The Need and Feasibility of the UN to Lead the Human Community in Creating a Digital Planet(024)
— An Open Letter to UN Secretary-General Guterres and Global Sages
5.3.3.3 Building the Belief Witness System: Three Principles
Bees and ants, as the simplest group ecologies, can function successfully without a central control system. Forests and deep seas, as extremely complex group ecologies, can also operate successfully without a central control system. Crucially, their development is almost error-free. In contrast, throughout the history of human society, conflicts have never ceased. Particularly in recent years, under the dominance of the capitalist system, the problems faced by human society have become more numerous and severe, even endangering the safety of the Earth. If we can learn from decentralized self-organizing ecologies like bees, ants, forests, and deep seas, can we create a more rational and safer social ecology for humanity? Our proposal for the United Nations self-rescue and humanity self-rescue plan is based on this understanding. The plan aims to create a belief witness system with self-adjustment, self-coordination, self-organization, self-correction, and self-evolution. With such a witness system, people’s initial belief in the United Nations self-rescue and humanity self-rescue plan is no longer important. Because as long as people continuously see successful witnesses, they will eventually believe in it.
Constructing such a witness system is undoubtedly a massive project. How can we ensure its success? Over thousands of years, humans have attempted many things. Generally, failures have outweighed successes. Even in the simplest entrepreneurial ventures under the capitalist system, the failure rate is much higher than the success rate. With the United Nations self-rescue and humanity self-rescue plan, why should we be confident that we can successfully build it?
Indeed, this logic is correct. Building such a witness system would have been unthinkable for human societies 1,000 or 2,000 years ago. Even 10 or 20 years ago, it would have been utterly impossible for human societies to build it. But today, not only are the conditions for construction fully mature and the chances of success more certain, but it is also easy to build, and almost everyone can initiate the construction. Why?
It is due to the emergence of a series of new technologies, models, and concepts in today’s era, such as blockchain, AI, NFT, the metaverse, digital Earth, and Web3.0. Let’s start with the basic principles and core rules of such a witness system.
The basic operating principle of this system is distributed management without a unified command center. Each node is independent and acts autonomously. Information is shared, and each node makes autonomous judgments based on the information. The judgments with the most consensus become collective action decisions. All nodes follow the consensus decisions. In his book “Out of Control,” Kevin Kelly summarized these principles as: ① No coercive central control; ② Subsidiary units have autonomous characteristics; ③ Subsidiary units are highly connected to each other; ④ Point-to-point influence forms a nonlinear causality relationship through the network. The consensus choices and judgments that can become collective decisions are the “emergence” praised in the book.
We believe that the four points summarized by Kevin Kelly are just the manifestations of this distributed self-organizing system. The following three core principles related to information are crucial:
First, sharing. All members of the system must share benefits for a win-win situation. In this way, everyone’s information can be shared without reservation;
Second, timeliness. Information sharing channels must be unobstructed and timely;
Third, reliability. Shared information must be truthful and reliable, without any falsehoods.
Only by ensuring these three points can the decisions or evolution that “emerge” be the most in line with the interests of the entire ecology and individuals. If there is a problem with any link, the system will inevitably become unhealthy and may eventually collapse. Under the premise of ensuring these three principles, as long as the number of nodes is large enough, the consensus decisions that “emerge” will ultimately maximize the interests of both individuals and the ecological whole. Furthermore, there will be no fatal errors, as consensus decisions have a strong ability to correct errors. All errors will be effectively improved upon after their initial appearance.
These three core principles could not be achieved at any time in the past.
First, benefit sharing is necessary for information sharing. Past cross-civilization new wealth, whether it was cattle, sheep, land, or intellectual property, belonged exclusively to individuals. The stronger the exclusivity, the higher the value. In such a situation, why should my interests be shared with others? Today, the value of NFTs is created by consensus. If you want to obtain value or higher value, you must share. It is precisely because the interests in this economic ecology are shared that everyone has the responsibility and obligation to actively share and disseminate information. Only then can information circulate to form a consensus and ultimately create value.
