collective interests of the societal pyramid. ![[Individual Interests vs Societal Pyramid.excalidraw.png|700]] With the ultimate goal being to merge each individual’s interests (their optimal selfish decision) to exactly overlap with the collective interests (what the group wants from them as a pyramid). If the merging of the two is the ultimate coordination goal representing perfect alignment, then the delta or distance between them measures the amount of coordination that we’re leaking as a group, compared to perfection. I want to note that this merging doesn't mean tyranny (where individuals are incentivized to **ACT** like their individual interests are aligned with the collective, while in reality they aren't truly aligned at all). This chart above illustrates the true merging of interests, where they are literally the same thing[^6]. ### Desire (Individual Interests) _The thing about people…is that they all want something._ They also all want somethings in common (in 2025 it was Sydney Sweeney). Unfortunately, not every individual can attain their individual desires due to scarcity. Desires also change upon attainment—accomplishments don’t last forever, individuals constantly adjust their desires. Nevertheless, we all want something, and the overlap of our individual desires, when viewed as an aggregated collective, forms the demand side of the economic chart for those things[^7]. **Individuals will do anything to get their individual interests.** Individuals DO NOT ever subordinate their individual interests to the collective interests of the coalition they’re a part of. Their individual interests (perceived from their lens) are ALWAYS the action they’re going to take. All communication between individuals happens as a means to achieve their individual interests. This means that ultimately: _all reason, rationality, and persuasive arguments are simply tools. (A means) for individuals aiming to achieve their selfish desires (an end)._ It’s another reason why duality is a part of human nature. Duality emerges due to the divergence of interests between the individual’s desires and the collective interests. **As a society or coalition, we can’t ever change that.** All that we can do as a coalition, is to change the individual’s perceived optimal decision by using various forms of incentives, punishments, and social contracts—moving their individual intersts closer to the group’s collective interests. Individual’s interests can be thought of as the micro, freedom side of the equation. They function on free markets, where individuals make their own choices about what’s best for them. ### The Pyramid (Societal Interests) We live in a society where _organizational constraints_ dictate that there are fewer spots at the top of the social hierarchy than at the bottom—forming a pyramid structure. _Status hierarchies naturally form into pyramids for optimal coordination. This pattern is observed throughout essentially all organizations._ > A coffee shop franchise requires tens of thousands of baristas to pour the coffee, one manager per ten baristas, one franchise owner per store, but only a small board of directors to set the unified direction of the brand, and one CEO. > > A Nation State requires a large army to protect its borders, often numbered in millions of private soldiers, but less of each ascending rank, with only a handful of generals, and ultimately one commander-in-chief. As individuals, we're all a part of (usually multiple) social hierarchy pyramids. We've previously covered the individual interests side in *[The Sovereign Individual (Identity)](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+Sovereign+Individual+(Identity))*. In contrast, this article focuses on the societal pyramid side. Without any pyramid there to protect us—we would be very very dead (more likely enslaved by another pyramid). So everyone gets to join a pyramid no matter what, they're inclusive. Social coalitions must form into pyramids to survive[^8]. These pyramids structurally have their own needs, mandated by their structure. To continue existing and coordinating as a group the pyramid must maintain an equilibrium. The pyramid structure wants to remain balanced, maintaining a golden ratio of _ϕ_= $(\frac{21+5}{2})$ between its hierarchical tiers to remain optimally effective. If it becomes too imbalanced towards any one side, the pyramid begins to break apart. Likewise, if it's filled with the wrong individuals in the wrong identity slots (roles), the pyramid becomes ineffective. **Meritocracy.** The pyramid ideally wants to form a meritocratic structure, where everyone’s value is accurately mapped to their role and position in the explicit status hierarchy[^9]––at each point in time. Such a configuration would be the pinnacle of organizing social pyramids––the ideal scenario—where every participant is accurately placed and repositioned exactly where they should be in the status hierarchy at all times[^10]. _The closer that we get to achieving that ideal state of meritocracy—the more the coalition will thrive, because it itself is allocating its resources optimally (making good decisions)._ _Meritocracy doesn’t make everyone equal—because we’re not all equal—we never have been equal––we’re all different._ What we would like to see happen as a societal coalition…is the competition for the roles inside the pyramid to be optimizing for the parameters we want and be fair to everyone, and as a result…be consistently accurately mapping to those individuals who have the most merit for each identity slot (role). _This gets all the individual participants in the coalition beneficial results, each earning bonus karmic points 💚 and living a better life, without necessarily contributing any value themselves._ While the societal pyramid wants to rebalance into optimal meritocratic configurations, it has never really had a means to do so, because it kind of doesn’t exist in its own right—_it’s a golem of individual interests. It doesn’t have a singular intention of its own_. There is no societal pyramid I can go speak with and ask what it wants, or even visualize its superstructure completely and concretely to understand it: during the ZEAA, SEAA, and DEAA. *Those abilities are arriving in the TEAA.* Its decision-making process consists of some form of governance a.k.a group decision-making. Previously, we’ve gone through three epochs[^11]: - Zero-entry accounting age (ZEAA): where group-decision making was handled through the threat of physical violence. - Single-entry accounting age (SEAA): where group decision-making was handled through absolute monarchies. - Double-entry accounting age (DEAA): where group-decision making has been handled through democratic principles. In all cases, decisions are made using some combination of individual interests. From the individual perspective: No individual’s desires want to rebalance the pyramid optimally, each individual is competing for the best role for themselves. _The optimal configuration for the societal pyramid is never the intention of any participant while simultaneously being in the interests of every participant in the coalition. This is known as a [tragedy of the commons](https://math.uchicago.edu/~shmuel/Modeling/Hardin,%20Tragedy%20of%20the%20Commons.pdf)_. To figure out what the pyramid wants...is a highly complex theoretical art and science––which is not well studied in theory (there are no college courses on how to coordinate a society[^12]), but additionally gets obscured by the dualistic political wishes of individual participants in practice. **…But**. _We can say it has interests._ We can also say that the societal interests of a coalition are _very important_, at least equally as important as the individual interests of its participants. > For example: it’s in the interest of a Nation State to control territory and have a strong military to protect the territory. Without these, it wouldn’t be able to exist. It’s in the interest of Synchronized States to have activity in their Timeline. Without any activity, a Synchronized State has little reason to exist. The social contract is important, yet we cannot directly perceive/analyze, distinguish what a good decision for the coalition would be, or easily make decisions as a group (govern). Additionally, while it’s in the interests of the majority of participants to rebalance the societal pyramid; the people at the top, who wield tremendous power, are never in favor of rebalancing the pyramid[^13]. They often create (or capture) systems, and we have no way of rebalancing after that. The system usually just grinds on without rebalancing, until it’s inevitable collapse. So the question becomes: How do we sort & rebalance the societal pyramid, to make sure that people are sorted into roles based on merit...when those residing in higher positions in the pyramid, who as a consequence wield the power, are never incentivized to do so? How can we rebalance the societal pyramid in a way that’s fair and accurate without creating catastrophic consequences in the process, such as wars, stagnation and collapse? **The process would look something like this:** 1. **Creating a singular perceivable social contract for the pyramid:** Visualize the pyramid structure’s social contract and use theory combined with history and analytics to identify its potential improvement decision-tree. This isn’t possible in the DEAA, because our social hierarchies are a patchwork of duplicated contracts fragmented between silos. There is no singular structure to visualize.) 2. **Game Theory:** Theoretically analyze and decipher what is best for this societal pyramid based off its stated collective goals. Using research and game theory, we can arrive at a range of clearly better and worse solutions and their tradeoffs. This process often requires deep theoretical understandings, technical analysis, and debate, and its all moot without the power to actually implement and execute decisions. 3. **Governance Implementation:** We would need a group decision-making (governance) method which is able to make a decision as close to the collective interest point as possible and implement the chosen decision evenly across the pyramid[^14]. Our governance method would need to be able to both make and execute this decision. 4. **Acknowledge Skew:** Once it comes time to rely on participants inside the coalition to actually make a decision, their individual interests will skew it away from any perfectly optimal equilibrium we have created using **game theory**. Even so, that’s kind of as good as it gets. What we want is their skew of individual interests to be as close in proximity to the GTO colllective interest as possible. --- The pyramid’s collective interests can be thought of as the macro “social coordination” side of the equation. The pyramid doesn’t function on free markets like the individual interest side. It functions on roles, social orders, and teamwork. **_It functions on a social contract._** Without the “macro” pyramid side there to protect the individual interests—the individual wouldn't be able to participate in the free market, because they would be enslaved by another pyramid. *Each societal interaction and free-market negotiation we enter into as individuals with our own individual interests on the micro side is distorted by the social contract of the pyramid’s collective interests. **_An Example of Free Market Distortion:_** > Let’s say Joe is the boss of the car dealership, and Chris goes to buy a car more expensive and cooler than Joe’s…Chris might be easily able afford it in the free market…but the social consequences of Joe firing Chris wouldn’t be worth it, so Chris decides to purchase a cheaper car instead, in order to not ruin the social cohesion of the organization. **The social contract from the pyramid side distorts the individual interests from the individual side.** Just like _duality_ emerges from the individual interests’ divergence from societal interests...Indoctrination emerges from the societal pyramid side (more about this the introduction section of [The state That Binds (Shared Reality)](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+That+Binds+(Shared+Reality))). Indoctrination emerges as a result of the collective interests of the societal pyramid deciding what beliefs, cultures, knowledge, rituals, religions, etc... it needs to include, in order to optimally coordinate its constituents. ### Aligning Interests (Virtuous Cycle) Ultimately, in order to align interests and achieve better coordination—we must move the interests of all individual actors closer to those of the pyramid[^15] organically (this must happen from the actors’ perspective). From the pyramid side, in order to achieve this, it’s crucial to [accurately gauge and reward the contributions of all individual participants](https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/why-we-so-often-fail-to-work-together?open=false#%C2%A7fighting-for-prestige-and-social-recognition). The problem in current and past epochs of civilization is that there has never been a direct pyramid or social contract layer for individuals to interact with—in the current double-entry accounting age (DEAA), individuals are always engaging 'representatives of the pyramid'—other individual actors, each with their own individual interests—to acquire recognition for their actions in the pyramid. This lack of unified and transparent social contract creates [a plethora of perverse incentives](https://www.optimallyirrational.com/i/160629904/fighting-for-power), where individuals manipulate the information available and perception of the patchwork of social contracts, in order to elevate themselves in the social hierarchy. This behavior is game theory optimal (GTO) strategy for the individual but destructive to the collective interests. The social status games that all participants in the coalition are forced to engage in depend on the superstructure of the societal pyramid itself––the infrastructure, social contract, and culture of the coalition. Whenever the societal pyramid doesn’t ascribe credit, or worse yet, incorrectly ascribes credit (both of which happen consistently all day everyday in modern society), all participants within the pyramid superstructure _suffer silently, in an imperceptible way, which can only be visualized using game theory_, in exact proportion to the sum of every participant’s delta/distance from the perfect coordination alignment[^16] > Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. –Naval This isn't a single person, it's happening at every suboptimal interaction on a societal scale. **Everyone is playing stupid games, and winning stupid prizes.