Do Blockchain communities have a "Critical-group" ?
1-Introduction
The comprehension of this post, dedicated to analyse the actual state of Steemit is facilitated by reading my two last articles, part I Is the blockchain a Realizable Social Utopia and part II Is the blockchain a "Hierarchical" or an "Equalitarian" Community?.
Any social non-paternalistic utopia to be realizable, must have a person or group of creators that need to convince people who could get on board to participate in the project, using communication to make them understand and reach common agreement on the best solutions for all the peers involved.
This is possible while the utopia is shared by a small group, but after certain numbers of members or groups, the number of transactions or influences will result in a growing difficulty to reach consensus and maintain common goals, because communication and direct persuasion have a threshold after which it is impossible.
This statement have the intention to prove that it is impossible to have "universalistic utopias" for projects in function of "universal consensus", and we have a lot of them to show it like world peace, social justice and UBI - Universal Basic Income.(blockchain maybe will make that last one possible today, using local communities).
But it is possible in communities, that are growing in the technological utopia of the blockchain, to support small groups of interested men in generating equalitarian decentralized realizable social utopias in the "Nations" of the blockchain in Ubiquity.
"There are other ways of finding satisfaction, recipes for human happiness, enjoyment, dignified and meaningful, gratifying life, than increased consumption that increases production".- Zygmunt Bauman
2- Valency and Influence deterioration
We will use the language of society as a mathematical structure (graphs) , expressing the social structure as hierarchical or equalitarian.
As we have seen it's impossible to create universal "one-size-fits-all" utopias starting with human animal limitations, in terms of centers of interest that he can maintain our conscious concentration and in terms of influence each human being can give and receive.
This graphic example is related to an Equalitarian structure, where the arrows shows the map of influences but not quantitatively, because it is not observable:
Valency is an observable property of "animal man" that expresses the limit of the number of centers of interest a person can focus attention , limiting the number of people that can receive and transmit influence in a period of time, and we will give an example:
You can watch 2 or 3 movies at the same time, maybe in a maximum of 3 screens, but for sure after 10 maybe it is impossible. So valency=3 or more and channel capacity< 10.
On the other hand in big groups or organizations, the influence of the creator or group of utopists that started it deteriorates after a number of intermediary transmissions depending on the capacity of the channel.
As we see human beings have "natural limits" for the propagation of influence between peers depending on the numerical value of this lthreshold that limit the number of elements - Men and Objects - that can coexist in a community without becoming disfunctional, as well as the number of connections or links in which influence can be transmitted or received.
The blockchain is a technological utopia that expands the threshold of the possibilities of combining Men, Objects and Links (influences) , improving the scalability of traditional communication, but at the same is a living evidence of the limitations of each human being to interact with infinite peers and objects.
So in each blockchain community there will a moment that after a certain limit, the number of combinations of Men, Objects and Links (influences) is naturally limited by the capacities of men like a species.
For example anarchy for all is not a realizable utopias, but anarchist communities are creating self and collective educated people by consensus, that help to spread a myriad of realizable non-paternalistic social utopias on the blockchain.
So after a certain number of combinations it is impossible to keep an equalitarian society toghether.
After this number, the system have a high possibilty to turn into a hierarchical society environment and became the lie and hypocrisy of politics as a non realizable utopia to constraint every-bodies' freedom.
The lie and hypocrisy of politics and the ruling class is sucking everybodies' wealth, soul and freedom, generating false news that restraint people to a voluntary servitude, with the News helping to turn and generalise lies into proven objectiv facts in the pos-truth era.
The media is promoting political extremist controversial personalities, moving us to blindness motivated by passion and dangerous convictions, rather then objective facts to shape and educate public opinion.
So after a certain number of peers interactions, objects retained and exchanged, and reciprocal influences in the channel attains the full capacity and there is a certainty of disruption of any equalitarian society and a big chance to turn into an hierarchic society.