In the group ecologies of bees, ants, forests, and deep seas, there is undoubtedly benefit sharing. All resources are shared by all organisms, and no resource belongs exclusively to anyone or any other organism. This is similar to Marx’s communism theory of public ownership of the means of production. The difference is that public ownership still requires a centralized organization for management, while the distributed system does not have a centralized organizational structure but is a self-organizing form with nodes managing themselves. Perhaps the future of public ownership will also be distributed. It is because of resource sharing and benefit sharing that unconditional information sharing exists. It is precisely because of the existence of this unconditional information sharing that “emergence” becomes possible as the amount of data increases.
The second point is that information sharing must be timely and immediate. The effectiveness of information lies in its timeliness. Before the popularization of the internet, especially mobile internet, information sharing for consensus decision-making was not feasible.
First, the speed of information sharing and transmission was too slow and lacked timeliness. This was true in ancient times, and even in modern times after the invention of the telegraph and telephone, the timeliness of information transmission was poor.
Second, the channels for information sharing were insufficient. The channels of telegraph and telephone were undoubtedly limited, and even in the age of the internet, people needed computers and connectivity to share information. Those without computers or internet access could not share.
Lastly, the popularity of information sharing was insufficient. Due to the lack of information sharing channels, it was impossible for everyone to share and access information, which greatly limited the amount of shared information. If there is not a large enough amount of shared data, “emergence” cannot occur.
Today, with the popularization of mobile internet and almost everyone having a smartphone, information occurring anywhere and anytime can be shared globally within minutes or even seconds. This kind of timeliness in signal transmission is comparable to, or even stronger than, many natural ecological groups.
Whether it is bee colonies, ant colonies, forests, or deep-sea ecological communities, we know that their modes of information transmission are through vision, hearing, smell, touch, etc. Whether there is also widespread transmission of electrical signals, magnetic signals, biophotons, and bio-quantum information among them is still inconclusive. However, at least human society has already achieved electrical signal information transmission, not only within a specific community but also on a global scale. In this regard, human society may have more favorable conditions than other natural organisms. Moreover, with the continuous development of technology, this advantage will become more and more apparent.
The third point is that shared information must ensure truthfulness. This principle is simple: if the shared information is false, the entire consensus decision-making process is likely to fail completely. The entire ecological system will fall into chaos and inevitably collapse. One of the crucial factors for today’s human society and Earth’s ecology to reach such a precarious state is the abundance of false information. The emergence of this false information is, to a considerable extent, due to individuals intentionally spreading misinformation to confuse competitors to protect their interests. Hence, deception and fraud are the byproducts of the capitalist system. Humanity can only prevent the appearance of false information through a strict legal system. However, even if the legal system can make up for the damage, it would be meaningless for a distributed self-organizing ecology. Once false information appears and is shared, the consequences are already there and cannot be remedied afterwards.
The phenomenon of false information in human society did not appear only after the birth of capitalism. It has always existed. Capitalism has only further exacerbated the severity of this phenomenon. Even in agricultural civilizations or primitive societies, humans might generate false information to protect their technological secrets, personal privacy, or merely for vanity or self-esteem. This is a unique phenomenon to the human species.
This phenomenon of false information is virtually non-existent in bee colonies, ant colonies, forests, and deep-sea biological communities. They do not have the motivation to deliberately create false information. Even if false information appears, it is merely a cognitive problem for each organism. Cognitive issues can be resolved through consensus. However, the false information created by humans can form false consensus, leading to devastating damage to the ecology essential for human survival and development. Statements such as “the first bucket of gold is often bloody,” “money can make the devil work,” “survival of the fittest,” and “impoverished countries can only rise by developing first and then governing” are all results of false information sharing, forming false consensus, causing irreparable damage to human society and the Earth’s ecology.
Before the advent of blockchain technology, humans had no way to eliminate or identify such false information. Without solving this problem, it is impossible for human society to learn from nature and build a self-aligning, self-coordinating, self-organizing, self-correcting, and self-evolving ecosystem, which is what we call a “belief” witnessing system. If you try to build such a system, it is bound to fail. However, after the birth of blockchain technology, the Byzantine Generals’ Problem it addresses perfectly solves this issue. This solution is called “Byzantine Consensus,” built upon a fault-tolerant rule. Even if a small portion of blocks contains false information, it does not affect the overall correctness. This is also known as Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT).
