It's a nifty video with six heuristics to use to improve outcomes in a hopefully ethical way. I suppose one of the first and most fundamental questions that has to be addressed is what problems are you trying to solve and why are you trying to solve them? Who do these problems impact and what is the definition of success? What are the metrics upon which we can hold people accountable and what alternative solutions exist?
Ultimately building an ecosystem is hard because you'll soon find out that there isn't solid consensus in the community about both the problem and solution space. People confuse symptoms for problems and already have decided on solutions that may not even be relevant or wise. The whole lean startup model probably has worked so well because it forced startups to launch a series of small experiments that are customer validated and have well defined metrics of success. I think there is a great lesson there.
As for persuasion in general, I've found throughout my life that it really only works on the long term and in an ethical way when you have a real idea about what you're selling. Watch this video first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33DU2je1kFA
Different people have different goals. Ethics are entirely subjective but there are social norms of the Bitshares community. The social norms are set by the initial members of the Bitshares community, including the developers and thought leaders.
Experience from experiments can determine what works. As for what the goals are, I doubt any of us want to see Bitshares fail as an experiment. Success for Bitshares is something for Bytemaster to define but my guess would be to change the world while also making a lot of money for it's members. If the world is a better place, and if Bitshares is profitable so as to sustain a vibrant industry, then I would think to most of us it would be a success but you really have to ask around.
One of the interesting ideals I remember seeing in the beginning popularized by Stan was that Bitshares is trying to seed an industry, not merely compete in an already established industry. To seed an industry, you have to create a culture, a character, unique to that industry, to spread the ideals or simply because it's highly effective. Startup culture worked great for Silicon Valley but even within startup culture there are different subcultures, such as the Open Source / Free Software model, that model worked great for Linux and was based on an entirely different culture from the culture which brought about Microsoft, Apple, and the PC revolution.
Now what would work for the particular unique circumstances that birthed the Bitshares community? In our history it wasn't possible to follow any traditional models because of the legal ambiguity, and we couldn't have securities in the past because equity crowdfunding was illegal (it's now legal but requires some paperwork). So Bitshares culture has to be whatever seems to be working for Bitshares, and that would be reflected by the data, the case studies of previous experiments.
So if we look at Protoshares? Successful experiment. The merger? We still are collecting data on that but it was the first crypto-merger in history, so our community will be the first community to ever do a crypto merger, and Protoshares was also a first. Analysis of the results will show what works, how well it works, lessons learned, potential improvements for the model, but we do know so far by track record that Bitshares as a community is one of the top communities in the cryptospace in terms of engagement, one of the most innovative in the space too in terms of ideas, technical development.
The only weakness we seem to be having is in the marketing department, and the gift economy is part of resolving that. Dogecoin had a givers culture, and it did a lot to help bring people who had nothing to do with crypto into the crypto space, simply because of the unique culture of the community at the time. On the other hand, Bitcoin in the 2013 and earlier, had a very difficult culture, it was that culture that brought most of us to this forum, the culture of the crowd sales, seeing new altcoins being birthed daily, and the very low barriers to entry, where anyone could simply start mining, or join a forum and start to build a new community.
In my opinion there is something very magical about that atmosphere. It's the same atmosphere I remember during the early Internet era in the early to mid 90s and anyone who is old enough will remember. It's the same atmosphere that seemed to inspire Richard Stallman, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, all who came out of a certain hacker culture, the Home Brew Computer Club for example.
In my opinion the Brownie Points and similar ideas are an experiment which could usher us into a new culture which hasn't existed before in this space. If it is a success then others will for sure begin to copy it. Brownie Points, Appreciation Credits, all of this stuff, you can use your own credits to tip whomever you want for whatever reason, and at any time in the future we can sharedrop on any holders of any credits of any type for any reasons which creates a gift economy.
It would probably be a good idea if you blog about the ethics of what goes on if you have particular feelings. It would also be a good idea if you collect data so the results can be analyzed in the future because most of what is going on here hasn't been done before in this form, and the only references we have are exotic cultures that anthropologists know, or psychology 101, but we need of course bloggers to record their diaries so in the future people know how individuals felt.
If you feel something going on is unethical, put it in the blog. If you see some interesting experiment, then collect some data set, do a random sample, do surveys, you can learn a lot if you're into anthropology.
Topic: Science of Persuasion [ALL SHOULD WATCH] (Read 1516 times)
