Thread by @VitalikButerin

A big difference between the "new idealistic movement" scene 10-15 years ago vs today is that back then it felt possible to be on all the good-guy teams at the same time. Today, much more adversarial thinking and conflict.

I've been trying to understand.. where to from here?

Many libertarians were excited about direct democracy.

PorcFest (big libertarian event) had lots of carnivore *and* vegan food.

Rick @Falkvinge bridged Bitcoin and the Pirate Party.

Lots of blockchain people and "open source community" people saw each other as natural allies.

Today, we see @doctorow signing onto a letter advocating regulating crypto more harshly, which is upsetting and confusing a lot of crypto advocates because many looked up to his vision and saw themselves as fellow travelers.

See

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1532109933696589824

for @doctorow's explanation of his views.

Cory's devcon speech has some specific concerns about financialization.

But it feels like there are deeper causes. The crypto vs tech-left divide is not the only divide; *all* the teams are divided.

Other examples of this:

* Maximalism in crypto
* Many libertarians turning against {democracy | immigration | cosmopolitan morality...}
* The rabidly anti-vegetable types
* The "woke vs rationalist" mini-internet-war last year
* The hostile responses here

https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1529817646283206657

This all makes me feel very sad. My natural temperament has always been that I want to be part of all the good-guy teams and bring them together. But now many of these teams that I've grown up loving are attacking each other and considering each other harmful.

But complaining about the phenomenon won't fix it. Need to understand it.

One important factor is that all of those movements *got much bigger* in the last decade. When something is small, even if you don't like it, it's not a threat, so it's easy to live-and-let-live. When everything is big, more competition, so more incentive to point out problems.

Also related is the "dense jungle" phenomenon I talk about here:

vitalik.ca/general/2020/1…

The internet naturally puts everything distance 1 away from everything else. This too makes live-and-let-live harder.

Explanation 3: idealistic small movements easily lose their idealism and become mixed in with other energies once they become big, and those other energies more easily lead to negative stuff.

As Cory mentioned, crypto was at first just decentralization enthusiasts, but now there's also various types of "money people".

This is an inevitable part of becoming bigger. In non-financial movements too, various classes of normies and often soon grifters move in over time.

See also:

https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1523725562497232897

Explanation 4: today's culture is just in general more driven by fear of dystopia rather than excitement about positive visions, and so everyone's first question is now "will your thing create a dystopia?"

(If true, I think this is unhealthy and we should just fight it head-on)

Explanation 5: we have social media now and social media rewards negativity.

(If true, I think this is unhealthy and we should just fight it head-on, but less sure *how* to do that)

I'm inclined to believe it's some of all of those causes, and they are interrelated. But what can we *do* about this?

One path is to focus more on the newer and smaller sub-movements, that are more opinionated about their values. The "regen finance" movement in ethereum (big credit to @gitcoin @proofofhumanity and now @optimismPBC, arguably @MolochDAO too) is one great example.

Another example might be the ethereum identity space (@signinwitheth + ENS + POAPs + maybe soon SBTs).

These smaller spaces can help create new optimistic visions for the future *and* create something that people can be part of without also being part of the financialized cruft.

But we also have to keep the peace between the big groups, and navigate the reality that many of these movements really do contain, in their worst versions, threats to each other's visions of a bright future for humanity.

One thing is that I think people working in any of the "big movements" should more actively think about offering olive branches: how can you make what you're building 10% more palatable to the other side?

I do think that many people disagree less than they think. Eg. @glenweyl @balajis fight a lot, but when I talk to them, both have a strong "we're all in this together" attitude: this century either all of humanity rises or all of humanity falls.

That's a key point of agreement!

BTW I strongly agree with the sentiment.

Like, even selfishly speaking, a nuclear bunker could stop a nuke from killing me directly, but it can't stop the nuclear war from destroying the scientific ecosystem that I'm counting on to cure aging before I succumb to it in ~60 years.

As @balajis loves to say, "live and let live" can be upgraded to "win and help win".

I guess the conclusion is, peacekeeping and cooperation-seeking needs to be an explicit effort rather than peace being an assumed default.

There's an element of "we compete where we must" (eg. if your happy sunshine movement advocates making financial privacy globally illegal, then sorry but I will fight you), but I think the room for cooperation, and for cross-tribal appreciation, is larger than many people think.