Whilst we have briefly touched on this issue in other articles and in our whitepaper, we agree that expanding on the subject here will achieve greater clarity. (Many institutional investors do not really delve that deep, only being concerned with how data value behaves on Decentr and not from where it derives.)
This article fills in those details, and we have updated our whitepaper (p. 11) (and FAQs) accordingly. (Thanks for all the great feedback.)
We will start by addressing a specific question at our Telegram that gets to the heart of the matter: this question relates to us using the terms “positive and “negative” to describe activity that is correspondingly assigned lesser or greater “value” on Decentr. The questioner followed the logic that concepts such as “positive” and “negative” (and by association notions of “good” and “bad”, “right and wrong” etc) imply some sort of “moral authority” and hence must in some way be centralised.
This logic only stands to reason if we assume a centralised authority at the outset — which is fair enough, if online is the only benchmark (and it is the only benchmark due to the fact that no precedent exists as regards the 100% causal system we are developing).
To be fair, why would anyone not assume this?
Online has become so perversely and aggressively centralised none of us can even imagine a truly decentralised alternative.
The overall point to bear in mind is that our system (website + browser), being 100% decentralised and hence causal, mimics on every level natural systems, including those operating within a democratic society.
Crucially, what needs to be apprehended is that there is no overarching “moral authority” in a democratic society (only in certain types of autocratic systems: dictatorships, monarchical forms of government, etc). The citizens of a democratic society do not go about their daily lives “following” morals prescribed for them; they follow the morals of their own guiding lights.
Certainly, there are laws to protect many commonly cherished beliefs that society may hold but these change as per country and per jurisdiction, and are further dependent on changing times and other essentially transient values and dimensions, and so forth.
For example, it is often quoted that there is still a 17th Century law on the statute books in York, England that permits in full view of York Minster a married man to beat his wife during prescribed hours on a Sunday.
Such anomalous “laws” still abound in a country as old as England, and in other countries, such as the US where in South Carolina the same wife-beating privileges are afforded a husband (but only on the courthouse steps).
So it wife-beating in that jurisdiction is still perfectly legal, why do we laugh at this now but did not 200 years ago, when it was deemed a perfectly acceptable way to maintain familial accord and spousal discipline (though it is an arrestable offence in the rest of the country)?
We laugh because it is so hopelessly and “obviously” morally “wrong” (by the more enlightened moral lights of our times) to even consider such an action (and therefore a waste of time to repeal such a law).
But what “moral authority” determined this activity and type of engagement to be “wrong” (if not parliament, the church or the courts) and when and why?
The question therefore is how in a civilised society does a “good” action or a “bad” action be determined as such and assigned a (moral) “value”, and “who” decides?
The follow-on question is how can this concept be expressed online through corresponding data value?
The answer is that in a democratic society moral values are decided by community consensus — a consensus that is never consciously mandated or prescribed by any “authority”. Evolving moral values are determined by the totality of innumerable and mostly invisible actions and reactions across many component networks and communities that propel forward the generally “positive” (by community consensus) moral curve of society.
We all agree an outcome is generally “positive” due to the outcomes we see and feel around us that are, overall, when benchmarked against the moral spectrum, beneficial to the majority of citizens.
Where they are not generally beneficial, we instinctively assign a “negative” value to the underlying morals (or lack of them) that promote these non-beneficial outcomes, and then we as citizens-of-conscience are free to take action to effect a better outcome.
Lawmakers, as the elected representatives of public will, act and react to this and table, amend and pass laws to reflect changing times and social mores.
The point is, the same happens on Decentr as regards community activity in 100% disintermediated environment.
The real question is how is this value actually “captured” by our platform and assigned to individual users. The answer is through the use of applied co-operative-game theory.
In essence, cooperative-game theory describes the ongoing, qualitative and quantitative “proof-of-engagement” assessment of transmitted user data among cooperating player (or “user”) coalitions.
Cooperative game theory assumes that groups of players (represented on Decentr as “sub-decosystems”), are the primary units of decision-making, and may enforce cooperative behaviour due to democratic consensus across any given coalition.
Consequently, cooperative games can be seen as a competition between coalitions of players, rather than between individual players, all of who function and contribute individually but also as part of the wider “grand” coalition, which is the group consisting of all players.
The basic assumption in cooperative game theory is that the grand coalition will be formed, and overarching ideas, proofs, opinions, shared goals, morals and mores will continue to evolve and be updated as a reflection of the grand coalition and its component coalitions — in the same way as societies and there composite community groups evolve similar attributes in real-world society.
One of the main research questions in cooperative game theory is how to allocate in some fair way the “payoff” of the grand coalition among the players — and this is where Decentr steps in to shake up the concept of the payoff-as-Personal-Data-Value (PDV).
The answer to this question in classical co-operative game theory is related to a solution concept which, putting it simply, is a “vector” that represents the allocation to each player. Different solution concepts based on different notions of fairness have been proposed in the cooperative game theory literature, however, of course, none of these has yet come to a solution based on a 100% decentralised and hence causal environment.
As a result, the payoff issue has never really been resolved. Hence the development of deconomic theory to underpin our PDV solution to solve this.
Decentr’s PDV system achieves this “fairness” by assigning a numerical value to the data generated by online engagement in a causal system — meaning all numerical values are relative to each individual.
The decosystem is a purely relative, 100% disintermediated environment, and has no central “authority” to assign vector values. This means that a vector value of increasing value — as expressed by the numeric value of PDV — can affect all other vector values due to the consensually “positive”/beneficial content of data generated, reused or exchanged that allowed this “player”to achieve such a high vector (PDV) value to begin with.
And so it goes on in a sort of digital dance of competing vectors and player positions, all adding up to an overall cohesive whole as regards changing decosystem-wide morals, mores etc and the value they reflect.
Official Links for Decentr:
Website: https://decentr.net/
Telegram Group: https://t.me/DecentrNet
Telegram ANN: https://t.me/DecentrAnnouncements
Github: https://github.com/Decentr-net
Firefox Plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentr/
Chrome Plugin: https://decentr.net/files/charon_v1.1.7_chrome.zip
Beta Testers: https://t.me/DecentrBetaTesters
