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Plurality in Japan(Japanese)

Aug 04, 202418 min read

Event Funding the Commons Tokyo 2024.

  • 7/24 16:10-16:50
  • Plurality in Japan English slides were explained in Japanese the day before and additional content was discussed in the remaining time.

lecture material

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  • FundingCommons @nishio from Cybozu Labs will be speaking atFtCTokyo!

  • Hirokazu will explore the concept of plurality in Japan and its societal impact.

  • @nishio Cybozu Labs will be speaking atFtCTokyo !

  • Explore the concept of “pluralism” and its social impact in Japan.

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Links

Plurality in Japan Japanese version

  • A brief explanation
  • Explanation of the English version of the slides
  • A brief explanation
  • Check Slido’s question
  • Remaining Description
  • Check Slido’s Q&A if you have time.
  • Explain the rest if you have time.

self-introduction

  • Yasukazu Nishio (NISHIO Hirokazu, @nishio)
  • Senior Researcher, Cybozu Labs, Research theme: Intellectual Productivity
  • Director of MUTOH, a general incorporated association, running MUTOH JUNIOR, which provides funding and support to creators under the age of 17.
  • I was on the Anno team Talk to the City for the Governor’s race.

What is Plurality?

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  • A concept proposed by Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl.
    • Plurality: Technology for Collaborative Diversity and Democracy
    • Techniques for Overcoming Differences and Collaboration
    • A movement to update society for the better by using this technology.
    • image
    • The society that is being newly created is still taking shape and people have never seen it before.
    • So I can’t fully explain it in existing terms.
    • We must create new words and connect them to the context to create new meanings for the words themselves

Explain the English version of the slides

Plurality Japanese edition is now available from Cybozu Shiki Books

See Slido once here

Dig deeper in the remaining time

  • The whole thing cannot be explained in 25 minutes.
  • The overarching explanation is abstract.
    • image
    • I’m sure you can find that by searching, etc., so here are some interesting topics to connect to the context of Funding the Commons

Funding the Commons and Plurality

  • Start with interchange format in Gyojin Karatani, which Audrey referred to, and run through digital democracy.
  • image
    • If food was not storable, it was more reasonable for everyone to share more than one person could eat than to let the uneaten amount rot. (Exchange Form A)
    • The ability to preserve food has eliminated the rationale for sharing.
    • The hungry want food, so they have to offer something in exchange.
    • At this time, all that “those who have no assets” could offer was their life time.
    • Thus occurred the “subordination to others” of selling off time. (Exchange Form B)
    • This evolved into an army not engaged in productive activities.
      • The occurrence of standing armies is quite old, already documented in Mesopotamia.
    • A “state” was created to protect the “people” within from external forces through military power.
    • By eliminating others through military force, “land” that belonged to no one became privately owned.
  • The same long ago created “tokens that can be saved.”
    • Later it will be called money.
    • imageShekel - Wikipedia
    • image
    • Replacement timing no longer needs to be synchronized, making replacement easier (Replacement Form C)
    • More compact and stable than “storable food,” easier to accumulate value
    • A synergistic effect occurred: the military strength of the value accumulation increased the reliability of this token, and vice versa, and this token increased the stability of the value accumulation
    • However, as the market for token exchange grows, geographically demarcated nations will become a hindrance.
      • The “state” as a mechanism to protect “friends” within by eliminating external enemies with military force seeks to strengthen borders, while trade seeks to weaken them.
      • The more connected the market, the more profitable it was.
    • Merchants interfere in the running of the state.
      • Venice in medieval Europe, etc.
    • The forces demanding open trade from the states became stronger and stronger, and eventually a global market was established.
      • If you go to a convenience store there for a minute and look at the ingredients, they’re harvested all over the world.
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    • This was a rough explanation of exchange styles A, B, and C in Yukito Karatani’s theory of exchange styles.
    • By the way, if you look at world history on this scale, now is the period of “the first 100 years of the birth of the electronic calculator”.
    • A new kind of “thing (goods)” has been created: digital goods.
      • Can be replicated at negligible cost.
      • A fortune spent but not reduced.”
    • Just as in the days when sharing food increased the happiness of a society, copying digital goods increases the total amount of happiness in a society.
    • Digital goods, however, are inedible.
      • imageimage
      • In the course of civilization’s progress to this point, most people have come to obtain their food in exchange for money.
      • If we made digital goods and gave them away for free, they would starve to death.
        • There was also an incident where an unrewarded OSS author became angry and engaged in vandalism (colors.js incident).
      • Society’s overall well-being is improved if the digital goods created are copied by as many people as possible for free.
      • Why don’t society fund the people who create digital goods to the extent that they don’t die, and make the digital goods created into commons that are shared by everyone?
        • (For those wondering about the difference between Common Goods and Public Goods: Funding the Commons says [“We build a bridge between builders and researchers focused on transforming the funding mechanisms for public goods.)
  • So what does Plurality think about this area?
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    • An important concept is the worldview of “neither the individual nor the whole, but a number of intersecting groups.
    • From this point of view, it seems like a false choice between “private ownership” and “worldwide sharing” in terms of digital goods.
    • Glen et al. said that there is a space between Public and Private (Beyond Public and Private).
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    • Something similar is said in Japan by Kazuto Ataka ([web3, Environmental Impact and Thin Commons - Between Neuroscience and Marketing https://kaz-ataka.hatenablog. com/entry/2023/12/24/123010])(2023)
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    • There is a growing sense that this problem is something that needs to be resolved in the future.
      • And the situation that web3 technology may be the solution to create new ownership and provision options for digital goods.
      • That’s why there’s a good amount of web3-related stuff in the other sessions.