We have always said that the greatest value and significance of blockchain technology have not yet been fully realized by humans. This is the aspect we are referring to. Only when blockchain technology emerged, the possibility of human society learning from nature and constructing a distributed, self-organizing ecosystem similar to forest ecology and deep-sea ecology was genuinely presented for the first time. A significant leap in human development and the sublimation of human civilization could be possible.
Finally, let’s use the previous analogy of the “god-given gold bars” to illustrate the practical utility of these three core principles in a self-organizing system.
The first principle is that the interests of the seven people are shared so that they will all share their information without reservation. The second principle is that the seven people can communicate timely information with their phones to ensure the efficiency of the system’s decision-making. The third principle is that the information shared and exchanged among the seven people must not be false; otherwise, others will no longer trust them, and the community of shared interests would cease to exist.
On the basis of these three principles, suppose their decision-making is not smooth. For example, when the seven people arrive at location Y3 and find that, despite their combined efforts, they cannot push down the tree. In this case, they will immediately correct the error and check whether there is any possibility at the other six points. They find that at location Y5, it is possible to climb the cliff by forming a human ladder. Then, everyone will immediately head to Y5 and try again… Constant trial and error, continuous correction, and ultimately, as long as at least one path mentioned by the god is correct, they will succeed no matter how many times they attempt and correct their errors. The principles of “swarm intelligence” and “ecological thinking” work the same way.
