I recently saw this story [1] in my news feed about a new model in physics. While I cannot comment on the specifics of the work, one aspect of it rings true. Unlike other efforts I’ve seen, this one has the property that the model proposed seems to be scale invariant, meaning that the same abstraction applies at the smallest scales as well as at the largest scales. This principle is discussed at great length in my work on identity architecture, and I expect that a true description of reality would have this property, whether that is this particular model, or something else. I am not remotely the first to discuss such ideas — scale invariant conceptions are found extensively in so-called “Eastern” philosophies, from the “dharmas” of buddhism, to the “anekanta” of the Jains, to the “fa-chieh” of Huayan Buddhism, and beyond.

[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-suggest-energy-fragments-is-the-best-way-to-describe-matter

Yet, the referenced story begins with the Greeks, continues with Newton, and ends with the authors. Which, incidentally, is what made the story difficult for me to read each time I saw it in my news feed. It wasn’t until the third or fourth time that I actually read the whole thing through and realized there could be something of value in it. It’s not the fault of the authors that they chose to attribute the inheritance of their work in the way that they did, as we will see. This post is not about the specific work referenced above or even about identity architecture. Instead, I’m going to use these as a jumping off point to tell you about Dialectical Inheritance Attribution. But first, I want to convince you of the extent of the problems that it is designed to solve.

Correctly attributing the sources of your work, inventions, and ideas, is a very, very hard problem, and one that we absolutely cannot solve on our own, or even in cliques of domain experts. We attempt to solve it by leaving it to authors to “cite their sources.” Citing our sources is worse than useless – it not only fails to solve the problem correctly, it also gives a false sense of having done so. It is yesterday’s solution. It isn’t enough for tomorrow, and it never has been enough at all. After all…

… Socrates is often said to be the “first” moral philosopher, but what about this fellow named Kǒng Qiū who lived a century before him (or really, any of a number of others)? In some sense, Confucius, as he is better known, doesn’t seem to matter when speaking of Socrates, no? And in that same sense, Confucius doesn’t seem to matter at all. Gutenberg invented the printing press, as everyone knows… even though Bi Sheng invented it three centuries before him. Why do our narratives assume that Gutenberg came up with his invention in a vacuum, when it seems much more plausible that he was adapting a version of the printing press already in use for centuries? Newton invented Calculus, standing on the shoulders of unnamed giants. Giants whose names sounded like Madhava and Bhaskara. Galileo is the first scientist, unless you count Ibn al-Haytham (who? He doesn’t sound like any scientist I know) or Alhazen as he is sometimes known (who, now? Sounds more like a wizard than a scientist!). We all know and love Pascal’s triangle and the Fibonacci sequence. But who knows meruprasthara and the Pingala sequence? What’re those! America invented modern democracy! Murica! Even though the Haudenosaunee practiced it for centuries before on the same land. Let us be clear: we are very bad at attribution. Citing our sources is an echochamber, a way to further empower voices that are already empowered, whether they did the work and contributed the value or not. It is an easy way to achieve what empowered groups want, not the hard way to achieve what is right.

If we’re so bad at it, why do we attempt it at all? Because (a) it is unclear that we ever knew, and in any case we have certainly forgotten that we’re bad at it, because it is always convenient for empowered groups that we forget, and inevitably — by the economic forces described by Han Fei — we do. And (b) it is plain to see that attribution is empowerment. Thus, in the face of the reality that we cannot do attribution well, inevitably, we do it in such a manner that it, covertly and overtly, empowers people who happen to already possess some authority, rather than people who contributed value (which don’t necessarily coincide). There are many instruments that are used to facilitate this, and which make our inadequacy and ignorance appear as expertise and knowledge. One of these that I’d like to focus on, and perhaps the most insidious one, is labels, and among the worst offenders here, the labels “East” and “West.”

Labels accrete meaning. They do not inherently possess it.