intersecting group and Ideology in the 21st Century.

  • Talk a little more about this diagram
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  • In this connection, Ideology in the 21st Century organizes and strongly promotes one of the three ideologies, “digital democracy,” in the Plurality book
    • image
      • from Glen’s slide : [/plurality-japanese/Glen in Japan Keynote Japanese subtitle65aaa7faff09e0000559732](https://scrapbox.io/plurality-japanese/Glen in Japan Keynote Japanese subtitle65aaa7faff09e0000559732)
      • Integrated Technocracy (synthetic technocracy) is the idea that AI advances will create a being that surpasses humans, so why don’t we all just leave it to it?
      • It is this ideology that is implied by the word Singularity when it is explained that “Plurality is a synonym for Singularity.
      • This corresponds to the WHOLE in the indivisual / intersecting group / whole diagram
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      • I don’t understand it well when I think of Plurality as a synonym for this and think of it as aiming at INDIVIDUALITY.
      • Especially web3 people would mistake it for an oppositional composition of centralized and decentralized power.
      • corporate libertarianism (corporate libertarianism) is the antipode in the conflict.
      • Using cryptography and other technologies to strengthen individual freedoms and undermine the power of government to restrict them.
      • The idea is to let the market mechanism take care of itself, so to speak.
      • This corresponds to the indivisual in the indivisual / intersecting group / whole diagram
      • A vision of avoiding and deconstructing social organization through technology and replacing trust with algorithms” by Glen
      • digital democracy also opposes [corporate libertarianism
      • For example, at yesterday’s Meetup, the question was “Do you think we can have a trustless government in the future?” Audrey answered [“I don’t like the word trustless. I like the word trust building.
      • They seem to think that the direction of pursuing trastress is to disassemble and destroy the existing social structure built by trust, which is undesirable.
    • You can look at these three ideologies and try to figure out which element is stronger in you.
      • Plural Viewpoints, a service that allows questions to be posed to three different ideologies
        • Often divided, and even when not divided, there are differences in specific policies.
        • For example, “The declining birthrate and aging population are making it difficult to maintain the welfare of the elderly, what should be done?”
        • ST: Implement nursing care robots and AI to compensate for labor shortages and improve the quality of care.
        • CL: Reduce regulations and increase competition among businesses so that innovative services and products for the elderly can emerge.
        • DD: Strengthen community networks and create systems to support seniors through volunteerism and community activities.
        • Each has a point.
      • Nishio personally believes that “in the long run, it is an integrated technocracy, but before that, we need digital democracy first.
        • When AI becomes smarter than humans, AI governance will be better than human governance.
        • However, when we speak of “governing people to happiness,” it is not good if some people define “happiness” in a way that imposes a form of happiness on other people, so we need a way to collect the various forms of happiness of everyone.
        • Since that is digital democracy, we can conclude that “digital democracy is necessary before integrated technocracy.
        • Regardless of whether we accept a dictatorship by a smart AI later, it is better to push for digital democracy at this point.
        • You can also decide in a digital democracy whether to accept it or not.