Once these three core principles are clarified, anyone can potentially build a “belief” witnessing system not only in the metaverse digital Earth but anywhere. Moreover, as long as the overall direction of this witnessing system is correct and aligns with the fundamental trend of the times, it will eventually succeed. Why? Because it possesses the functions of self-alignment, self-coordination, self-organization, self-correction, and self-evolution. Just like the analogy above, it can constantly try and correct errors, continuously adjust and rectify, and ultimately, like all natural ecosystems, find a path to balance, health, and sustainable development.
(To be continued)
The English translation is mainly done by AI and is inevitably not accurate enough. Please refer to the original Chinese text below for a more accurate understanding.
联合国引领人类社会打造数字地球的必要性和可行性（024）
— — 致联合国秘书长古特雷斯及全球贤达的公开信
5.3.3.3 构建“信”的见证体系三原则
蜂群、蚁群，作为一种最简单的群体生态，在没有中心控制系统的条件下，能够成功运行。森林、深海，作为一种极复杂的群体生态，也能在没有中心控制系统的条件下成功运转。最关键是，它们的发展几乎可以从不出错。反观人类社会几千年发展史，自相残杀的情况从未消失过。尤其是近些年来，在资本主义体系主导下，人类社会出现的问题越来越多、越来越严重，甚至已经危及到地球的安全。如果我们能借鉴蜂群、蚁群，或森林、深海的去中心化自组织生态，会不会给人类营造一个更合理、更安全的社会生态。而我们提议的联合国自救、人类自救方案，正是建立在这样一种认知基础上。这个方案打造的是一个具有自磨合、自协调、自组织、自修正、自进化的“信”的见证系统。有了这样一个见证系统，人们最初是否相信联合国自救、人类自救方案都不重要了。因为，只要人们不断看到成功的见证，最终他是一定会相信的。
构建这样一个见证系统，无疑是一个超级大工程。如何才能确保它能成功呢？几千年来，人类做过很多事情。总体来说，都是失败多成功少。即使是资本主义体系下最简单的企业创业，失败率也大大高于成功率。联合国自救、人类自救方案，凭什么说我们一定能构建成功？
这个道理确实没错。放在1000年前、2000年前，要构建这样的见证系统，人类社会连想都不敢想。即使是放在10年前、20年前，人类社会要想构建它，也是完全没可能的。而今天，不仅构建条件完全成熟、构建成功也更有把握了。最重要的是，构建起来很容易，几乎每个人都能发起构建。为什么？
就是因为在今天这个时代，区块链、AI、NFT、元宇宙、数字地球、Web3.0等一系列新技术、新模式、新理念的出现。我们就从这样一个见证系统的基本原理和核心原则说起。
这个系统的基本运作原理就是分布式管理，没有一个统一指挥中心。每个节点都是独立的，完全自主行动。信息共享。每个节点依据信息做出自主判断，共识大的判断成为集体行动的共识决策。所有节点服从共识决策。凯文·凯利在《失控》一书中将它们归纳为：①没有强制性的中心控制；②次级单位具有自治的特质；③次级单位之间彼此高度连接；④点对点间的影响通过网络形成非线性因果关系。能成为集体决策的共识选择和判断，就是书中所推崇的“涌现”。
而我们认为，凯文·凯利归纳的四点，只是这种分布式自组织系统的表现形式。而以下三条关乎信息的核心原则至关重要。
第一，共享性。系统中所有成员必须利益共享，共赢同赢。这样，大家的信息才能无保留分享、共享；
第二，及时性。信息分享、共享渠道一定要畅通，要及时；
第三，可靠性。分享、共享的信息一定要真实可靠，绝不能有半点虚假。
只有确保这三点，“涌现”出来的决策或进化，才是最符合整个生态利益和个体利益的。任何一个环节出了问题，这个系统就必然不健康、并极可能最终走向崩溃。在确保这三条原则的前提下，只要节点数量足够大，“涌现”出来的共识决策，最终一定是个人和生态整体利益的最大化。而且，绝对不会出现致命性错误。因为，共识决策具有超强的纠错能力。所有的错误都会在初期显现后，立即得到有效改进。
而这三点核心原则，在过去任何一个时候都做不到。
第一点，利益共享，才有信息共享。过往的跨文明新财富，无论是牛羊、土地，还是知识产权。我的就是我的，利益也是我的。独占性越强，价值越高。在这种情况下，我的利益凭什么让别人来共享。可今天，NFT的价值是共识创造的，你要想获得价值、获得更高价值，你必须分享、共享。正因为在这个经济生态中，利益是共享的。每个人才有责任和义务去主动分享信息，共享信息。信息才能流通起来形成共识，最终创造出价值。
在蜂群、蚁群、森林、深海的群体生态中，无疑都是利益共享。所有资源都又全体生物所共享，没有任何资源仅属于谁，而不属于其他生物。这与马克思共产主义理论的生产资料公有制，有类似之处。但不同之处在于，公有制依然需要有一个中心化组织来管理。而分布式系统不存在中心化的组织结构，而是节点自行管理的自组织形态。或许，公有制的未来也是分布式。正是因为资源共享、利益共享，才有无条件的信息共享。又正是因为这种无条件信息共享的存在，在数据量越来越大时，“涌现”才有可能。