3- The "Critical Group" in a Equalitarian Society and Natural Limits.
It starts after N+ Peers, M' objects and W' links or connections (influence) and it is that limitation that we are going to call "Critical-group".
The second option as the best way to escape hierarchic reversion, is already expressed in the recent Steemit Roadmap:
"we wish to enable many users to build communities in parallel around curating specific types of content valuable to their audiences. To enable this, we intend to augment our current tag-based organizational structure for posts with a new system called “communities” ".
It was the unknown concept of the limitations of the "Critical-group" that made most social utopias fail, because it is imposed by the laws of Nature, dictating the impossibility of establishing Universal Utopias.
Universal Utopias are not realizable the key must be in the polarization on several communities coexisting in diversity. It would take centuries to make changes in all humanity.
It is impossible to violate the assumption of this mathematical view of reality that conduct Man to alienation when we put more objects and elements that he can handle without any change in genetic terms to support it.
Let's see a practical example of this paradox by Yona Freedman:
- 10 dissatisfied people join an equalitarian group to find the path to a social utopia
- Then they decide to accept only 4 more members. The group remains equalitarian if we suppose that the valency is 4 and the capacity of the channel is 6 the 12 peers are still a"Critical-group" .
- Then 6 new members join the group . At that exact moment one of the old peers will lead the group and we change the equalitarian society in a hierarchical one.
-If more than 900 people join this new hierarchy if the valency is 4 and the capacity of the channel is 6 this group will automatically and irreversible break into subgroups of "dissidents".
4 - On"Critical-group" and social utopias/ecology
So the "Critical-group" is a function of natural laws of the species as we may say a kind of social selection and can be characterized by:
a) Group toponomical (graph) structure (hierarchical or equalitarian ).
b ) the valency of each member (influence received/transmitted).
c) the channel capacity , that was increasingly raised by the singularity technological utopia of the blockchain, to sustain and make possible realizable social utopias in the communities giving an unparalleled scalability of possible human communication and objects exchange.
So valency and channel capacity depends on the threshold of natural laws as well as the type of toponomy observed in the structure of society (Hierarchical or Equalitarian).
Yona Friedman got to the conclusion that this parapolitical phenomena makes politics irrelevant, as a language for any realizable social utopia.
In a referenced period of time(duration) valency is the number of possible peer's mutually assimilated influences and the type of language/codes used in the community (speed of language) as the period of time necessary for every member to assimilate others influence and express its own.
Now let's introduce 2 more variables for the understanding of the "Critical-Group":
d) the necessary speed of reaction in a given context.
e) the speed of the language used by the group .
Whenever the any threshold or limit of the "Critical-group" is exceeded the equalitarian society can react in 3 distinct ways:
(i) - Change the toponomical social structure of society (Hierarchical vs Equalitarian).
(ii) - Polarize in several groups that will maintain the social structure of the original group .
(iii) - Reduce the speed of reaction.
The degradation of actual hierarchic paternalist society as a result of globalization (universal one-size-for-all principles), is breaking and disabling the capacity of states and governments to make internal policies and concentrate only in foreign policies, and external interventions .
Bloombergs and Davos is an example of how reunions of high level elites try to save each other from this abyss of large corporations still ruling, but already broken by the natural laws on the size of communities and threshold of maintenance of gigantic hierarchic unchangeable organizations.
"Capitalism is a parasitic system. Like all parasites, it can thrive for a certain period, as long as it finds an untapped organism that provides it with food." - Zygmunt Bauman
5- Limit Laws as natural Self-regulation Mechanism of systems
Excessive numbers of members and elements in any society /environment, dictated by this limit laws, always determine a self-regulation in social organizations as a natural mechanism that maintains the structure and growth, diminishing reaction time and stopping accelerated growth.
So this natural laws are barriers establishing limits and utility in making social utopia realization.
Yona Friedman believed in changing the future in the day everybody realizes and that the actual society is already falling and renounce the ideologies of words of politics, that replaced social and political science.