** That's how the universe is natively designed, but we can evolve. _We must evolve to improve the actual games that we play as a species. That’s what the universe wants us to do—evolve the game._ **When we align the true interests of individuals and the coalition together—the potential of the whole society increases.** Every tiny little movement of individual’s interests closer aligned with that of the societal pyramid interests increases everyone’s karma within that coalition. _It’s like a group healing spell. 💚⚕️Everyone’s HP in society increases when_ **_any_** _members’ individual interests get pulled closer to those of the whole pyramid._ The duality of individuals doesn’t change; all individuals are still competing and cooperating at the same time. The individual’s selfish desires don’t change. This process doesn’t remove the indoctrination aspects coming from the pyramid side, the coalition still pursues those…It’s just that by bringing the game theoretic optimal (GTO) move of the individual closer to the coalition's optimal move for that individual—**it elevates the whole societal pyramid and everyone within it**––_creating a butterfly effect from small individual alignments, which with consistently repeated interactions, affects everyone in the pyramid._ ![[Aligned Interests – Alignment.excalidraw.png|700]] Perfect alignment of individual and group interests isn’t possible to achieve, but what we can do is bring the two as close together as possible. The more that a society can achieve this objective—the more optimally its coalition is able to function, _and as a consequence its shared reality becomes more valuable_. If a society coordinates inefficiently, and its shared reality doesn’t function well enough to survive…it will be conquered by a rival pyramid superstructure, and its individual participants’ interests will be assimilated into the bottom of that pyramid. _Everyone gets a pyramid!_ ### Rebalancing Pyramids Rebalancing the societal pyramid accurately isn’t all of coordination…but it’s perhaps _the root of coordination_. Without accurate social hierarchies, groups become unable to function at all. Just _imagine_ an inversion or randomization of the status hierarchy roles in our current society—it would be absolute chaos. Throughout history, almost every society fails for one of two reasons: 1. It collapses due to a suboptimal distribution of status hierarchies within the pyramid (internal pyramid failure) 2. It is conquered by a more optimized and efficient pyramid structure (external pyramid failure) I don’t know of any other reason for societal failure outside of these two, but these two are an infinite challenge. **Why do we need to rebalance the pyramid?** ![[wars to preserve a failing system.png]] Wars are mostly the byproduct of captured pyramid structures in the capture-collapse-revolution cycle, since the pyramid is unable to adequately rebalance internally, it has to collapse. Wars are an eternal story of old people who have captured the pyramid manifesting their individual interests, which are oftentimes in deep disalignment with the collective interests of the societal pyramid. That is why this article is called Rebalancing Pyramids, because humanity has never had a way to create pyramids which can truly rebalance themselves optimally—causing the downfall of just about all empires previously assembled. Society Protocol introduces a way to accurately and continuously rebalance the societal pyramid, which will expand the healthy longevity of the State structure—without needing to go through the miserable capture-collapse–revolution cycle to re-establish the pecking order. ## Additional Coordination Concepts ### Tit-For-Tat > All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest in long-term games. Play long-term games with long-term people. > > –Naval Ravikant All human interactions involve both _competing_ and _cooperating_ simultaneously. The key factor that tips the balance toward cooperation? **The expectation of future interactions.** When both parties know they'll need each other again, cooperation becomes valuable. This transforms a one-off transaction into what game theorists call an "iterated game"—a relationship with multiple rounds. Without this future prospect, the dynamics shift dramatically. The prisoner's dilemma kicks in: both sides are incentivized to betray because there's no tomorrow to worry about. **This makes forming highly valuable relationships impossible.** **The formula for trust is simple:** Both participants must expect repeated interactions. To build and maintain trust, both parties need to see the prospect of a future together. **_To summarize the mechanics of trust:_** 1. Trust must be developed iteratively (one step at a time). 2. To develop trust, all parties must have the prospect of future interactions. 3. To develop trust, the signals used to establish it must not be able to be forged. There is a big difference between [cheap and costly signals](https://www.robkhenderson.com/p/theres-nothing-wrong-with-signaling). > “Those who suffer together, stay together.” 4. Trust can be lost instantly. It is built one step at a time, but can fall down multiple steps at a time. **Building trust is hard**[^17], but it’s also the only way to create real lasting value without falling into the pits of hell…betraying and betrayed by everyone around you. There are two resources which do an excellent job of displaying how the game theory of trust works: - [_The Evolution of Trust_](https://ncase.me/trust/) - The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Especially chapter 12: “Nice Guys Finish Last” about tit-for-tat \[@dawkinsSelfishGene2016\]. ### The Sum of Your Thinking (Negative, Zero, and Positive Sum) We are often taught that a positive sum view of the world is superior and more productive to a negative or a zero-sum view. _That’s not exactly how it works…_ It really depends on what kind of State structure you are living in, and its relative success to the universe. Although individual microcosms within that State structure might experience different dynamics…the overall amount of value to divide in each system is equivalent to how the State structure is faring against the universe. There are three scenarios which can occur: - **Positive Sum:** When a societal pyramid is successful, and it is conquering new grounds and opening up new opportunities for its members: there is a positive sum environment of new value being brought into the system. Individuals within it (on average) can adopt a positive thinking mindset, because there is constantly more value being input to divide. - **Zero Sum:** When a societal pyramid is at a perfect theoretical stable equilibrium (not growing or shrinking): there is a zero-sum amount of value in the system. Individuals within the system must compete over how to divide this value—each fighting for a bigger share of that zero-sum amount of value. - **Negative Sum**: _This scenario is also possible._ This is the scenario where participants eat each other (are incentivized to be negative to each other) because the value in the societal pyramid itself is shrinking. _It’s like The Hunger Games_. This occurs when their shared societal pyramid is being conquered. Individuals in such a system must ultimately turn on each other with negative intentions, undermining each other, even more so than in a zero-sum system, because there will be less resources to divide in the future than in the present. _This scenario applies often to oppressed groups._ The truth is, that some groups are oppressed and not allowed to coordinate, while their resources are exfiltrated. That is the history of the world, and it reflects in the economics, politics, and cultures of those groups. The Indian subcontinent is an example of this, as is Africa. The laws, culture, and individuals are often negative to each other, because their systems are negative sum in nature. **This isn’t a bug in the system**, it’s important to understand that nature is perfect as is. That is their optimal coordination equilibrium. Positive sum thinking for an average individual becomes suicidal in such systems. **This is the cost of coordination failure as a society.** The individuals within these systems are culturally incentivized to devour each other. _It is the mythology of Moloch (there isn’t enough energy to go around, so its better to sacrifice the children)._ ![[moloch.jpg|600]] <center>Moloch. Ancient deity. We sacrificed the children to him by throwing them into the flames.</center> This is not an uncommon situation throughout the world, and is absolutely the game theory optimal (GTO) behavior for most of the average individuals in such societal pyramids. Attempting to be positive sum player in a negative sum societal pyramid is not going to work (in the average case)—there isn’t enough value to go around. **This doesn’t apply to every individual inside the State superstructure.** Individuals can be positive sum in a microcosm while the State superstructure is negative sum in the macrocosm, but it does apply to all individuals (averaged together) inside the macrocosm of their societal pyramid structure. As an individual, you can retain a positive, neutral, or negative mindset in any of the three systems. But a positive mindset in a system that is shrinking (without being part of a positive microcosm of energy) would hurt rather than help you. This game isn’t absolute because the game itself isn’t zero-sum. At the current moment, humans are, as a species, conquering more value in a zero-sum universe. This means that more States can stay positive sum/zero sum than equilibrium, despite being conquered, because humanity itself is succeeding and flourishing. #### Winner Take Most Game As societal pyramids, States are all competing for 100% of the [shared reality](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+That+Binds+(Shared+Reality)). A State which is 20% worse at coordination, doesn’t fare 20% worse. It becomes captured, controlled, and disrupted by the State which is marginally better. It’s a winner take most game where small edges matter and the society which coordinates the best always historically conquers the weaker coordinated society. ### Societal Coordination vs Individual Privacy The societal pyramid’s interests for optimizing societal coordination are at odds with every individual participant’s desire for privacy within it. _They’re counter opposing forces._ The process of achieving privacy adds extra complexity to each interaction and decreases the potential for societal coordination. In [The Sovereign Individual](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+Sovereign+Individual+(Identity)), we covered a key recurrent pattern throughout every past epoch of human civilization: _privacy has decreased and societal coordination has increased_. The interests of the pyramid are overall more important than the desires of the individual. Without a strong pyramid structure protecting us—we cannot survive as individuals, and would be 💀 with no desires. Privacy places significant limitations on societal coordination. It’s important to know how power is distributed and the history of identities interacting in the system—without these features, powerful secret societies form into organized cabals and manipulate the rest of the participants in the system using their asymmetrical informational advantages. _Therefore, in addition to adding complexity, this privacy trade-off might actually be ruinous for achieving the fair coordination of a society. It appears that the more privacy we attain, the higher the abilities for individuals to coordinate into powerful cabals._ **Some amount of privacy is obviously necessary.** On a technical level, Society Protocol can support all variations possible with cryptography[^18]. At a philosophical level…it remains to be seen where the optimal line is drawn (between individual privacy and societal coordination) in the TEAA. For example, we aren't certain at Society Protocol whether encrypting all the Energy in the system and every interaction between participants at different Value Functions would actually be in the societal interest. In the TEAA, **identity is the scarce identifying & differentiating resource**. To hide every identity’s history from each other in the system…may not be a beneficial quality after all. It may simply be the way things are done in the DEAA, because we have no choice in the matter due to its informational architecture structure (duplicated contracts). Adding privacy within sub-systems, such as Communication, seems superior to encrypting the entire system. This is because by keeping a strong transparent root of identities, relationships, and interactions: we can hook into that data to make the more private aspects, such as private chats, retain a lot of valuable verifiable elements. At Society Protocol, we don’t believe that humanity is entering an age of privacy, because each of our previous epoch transitions has brought less privacy and more societal coordination. _We believe that society is heading towards The Age of Synchronicity—where all of society moves as one._ # The History of Alignment (Coordination) Looking throughout history, it’s easy to perceive humanity’s evolution as simply us learning to coordinate in ever more advanced and optimized ways—using the planet as a sandbox in the process—in an attempt to create the most powerful societal superstructure. Evolution pressures societies to evolve, just as much as it pressures individuals. It’s a constant process of better pyramids absorbing lesser pyramids into their structures. _May the best pyramid win, welcome to the global societal pyramid competition!