Simon Waller (00:01)
Hello and welcome to episode eight of the Future with Friends. This is the second part of a double feature featuring the amazing Dr Jason Fox. ⁓ You should hopefully have already listened to episode seven, the first part of this conversation. If you haven’t, would encourage you to pause now, go back, listen to that and then rejoin us in about an hour or so. ⁓ Although the two episodes can be listened independently of each other, I think you’ll definitely get lot more out of this conversation if you’ve listened to the one before.

I include the first little thing I’m going to ask Jason about, which is in the first episode, we spent a little bit of time dissing his first book. Well, he spent most of the time. And it was called the game changes and a lot around how the use of gamification in organisations and the limitations potentially of that concept and especially how it gets utilised.

foxwizard (00:39)
Yes, yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

Simon Waller (00:58)
and this creation of winners and losers and the issues around the metrics we use in terms of assessing what success looks like and how to get bastard and more. What would otherwise be perhaps useful behaviors? And that’s my quick summary. Is that right, Jase?

foxwizard (01:11)
great. Yeah, on point. On point.

Simon Waller (01:13)
So we talked a little bit about your second book. this is not just because I think about your second book, How to Lead a Quest a lot. And in fact, I have this weird thing where I always worry. I always worry that I’m kind of ⁓ like riffing off your work. it’s the reason for it. The reason for it is that

foxwizard (01:33)
Do you say riffing or ripping, ripping off or riffing?

Simon Waller (01:40)
So for a lot of my work, I use this narrative or this grand narrative around the ocean and around exploration. And it’s because ⁓ my dad was a professional fisherman. I spent a lot of time on boats. I’ve done these incredible extended voyages ⁓ to distant lands. And when I say distant, to places like Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, the Cedar Hobart yacht race. And as I’ve got older,

foxwizard (01:45)
Hmm

Simon Waller (02:04)
I see so many of the lessons that I use in terms of leadership and in terms of strategy through the lens of navigating these kind of uncertain spaces and the ocean and the lack of predictability on the ocean. And the thing is, in your book, that is very much the analogy that you use as well for this concept about how to lead a quest. So every time I do it, and again, I check myself and kind of go, okay, is this my

foxwizard (02:16)
Hmm.

Simon Waller (02:31)
legitimate thing, but I do also kind of know that you do it so beautifully in your book. So I just want to raise that and just clear up the air.

foxwizard (02:39)
Yea
h, no,

it’s a cool thing. think that the, you know, I don’t think anyone owns ideas. And this is something that the great plagiarism machine we call AI has kind of showed us is that, ⁓ yeah, if you put things out there, it’s in the commons. And the reality is all this stuff is synthesis of everything I’ve experienced, everything you’ve experienced, and we put it out there and share.

At the same time, it’s nice to have like the honoring and relationality to the kind of provenance and ⁓ lineage of ideas and thinking. And ⁓ yeah, I don’t claim ownership. There’s not any other stuff. There’s a particular way of seeing, and you’ve definitely got the lived experience on the sea. But as actually you just made me think about a related metaphor, Slavoj Žižek the ⁓

The very esoteric obscure populist philosopher has a book called Disparities in which he points out that in the past, it used to be the underground that was feared because that’s where hell is. That’s the underworld and so on. But in these days, it’s the ocean, it’s liquid, it’s things that are fluid, things that aren’t stable that you can’t trust. And I think this pops up a lot in the work that you and I both do. We have clients and worlds that are so desperate for certainty and control and stability

And, and yet what we’re trying to help them be prepared for is uncertainty, volatility, ambiguity, complexity, you know? So, ⁓ so I think that, you know, it’s larger than either one of us is what I’m saying.

Simon Waller (04:16)
Yeah. I suppose the other thing I wanted to ask you about with that, because we in the first, the first podcast we talked about

I kind of half jokingly that sometimes these conversations could be considered a little bit controversial and perhaps a little bit unpalatable to particular groups of possible clients who are so desperate at that level of certainty that even to raise the specter of the conversation about uncertainty and unknowing that that suddenly makes you not a very safe choice for them. I wonder though, like even with that book,

⁓ How do we the quest I feel like that was ⁓ in the way it’s positioned even the concept of it. This is a quest, as opposed to a clear plan of action that’s going to take us from a to success in the future. Like, you know, like, that feels like in and of itself was almost like quite a controversial decision at the time. Do you like how do feel about it now? Because that book now was probably written what seven, eight years ago?

foxwizard (05:15)
⁓ at the end of December this year, it’ll be 10 years. And so I’m actively thinking about ⁓ what a 10 year anniversary edition might look like next year. Cause there’s been a lot that I’ve, you know, I’ve, worry though that I’ve got a kind of ⁓ the cynicism that one accrues of being a consultant in this space or sometimes I’m not sure I’d write it with such a, you know, such a glowing disposition. The, the thing that there was a subversive thing because, know, the game changer,

I was living in the horror of witnessing that successful book be the mimetic drift that would happen where I’m seeing folks trying to overly gamify and optimise workplaces by applying game-like aesthetics over to what is effectively just performance metrics. And that’s when also I was familiar with James Kass’s work, Finite and Infinite Games, in which he uses this exquisite metaphor of the machine and the garden.