"Non-society" means not to have utopia or dystopia" - Zygmunt Bauman
6 - The "Others" and Objects as Environment
The disintegration and re-structure of "Critical-Groups" is social ecology as a regulating system of the "Critical-Group" as a form of natural Social Selection.
The blockchain is a possible infra-structure of for developing multiple equalitarian societies, to maintain the original philosophy that presided the emergence of the initial blockchain, that after its limits led to the creation of a myriad of alternative communities, envisioning non paternalistic realizable social utopias in equalitarian structured smaller groups.
Steemit has now attained the natural limit state of maintaining the "critical-group", it will have to polarize in sub-groups, like for example the actual guilds with new pro-active actions to develop the vision and mission of our steem world.
The alternative would be to change steemit in an hierarchic society that disables the possibility of a realizable non paternalistic utopia, because Steem is approaching or already overpass the breaking point of the natural limits.
The third alternative is to keep the actual structure until it has no speed of reaction.
So the theory shows that the "Critical-group" is nature limit and regulating mechanism as a form of social ecology, as a defence mechanism against the possibility of eternal growth in the size of societies .
In my next post I'm going to propose two social utopias and one technological utopia to open new horizons for discussion and consensus in the future of Steemit, to maintain the initial vision of the creators, supposing that they share the same needs of the community for example related to the problem stated in steemit rodmap."largest problems currently presented to social media services: the dichotomy between maintaining a high Signal-to- Noise Ratio (SNR) for a quality content experience free of spam and low-value comments, whilst simultaneously preventing any type of censorship. "
I just edited the post to put a new link I found on the web now that facilitates the compreension of this post, explainin in more detail the concept of valency and channel capacity
From Networking to Tensegrity Organization
Footnote: All phrases with commas are citations of Yona Friedman's books
(*) I choose the term Equalitarian for a vision that accepts or promotes the view of equalitarianism , instead of Egalitarian a vision who accepts or promotes social equality and equal rights for all people because that is not yet possible in the material hierarchic structure of our world of objects and assets.
My other posts on Steemit about the blockchain
Is the blockchain a "Hierarchical" or an "Equalitarian" Community?
Is the blockchain a Realizable Social Utopia?
An Ode to the blockchain - the Dialectic of Liberation
Steemit: Vision, Mission, Values and Strategy
Steemit Value : Intangible Asset vs Tangible Asset Analysis
Steemit: Altruism and Financial Scarcity and the rise of Advertising
Steemit : The Shrinking of the Money Pie and the Rise of Human Pie
B/W Pictures Source:
All black and white hand writing pictures are originally copied from the book - "Utopias Realizáveis" - (Reaslizable Utopias )by Yona Friedman , Sociocultur, Lisbon, 1977 (in Portuguese)
References:
(1) Yona Friedman - wikipedia : Architect, urban planner, designer but also a sociology student, physics and science communications, Yona Friedman (Budapest, 1923) is back at the center of international architectural culture after having long been dismissed as Utopian. Member of the Hungarian anti-Nazi resistance, Friedman spent a few years in Haifa, Israel, where he sketched the first of his many theories, namely the Mobile Manifesto architecture in which special construction systems allow the inhabitant to determine for itself the shape, style etc. his apartment and to change it when they want it.
website: Yona Friedman
Interview with Yona Friedman: "Imagine, Having Improvised Volumes "Floating"In Space, Like Balloons"
Yona Friedman 1000+ photos - Pinterest
Books:
Utopies réalisables by Yona Friedman
Comment vivre entre les autres sans être esclave et sans être chef, J.J. Pauvert, Paris, 1974
The Politics of Utopia: A Study in Theory and Practice By Barbara Goodwin, Keith Taylor
One Video among hundreds : Yona Friedman: You are obliged to stay Mainstream
Other related posts on Steemit:
Exceeding the Limits of Interaction in a Community Leads to Control