_ The pyramid structure ultimately determines what a society is able to build, the armies it can field, the knowledge it can attain and retain, the technologies it can develop, the population size it can sustain, the resources it can exploit, etc. _Everything in society really comes down to the optimization of this societal pyramid superstructure._ Throughout history, each epoch has brought a new type of societal pyramid superstructure, which was an evolution of the previous epoch. These aren’t merely revolutions (where power flips from one faction to another to rebalance the pyramid), they are much bigger _evolutionary journeys_ which completely redefine the structural nature of the pyramid itself, and redefine civilization in the process—with drastic changes. When mapped to a timeline, society’s evolution has been a continuous ebb-and-flow of alternating centralization and decentralization structures[^19]. ![[Changing Tides of Centralization & Decentralization.excalidraw.png]] <center>The Ebb & Flow of Centralization and Decentralization during the course of the DEAA</center> Today, money makes the world go around. In the past, different societies throughout history have valued different things; the explicit social hierarchy of societal pyramids hasn’t always been defined by money. The Catholic Church didn’t run on money, it ran on divine rights. The Soviet Union didn’t run on money, it ran on the paradoxical combination of equality and prestige (nobody really had money, but being an educator or principal was a highly prestigious role). Our current societies run on faux-capitalism (techno-feudalism) fueled by an infinite supply of fiat currency. In the prior age, during the reign of the British Empire, they ran on real laissez-faire capitalism. *The social hierarchy of value doesn’t necessarily function on free-markets, it functions on roles.* In this section, we will cover the evolution of coordination in human civilizations throughout history. The four epochs covered are the same pattern as every other article: 1. [Zero-Entry Accounting (ZEA) – Tribes (Pre 10,000 BCE – 3,500 BCE)]((https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+of+The+State+(History)#Zero-Entry+Accounting+%E2%80%93+Tribes+(Pre+10%2C000+BCE+%E2%80%93+3%2C500+BCE))) 2. [Single-Entry Accounting (SEA) – Classical States (3500 BCE–476 CE)]((https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+of+The+State+(History)#Single-Entry+Accounting+%E2%80%93+Classical+States+(3500+BCE%E2%80%93476+CE))) 3. [Double-Entry Accounting (DEA) – Nation States (500 – Present)]((https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+of+The+State+(History)#Double-Entry+Accounting+%E2%80%93+Nation+States+(500+%E2%80%93+Present))) 4. [Triple-Entry Accounting (TEA) – Synchronized States (Starts now)]((https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+of+The+State+(History)#Triple-Entry+Accounting+%E2%80%93+Synchronized+States+(Starts+now))[](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+of+The+State+(History)#Triple-Entry+Accounting+%E2%80%93+Synchronized+States+(Starts+now))) Each epoch has introduced new ways of coordination. Instead of replacing the previous epoch's coordination methods, each epoch’s coordination methods stack on top of each other—adding multi-dimensional coordination capacities. We still use rituals from the ZEAA to coordinate today, we still use vertical recorded hierarchies from the SEAA, and we still use the democratic principles of the DEAA. We will soon add automated rebalancing and synchronization of the TEAA. ## Primitive Pyramids (Muddy and Unstable) ###### Tribes – Zero-Entry Accounting Age (ZEAA) – (Pre 10,000 BCE – 3,500 BCE) ![[zeaa pyramid.png|600]] <center>ZEAA social hierarchy pyramid</center> From the very earliest ancient days, when Homo sapiens learned language—allowing us to coordinate in complex ways—coordination has been the core factor in our success. Tribal coordination of the ZEAA, pre-dating written records, relied on fluid status hierarchies and ceremonial rituals. Although social hierarchies have been a thing since the beginning of time, ZEAA Tribes were unable to scale and form into large pyramid structures, due to a lack of ability to keep order and consistent specialized roles without permanent records. Early tribal civilizations remained around Dunbar’s Number of ~150 people. They were unable to scale further due to the high cognitive loads of needing to retain their social hierarchies in their minds. Tribal hierarchies could change fluidly…they were actually too fluid and unpredictable in how hierarchies would change. There wasn’t enough stability and nothing holding them in place, other than the malleable collective memory of the Tribe and whoever felt the strongest that day. These dynamics created a lot of volatility, along with: high cognitive loads, lack of trust, lack of consistency, and ultimately a lack of ability to scale their pyramid structure—_similar to a pyramid that’s made out of mud_. Organized religion emerged as a foundational way to coordinate people as early as 100,000+ years ago, giving Tribes a sense of social cohesion. Organized religion shouldn’t be confused with spiritual practices, it’s rather a political coordination tool created to align many individual actors into a singular social cohesion—allowing them to establish social hierarchies. It’s one of the most important primitive coordination tools to emerge, and game theory optimal (GTO) coordination strategy. If, for example, all the individual participants in a Tribe had each adopted their own unique blend of spirituality, they wouldn’t be able to form social hierarchies effectively (decreasing their coordination abilities), and as a result been conquered by a Tribe which used an organized religion. So this individual spirituality configuration couldn’t exist. If it did at some point in history, it was eaten by a more coordinated societal pyramid structure using organized religion. This makes organized religion an absolutely necessary GTO strategy of the ZEAA, which both protected people and slayed people. _That’s why it emerged everywhere, it's the dominant strategy with no other alternative._ Substituting a singular organized religion with an array of independent spiritual beliefs would have been entirely counterproductive…it would decrease the Tribe’s ability to form social hierarchies and coordinate by putting everyone on their own different individualist spiritual page, and ultimately be entirely counterproductive, because this unorganized formation would be conquered by a better coordinated group using organized religion anyways—making all participants lose their individual spirituality. _This dynamic shows an interesting thing about spirituality and individuality—to have those abilities, we must first be able to include these abilities into our coordination frameworks as a group._ ![[ZEAA Coordination Methods.png]] The primitive “pyramids of mud” of the ZEAA were conquered by the colossal vertically integrated pyramids of the SEAA. ## Vertical Pyramids (Static) ###### Classical States – Single-Entry Accounting Age (SEAA) – (3500 BCE–476 CE) ![[seaa pyramid.png|700]] <center>SEAA social hierarchy pyramid</center> Societal hierarchies learned to scale into grandiose pyramids when permanent records emerged, enabling vertical integration throughout the entire pyramid structure. This formed empires, as colossal vertical pyramid structures were erected—the SEAA was the _Age of Classical Empires_. The Egyptian, Roman, Persian, and Chinese empires were all products of humans learning to form into vertical pyramid structures. These colossal vertical pyramids swallowed up just about every small Tribe, absorbing them. The social hierarchy pyramids of the SEAA resembled the ancient pyramids of the ancient Egyptians: they were colossal in size, sturdily made of solid stones, and not moveable (without much discernment or possibility for rebalancing). This meant societal roles were often fixed from birth until death. While societal hierarchies gained the ability to scale and specialize…they didn’t have much of a way to rebalance roles effectively based on merit. Consequentially, the optimal person from the pyramid was hardly ever accurately positioned for each specialized role in the societal pyramid. _Some of the truly mad emperors of Rome come to mind…(they really shouldn’t have been in that position, but that’s just how the pyramid was designed)._ ![[SEAA Coordination Methods.png]] The grandiose pyramids of the SEAA were conquered due to being unable to make good decisions at scale, in massive empires, without having a more decentralized and adaptive decision-making process. All important decisions going up to the emperor, who didn’t have the best information and often wasn’t the best person selected for the role to make decisions, proved to be a very inefficient process—unable to keep up with the constantly evolving situation in all corners of the empire. ## Horizontal Pyramids (Manually Adjustable) ###### Nation States – Double-Entry Accounting Age (DEAA) – (500 – Present) ![[deaa pyramid.png]] <center>DEAA social hierarchy pyramid</center> > _“We should not judge a man’s merit by his great qualities, but by the use he makes of them.”_ –François de La Rochefoucauld _Duplicated contracts are the root invention which changed the nature of the societal pyramid in the DEAA. They allowed for the permanent updating of status hierarchies between participants as contracts between equals—without requiring the vertical hierarchy line to update status._ In addition to the features of the previous ages, what emerged was a horizontally integrated pyramid, which was manually rebalancing from the duplicated social contracts signed between participants. This changed the nature of societies entirely. It created democratic principles and individualism. Society has learned how to manually rebalance the societal pyramid through repeated horizontal interactions facilitated by duplicated contracts. _All individuals became more different yet more equal in this legal context of individualism_. Societies evolved from a world where social hierarchy is prescribed top-down to a world where roles in the social hierarchy are attained. These manually adjustable horizontal pyramids became more adaptable, with better decision-making. They had a better alignment between the individual interests and collective interests. As a result, they replaced the grandiose, yet sluggish vertical pyramids of the SEAA. _We no longer live in a society where social hierarchy is prescribed top-down; we take it for granted that roles are attained._ The societal pyramid is no longer stable like the solid stone structures of the SEAA, it’s more vibrant and constantly rebalancing inside based on its participants’ repeated manual interactions and status games. Participants play status games with each other to compete for scarce roles within the pyramid. In this process, they ultimately rebalance the pyramid into more optimal configurations through repeated interactions “as equals.” _Nodes are manually rebalancing the pyramid through repeated interactions._ Each node in the network has its own individual interests: it signals, gives feedback, declares its preferences, makes individualistic decisions, and maneuvers throughout the pyramid towards where it wants to go. All participants still participate in the same canonical vertical ruleset emanating from the top of the pyramid, but they’re all also able to interact “as equals” _horizontally_ to adjust the pyramid within that singular ruleset—updating social hierarchies within that ruleset autonomously, without necessarily requiring top-down hierarchical interactions. The population’s duplicated social contracts are with each other (horizontal)—while remaining secured by the vertical social hierarchy pyramid of the State, but not dependent on it for everyday interactions. The difference is something like this: the purely vertical system of the SEAA would label the lower classes explicitly a slave, but the horizontally rebalancing system of the DEAA makes the lower classes an economic slave (with the freedom to rebalance, adjusted by various factors). Humanity has truly learned three governance mechanics up to this point, each stacked on top of each other: 1) ZEAA: threat of physical violence, 2) SEAA: absolute monarchy (dictatorship), 3) DEAA: representative democracy. The DEAA is fueled by representative governance in all forms: parliaments, corporate boardrooms, city councils, etc. The constituents of the pyramid in the DEAA have no direct representation, even as we approach the final breaths of this age. It’s important to understand where these mechanics originate from. During the early parts of the DEAA, the nobles demanded some decision-making power from the absolute monarch kings (this is best displayed in the [Magna Carta](<https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+of+The+State+(History)#The+Magna+Carta+(1215)>))…As a result, they evolved the governance system into using duplicated contracts to create a form of horizontal “democratic as equals decision-making” by voting on decisions. During the time, there was no method, nor will, to collect this input from the entire populace at scale. What started out as an enshrined council of nobles voting eventually opened up into representative democracy—where the lower tiers of the societal pyramid could select a noble from the higher tiers to represent them in a parliament. The individual interests of these nobles have never fully overlapped with their constituents. That's still where we are today....representative democracy. ![[Representative Democracy Interests.png|700]] Direct democracy has never been tried; it has only become technologically feasible recently at scale due to the Internet. In the past, there was no means of facilitating direct governance transmissible and secure at scale, and no willpower from the elites to allow the bottom parts of the pyramid to make decisions (and thereby rebalance the top of the pyramid). Modern societal coordination tools still don’t effectively grant the majority of the populace representation in their own social hierarchies. *Since the individual interests of the representatives diverge from the collective interests of the entire population: this structure creates a significant loss of coordination value for the entire population––costing every participant within the societal pyramid in proportion to the distance of the divergence between individual interests of the representatives away from the collective interests of the coalition.