Beyond Exit and Voice - Censorship.wtf

Intro

Venkatesh (the speaker) acknowledges he is not capable of diving as deep into the technical details as the other talks.

Instead, he wants to focus his talk on foundational design principles, which he has found guide and shape the quality of technical work over time

Strong technical leaders tend to have strong foundational design principles guiding their work. If the foundational principle is good, the details tend to work out well. If it's flawed, the details tend to go wrong.

A censorship definition (1:50)

There is a quote attributed to George Orwell about journalism being printing what someone doesn't want printed, while everything else is public relations.

Venkatesh tried to adapt the quote to crypto by saying "Censorship resistance is completing a transaction someone does not want completed. Everything else is yield farming."

Not sure if this adaptation is technically accurate, but it sounds plausible

2 anecdotes from Istanbul (2:50)

The left photo of an executioner's chopping block at Topkapi Palace used by the Ottoman Empire, a fountain was nearby to wash the executioner's sword :

• Historically, executioners were chosen to be deaf and mute so they could not hear pleas for mercy
• Executionners got to keep any possessions of the condemned as a "tip."

The speaker ties this to the previous talks about tips and blocks in crypto

The right photo is Hagia Sophia, a former church converted to a mosque :

• Images of religious figures were censored to comply with Islamic prohibitions.
• Some images near the old altar facing Mecca were completely covered up.
• Others had curtains to cover them during prayer times

The speaker found this a pragmatic approach to handling censorship in a charged context, living up to the church's name, which means "holy wisdom."

Foundational design opinion (6:15)

The foundational design principle of crypto, including censorship resistance, is the "exit versus voice" dichotomy with a strong "exit" bias.

This concept comes from a book by Hirschman that Balaji made famous in Silicon Valley years ago :

• "Voice" means complaining or voicing opinions, which is informative.
• "Exit" just signals people are leaving, which is less informative.

Loyalty affects whether one chooses exit or voice. Exit is biased toward economic solutions, while voice is biased toward political solutions.

In crypto's design, there is a strong economics bias

Where does this bias comes from ? (7:45)

Censorship normally means things like newspapers being censored or journalists jailed - people staying to fight rather than exiting.

It means that outside of crypto, censorship resistance is typically viewed as a "voice" problem

"voice" is not about leaving one medium for another when censored, but fighting censorship where you are.

The thing is, concepts like forks, running your own node, and decentralization in crypto have a strong "exit" bias.

So there appears to be a fundamental tension between the exit-oriented design tendency of crypto and censorship resistance being a voice problem.

Taking the "Exit" (8:50)

Taking the "exit" approach to its extreme leads to fragmenting relationships to get unconstrainted, and perfect unconstriction requires zero relationships. This is the "libertarian endgame" : you are sovereign, but alone

Libertarians see this sovereignty as freedom, but philosopher Hannah Arendt argues sovereignty is not freedom, as true freedom requires other people.

According to Arendt, freedom exists in a plurality. Not assimilation, but being able to speak in a public square.

The phrase "hell is other people" comes from Sartre's play No Exit : it refers to how others reflect parts of yourself you don't see, which can be tormenting.

So freedom requires relationships with others, which Sartre sees as hellish. Freedom becomes a kind of hell you choose to live in.

This highlights a conflict between the exit bias of crypto and censorship resistance requiring engagement with others, a kind of hellish freedom.

Is there a foil to exit/voice ? (12:15)

Venkatesh observes that the crypto community, especially Bitcoin, tends to default to an "exit" mentality of wanting to escape systems and people. This stems from a simplistic libertarian philosophy absorbed in youth without deeper reflection.

In Ethereum there is more openness to questioning core libertarian principles and examining what should drive design decisions, but seems unnecessary to tie complex tech like Ethereum to such personal growth and awareness.

Most just want to escape to a desert island with guns, which is the simplistic way. Truly navigating "exit" versus "voice" requires self-awareness and ability to co-exist with others freely, and this is hard.

There may be a way to approach Ethereum's core design without needing to be an enlightened philosopher.

The Efficiency/Thoroughness Trade-Off "ETTO" (14:15)

The speaker introduces the "efficiency-thoroughness tradeoff" principle proposed by researcher Erik Hollnagel. This principle says you must choose between efficiency and thoroughness :

• In domains like nuclear reactor safety, thoroughness is crucial. You want to meticulously check everything.
• In other areas like route mapping, efficiency is more important.

Hollnagel critiqued investigations of accidents as having an "ETTO fallacy" - looking back after the fact and saying more thoroughness should have been applied. But you need thoroughness from the start, not just in hindsight.

Efficiency has a corporate/private bias, leading to atomized individuals. Thoroughness has a public/commons bias, leading to interconnected communities.

This principle is less ideologically loaded than "exit vs voice" but makes a similar point : thoroughly considering implications for the public good, not just private efficiency

Being part of a community should not be seen as losing freedom but gaining wholeness.

Illustration (17:55)

Currently crypto is strongly exit biased and efficiency biased, like shareholder value maximization, but Ethereum needs to become more voice biased and thoroughness biased.

Example : exploring a map for the shortest path is efficiency biased like his aerospace background. But you can't go efficiently toward thoroughness directly, that would be ironic and defeat the purpose.

Instead, Ethereum should "wander around" the design space more inefficiently to explore "exit vs voice" and "efficiency vs thoroughness" implications.

The right landing point may be thoroughness and voice bias, but the path there should meander inefficiently to fully explore the implications.