Check Slido

  • Question: Sli.do

  • I think it’s time for some quicksand around here.

  • If there’s still time, we’ll talk about the topic below.

  • broad listening

  • The development of technology to duplicate and distribute information has made it easier for one person to communicate ideas to a large number of people.

  • However, when a large number of people transmit information, the volume of information received by one person becomes enormous, and the person drowns in the flood of information.

  • In a society and company where people actively communicate, technology that supports listening to the opinions of many will be important.

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    • Figure from “[Not subjective or objective, but from the subjectivity of one to the subjectivity of many.

  • (Technological advances) enable “broad listening,” where millions of people can hear the essence extracted from the distribution of opinions of their peers, enhancing democratic deliberation on a large scale.

  • Talk to the City] used in the Tokyo gubernatorial election was able to collect and visualize people’s voices

    • However, it only promotes understanding of the many voices gathered and does not encourage discussion.
    • The discussion section used GitHub for the Governor’s race, but the flow of information from Talk to the City was not smooth.
    • The policy team within the Anno team looked at the report and made issues, etc.

  • Polis used in vTaiwan.

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    • Here you can see clusters of opinions in real time and post new ones
    • It can be a tool to promote in-depth discussions
      • However, moderator costs are high.
    • Audrey’s comments on Talk to the City

      • Ten years ago, vTaiwan projects were limited in scope. This was because the technology was not yet developed and it took time for those involved to adapt to it.

      • However, advances in language modeling (AI) have now solved this problem.

      • In 2014, it was impossible to gather the opinions of so many people and retain all the nuances, but now, thanks to the “Talk to the City” tool, it is very easy and inexpensive to do so.

      • This tool can gather a wide range of opinions and thus potentially change the nature of public discussion.

  • It would be nice if these two broad listening technologies could evolve to complement each other.

What should the media be like?

  • Groupware as a medium.

    • In the past, the media were occupied by certain companies, such as newspapers and television stations, which controlled what was disseminated.
    • With the birth of social media such as Twitter, we now live in a world where anyone can transmit anything.
    • However, there are distortions caused by being sustained by advertising revenues.
    • It will be designed to take more time away from the user, since increased “engagement” is profitable.
    • The story is that productivity-enhancing software will replace it.

    • Productivity software sales…are a highly profitable business model. This type of software often includes a social media component and is sold to companies to improve productivity. …The purpose of this software is to help employees work together to achieve common goals and adapt to change.

    • The new pro-social media will be nurtured naturally in such an environment and then marketed in a broader social context to other organizations interested in solidarity and dynamism.

    • What Audrey Tang et al. call productivity software is what Cybozu has called [groupware
    • Twitter’s public timeline corresponds to the WHOLE in this figure.
      • image
    • Groupware was essentially introduced to “groups” (but each group was independent)

  • digital democracy

  • In “democracy,” “indirect democracy” has been widely practiced, in which people elect “delegates” to debate on their behalf.

  • This was just an operation at a time when information processing technology was in its infancy. Better technology leads to better teamwork.

  • In the future, a wide variety of local governments will make a wide variety of attempts to “better communicate with their citizens.

  • The key to moving democracy forward is for teens and young people to come up with really good ideas and for them to be understood and implemented by the senior people in a shorter time. Younger people, being digital natives, do not believe that upload bandwidth once every four years is enough, and latency is too high. They prefer to collaborate on a daily basis.

  • Opening up the agenda-setting authority to the people would return the people’s approval or disapproval of each agenda to the people. Public officials no longer have exclusive ownership of agendas.

  • Oversimplification of indirect and direct democracy, although many people find the structure of indirect democracy and direct democracy in opposition to each other.