* #### Illuminati There's a little-known quirk to the pyramids of the DEAA. We will call it the “_Illuminati._” What happens in the DEAA pyramids, is that…since the spots near the top of the pyramid are so few and so desired (there’s a whole mass of people underneath aiming for them)…the elites in privileged positions at the top of the pyramid must create alliances with each other in order to secure their positions. (Without this important alliance—they would have no sustainable edges to retain their positions, and almost certainly get overrun by the masses underneath trying to rebalance into their rare and valuable slots in the social hierarchy.) So in order to preserve their status, the Illuminati of the DEAA must ally with each other, forming a separate structure at the top of the pyramid, and lift it off—entirely separating themselves from the rebalancing effect at the bottom of the pyramid. _The top is separated from the bottom of the pyramid via these alliances, and the barrier is a very difficult one to cross. The club at the top can hardly sustain their own bloodlines[^20]. That is why…ultimately, while the systems of the DEAA have learned to rebalance––the top of the pyramid still doesn’t functionally rebalance well due to its very limited pool of talent. Since these are the most powerful and pivotal roles and positions of leverage, affecting the entirety of society: all humans in the rest of the system are heavily dependent, and highly affected, by the inefficiency of this rebalancing. The Illuminati’s inability to effectively rebalance, and their interests not being fully aligned with the entire pyramid, causes tremendous harm to the societal interest, and leads to the standard patterns known as “The Big Cycle” [@raydalioPrinciplesDealingChanging2021]. ![[the big cycle.png]] <center>The big cycle of "changing world orders" repeats consistently in the DEAA, due to a disallignment of interests. The pyramid must collapse before it can rebalance.</center> The top of the pyramid controls all coordination underneath, and hence it's easy to take control of the pyramid by simply capturing a handful of Illuminati nodes, which are responsible for all the decision-making and difficult to rebalance \[hint[^21]]. Since these are the most powerful and pivotal leverage points in a society, our civilizations grind to a complete halt from the lack of vertical rebalancing here before undergoing the collapse —> revolution cycle. _This is perhaps the biggest flaw of the pyramids of the DEAA: the individual interests of the elite representatives are not fully aligned with the collective interests of the whole societal pyramid. Firstly, it’s a small club of elites who are making all the decisions. Secondly, the entire societal pyramid is completely dependent on them; yet they aren't capable of rebalancing effectively into optimal meritocratic configurations. Thirdly, it's relatively easy to capture the whole pyramid by simply gaining control a handful of its elite individuals._ It’s the reason our governance systems are currently outdated, because while the rest of the pyramid is able to rebalance, the Illuminati controlling the very upper tiers of power in absolutely all the spheres (political, financial, and informational) are unable to effectively rebalance the pyramid. _The DEAA doesn’t rebalance the top of the pyramid effectively._ Modern societal coordination tools don’t effectively grant the populace representation in their own governments or corporations, as the narrow individual interests of their representatives diverge from the collective interests of the population. There is little will to update this coordination mechanism into direct democracy or liquid democracy from the Illuminati side of the pyramid—leaving the societal hierarchy still unable to rebalance outside of a collapse cycle. This power dynamic has effectively created two separate pyramids, the Illuminati at the top, and the rest of the pyramid at the bottom. Additionally, the power has concentrated due to technological advances: the advent of telecommunications, the Internet, AI, and CBDCs—the power concentrations have reverted into techno-feudalism. It’s effectively the same dictatorial kings’ decrees from the SEAA…with better information funneled up to the top of the pyramid, but equally as dictatorial in power structure. All coordination systems of the DEAA are (currently) similar to this. All this power has trickled up to the elites, who are not rebalancing. As a result of the top not rebalancing, the pyramid doesn’t belong to or represent the actual populace or societal interests due to this fundamental quirk...and hence, it can’t make good decisions. As we approach the end of the DEAA, our societal coordination mechanisms don’t represent the will of the populace—they are instead pushing an ineffective world-view from the Illuminati top of the pyramid onto everyone—and unable to rebalance. This configuration isn’t anywhere near optimal, but societal pyramids are stuck in it until they collapse or discover a better option. **Currently, our coordination systems are fake due to this concentration of power.** - We have a monetary system, but it’s controlled by just a few parties. _It doesn’t rebalance well horizontally. It’s entirely controlled by the central banks in a fiat system._ - We have a media / information propagation system, but it’s controlled by just a few parties. _It doesn’t rebalance well horizontally, media stories are pushed onto the populace as a monopoly of a few parties on media._ - We have a representative public servant governance, but it’s controlled by just a few parties. _It doesn’t represent the vast majority of the populace well, blocking the system from rebalancing horizontally._ - We have identities, but they don’t belong to us; our identities are controlled by just a few parties. They aren’t tracked cohesively or harmonized. As a result, people play all sorts of games manipulating, hiding parts of their identity and manipulating its perception. _This doesn’t allow the system to rebalance well horizontally, as data gets obscured and manipulated._ - Our entire shared reality (culture) is coordinated from the top of the pyramid, it’s created by the top parts, it’s not organic. - Our system of values is likewise dictated from the top of the pyramid. All these systems have reverted to a top-down means to vertically control a populace by controlling its coordination mechanisms **(which contain and update our status hierarchies—the root of civilization)**. _It’s the same absolute monarchy from the SEAA, just with an eye at the top (able to see everything going on inside the pyramid)....yet unable to make good decisions (due to the disalignment)._ Ultimately, the only difference between the absolute monarchs of the SEAA and the representative governance of the DEAA is that the Illuminati of the DEAA are able to absorb much better information––funneled from all of society in real-time, but it’s ultimately just them making all the decisions in their own individual interests, so we're leaking a lot of coordination value. What the Illuminati part of the pyramid doesn’t like the bottom part doing, isn’t destructive behaviors like rioting, violence, crime, or alcoholism—**it’s coordinating.** The Illuminati top of the pyramid is symbolized by the eye, because it wants to see the entire pyramid from the top and direct it. It wants to keep the bottom of the pyramid in a panopticon, while controlling the coordination mechanisms. The people at the top of the pyramid very well understand that social hierarchies are the root of civilization, and as long as the populace doesn’t have a better coordination mechanism—no amount of random chaos at the bottom of the pyramid can threaten their positions at the top. _Ordo ab chao. Order through chaos._ Their power derives from controlling the coordination methods. The issue is exacerbated by the nature of identity and privacy in the DEAA, making it easy to obscure the true ownership and control structures of society's vital tools of coordination. That’s the age of duplicated contracts, that’s how it works... There's is no singular unified societal social contract. As a result, the secret societies which make the most prosperous and obscured social contracts between themselves, not available for the public to observe or know about (even though it greatly affects them) are the dark corners of the room where the power accumulates. This paradigm shifts entirely in the TEAA of Synchronized States, where a singular Synchronized Social Contract (SSC) is shared between all participants in the coalition. The nature of identity and privacy in the DEAA makes this problem worse. True ownership and control of society's coordination tools remain easy to obscure—that's simply how the age of duplicated contracts works. Without a singular unified societal social contract, power naturally accumulates in the shadows. Secret societies craft prosperous contracts between themselves, hidden from public view. These arrangements profoundly affect everyone, yet remain invisible—forming the dark corners where power concentrates. This paradigm shifts entirely in the TEAA of Synchronized States, where a singular Synchronized Social Contract (SSC) transparently binds all participants in the coalition. While this is a valid and reasonable strategy of the DEAA, due to the nature of its pyramids…the entire DEAA is coming to an end. **Society Protocol is a coordination tool which truly illuminates the pyramid for everyone, not just the Illuminati.** ![[oprah-illuminati.gif]] In the DEAA, humanity learned how to _manually_ rebalance the societal hierarchies. The problem is...this takes SO MUCH ENERGY!! It also forces everyone into a lifetime of manual status games—eternally creating a patchwork of disconnected status hierarchies manually, manually thinking about them, and then manually interacting to update them. There is no automated system. As a result, this information remains opaque and malleable, and it isn’t evenly propagated through society. There are many manual social hierarchy systems, each of which are disconnected, must be updated manually, and none of which have equal representation in the process. _The manual pyramids of the DEAA will evolve into the automatically rebalancing pyramids of the TEAA—Synchronized States._ ![[DEAA Coordination Methods.png]] ## Rebalancing Pyramids (Automated) ###### Synchronized States – Triple-Entry Accounting Age (TEAA) – (Starts now) ![[teaa pyramid.png|600]] <center>TEAA social hierarchy pyramid (automatically rebalances everyone inside using algorithms)</center> *The TEAA will usher in the automated rebalancing pyramids of Synchronized States––entirely reconstructing the societal pyramid superstructure by using first-principles thinking and modern technology.* The rebalancing pyramids of the TEAA will: better align incentives for all participants, automatically rebalance using algorithms, be synchronized worldwide, have direct representation for all participants, and enable meritocracy as a new form of group decision-making. This is achieved by forming a single unified **Synchronized Social Contract (SSC)** for each society. Each SSC is clear in its rules, transparent in its history, and can be directly accessed by all participants—enabling direct representation. Thus, making the social contract equitable and infinitely more challenging to manipulate than the patchwork of duplicated contracts forming the social hierarchies of the DEAA. _The societal hierarchy pyramids of the TEAA are entirely stored as digital data inside of a duplicated computer program._ These rebalancing pyramids are wholly synchronized around the world and constructed from a source-available codebase. The united societal “objective rules of the game” are contained in their SSC—they are enforced automatically and equally for all participants. On the other hand, the societal “subjective rules of the game” are determined by the perception and interpretation of participants (the same as in the DEAA). Synchronized States are upheld by all participants around the world who choose to participate in the joint effort of running the duplicated computer program, upholding their SSC and society together. **What does this mean for the nature of rebalancing pyramid social hierarchies?** 1. **The map is clear**. The rules of the social hierarchy are clearly defined, uniform society-wide, equally applied, and delegated to a group of Governors to maintain. Visibility about what's happening inside the system is explicit[^22]. 2. **All participants have equal representation through direct access to the SSC.** The middle-men facilitating interactions of the DEAA are no longer necessary. 3. **The cream automatically rises to the top.** The most valuable participants are automatically transferred closer to the top of the social hierarchy pyramid over time algorithmically, and granted more power. 