第二点，信息分享、共享一定是即时的，当下的。信息的有效性就在于它的即时性。而人类社会在互联网、尤其是移动互联网普及之前，信息分享对于共识性决策而言，是完全不具备条件的。
首先是信息分享传递的速度太慢，缺乏时效性。古代就不用说了，即使现代在电报、电话发明后，信息传递的时效性也很差。
其次是信息分享的通道不够。电报、电话的通道无疑是很有限的，即使是互联网时代，人们需要电脑、需要联网才能分享信息。没有电脑、不能上网的人就无法分享。
最后是信息分享的普及型不够。由于信息分享的通道不足，就无法做到人人都能分享和共享信息，这就极大地限制了信息的分享量。而信息分享如果没有足够大的数据量，“涌现”也无法出现。
而今天，当移动互联网普及后，几乎人手一部手机。任何地方、任何时间发生的信息，都可能在几分钟、甚至几秒种类分享到全球。这种电信号传递的及时性，已经不亚于、甚至强于很多自然生态群了。
无论是蜂群、蚁群、森林、深海生态生物群，我们已知它们的信息传递模式，无非是视觉、听觉、嗅觉、触觉等。它们之间是否还普遍存在电信号、磁信号、生物光子、生物量子的信息传递，目前还没有定论。但是，至少人类社会已经实现了电信号信息传递，还不仅仅是在一个特定群落内，而是在全球范围内。在这一点上，人类社会已经拥有的条件，或许比自然界其他生物群更优越。而且，随着技术的不断发展，这种优越性会越来越明显。
第三点，分享的信息一定要确保真实性。这个道理很简单，如果分享的信息有虚假，那么，整个共识决策就极可能完全失效。整个生物生态就会陷入混乱中，最终必然崩溃。今天的人类社会、地球生态，之所以会走到这样一个岌岌可危的地步。其中，一个非常重要的因素，就是虚假信息太多。这些虚假信息的出现，相当一部分，是各自为了保障自己的利益，而有意散布出去迷惑竞争对手的。所以，尔虞我诈、坑蒙拐骗是资本主义制度的伴生物。人类唯有通过严厉的法治体系来防止这些虚假信息的出现。而在信息分享真实性层面，即使法治能够亡羊补牢，对于一个分布式自组织生态来说，也没有任何意义了。因为，只要虚假信息出现了，又被分享、共享了。结果就已经造成，事后无法弥补。
人类社会的虚假信息现象，并不是资本主义诞生后才出现的。而是一直就存在。资本主义只是进一步加剧了这种现象的严重性。即使是在农耕文明、甚至原始文明时代，人类为了保护自己的技术诀窍、个人隐私，甚至仅仅是为了虚荣心、为了自尊心，都有可能引发虚假信息。这是人类这个种族所特有的现象。
这种虚假信息现象，在蜂群、蚁群、森林、深海的生物种群中，基本是不存在的。它们没有刻意制造虚假信息的动机。即使有可能出现虚假信息，那也仅仅是每个生物自己的认知问题。而认知问题，是可以通过共识来解决的。但人类制造的虚假信息，却可以形成虚假共识，导致对人类生存发展的生态造成毁灭性破坏。像“第一桶金往往都是血腥的”，“有钱能买鬼推磨”，“弱肉强食、适者生存”，“贫穷国家要崛起，只能走先发展、后治理的道路”等等说法，都是由虚假信息分享，最后形成的虚假共识。对人类社会，对地球生态都造成了难以弥补的破坏。
在区块链技术诞生之前，人类没有任何办法杜绝或识别这类虚假信息。而这个问题不解决，人类社会是根本不可能向大自然学习，构建起具备自磨合、自协调、自组织、自修正、自进化的生态系统，也就是我们说的“信”的见证系统。因为，即使你构建了，也必然失败，没有成功的可能。但是，当区块链技术诞生后，它所涉及到的拜占庭将军问题，完美地解决了这个问题。这种解决模式就叫作“拜占庭共识”，它构建在一种容错规则之上。即使有少部分区块出现虚假信息的错误，也不影响整体的正确性判断。又被称作拜占庭共识算法（Byzantine Fault Tolerance，BFT）。
我们一直在说，区块链技术的最大价值和意义，人类至今还没有真正意识到。指的也就是这个层面。只有当区块链技术出现后，人类向大自然学习，构建一种类似森林生态、深海生态的人类社会分布式自组织生态的可能性，才第一次真真切切的呈现出来。人类发展的大跃迁、人类文明的大升华才有可能。
最后，还是以前面“神赠金条”的比方为例，来说明这三条核心原则，在自组织系统中的实际效用。
第一原则，7个人的利益是共享的，这样，他们7个人才都会将自己的信息无保留分享。第二原则，7个人之间，信息可以及时用手机交流，这样，才能保障系统决策的高效。第三原则，7个人分享、交流的信息一定不能有虚假，否则，其他人就再也不相信他。这个利益共同体就不能再存在了。
在这三原则基础上，假设他们的决策并不顺利。比如，7个人到了乙3处，发现合7人之力也无论如何推不倒那棵树。这时，7个人就会立即纠错，看看刚才其它另外6个点还有没有可能。结果发现乙5处面临的峭壁，搭一个人梯有可能翻上去。于是，大家会立即去往乙5处再尝试…… 不断试错、不断纠错，最后，只要神说的至少有一条路可以到达是正确的，无论经历多少次试错、纠错，最终都能成功。“蜂群思维”、“生态思维”的原理都是如此。
明确了这样三个核心原则后，不仅在元宇宙数字地球中，任何人都有可能去构建一种“信”的见证体系。而且这种模式的见证系统，只要大方向是正确的，是符合时代发展根本趋势的，最终一定会走向成功。为什么，就因为它具备自磨合、自协调、自组织、自修正、自进化功能。就像上面的比方那样，可以不断地试错、纠错，不断调整、修正，最后，让自己像所有自然界生态系统那样，找到平衡、健康、可持续发展的大道。
（未完待续）
