Coordination.md

Coordination

• Human coordination in groups ([[Teamwork]], [[Cooperatives]], [[Decentralized Autonomous Organizations]]) to achieve aims is the secret sauce of human civilization. If it could be engineered, a lot of problems would have been solved.
  • Coordination problems are a constraint to production of all kinds of economic value.
  • All problems are coordination problems. Moloch is at the end of all!
  • The Second Law of Consulting: No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem.
• Coordination, the ability for large [[Teamwork|groups of actors to work together]] for their common interest, is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It can be improved in many ways:
  • Faster spread of information.
  • Better norms that identify what behaviors are classified as cheating along with more effective punishments.
  • Stronger and more powerful [[organizations]].
  • Tools like smart contracts that allow interactions with reduced levels of trust.
  • [[Governance]] technologies (voting, shares, decision markets...).
• Keep the work parallel, the groups small, and the resources local. If possible, factor work products into independent modules; if not, grow slowly and optimize.
• Trust increases coordination. To increase trust:
  1. Repeat interactions.
  2. Look for possible win-wins.
  3. Communicate clearly.
• The best process is no process! In an ideal state it all just works and everything flows. Adding a couple of checks seems simple but that affects everyone in that process.
  • No [[processes]] requires trusting other people. More trust means better coordination without processes. Trust is the currency of interactions.
  • When a process becomes the proxy for the result you want, you stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you're doing the process right.
  • Every process will slow you down, and some will make you better.
• If we imagine human society as it's own organism. We need processes and other coordination tools to make it remove the hand from the fire when it starts to burn.
  • The hand doesn't know what to do, but relies information to the brain, that makes the appropriate changes.
  • Something similar could be achieved at a society level, where pain triggers processes that make it stop.
• Only a few bits of information are possible to reliably convey to a large number of people. The larger the group, the smaller the message needs to be.
• The requirements to govern a commons without tragedy:
  • Clear boundaries.
  • Managed by locals.
    • In a small community, everybody knows everybody, and can keep track of what they do. This makes small groups iterated games which rewards trust and penalizes sociopath behavior.
  • Community makes its own rules.
  • Community can monitor behavior.
  • Graduated sanctions for those who violate community rules.
  • Cheap, accessible means of conflict resolution.
  • Self-determination.
• There are many coordination mechanisms. Choose the appropriate one for your situation.
• There is no such thing as a structureless group.
  • We are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds.
  • The idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, it becomes a way of masking power.
  • Make the group structure explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision-making must be open and available to everyone, and this can happen only if they are formalized. Having an established process for decision-making ensures that everyone can participate in it to some extent.
• The more you need consensus, the less work you can do.
• A way to coordinate without trust is relying on [[Blockchain]] and [[Cryptocurrencies]].
• Coordinating is better than who takes the resources. The more you can coordinate, the more resources you can take (Paretotopia).