4. **The garbage is automatically cleaned out of the system.** The least valuable participants are automatically relieved of their standing and decision-making power and transferred out of the system over time—negating their potential to adversely affect the group by avoiding rebalancing. 5. **All participants are able to interact, using this consistent and automated status hierarchy––without playing a whole slew of energy intensive social status games with each other** in order to manually establish and update an ever-changing patchwork of status hierarchies…as happens in the DEAA’s manually rebalancing pyramid structure (we’re manually performing all the actions that will be automated). **It's simple, participants get rewarded for things that the collective interests find valuable, and punished for things the collective interests find harmful.** *Rather than trying to align each individual's selfish interests into something the opaque notion of collective interests find valuable––we start with a singular Synchronized Social Contract (SSC), which defines what the coalitions collective interests are.* The algorithmic status hierarchy is rebalancing and its immutable history is stored in the background, executing the SSC in a fully transparent manner while participants sleep, work, and play. All participants agree on the rules of the SSC implicitly by participating and manage them together via Governance[^23]. This happens with _direct access_, without any requirement for representatives or intermediaries (who can manipulate and skew the social contract towards their own ends). _In Synchronized States all participants interact directly with the SSC––they do not require the middle-men of the DEAA._ **_You might be wondering, “How does the rebalancing societal pyramid decide what's valuable?”_** The pyramid of Society Protocol (SP) instances _automatically_ rebalances its explicit social hierarchy, Energy, based on the unified value system of the SP instance contained in the SSC—called Value Functions (VFs). You can read more about VFs in [Energy Redistribution (Value Functions)](https://lex.page/d/bb0496df-a51e-43a0-8dac-dfa9471573da). Each SP instance is able to implement its own unique assortment of Value Functions, and adjusts the knobs of how they redistribute Energy via Protocol Parameters[^24]. #### Philosophy of Value in Synchronized States Although various instances of Society Protocol will each have different philosophies on what is valuable to them––there is one underlying philosophy of value, which must be followed by all Synchronized States, in order for these protocol to work. It is **Survival.** Survival of the societal pyramid must always remain the singular primary value of every SP instance. Before it can differentiate itself with other values, the instance must fulfill this criteria. **What does survival mean in this case?** *It’s very simple.* **The Synchronized State must, before anything else, value producing activity (social interactions).** If the SP instance has activity (interactions) happening inside it, then it’s *alive* and *surviving*—meaning, participants find that instance valuable by interacting with it. Synchronized States must always consider this core criteria for optimization, before they branch off into any unique value optimizations. **Their value system must always optimize for activity (social interactions) before expanding into anything else.** After that is complete, each instance can theoretically choose to optimize their whole value system however they would like....[^25]. Practically, as a secondary consideration, the Value Functions should be able to achieve all the generalized interactions that humans partake in, in all societies—such as: property rights, governance, indoctrination, social relationships, cultures, organization, communication, state storage, etc... **Society Protocol uses Value Functions to achieve this.** Value Functions define what the instance finds valuable (what it rewards and punishes in its Synchronized Social Contract (SSC). The aim when creating Value Functions is to fuse the individual's interest[^26] together with the collective interest. For example, the Curation Value Function in Society Protocol fuses the individual's desire to share their opinions about subjects they care about with the societal interest for accurate discovery, which all participants want, using economic incentives. The more powerful the economic incentives used to fuse every individual’s interests together with the societal interests present in the Value Functions —> the more powerful that Value Function and variant of SP becomes as a coordination mechanism. Each Value Function coordinates all the participants inside of the SP instance and redistributes the total value of the societal pyramid. All participants agree to these functions (implicitly) by interacting with the protocol. Value Functions form a core part of the SSC—the explicit social contract inside of the SSC is what keeps societies together. The perceived value of the SSC is what brings active value to everything else in the protocol, including the monetary system (Energy) and the shared reality of identities (Actors) which exist inside an SP instance[^27]. ### Blockchain Pyramids (Web3) vs Rebalancing Pyramids (Web4) The core difference between Web3 blockchains (pyramids) and Web4 Society Protocol instances (which are rebalancing pyramids), is in their perception of value. Blockchains are operating by using the assumptions of value from the end of the DEAA—where value is still stored as static assets. Society Protocol operates under the assumption of value from the beginning of the TEAA—where value is an ever-changing measurement flowing between each identity in the system. _The differences in the two systems create a staggering divergence in their coordination incentives._ #### Web3 Adoption Cycle If you leave a Bitcoin or Ether token in the state machine for 200 years, and then come back…it will be there for you. Exactly the same as when you left it (assuming that the network is still alive and functional). Your tokens may be worth more or less upon your return—depending on the success of the network while you were absent. Their value is not tied to your contribution and will greatly diverge. _The value a participant contributes to the network doesn’t correlate with the value that participant holds in Web3._ **These are flawed economic incentives, which create disaligned societal coalitions**. _As a result, Web3 participants are incentivized to join pyramids they perceive as being successful in the future as early as possible, speak loudly about how much they’re contributing (to get other people interested) and contribute little value. Web3 pyramids produce a constantly degrading curve of adoption incentives throughout their lifetime, which is only counterbalanced by their success, but at a certain point…this degrading curve creates a game theoretic scenario where it’s more beneficial for participants to join a newly formed degrading curve at the start, rather than participate in the bottom of an established successful degraded curve of adoption._ _At that point in the curve, blockchains start to lose members to a new curve and collapse[^28]._ #### Web4 Adoption Cycle If an Actor leaves Energy in the Society Protocol state machine for 200 years, and then comes back…their Energy will be drained proportionally to the value they contributed during that time period and likely not be there when they return. In the case of Energy, their value is correctly following economic principles. It is directly tied to each participant’s contributed value to the coalition at each point in time. At whatever point they return in the future, their value will remain proportional to their contribution to the coalition. _As a result, Web4 participants are equally incentivized to join the rebalancing pyramid...at any point in time. There is no “good” time to join, and no “bad” time to join, whenever a participant enters and exits, their value will always reflect the value they contributed to the network._ _Web4 participants are incentivized to contribute real value AND speak loudly (to also get other people interested)._ * * * Web3 systems like Bitcoin and Ethereum can be compared to infantile versions of Society Protocol––with only 1-2 Value Functions embedded in their system. All of Web3 networks already **_must_ _have_** a Synchronized Social Contract (SSC) to decide what’s valuable for their network (in addition to their free market aspects). _The only difference is some social contracts are more refined than others._ - **In the case of Bitcoin**: The SSC contains only one Value Function: _mining_. The entire social contract agrees to keep the scarcity of BTC at a certain supply and to reward newly added value to winning miners who solve a cryptographic puzzle. *That’s it. That’s the SSC of the Bitcoin network.* The rest of the network operates on the free market of individual interests. - **In the case of Ethereum:** The SSC evolved to have two Value Functions (VFs): _staking_ and _access to the EVM_. The first VF is _staking,_ where the network has decided it values and will reward users who participate in securing the network and inputting transactions. The second VF is in _access to the EVM_ (the equivalent of the Property VF in Society Protocol), it allows users to pay Ether (gas) to access the programmable EVM (in order to CRUD their property). **That’s all it is. Bitcoin and Ethereum are simply infantile versions of Synchronized States like Society Protocol with a simpler SSC.** Unlike Society Protocol, their SSCs are unable to accomplish all the functionality necessary to run the coordination of a State, such as: identity, governance, social relationships, organizations, cultures, laws, and taxes. But they both have a value system in mining, staking, and access to the EVM. **All blockchain networks are simply infantile versions of Synchronized States with fewer and less optimized Value Functions (VFs) in their Synchronized Social Contracts (SSCs).** Since blockchains can’t effectively store identities...which are the source of scarcity in the TEAA...they cannot produce sybil-resistance on account creation. As a consequence...they can’t govern themselves effectively. As a consequence...all of their decision-making must happen off-chain at the social layer—requiring hard forks to make updates to their networks. As a consequence...this makes it essentially impossible to “steer the ship”, a.k.a _coordinate,_ on these networks as a group. As a consequence...they are forced to set perfect parameters for their networks from the outset of the network (essentially an impossible challenge). As a result: - _Web3 systems: Read – Write – Own_ - _Web4 systems: Read – Write – Own – Coordinate_ **Web3 systems are DEAA chains acting in a TEAA world. Their foundations are stuck in the past. We must evolve to Web4 to enter the future of human coordination.** ### The Advantages of Synchronized States (Web4) #### Complete Alignment of Direct Representation Synchronized States fundamentally transform how we coordinate. Every participant—without exception—interacts directly with the Synchronized Social Contract (SSC). This marks a radical departure from the double-entry accounting age (DEAA), where we depended on intermediaries, such as governance representatives, to facilitate our societal interactions. All participants individual interests are represented equally. **This fundamental transformation is a big deal.** - When applied to governance, it means that the complete combination of individual interests of all participants can align to theoretically equal the collective interests of the pyramid. - When applied to societal interactions, it means that the system becomes less prone to the censorship which can be imposed by intermediaries––everyone interacts directly (P2P). It results in a fair social contract that's transparent (illuminated) for everyone and applied equally to all parties for everyone to interact with. *Everyone becomes illuminated by this shared contract (SSC), not just the Illuminati at the top of the pyramid.* - When applied to the important question of "What does it take to capture control of the societal pyramid?", it makes it much harder to capture than a representative governance system, where only a few powerful nodes at the top need to be captured to capture the system. In a direct representation system, ideally the majority of the population or more would need captured in order to capture and corrupt the system. **That's a big difference! It was never possible before.** **Direct representation can eliminate the Illuminati top quirk of the DEAA.** The top slots in TEAA social pyramids are unable to opaquely form alliances with each other to avoid rebalancing...at a minimum this would be visible to all. If the value system of a Synchronized State is configured optimally, it can make all parties compete with each other, without any benefit to forming into cabals and only a downside really (in the same way that stock market traders don't form into cabals, because they're economically incentivized to compete with each other). Governance is the exception, political parties are inevitable and use cooperation between large groups to enact change––this is normal. Even that dynamic can be alleviated a little bit, to protect against malicious cabals and cartels... As systems designers, we can improve this dynamic by occasionally directly double checking the will of the Governors against the wider will of the entire populace via direct interactions. *That's about as good as it gets.* *It's pretty close to the theoretical limits of governance.