Mini-thread: against the "One Commandment"

Balaji's The Network State (see my review https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/07/13/networkstates.html ) has a concept called "the one commandment": a new startup society should have one key moral value that differs from the outside world. I argue that this is wrong.

Instead, any realistic new community is going to have a complicated jumble of various legible and illegible values (and "vibes") that appeals to a particular group of people. And this is the *only* realistic way to define a new (or existing) community.

To take one example, let's briefly pick on the new city project Praxis. Praxis defines its primary virtue as "vitality". On its home page it says:

"EXCEPTIONAL MEN AND WOMEN SEEKING MORE VITAL LIVES"

Also here: https://www.praxissociety.com/announcements/two

"Praxis is leading this movement by building a new city organized around the value of vitality, a principle that unifies across culture, time, and space, to enable people to live healthier, more purposeful lives"

But when you get deeper into it, you see there's a lot of other things that Praxis is defined by. Here's a thread with concept images, that has a very distinct ancient Greco-Roman aesthetic:

https://twitter.com/solbrah/status/1461348636663509000

And now here's another one from Praxis founder Dryden's account, going in a different direction:

https://twitter.com/drydenwtbrown/status/1605330313399320576

"Move to Praxis if you don't want to hear "folx" ever again"

There is clearly a pretty cohesive and well-defined group of people that find the idea of not being around the kinds of people who say "folx" appealing. But if you try to explain to a sociologist from Mars how opposition to "folx" logically follows from the principle of "vitality", they'll be very confused at best.

The Martian sociologist might say something like "but Black Lives Matter seems to be about preserving life, it's in their name, they'd love a city organized around vitality, right?", and Praxis and BLM would both be like, errr......

Note: this is NOT arguing that Praxis is somehow logically inconsistent or anything like that. Praxis never claimed to be fully defined by a single word or commandment. Rather, it's an illustration of the principle that "one commandment" is actually not what people want.

But then how would you explain this?

https://twitter.com/_kevin_pham/status/927792297365848064

Now, you might say, how does the (still active) Tornado Cash community fit into this? Well, they're not unicorny, but they are excited about privacy, and they *might* fit into bitcoin, *except* they're probably a little too excited about advanced technology, whereas bitcoin might prefer old skool stuff like coinjoin.

In both of these cases, there are legible "official" differentiators between the community and its alternatives, but there is also a whole pile of illegible cultural and "vibe" level differentiators.

And it's the pile of illegible cultural and vibe differentiators that are far more important. This is the only way that it can be done, for any community - new blockchain, new social network or new city, left or libertarian or right.

Not one commandment, but many. And not all of them written down.

Example 2: Bitcoin and Ethereum. Suppose you ask an observer "what is the fundamental differentiator between the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems?". They might say, "Ethereum has smart contracts!" or "Ethereum is more than just money, look at what ethereum.org lists as applications!"