In the past few days, I've finally been able to wake up early and watch the never-ending flow of traffic across the Straits of Malacca. Under the billowing smoke and amidst the blaring horns, ferries cross the horizon from east to west, and then back from west to east. From steam engines to GPT, from the East India Company to DAO organizations, centuries of vast oceans and big waves have all become fleeting memories.
Today, let's look at what defines the Era of Wisdom?
First and foremost, we need to understand the distinction between knowledge and wisdom. According to the DIKW hierarchy in epistemology, data serves as the raw material being collected. This data, when processed logically, turns into information. Knowledge is then the refined structure of information, answering the questions of why and how. Wisdom, on the other hand, pertains to the application of knowledge and, in some instances, predicting the future. We can loosely define "wisdom" as something akin to intelligence – an application and future prediction model of knowledge that is machine-readable and verifiable.
In layman's terms, wisdom is a form of intelligence, but it is a type of intelligence that machines can recognize and verify. It is similar to the unique knowledge capability humans possess. What distinguishes it from knowledge is its inherent intelligence, more than just vast knowledge. And what differentiates it from intelligence is that it's not solely about humans; it's also machine-related. This wisdom has a certain machine-verifiable consensus. To distinguish this wisdom from knowledge and intelligence, we introduce the concept of "wisdom".
Let's look at some characteristics of the Era of Wisdom from different societal perspectives:
- Technologically, knowledge production will be greatly enhanced by machines, and naturally, more consensus-driven wisdom will emerge. With the help of machines, this wisdom will become a new high-value medium and drive societal progress. From the Industrial Revolution to the Information Revolution, to the Knowledge Revolution, a common theme emerges: when the efficiency and method of knowledge production are revolutionized, the opposite happens – a plethora of high-value, strongly consensus-driven wisdom arises in the system. In essence, machines can not only recognize and learn knowledge but also predict and apply it to some extent. And this future-oriented wisdom, considering certain rules and economics, will emerge in new decentralized systems.
- Economically, wisdom will undoubtedly play a strong driving role in the future economy, and the scale and speed of this wisdom economy will exceed our expectations. If we liken new machines to new steam engines, then this wisdom is the fundamental driving force of these new engines. During the industrial age, we created and captured value by improving efficiency from point A to point B in physical space. Our economy was defined by this physical uplift. The previous era, the information age, reformed the economy based on the efficiency of transferring information from point A to point B. In the Era of Wisdom, transformations aren't just linear – they're a complete dimensional overhaul.
- From a governance perspective, this era of "wisdom" demands a lot in terms of our order and rules. The co-governance of humans and machines is a distinguishing feature. This governance isn't just targeted at humans, but also at machines, and the governing principles of human-machine interactions. This presents a significant challenge. Both traditional and new public authority bodies must grapple with defining the just and unjust nature of this wisdom, and how to strike a balance between pluralism and establishing consensus rules across different cultural backgrounds. This wisdom directly impacts our definitions of rights and legitimacy, challenging traditional governance rules and methods.
- In the era of "wisdom," originality, openness, and entanglement will evidently become keywords in culture. While it's challenging to precisely describe culture, personally, I resonate with the Rhizome Theory's depiction. On one hand, our root culture delves deeper. Wisdom will delve into the depths of cultures. To some extent, wisdom will encourage many cultures to root deeper because only such cultures will be more stable. In many ways, predictions made using wisdom will relate more to the past.
In the not-too-distant future, in a decentralized system, while the production of new knowledge becomes ubiquitous, the emergence of wisdom is even more prolific. Capturing or translating the value of this wisdom will likely be straightforward. Verifiable computation will greatly accelerate this trend.
For us, using machines for knowledge production becomes very simple, and much of our wisdom is stimulated after being recognized by machines. We will use machines for collective wisdom production. Of course, for machines, self-production of wisdom is probably possible, and the autonomous production of knowledge is inevitable.
Just like capitalism and the industrial age defined a two-dimensional economic structure, the Era of Wisdom resembles a transformation into a three-dimensional economy. More importantly, monetizing wisdom is direct. In an economic system where wisdom is directly monetized, production efficiency and relations are revolutionized by machines from multiple dimensions, and this happens at an exponential rate.
In the Era of Wisdom, the real economy will be creative. Non-creative economies will be replaced at an unexpectedly efficient rate. Phenomena where giant economic entities can be born in a day will become common, with creative economies emerging in transcendent forms throughout. When wisdom is directly monetized, free competition becomes inevitable, and the explosive power of genuinely creative economies will exceed the constraints of traditional economic rules. Innovations on the fringes of the economy will appear in forms beyond our expectations, and traditional antitrust laws will find it hard to regulate them. Of course, if we don't consider legal constraints, the wealth disparity in this world could be shocking.
For most people, mastering knowledge production tools and then sparing time for self and collective wisdom production or co-creation is a new creative model that matches the future era and is basically a more optimized way for humans to produce. For machines, many machine clusters will be sought after by various wisdom economies, especially in a phase where energy is still limited. To some extent, the efficiency of the birth of these wisdom economies will far exceed the efficiency at which companies were born in the capitalist era of the past few centuries.
In the era of "wisdom," the generation of new concepts will become very common. They'll come not just from humans but more so from machines. The social order of co-governance between humans and machines will need redefining, which will also demand certain things from jurisprudence. Leading the way in this aspect are concepts like trust-minimization introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto, as well as methods for permission minimization, and considerations for decentralized identity in decentralized societies. Indeed, the iterative nature of recent GPTs has sparked widespread discussion on the internet.
A principle to consider here is ownership. Not only should our money be ours, but our speech should also be ours. In other words, we should have more autonomy over our thoughts and expressions. Under this assumption, the order of wisdom in the future decentralized era might emerge from collaborative efforts between humans and machines. While we hope for a smooth transition, such expectations might be unrealistic.
In the not-so-distant future, a decentralized society awaits us. It isn't a fully automated anarchic state, nor is it a completely tangible oligarchic power structure. Instead, it represents the birth of a new governance structure where diverse approaches coexist. This governance is driven by wisdom itself, representing a paradigm shift in order at an organizational level. It will restrict not only machines but also humans and older power structures.
On the other hand, there's the middle layer, the stem of our culture, characterized by diversity and entanglement. Different cultural systems intertwine and overlap, building the expansive and connective force of the stem. In comparison to the past, wisdom might be very open in this modern cultural context, especially in a future decentralized society comprised of individual stem communities. The dynamism of culture will be greatly invigorated.
At the community level, this culture emphasizes openness and compatibility. With the continuous emergence of new wisdom, openness becomes almost inevitable. The closure of culture becomes a symptom of the community. As originality gets stimulated, superhuman and transcendent cultures may replace the hero cultures of the past internet age. More communities or individuals will pursue transcendence at the wisdom level. Over-encouragement of such a culture can lead to the birth of belief communities and hyper-politicization. This openness will also challenge ethics and meaning to a great extent.
To some degree, the era of "wisdom" is challenging our past subjective and objective ethics. Contrary to the idea that philosophy is dead, it's more like a call for the birth of a wisdom-based philosophy.
Indeed, living at the crossroads of such an era is exhilarating. Just like the giant waves I saw on the Atlantic coast in Portugal last year, there's an inexplicable urge to leap off the cliff.
Daring to imagine, 100 years from now, whether we're carbon-based, silicon-based, or X-based, I wonder how they will perceive our current thoughts, words, tools, and society. Regardless, may we become better versions of ourselves and may we navigate this vast ocean and its massive waves in our own unique way.