What could be more “Western” than logic? And yet, to my ignorant eye, logic appears to have originated and to have historically been developed to greater sophistication in the geographic East. In a foundational sense, modern logic still hasn’t touched sunyata from the 2nd century, yet it has continued to reinvent shadows of the wheel, ostensibly without looking at the chariot. What could be more “Western” than fractals and scale invariance? Yet, this is a quintessentially “Eastern” idea, found in all of the many, many schools of Eastern philosophy that we hear about only in appropriated (and diminished, if I may say so) form in some “Western” school of thought or another. Surely, so-called “computer science” is a paragon of “Western” accomplishment. Yet, the nearest precursor to it is to be found in the millennia-old study of Sanskrit linguistics. Abstract mathematics seems decidedly “Western,” does it not? Yet many of the early explorations here were done in the Middle “East.” Just look at the scores of Wikipedia articles where individuals espousing ideas whose chronological origin is ostensibly in the “East” are categorized as “Western” thinkers. And the innumerable other historical innovations tacitly presumed to be “Western” that were done in places like Africa that are somehow excluded from the term, all the same. Labels don’t just accrete meaning. They accrete presuppositions. And they are illusions, spells that have been cast on us all to give us a certain idea about who made the world as great as it is. It’s precisely because these stories are wrong that the world isn’t as great as it could be, because the wrong people are empowered, or rather, that people and ideas aren’t empowered to the true extent of their value contributed. Is it any wonder that we have all of the problems that we see in the world today?

Maybe you are not so “Western,” or “Eastern,” for that matter, as you thought. These are labels, which recruit you into invisible armies fighting invisible wars on somebody’s behalf. Sometimes not so invisibly, as supremacy groups of one stripe or another, and the numerous abuses against people of color and other disenfranchised groups, exemplify. We are all victims of the illusion, but a few among us are also apparent beneficiaries of it, which is why the illusion persists.

Attribution is empowerment. Rightfully so. So it is vitally important that we do it well, and do it fairly, recognizing true value and not rewarding facsimiles and appropriators.

What if I told you that we can do attribution in such a way that (a) it frees authors and creators from the responsibility of having to cite or even know about their sources, yet, (b) encourages them to do so, and also (c) to share their creations widely and freely, but (d) does not require them to do so, and (e) is guaranteed to be fair and (f) certain to be generous and (g) orders of magnitude more comprehensive and rigorous than anything we can do today?

The idea is very simple: attribution should be done collectively.

This is the idea that is hidden behind the more precise term, Dialectical Inheritance Attribution. Why bother with all this terminology? Well, because good ideas benefit greatly from precision. It is important to be precise, for otherwise it’s hard to distinguish a bad idea from the truth, or one good idea from another. Let’s parse this term to understand it precisely:

Dialectical – this is about “dialogue.” We can discuss, collectively, any aspect of our shared reality. Such discussion is itself subject to the method of discussion, meaning that we can discuss the manner in which we discuss things, allowing us to reflect upon our shared reality and reflect upon our reflections. This is an important feature in order to achieve fairness and effectiveness, since we can define colorblind standards and criteria for those standards, apply such standards in widely varying instances and then reflect upon those instances to refine the standard in the abstract. And then reflect upon this whole process and make necessary improvements.

Inheritance – What are the precursors to this idea or work? In what abstract way are they similar, even if they are in entirely different contexts and appear different on the surface? A work of art may inspire a mathematical result, which may be necessary to the construction of a bridge, which may inspire a work of art that unconsciously encodes a mathematical result. Ideas and works metaphysically transform into one another as they are conveyed, often subliminally, across worlds and minds.

