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How to self-assemble an atomic bomb project

DeSci@ETH Denver

Evan Miyazono, PhD

Protocol Labs Research

Protocol Labs Research

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“Computation / agreements”

What is Protocol Labs?

And who are you?

There’s trend of making things trustlessly computable:

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What is Protocol Labs?

And who are you?

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How research works

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The top-down approach

images courtesy of wikipedia

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Top-down vs self-assembly

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What if the one person at the top isn’t right?

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Top-down vs self-assembly

vs

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What if the one person at the top isn’t right?

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Top-down vs self-assembly

vs

Similar to “centralized vs decentralized”

  • Decentralized has coordination costs, but many benefits

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Useful + relevant memes

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Inspiration from the past

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A better model of science

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Ways to change systems

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Chesterton's fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood

Wicked problems are problems whose social complexity means that they have no determinable stopping point

Increase success through circumspection

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Sleepwalking to dystopia

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  • Researchers and engineers want a better world
    • e.g. “more exhausting grant processes” is no one’s end goal
    • People are motivated by loss aversion (sometimes $$, prestige, or just employment)

Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” �“Misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do. At least the latter two are certainly rarer”

Sleepwalking to dystopia

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Coordinate distributed research

Join the discord: mapsmap.org

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Incentivize distributed research

Watch talks from our last event: fundingthecommons.io

Join our next (virtual) event: March 3-4

We have interest from and are match-making:

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Design and support multiple funding mechanisms for new and existing funder:

More than just grants & bounties!

  • Competitions
  • S-process
  • “Secret funder”

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Questions?

Evan Miyazono

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How to find me?

miyazono@protocol.ai

Twitter: @emiyazono

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relevant websites:

research.protocol.ai & protocol.ai/join

FundingTheCommons.io

mapsmap.org

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Random recommendations

  • Generalizable models, frameworks, and paradigms
    • Leverage Points (blogpost - Meadows)
      • Thinking in Systems (book - Meadows)
    • How Complex Systems Fail (blogpost)
    • Foundations of Decision Analysis (textbook - Howard, Abbas)
    • The Essence of Linear Algebra (video - 3blue1brown)
    • How to Take Smart Notes (book - Ahrens)
    • Seven Sketches in Compositionality (textbook - Fong, Spivak)
    • The Currency of Trust (talk)
  • Thinking like a good researcher
    • You and Your Research (talk - Hamming)
    • The Future of Programming (talk - Victor)
    • Zero to One (book - Thiel, Masters)
  • Where Science meets Economics
    • Reinventing Discovery - examples of the decentralized collaboration that PL is trying to build
    • How Economics Shapes Science - title is self explanatory
    • Cycles of Invention and Discovery - why "basic" vs "applied" sciences is harmful
    • Superforecasting - under certain conditions, you can make better predictions than markets
    • What Money Can't Buy; The Moral Limits of Markets - humans often don’t act rationally
  • Historical context
    • The Idea Factory - history of Bell Labs
    • Dealers of Lightning - history of Xerox PARC
    • Where Wizards Stay up Late - history of the internet
    • Nickolas Means’s talks at Lead Developer - great exploration of engineering projects
    • Working in Public - history & economics of open source software

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Protocol Labs Research

Protocol Labs Research