Governing public knowledge

How do you know what is true? Who do you trust? Everybody has a point of view, but no one is an authority. As humanity we need a way to aggregate our knowledge into something we can trust.

We need a system.

We already know that knowledge graphs are web3. A new standard has been introduced with GRC-20. But how does it all fit together?

Let’s start with a set of claims about knowledge:

Now we can describe our design goals. Our goal is to create a system that converges toward truth. That truth should be represented as a knowledge graph. We want to enable maximum freedom for people to experiment and hold their own views, while creating a process for more people to come to agreement over time. This system should be a meritocracy, where those with more knowledge have more power to affect the system. It should be decentralized and resistant to capture.

If we can design such a system, it can serve as a foundation for a healthy and prosperous knowledge based society. Just about every area of life and industry can be reimagined on top of this foundation. Let’s explore how it would be designed.

We can start by defining a grouping of knowledge. Let’s call it a space. Each space can have its own knowledge graph and rules for updating it. Anyone should be able to create a space. This makes it an open system. By default, a space can be fully controlled by the person or company that created it. We can call this a personal space.

A different type of space, public spaces, can be used by communities that are working toward shared goals. They should have a public governance process with a clear set of rules for how decisions are made. Blockchain based voting can ensure that the rules are followed without any company or person having privileged control. The blockchain also makes sure that at any point in time, everyone has consensus on the state of the knowledge graph. Public spaces should have clearly defined goals, values, principles and policies. They define a social layer by which subjective decisions can be made. Communities should be able to customize their own governance system to be whatever they want.

Spaces can have subspaces for drilling down. Each space’s governance is responsible for deciding what spaces to include as subspaces. A space can be a subspace of more than one space.

Spaces toward the “top” of the hierarchy should be more neutral and they can get more opinionated as you drill down. Since we want to create a global graph with all the world’s public knowledge and information we need to be inclusive of controversial views.

Somehow we need to allow unpopular things while admitting that some things just shouldn’t be allowed. Incitement to physical violence serves no one and can be harmful. Where is the line?

The first amendment of the United States is a pretty good guide and has lots of case law. Knowledge exists there. Different spaces may have different points of views on limits.

There is an inherent tension between freedom to share any view and curation toward truth. How can we reconcile this?

It starts with how you structure knowledge. For example, things that not everybody agrees on can be represented as claims. Everybody can agree that somebody made a claim. We can also just observe who supports which claims. Whether or not something is considered true can evolve over time. By structuring knowledge correctly, we can get more people to agree on the facts.

Spaces should align behind shared goals and values. The same community with the same set of goals and values should be able to get to a state of agreement. If people have fundamentally different values or beliefs, they should create their own spaces. You can have different spaces with different perspectives all coexisting in the same system - this is called pluralism. You can even have an entity show up differently in different spaces. Having different views on the same entities from the perspective of different spaces is powerful for promoting freedom while not completely disassociating into separate bubbles.

How do you find what you’re looking for? It’s a matter of taste. And preference. And relevance.

People have preferences at a personal level and as groups. We should be able to express and aggregate our preferences to create shared views.

As communities we can organize everything and make sure the best rise to the top. Freedom for every individual. Association into any communities. Open. Composable. Decentralized. On the internet.

I believe the world is finally ready.