    • What is the subject of the direct vote, the bill or the budget bill?
    • Will voting be “reference data for human decision-making” or will “decision-making by algorithms without human intervention” take place?
      • Majority rule is one of the oldest algorithms.
      • Various mechanisms have been invented, such as Majority Judgement and [Quadratic Voting

Diagram that may be used for questions

question

  • I felt that the target of broad listening was language, but could it be extended to non-verbal things?

    • Yes
    • In the past few years, the development of large-scale language modeling techniques has made it much easier for computers to handle linguistic data.
    • So there is a growing movement to use it to make the world a better place.
    • Technologically, “multimodal” research, such as the combination of language and images/video, is also being actively conducted, and technology in that field will develop in the future.

  • Is it possible to use broad listening techniques cumulatively, like the KJ method?

    • Yes - Cumulative effect of the KJ method.
    • In fact, there are cases of repeated use in Taiwan vTaiwan and other countries. - How the discussion on Uber has evolved in vTaiwan
    • In Yasuno’s case study, he also published the results of the broadlistening, collected Twitter responses to it, and broadlisted it again.
      • My main focus was on GitHub, so I didn’t really focus on it.
    • In terms of repeating and deepening the discussion, using Twitter may not be a good idea
      • Most of the participants don’t keep the context of the previous discussion, and they’re replying to what’s coming down the timeline in a short period of thought.
      • In the case study presented in Meetup with Audrey & Glen, the case study started with a signature campaign, and since they have the contact information of the participants, they invited them to participate in ongoing discussions and created a discussion group with those who raised their hands.

  • Plurality is not yet realized, so what exactly do you mean by adding context to create it?

    • Audrey was talking at Audrey+Glen+Halsk@Cybozu and the term Plurality was chosen because it is transparent and not colored.
    • For example, using the term “digital democracy” makes people say, “That’s politics, it’s not about individuals,” which he called “colored.”
    • So, by choosing a new word that has not yet been colored and connecting various examples and ideas, we are trying to construct the word’s connotation.

  • Will the organization scale without hierarchy? It seems to me that they would be free to stick together and separate.

    • A state in which there is no hierarchy and each individual is active as he/she pleases is maximally parallel and will scale unlimitedly!
    • The problem is that in such cases people lose organizational coherence in the direction they are going
      • Alignment problems
    • To solve this problem, a hierarchical organization was created in which information is consolidated into the hands of a single president and a few board members, who determine the direction of the organization, which is then communicated to each employee.
      • However, this caused problems such as information being distorted in a game of messages, taking a long time to communicate, and people in the middle of the game suppressing information that was inconvenient for them.
    • In other words, this is not a question of whether or not the organization scales, but whether or not communication scales
      • And digitalization is changing the way we communicate.
    • The second half, “sticking together and apart,” is not about the future, but for some, it’s already the present. - The future already exists in speck.
      • For example, I am an employee of Cybozu Labs, but I am working with people from outside the company through the Unexplored Company, and I joined the Yasuno team and collaborated with people I had never met before.
      • Organizational Boundaries] are smoothing (e.g. numbers) by people working across these organizational boundaries.

  • How do you deal with conflicting interests and differing ideals in the Plurality and Broad Listening philosophy?

    • We believe that “conflict is fuel,” so we figure out ways to extract energy from it to make society better.
    • image

  • What do you think that counseling pregnant women and postpartum mothers by listening to their voices through broadband listening would be a good way to provide psychological care for them? I also think that such research would be of great social significance.

  • I think the role of LLM as a translator (not in the linguistic sense, but in the sense of making it understandable to the person) is important in realizing broad listening to avoid producing conflict, because the assumption of knowledge can overcome differences. Also, are there any points that we should pay attention to in realizing this?

    • Just like translating Japanese into English, it is possible to convert difficult kanji into hiragana for elementary school students, and difficult expressions into expressions for junior and senior high school students, etc., with the LLM at this point in time.

    • The problem is that when you explain a concept to someone who does not have that concept, it is basically a long

      • The concept has the effect of compressing what could be described in 10 words into a one-word description. - thought economy theory (this is a concrete example)
      • It’s a tradeoff between allowing it to be longer or discarding the information and keeping the length.

    • Plurality Question @FtCTokyo

This page is auto-translated from [/nishio/Plurality in Japan(日本語)](https://scrapbox.io/nishio/Plurality in Japan(日本語)) using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.

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