(1) THREAD

The COVID19 hysteria will not go away easily. A mistaken narrative got created, and will be VERY difficult to correct.

In this thread I explain why.

I give an analogy between social narratives and blockchains, the latter which are *designed* to resist correction.

(2) Both cryptocurrency (e.g., Bitcoin) and social reputation are currencies.

Both have
- non-physical tokens,
- no central authority recording interactions,

(3) and thus they both have to worry about “double spending,” where A pays B some amount of currency, but because it isn’t recorded appropriately, A can spend it again.

(4) E.g., for reputation, if I lose reputation in a social interaction with you, that “payment” of some of my social capital to you needs to be veridically recorded by the social network’s collective memory.

(5) But how? What if me and my buddies spread gossip -- a storyline -- that it is *you* who got humiliated in the argument, rather than me? Which gossip gets validated?

There are two key ways this is handled in social networks:

(6)

A. Favoring gossip of higher rep people. (Proof of Stake)

Higher rep people have truer gossip, care more about integrity of reputation currency. Analogous to “Proof of Stake” for cryptocurrency, where new transaction is validated by someone owning a lot of that coin.

(7)

B. Favoring gossip parsimoniously fitting the existing narrative of the social network. (Proof of Work)

Gossip that most parsimoniously fits the tribe’s existing storyline (the “tribal blockchain”) is chosen, in some part because it is easier for people to remember…

(8) Finding a highly parsimonious “gossip fit” to the existing storyline is not easy, but it’s easy for others to see whether it’s a parsimonious add.

(9) The winning gossiper’s gossip gains some social currency for this service. This is analogous to Proof of Work. (Gossipers are miners.)

(10) In cryptocurrency, these mechanisms lead to a blockchain that is practically impossible to displace. And, it is for very similar sorts of reasons that storylines amongst a social community are very difficult to displace.

(11) These are observations I made a couple years back, working on a new book on the origins of emotions, which connects tightly to social capital. https://2ailabs.tumblr.com/post/170664288310/cryptocurrency-and-tribes

(12) In summary, in regards to today’s COVID19, many of those that have “swallowed the doom pill” may *never* come around.

Efforts need to be made to study the conditions that led to hysteria of this kind, something I pointed out a couple months ago. https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1239995212572876802?s=20

(13/end) The dangers are clear. With the world connected as one network more tightly than ever, hysteria can spread and self-reinforce faster than ever, leading to consensus on unprecedented, disastrous and civil-rights-quashing emergency decrees. https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1254796958964858882?s=20

@AlexBerenson @NickSzabo4 @Barnes_Law @mattwridley @RogerPielkeJr @MattWalshBlog @ClarkeMicah @DickDelingpole @larryelder @allisonpearson @BjornLomborg @neontaster @NateSilver538 @naval

https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1278298284642021379?s=20