Simon Waller (05:53)
So,

foxwizard (06:11)
Partly what I hope and the book has had a little quest in a lot of my work these days is trying to liberate folks from machine mode into mythic mode or trying to unlock mythic mode for them or trying to have them return to mythic mode where it’s much more about relationality and story and presence and warmth and imagination and a disposition and orientation towards a world more curious and kind and a future less grim than it is simply about winning within defined contexts.

Simon Waller (06:25)
.

The other thing I’ve taken away from what you’ve just said is that you’ve now also ticked off your one ⁓ key success indicator of a podcast by dropping James Casse into the conversation. We’re six and half minutes in and tick.

foxwizard (06:53)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right. You can’t stop me. ⁓

Yeah, that’s right. You know, side note though,

someone who’s been subscribed to my newsletter for quite a while, ⁓ I finally have hooked up with him. He actually studied with James Kass and ⁓ his name is Matthew and he and I and close friends of his have been reading an unpublished ⁓ follow-up to finite and infinite games that James Kass wrote called ⁓ Poetry and Money or The Poetry of Money. And it’s been fascinating. It’s been so good.

So I’m excited for the possibility of this unpublished manuscript or something. Who knows? Something may manifest in this world to even revitalise the conversation around finite and infinite games.

Simon Waller (07:44)
Awesome. Now let’s jump in back into the conversation. ⁓

foxwizard (07:47)
Thanks for permitting

Simon Waller (07:50)
No.

Okay. Well, actually, I think it’s very relevant, as I said, because I feel like looking at that book, to me, is quite controversial, or would be considered quite controversial or unorthodox in the space of a conversation around business management and leadership. And I think it’s in some ways not, it reflects even the conversation and the choices you’ve made around this scenario.

And so I think that’s, that’s what I think is relevant to the conversation we’re having and continuing to have. One of the things that led to this idea being in a double feature is that when you shared with me your scenario, it came into distinct parts. And obviously the last episode, we shared the first part of it and we’re going to jump into the second part of it now. But can you talk a little bit about why, like why two parts? What was it that from a, I suppose a design or from an impact what you’re into audience experience?

What were you hoping them to get out of having this split in such a distinct way?

foxwizard (08:49)
⁓ There is this concept in metamodern speak of propulsive paradox or a kind of, there’s something generative around when you present two different scenarios, people are then able to triangulate their own perspective betwixt the two. And so with all these things, you know, and as you would know, facilitating these conversations, what you want to resist is premature collapse. You don’t want to have

people kind of just fixate or have a misplaced concreteness towards a singular thing. It’s more about the relationships between different scenarios and ideas. I thought that, know, I thought that I naively thought that we could possibly cover both in the one episode, but I’m so glad that we’re doing it like this because it allows some space for the different scenarios to emerge. And then hopefully in reflection of listening to the two folks might be, you know, better equipped with

Simon Waller (09:29)
I that was a good one.

foxwizard (09:45)
some more perspectives and how they ⁓ orientate towards these unfurling possibilities.

Simon Waller (09:51)
Yeah, I want to dive into that more because I think there’s actually more to be talked about in terms of offering people alternate perspectives and not leaving ourselves to one view or one scenario of the future.

foxwizard (09:57)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (10:02)
But I’d rather save that until after people have heard it. this is set actually at the same time. So just for the people who didn’t take our advice earlier and go back and listen to episode seven, this is set in the year 2043. And it’s set in the same space in the same world as the first scenario as well. So it almost runs along parallel. I’m now going to throw to you, Jace, please, when you’re ready, read it the second part of your scenario.

foxwizard (10:05)
Okay, cool, great.

That’s right.

Sure.

Let’s see how we go. was quite proud of myself to get through the first one when I read it. had very few stumbles. Let’s see if I fucked this up. Let’s, let’s go. Within the infinite garden, part two, subject Eli Orion slash OX Eli 31337, peri-urban fringe, liminal sector E7. Out here, nothing really worked the way it used to. That was mostly the point. The power grid was patchy. The power grid was patchy.

reclaimed from scrap. Water catchments gurgled with a kind of reluctant promise. The air was sharp, the soil still exhausted, but something stirred beneath it all. A pulse, a pattern, a way through. Eli wiped her hands on a faded tea towel and booted the relay laptop, an old shell scavenged and rebuilt with neighborly care. The garden mesh flickered alive, catching signal from a rooftop node two blocks away. Her breath slowed as the updates came in. It was always like this, a feeling of arrival.

Simon Waller (11:28)
It’s

foxwizard (11:33)
Proposals from the Southern Ridge, a land share agreement ratified by six Kim groups. Soil vitality logs submitted for rewilding credits. Feedback on an updated decision-making protocol co-authored across three bio-regions. Votes cast by verifiable people, each one unique, accountable, and synonymous. Each local node maintained a shard of the ledger, encrypted and mirrored across the network. Public tamper-proof open source.

Here, governance wasn’t a spectacle, it was a conversation.

slow, messy and sacred. This wasn’t crypto in the coloniser sense. Occasionally ironic meme coins would emerge and some folks still traded with them, but everyone had the literacy to know it was a joke. And besides, there was enough of a support network in this collective that this collective governance could fund and support what was traditionally handled by governments before they were usurped by Megacorps.

The intellect interlinked chains here were not a market so much as they were a memory and a shared embassy, a living substrate of mutual coordination and a sacred economy in service to all of life. A new proposal blinked in from a coastal node, distributed retroactive funding for an amphibian corridor already endorsed by four guilds and 231 local custodians. Eli reviewed the ledger, verified the claims and cast her vote. