The Social Singularity: How decentralization will allow us to transcend politics, create global prosperity, and avoid the robot apocalypse by
Max Borders
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
Have you ever imagined life without centralized, hierarchical social controls like a government or a fiat-money banking system?
Mr. Borders does a good job explaining why it is high time we allow all of the things that have failed us just dissolve into the past. He helps the reader look back to understand why education was fated to fail, why government and media were fated to collude, and why science gets things wrong more than it gets things right. The replacement for the corrupted structures that surround us will be peer-to-peer collaboration. One quote regarding science to help illustrate:
"The best thing that can happen to science is for it to open itself up to everyone, even people who are not credentialed experts, then let the checkers start to talk to each other. Leaders, influencers and force multipliers will emerge. You might think of them as communications hubs or bigger nodes in a network. Some will be cranks and hacks. But the best will win out, and the cranks will be worked out of the system in time."
In other words, a million million amateurs, a million million different perspectives, a million million people challenging orthodoxy and creating, in real time, will produce a better result that a handful of (often) bootlicking toadies. A network of superior collective intelligence is the light and the way. Yes, it is intriguing. (This book was published pre-Covid).
I especially like how he repeatedly invoked the Blue Church vs. the Red Religion throughout. These words/phrases were coined by Jordan Hall. Blue Church is the top-down process we see everywhere. It is describes a pro-governance, pro-gatekeepers, pro rules and pro following of the rules unquestioningly. The Red Religion uses a bottoms-up process, a decentralized way of sharing intel. It bypasses the gatekeepers. It's the reason we had Donald Trump for president surprising all the Blue Church members. It's the reason so many families are pulling their kids out of public schools. The war that is being waged today by these two very different philosophical systems is referred to again and again in this book. This helped me know where to hang some of the information in this book.
Exactly how a peer-to-peer life would play out ... this is not covered very deeply. It is still an idea, but the blockchain lays the groundwork. Cryptocurrency, though still volatile, will be the enabler. Smart contracts will keep us honest.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, because I am a beginner in the meta-verse, so two thumbs up. If I were a veteran in this space, I might find it unsatisfying.
View all my reviews
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