* ![[Society Protocol Interests.png|700]] **Escaping Goverance capture**: Even in the case of Synchronized State capture, it's easier for people to fork or Portal out than it is to exit in the case of Nation States, which requires physical war or diplomacy over territories. I expect Synchronized States to be more competitive and interoperable than their predecessor, with lower switching costs. #### Aligned Incentives in Every Value Function ![[future of coordination or trashheap.png]] Believe it or not, the only difference between the images above is the proper alignment of incentives and the power to enforce them. A thorny fundamental issue recurrently appears in group coordination called the “[_tragedy of the commons_](https://math.uchicago.edu/~shmuel/Modeling/Hardin,%20Tragedy%20of%20the%20Commons.pdf)_."_ It’s basically a way of saying “when nobody is in charge of communal objects…everybody takes advantage, nobody is able to marshal resources effectively, and the communal objects themselves go to shit.” This is simply the manifestation of individual interests not matching up with the collective interests. In the current DEAA paradigm of Nation States, civilization doesn’t have a way to make society-wide decisions without invoking a small group of representatives—each with their own individual interests. Since we don’t have a unified social contract for the societal interests, a decision-making process which can equally consider the interests of everyone inside the societal pyramid, or an enforcement mechanism to automate the enforcement of whatever social contract is created, the _tragedy of the commons_ remains a large and unsolved problem. **_Synchronized States break through this pattern..._** For the first time in history, societies are able to form a Synchronized Social Contract (SSC) which is: transparently and equally shared and governed by everyone (equitably considering collective interests), unified into one coherent object (not a patchwork of separate duplicated contracts), and automatically enforceable with modern technology (for example, algorithmically enforced sensors in parks automatically adding a fee to an individual participant’s identity for littering). **What does this allow us to do?** We can equitably make rules for the commons which are transparent to everyone and enforce those rules in an automated fashion (accountability), with real monetary value, society-wide, tied to real identities, property objects, and data. This allows entire societies to create a virtuous cycle of incentives for just about everything in their vicinity—including the societal commons, and all social interactions between their participants. **This functionality is truly evolutionary, it's not revolutionary.** **This was never possible before.** In past and current epochs of human civilization (ZEAA–DEAA), incentives haven’t been able to be transparently created in a unified SSC, instantly applied society-wide, automated and tracked using computation, nor created and governed fairly and equitably in the direct interests of the public. Value Functions comprise the value system of Society Protocol instances, each of which is designed to align the incentives between the individual interest and the societal interest as closely as possible. Although the 9 Value Functions we present at Society Protocol are extremely powerful and should be adequate to facilitate all the societal interactions necessary, Value Functions will themselves grow more refined over time as Society Protocol instances evolve, experiment, and our community discovers more robust ways to design them. Each discovery will bring the individual interests and societal interests closer together on a society-wide basis—*affecting every individual participant within a SP instance positively*. Each new valuable Value Function discovered gains compounding productivity increases for everyone inside the societal hierarchy pyramid at the same time. They affect every participant in the societal coalition, scale superlinearly with network effects, and compound, multiplying productivity—making these societal productivity gains exponential. _That’s what we mean when we say humanity is entering a new age, The Age of Synchronicity._ #### Automated Rebalancing of the Social Hierarchy In the modern world, every social interaction requires us to *manually* calculate and update status hierarchies. We've invented millions of tricks and decision trees to navigate these situations, constantly assessing "what the social contract is here", "how it affects the other patchwork of social contracts", and "how to best exploit it." Humans are opportunistic. Every little power vacuum must be filled with people negotiating over status hierarchies––which is essentially a zero-sum game. _It doesn’t create or destroy anything tangible, but status hierarchies must be established and updated for us to function as a society._ Remember…_each human behavior must adequately form or update the social hierarchy before it can do anything else_. But where is the resulting status hierarchy that’s adjusted located? In the modern world, civilization has learned three status hierarchy mechanics, which are used in a layered fashion: 1. Physical social interaction from the ZEAA 2. Vertical social hierarchy rules inscribed in permanent records from the SEAA 3. Duplicated contracts between “equal” participants of the DEAA All of these status hierarchies are manually updated—this means physical energy must be spent in societal interactions of some sort, which all come with highly complex mini-games, merely to adjust social hierarchies. The amount of energy spent here summed up between all participants and civilizations is a good chunk of all human energy ever spent[^29]. All this work happens at every interaction and upholds an ethereal ever-mutating mesh of social hierarchies. **The costs of creating and upholding this mesh for civilization are enormous. All participants combined pay these costs with their energy everyday.** As participants, we're constantly creating this mesh of social contracts—then forgetting them, rewriting them, fighting over them. We manipulate and deceive to gain advantages. We enter political confrontations over their meaning. We think on multiple levels about how others will interpret our moves…while staying aware that everyone else is playing the same complex game. *All the time.* _it's how we manually uphold the social contract as a society._ There’s no clear, unified, nor enforceable social contract ruleset (outside of those dictated vertically by the top of the pyramid). Even the vertical rules don't fully propagate across society. Just because they’re written on paper somewhere doesn’t mean they are known by participants, enforceable, or evenly applied––it all depends on the *manual attention* and *subjective interpretation* we as individuals give to them. Our vertical social contract rulesets are just some words on a page...its enforcement entirely depends on the subjective interpretation by various participants...especially the judges, who are responsible for deciphering the intentions of laws, they hold the ultimate power with their interpretation in this situation. **A historical example:**** In the United States’ Declaration of Independence, they wrote: “All men are created equal” in the words of the social contract––yet those are just words. They don’t mean anything without an interpretation and enforcement mechanism. *Great, now that we have some words...it’s time for participants to argue over what they actually mean!* This imposes high energy costs across society and produces subjective results. Finally, the judges decide with their subjective opinion and individual interests what it means. *Well, it seems to mean that slavery is a-okay!* As you can see, they're just words, they hold no power or meaning without a manual subjective interpretation. All manual subjective interpretation will differ. Well...so are you a slave or equal? *Results may vary!* **This process can be automated. Creating a singular unified social contract was never possible before, because humanity never had the technological capabilities to construct such a thing until now.** By unifying the social contract into a singular SSC, civilization doesn’t remove, but vastly downsizes the need for everyone in society to participate in this game of manually creating, updating, and interpreting social contracts on a daily basis—thus, saving all individual participants an estimated 25%[^30] of their total energy for more valuable pursuits. The SSC becomes unified society-wide, and can be updated globally instantly via Governance decisions in the Synchronized State. The SSC synchronously and automatically rebalances the explicit societal pyramid algorithmically for all participants based on its objective ruleset. This functionality is layered in addition to the tools of the previous ages. The ruleset is transparent and agreed upon by all participants. The cream rises to the top, and the garbage sinks to the bottom of the system automatically—benefitting every stakeholder in the system. Additionally, the SSC _balances_ what society wants (the coalition’s interest) on a society-wide basis. By sharing a unified social contract, participants are able to clearly articulate and direct what their collective interest actually is—_automatically balancing the roles desired within their unique societal pyramid_. Society Protocol instances can easily optimize their coalition’s societal towards their desired proportions of roles: military, asset creators, creatives, curators, governors, merchants, infrastructure workers, etc… in a comprehensive and unified way—by simply updating their SSC's Value Functions to incentivize the value of those roles in the right proportions. #### Meritocracy We can define a meritocracy as: “a system where the optimal entities for each vertical have an unequal amount of decision-making power, and thus are favored in making decisions for the coalition.” Civilization has always wanted meritocracy as its decision-making mechanism, because it produces the most intelligent decisions compared to other forms of group decision-making. The difficult part of the process has always been a way to ascertain “who are the optimal entities for each decision?”. Without a unified SSC, all participants in the system are incentivized to play status games for claims to their merit. If a coalition wants to implement meritocracy, then it must have a way to decide who has merit. Society has never really had an impartial unified way to deciding this part, because it lacked a shared SSC to define merit. By codifying a concrete value system in the SSC's Value Functions, coalitions become able to derive a hierarchy of merit from that singular value system. The initial hierarchy of merit present in all Society Protocol instances is Energy. Energy rebalances the explicit social status of Society Protocol instances, based on the Value Functions defined in that instance. By using Energy as the base metric of merit…additionally, all SP instances can ascertain what constitutes _merit_ in various other verticals, by pulling from all the data accumulated in their instance and algorithmically creating and agreeing via Governance to a singular formula for “merit” in any vertical. Meaning: once we have a base formula for merit in Energy, we can use group decision-making (governance) in order to create custom precise formulas for merit in any other vertical. **Not everyone has to participate in everything.** Meritocracy is the TEAA’s evolution of the group decision-making process. It’s more resilient than a dictatorship (which can make quick decisions but fails when the single ruler node goes bad), and more robust than democracy (which must give everyone decision-making power, giving all sorts of clueless individuals equal decision-making power in everything). **This evolution was never possible before, because society had no globally synchronized equitable method to decide on “what is merit” in a concrete way, without a unified SSC.** _For example: if society lets a dictator emperor of the SEAA decide on what is merit…it would still be a dictatorship, because the dictator decides merit. If instead society lets a democratic governance system decide on what is merit...it would still be a democracy, because the democracy decides merit._ **The root of the system needs to have merit imbued for it to be a meritocracy.** The governance of a system should generally not be perceivable, it should be frictionless (not engulfing the lives of unrelated ordinary citizens) and ideally effortless (saving everyone energy). _Meritocracy enables this combination_. It allows group decision-making systems to operate without involving everyone (saving energy), while retaining the best decision-makers to come to a consensus on group decisions (optimizing decision-making). These systems can only be made fair with a _complete alignment_ of the constituents and the governance, which requires _direct access_ to the social contract. Society Protocol is the first system able to offer such an alignment. #### Synchronized Automation of Incentives and Accounting In order to create valuable incentives in a coalition, there must be an accountability and enforcement mechanism. Accounting is required for the upkeep and transfer of all these societal incentives. Society Protocol automates the computation, synchronization, accounting, and enforcement of all incentives. Since everything (identities, assets, and data) is merely an object in the same unified system of digital data, the protocol can effortlessly target and affect these objects, but is restricted according to the rules set by its SSC. As a comparison to the manual accounting abilities of the DEAA, anyone that’s spent time filing taxes knows how long it takes to do all the accounting for receipts manually, and we attempt to synchronize all this data on a nationwide level once a year. Even after all this...the unified results always come out very mangled, because it’s extremely difficult and time consuming to do this amount of accounting manually and match it all up accurately across the system separately for each individual entity using _duplicated contracts_. It takes our current DEAA Nation States a year to *attempt* to synchronize all of this data––whereas Society Protocol instances would synchronize it all instantly and effortlessly. _Just imagine_ what societal coalitions could accomplish when all this manual work is offloaded, and all this societal data is automatically immutably stored and synchronized for everyone (in addition to just saving energy). This synchronicity of incentives combined with automation will create _a hive-mind effect similar to a swarm—allowing society to move as one, while directing its entire value flows and energy in an intelligent manner. This swarm effect will be a drastic improvement in coordination, but it will then combine with butterfly effects—completely changing the world. **It will usher in The Age of Synchronicity._** **This was never possible before.