Attribution – Now that we’ve figured out what sources or ideas a work inherits from, how do we actually recognize those sources? How do we communicate the extent to which those sources are present in the work in question? Attribution is not “payment” or “compensation” but about recognizing the proportion of value that the sources impart. It’s about communicating this inheritance so that those sources, those precedents, those underlying ideas are recognized as valuable and are empowered. In attributing value in this manner, we do so collectively and it does not “take away” from anyone. There is nothing exchanging hands; only a collaborative calibration which is dynamic and even retroactive, as we learn new ways to be more fair and more sagacious in the recognition of value, and as new kinds of value are created from prior work. An important aspect of this is that the orientation is not retrospective but forward-looking. The reason we’re doing this is to empower the right voices, which will be good for all of us because we’re empowering what has been good for all of us. Fairly attributing value gives authority to those inventors and ideas who are poised to create the most value in our world going forward because that’s precisely what they’ve done in the past. Bullies and appropriators don’t get any credit here. But honest efforts always do, because honest efforts are worthy of empowerment regardless of frivolous considerations of who was “first.”

Thus, we collectively come to an evolving agreement as to the extent of similarity and influence of ideas and works upon one another. The standards we agree on are the very ones that apply to us, giving it that “Golden” quality of fairness and kindness that the sages taught in every Age. Because empathy is seeing oneself in another.

In principle the scope of this system is all of the activity in our shared reality. This includes academic contributions, handling them in the same way as anything else, and also includes otherwise unrecognizable (except artificially, via the criminally wasteful practice of advertising) sources of value as videos, music and musical innovations of all kinds, art, colors, and words.

Doing this right will take a lot of creativity and precision and art in the methods used. There will be a very artistic component to this that it would take time to elaborate on. Yet, the nuts and bolts are not what I want to get across here nor do they need to be fully worked out at this stage. At a high level the outcome is that the value of contributions is determined by the interactions of the actors and events deemed to be representative of those contributions. If you create a simple way to save water and I save water by employing it, we both contribute value and derive empowerment. Because we did something that everyone agrees is good. That’s all.

But this is still only one part of the solution. The complete solution requires two other things: (1) identity architecture — because what everyone thinks is good in one context isn’t what everyone thinks is good in another. We need some way to model contexts so that value is reconciled in broader and broader settings. Identity architecture allows us to address this in a self-similar way, so that we only solve the value-reconciliation problem once, and the same solution works everywhere. In fact, IA does much more than this, giving us the freedom to take chances and be wrong and say or do something completely idiotic, and yet be free to start over immediately, without carrying the baggage of our sins, but, still, reaping the consequences of our actions, whether good or bad, in a context-sensitive manner. To be rid of “cancel culture,” without losing the accountability, essentially, and also gaining the creativity that comes with freedom. This is an extraordinary quality that, I think, needs to be understood. The freedom to be anyone and everyone but, ultimately, to be no one. Labels accrete presuppositions, after all. They recruit you into invisible armies. And also, (2) we need to think about history in terms of a more realistic model of how things actually happen in the real world. Nonlinear patterns, rather than linear narratives. Life is rivers and oceans. Not a line drawn by someone in a suit.

Finally, the true power of DIA is that it provides us an entirely alternative system of economics not based in supply and demand. A system of economics based on true value. Many may say that true value is a nebulous concept, hard to define and hard to quantify. To them I say, you’re right. But why should that stop us? Because an 80% solution to the right problem is better than a 100% solution to the wrong problem. Especially when it is only 80% because of fundamental properties or “limitations” of reality, rather than the inadequacy of our methods or our spirit. We cannot assign a true value to a poem. But we can ensure that the poet is empowered and appreciated to the extent that their words moved us and inspired other poems and works. So that they write more poems and that life becomes poetry, with voices of hate muted simply because no one that’s really helping listens to them, and so that those same voices of hate are transformed as voices of love because a world that recognizes good behavior makes us all better. Instead, today we force artists and creators of all kinds to submit to the whims of empowered gatekeepers who turn their work into a commodity for sale. This is yesterday’s economic system. When poems can be bought and sold, so can lives and worlds. This is not the way.

Let’s have empowerment reflect what we think is good, and what we say is good be empowered. How can you participate in this bold new economic system? You’re already there, and it’s easy: release the work that you do freely and widely to the world, and include a pointer to this site. There are no copyrights or trademarks or patents or licenses here. But maybe Wampum beads. With a critical mass of interest, we will begin anew.