** Even if these effects of synchronization and automation of incentives weren’t accomplished in an entirely fair manner (meaning: some parties had inherent advantages)—it would still be ridiculously powerful coordination. *We’re happy to inform you that Society Protocol can also theoretically accomplish these qualities in a fair and equitable manner[^31].* #### Fully Immutable Societal History For coalitions to coordinate effectively, they have to [share the same reality](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+That+Binds+(Shared+Reality)). Currently, shared realities are maintained through a fragmented patchwork of physical presence and communication (ZEAA), permanent records (SEAA), and duplicated contracts (DEAA). In the TEAA, societal coalitions will add a fourth layer of methods to uphold the shared reality: **an immutable Timeline of societal history**. Society Protocol instances retain the entire public history of every public interaction in a quasi-immutable Timeline for their entire lifetime. **Sharing a singular unified immutable history as a shared reality for the lifetime of the Synchronized State is powerful.** It allows coalitions to coordinate in more sophisticated ways because the amount of public information about every identity, asset, and piece of data in the system is unprecedented. All objects in the system will accumulate vast public histories over time. Unable to obscure, or hide from the shared reality—_their true colors will be revealed over time in an unforgeable manner._ **_This was never possible before_**_._ Up to this point, our history has always been a mutable story, which absolutely every individual actor in society can benefit from mutating into their favor…_and they do!_ As a result, we’re all living in an illusion. A patchwork of mutated history, which we use as a shared reality to make decisions (without this shared reality we wouldn’t be able to retain our sense of identities or know how to make decisions). This happens as a consequence of the patchwork nature of the DEAA. Before then, during the SEAA and ZEAA…_it was even worse_! **Two things occur as a result of the mutable nature of our history:** 1. Everyone in society is incentivized to manipulate history, and spends some significant amount of energy doing so, recreating stories a little bit in their favor. When we add up all the societal energy spent on this…and the distortions it causes…and realize we can eliminate those…it’s like wow! _That can save us all a lot of energy and make life better._ 2. As a result of all these individual distortions, we’re all living in a lie. A singular accurate version of historical events would fix this problem for everyone at once. _Just this one feature alone, would cure society of the veil it must currently live under—creating a different illuminated world._ The Timeline won’t remove the duality of human nature, _that’s here to stay._ Humans are naturally dualistic (you can read the introduction of [The state That Binds](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/The+state+That+Binds+(Shared+Reality)) for a better understanding). What it will do…is make it harder to maintain absurd dualities when matched against the immutable public history of society, which is transparently visible to all participants. _Duality should become less powerful._ In today’s world (DEAA), power is mostly derived from informational advantages. This makes secret societies very powerful. It’s very easy for individuals with informational advantages to create a dualistic story and take advantage of their informational advantage (based on what others believe and perceive with lesser information) because our current reality is a patchwork of overlapping shared realities. We face this issue everyday in the modern world. _The information is presented in a distorted way in our media channels specifically for this purpose._ There is a lot of power in informational advantages, and dualistically distorting the information of those around you to retain an advantage is a winning strategy (which brings value to some individual’s interests at the expense of ruining the accuracy of history for the whole societal pyramid[^32]). It’s one of many perverse incentives we currently experience. **_In the TEAA, all these dualistic stories will have to match up with the entire singular history of shared reality to be effective._** Everyone can perceive where stories originate from, who is propagating them, and can easily verify a mis-matching story against the shared reality. It becomes very difficult to propagate dualistic stories throughout the shared reality, especially over time. I believe that while power in the DEAA is derived largely from informational advantages; in the TEAA power will be derived largely from doing valuable things that are in the societal interests. This is due to a combination of the inherent incentives alignment in Synchronized States combined with the fact that coordinating in private against the speed of the joint coordination swarm will be both too slow and treacherous in comparison. #### Metaverse of Coordination _The coordination pyramid superstructure of Society Protocol will manifest in the real world in real-time._ Using modern hardware, such as this [AI enhanced helmet](https://x.com/goingparabolic/status/2010179746076962989?s=46&t=KHVZieex948L7UZSsS4vjA), all the data will come alive to create an overlay over life at all times—illuminating every social interaction. The overlay will show all sorts of relevant information about the entities participants interact with (identities, assets, and data objects), pulling from their entire public history (which is stored in the Timeline). This vast knowledge-base will be presented to each user in a personalized fashion—to give each user the personalized heads-up-display (HUD) they desire. ![[eagle eye helmet.webp|600]] <center>Eagle Eye AI Helmet</center> In the not too distant future, life will become very similar to an interactive massive multiplayer online game (MMORPG)—where everyone’s identity is loaded into the “game of life” and interactions occur directly between everyone’s self-sovereign identity (SSI) stored in Society Protocol, like playing a video game character. _This feature will **greatly** increase trust and coordination in society._ **_It was never possible before._** #### Modularity of Value Systems >**The root of culture and politics is economics.** (Economics ––> Culture ––> Politics) Societies all have different economics, a culture forms based off those economics. Then culture defines the politics of the society[^33]. This process creates unique value systems for each society. The value system of a tourism heavy nation like Costa Rica is nothing like the value system of a military superpower like the United States. Fortunately, Society Protocol supports a modular composition of Value Functions in order to create unique value systems for each instance. These value systems are defined in the assortment of Value Functions[^34] of each Society Protocol instance. Each instance’s unique value system defines a formula for how explicit social value, Energy, is redistributed—_which is how the societal pyramid is rebalanced_. You can learn more about this aspect in [Energy Redistribution (Value Functions)](https://lex.page/d/bb0496df-a51e-43a0-8dac-dfa9471573da). **The value system is very important**, seeing as it’s the algorithm responsible for redistributing Energy, which equates to: explicit social status, money, currency, ownership, and access to control in the shared reality. Each SP instance will define its own value system, but at the root of it is this question: “What does this coalition find valuable, and how can we create a system that can redistribute Energy towards that aim and away from the actions we don’t want?” At Society Protocol, our distributed community hosts an [official forum](forum.societyprotocol.io) where users can discuss the merits of various Value Function, value system formulas, and create custom modular templates for various Value Functions and “builds” of entire value systems. Each Synchronized States value system is only limited by their community’s imagination, Value Functions technical need for sybil-resistance, and computing power. New Value Functions, which participants agree to use for coordination purposes, can instantly be added into the system upon the decision by the Governance and implemented globally without destroying the previous state accumulated in the immutable history, while simultaneously taking into account the current state of the entire system. **This wasn't ever possible before.** #### Upgradeability **It’s very difficult to change ossified parts in our legacy systems. Societal pyramids collapse because they are unable to change.** Laws swell on the books but are impossible to remove. Concrete buildings line the streets, but are challenging to demolish and create space. Cultures permeate the public mentality, but are very difficult to modernize. In addition to rebalancing the social hierarchy inside of them, Synchronized States can update their infrastructure to rebalance the structure of the societal pyramid itself with relative ease. Since their nature is simply a duplicated computer program, _changing (updating) digital code is relatively easy (as long as we can avoid technical debt 😂)._ Everyone can clearly see and define what the update will do, it is controlled as fairly as possible by the Governance of the system, and execution is computed and synchronized all across the world automatically. Additionally, the public immutable history stored in the Timeline allows for clear analytics of the past and debates about "what are the optimal changes to be made?". Coalitions can accurately track the past to see what’s working, what’s not working, and make changes based off an accurate version of history. **_This was never possible before._** ![[TEAA Coordination Methods.png]] ### The Future of Human Coordination Synchronized States represent the inevitable leap for the future of human coordination. (You can read [Synchronized States (The Golden Record)](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Articles/Synchronized+States+(The+Golden+Record)) to understand this inevitability). Humanity will collectively live in a dystopia until this transition completes. > **_This is a monumental transition. Something similar like this has only happened twice in the entire human story (ZEAA –> SEAA –> DEAA)._** There is a certain line of thinking around depopulation and preserving the scarce resources of the planet emanating from the elite circles of power of the DEAA. This is a misconception of their perception—originating from mapping society’s total coordination capacity to the maximum coordination capacity of the DEAA (which appears to be able to scale up to about 10 billion humans, but then wars must emerge, as competition over scarce resources intensifies, to bring the population down to its optimal number for the species). **The amount of humans we can support on this planet depends on our coordination capacity as a species.** _If we are able to coordinate better and use our scarce resources in more efficient ways—the same amount of resources can support a larger population._ That larger population in return can create new ideas, new technologies, work towards increasing the productivity and network effects of humanity, and overall contribute towards progressing and evolving the species. Humanity cannot support such a population growth in the DEAA, due to a lack of coordination capacity. **That is the story of the dystopia you are witnessing today**. The only way to emerge from this darkness into something illuminated—is to upgrade society into the TEAA using the systems of Synchronized States[^35]. **Society Protocol is the only known protocol for forming Synchronized States.** Throughout every epoch of human history…_the organized minority has always controlled the disorganized majority_[^36]. Will that dynamic change entirely in the Age of Synchronicity—when all of society *moves as one*? _I don’t know._ Plainly, even a better distribution of inequality, power, and information—where most of civilization can participate directly in all the functions of society together, equally—would be a monumental achievement. **Why now?** None of this was possible before. All the advances _“invented”_ by Society Protocol stand on the shoulders of giants. Prerequisites include: computing, telecommunications, the Internet, blockchains (both 2D and 3D), access to hidden knowledge, and living in a relatively free State superstructure where an identity can think to create such a protocol. **The timing is now.** - Energy was never possible before…so instead civilization used static representations of value. - Verifiable identities, assets, and data with bearer asset control weren’t possible before…so instead, civilization used Web2 centralized infrastructure—resulting in institutional control of our identities, assets, and data. - Direct and liquid representation in governance was never possible before at scale…so humanity used representative governance—despite its flaws of unequal representation. - Triple-entry accounting, recording the interactions of society wasn’t technologically possible before…so instead humanity used double-entry duplicated contracts to record our societal state—which left our social contracts fragmented and murky. - Synchronizing the state of the State worldwide to enhance coordination was never possible before…so instead humanity lived in a fragmented world, where context and shared realities didn’t propagate. - Societies using all the tools listed above in order to coordinate was never possible before…so humanity lived in a dull and distorted world—without entering _The Age of Synchronicity_. **It’s time to enter The Age of Synchronicity.** An opportunity like this hasn’t come around for a few millenniums. The only thing which remains uncertain is who’s going to build it...will it be you or someone else? If you are interested in contributing to the creation of Society Protocol and would like to be a part of the journey, you can: [join our community](https://societyprotocol.io/), [invest in the movement](https://societyprotocol.io/), and [contribute to the architecture](https://societyprotocol.io/). * * * #### Full Table of Coordination Evolution (ZEAA–TEAA) ![[ZEAA–TEAA Coordination Methods.png]] # Conclusion We stand at the threshold of the _Age of Synchronicity_—a transformation as profound as any in human history. The emergence of triple-entry accounting and Synchronized States represents not merely an incremental advancement but a fundamental reimagining of how humanity coordinates around its shared reality. _This evolution will reshape our collective existence at a scale unseen for thousands of years._ Each epoch’s transition brought not just technological change, but a complete transformation of how humans coordinate, organize societal pyramids, and determine value. The movement from fluid tribal rituals to permanent written records enabled the rise of Classical States with their vertical pyramids of raw power. The shift from permanent records etched in stone to duplicated contracts sparked the horizontally rebalancing pyramids of Nation States, birthing democracy, individualism, and the modern world. Now, the evolution from duplicated contracts to a Synchronized Social Contract promises to usher in an era of automated rebalancing pyramids that will make our current coordination capabilities seem primitive by comparison. _This transition is not optional—it’s inevitable._ Nation States have reached their coordination limits in an interconnected world that demands instantaneous global synchronization. The choice before us is not whether we will transition into Synchronized States, but how we will make that transition. We can choose the path of Society Protocol—where the pyramid continuously rebalances itself to place merit at the top while clearing out inefficiency, where individuals retain agency over their identity, assets, and data while participating in unprecedented coordination—or we can accept alternative trajectories that concentrate power while adding surveillance capabilities without the benefits of true rebalancing. The future of human coordination begins now, with Society Protocol illuminating the path forward into this new epoch. We invite you to join us in building not just better technology, but a better foundation for civilization itself—one where the societal pyramid truly serves all participants in creating the most prosperous, fairly coordinated, and dynamic civilization in human history. The Age of Synchronicity awaits, and it will be as transformative for human coordination as anything that came before. ### Bibliography Dawkins, R. (2016). _The selfish gene_ (40th anniversary edition). Oxford University Press. Page, L. (2024). _Why we so often fail to work together_. https://www.optimallyirrational.com/p/why-we-so-often-fail-to-work-together?publication_id=1631989. Ray Dalio. (2021). _Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail_. https://economicprinciples.org/the-changing-world-order. Storr, W. (2022). _The status game_. William Collins. ### Footnotes [^1]: Our ways of transferring state became superior (to have complex coordination, we must transfer and preserve a complex state). [^2]: Oftentimes, people actually benefit from being conquered like this relatively speaking. It’s often better to be at the bottom of an advanced social hierarchy than the top of an inferior one. It’s possible to be exploited, even enslaved, and still relatively benefiting in comparison. [^3]: There are oftentimes overlapping implicit and explicit social hierarchies that exist in parallel, but say completely different things. The implicit order often differs from the explicit ranks in a social hierarchy. [^4]: Games humans play to establish social hierarchies. _The Status Game_ by Will Storr is a good book on this \[@storrStatusGame2022\]. [^5]: Where all participants end up spending their energy only to end up doing harm to each other anyways, leading to a less than zero-sum result. [^6]: An impossible theoretical feat, but it's important to know what to aim for. [^7]: These amalgamated individual desires also strangely form another pyramid, an economic pyramid of scarcity (creating the demand side of it). [^8]: Otherwise, they are captured by rival pyramids. [^9]: In multiple verticals, there isn’t only one sphere of coordination value. [^10]: If this form of meritocracy represents the theoretically perfect coordination abilities of a coalition, the delta (distance) between this ideal structure and how the actual coalition's societal pyramid looks in practice, equals the total coordination value our coalition is leaking in its current formation. There are multiple verticals of status hierarchies in the coalition, to get the total amount of coordination value leaking from the optimal coordination capacity of the coalition, we would sum all of these status hierarchy verticals together. [^11]: These layers all stack on top of each other, we still use the threat of physical violence to enforce democratic principles in the DEAA. [^12]: That’s because the individuals at the top of the pyramid create the college courses, and they are perfectly content. [^13]: Some of the most vile, desperate, and despicable behavior in human nature comes when people believe they are backtracking in status. It creates the recipe of: wielding power and having little to lose by wielding it inappropriately other than what they would lose by losing that power anyways. In addition, many of those who wield power have accumulated it over their lifetime, and are now quite old, nearing their death anyways. So, there aren’t many transitions or repercussions to misusing that accumulated power. [^14]: This is way impossible with both dictatorship and democracy because in a dictatorship we’re always ending up making the individual interests decision of the dictator and in a democracy we’re always ending up making a decision which is an amalgamation of all individual interests without any qualifications into the decision-making process. [^15]: I suppose the pyramid itself moves closer to the interests of individual actors too…but seeing that it’s an amalgamated golem of a combination of their unique desires itself…each actor pulling it from a different direction might stabilize it. In any case, it should be much easier to move the individual interests decisions using the gravity point of the pyramid, compared to moving the decision points of the entire pyramid based on an individuals desires. (The fact that this happens often in the history, where a single person with a lot of power adjusts the entire pyramid towards their preferred path without popular support, displays a lack of robust group coordination.) [^16]: This might actually have network effects, where it’s not a linear loss, but rather superlinear or exponential (because if this coordination was attained it would start compounding into network effects). [^17]: It’s very tricky too, because of the dualistic nature of competition combined with cooperation at all times in coordination. If people were straightforward and transparent with each other, they would paradoxically be unable to build trust, for example. [^18]: Although achieving privacy in practice adds complexity, and would likely be added only after the more transparent variants of the system are available. [^19]: Humans don’t learn in a straight line. There is a tendency to go too far in one direction before overcompensating and going too far towards the opposite direction. [^20]: To sustain a replacement amount of children of their bloodlines replacing them, they must maintain an equal amount of power. Most elites at the top throughout history have significantly more than merely (2) a replacement amount of children. In order to give those Illuminati children elite opportunities at the top of the pyramid, the elites must be more successful than average—conquering more power in a zero-sum political game. That’s before we get into any form of rebalancing attempts breaching the Illuminati alliance from the bottom part of the pyramid. This is called [elite overproduction](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-elite-overproduction-hypothesis-994). [^21]: That's the bankers job.. [^22]: This contrasts with the DEAA, where individuals cant see the duplicated contracts other individuals sign and partake in. Only the middle-men aggregator platforms, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, can truly see all of those. This dynamic creates enormous power imbalances, and secret opaque parts of the societal map where espionage and secret societies thrive. As a result, much valuable societal information remains held in silos. [^23]: Each Society Protocol instance will have its own customizable way of group decision-making (governance). The protocol supports a modular system where instances themselves choose how changes are made, more about this in the [Governance section of the Handbook](https://societyprotocol.io/Published/Handbook/Handbook-Governance). [^24]: We expect many community created Value Functions to be present and plug-and-play ready in our community portal. This will allow various SP instances to easily add, remove, and adjust an assortment of Value Functions in their societies. [^25]: As a secondary consideration, the Value Functions should be able to achieve all the generalized interactions that humans partake in, in all societies—such as: property rights, governance, indoctrination, communication, state storage, etc. [^26]: A VF doesn't need to be in everyone's individual interests, but must be in the total collective interest for anyone to be able to access––different people will use different Value Functions. [^27]: Interestingly, the immutable history accumulated within the protocol can remain valuable even after the social contract has ceased to be valuable, by preserving the history of a SP instance. [^28]: Web3 blockchains don’t have any way to offset this game theoretic equilibrium, it's simply the consequence of participants value diverging from their actual contribution. Blockchains also don’t have many inherently strong moats which would make switching rails difficult in order to prevent users leaving (it’s relatively easy to switch from transferring financial value on one blockchain medium to another without getting bogged down in network effects). [^29]: It’s not an exaggeration to say that this constitutes ~50% of all human energy ever spent. [^30]: The SSC of Synchronized States will only eliminate around 50% of the status games required (automate some parts), while the other 50% will remain intact. If we estimate the total amount of energy spent on status games as around 50%…then this automation saves around 25% of all human energy. [^31]: While the system is capable of being completely fair in theory. In practice, society protocol instances will be used by coalitions of individuals—and the individual interests of participants in the coalition will slightly imbalance each instance. Different instances will compete to attract members based on how favorable their SSC is to all participants. [^32]: What we want to get away from in order to coordinate better is this: [fighting for power in disingenuous, sabotaging, and loyalty over performance ways](https://www.optimallyirrational.com/i/160629904/fighting-for-power). [^33]: Culture is just politics so engrained that it feels like it can’t be changed. [^34]: Additionally, Protocol Parameters, Laws, and Constitution play a role in defining and tuning the knobs of value systems. [^35]: We estimate that the TEAA of Synchronized States will be able to support human civilizations of 10-100x current numbers (100 billion–1 trillion individuals) simply by using the exact same amount of resources in more optimized ways. [^36]: This happens because of _informational advantages_ and is very well displayed by the [Werewolf Game](https://faisalkhan.com/knowledge-center/industry-perspective-commentary/understanding-the-werewolf-game-and-its-relation-to-game-theory/), where the villagers are generally unable to decipher who the werewolves are and lose the game to the werewolves. The same dynamic has been playing out in real life for at least the past 4,000 years (starting when written records gave some entities severe informational asymmetries over others). [^37]: Our ways of transferring state became superior (to have complex coordination, we must transfer and preserve a complex state). [^38]: A balance of power is only important insofar as it helps the State survive and become stronger, otherwise it’s a liability. If the societies of the SEAA tried to balance the power, without having decision-making processes to achieve that, it would only lead to their downfall and wasn’t required until the DEAA age Nation States came along.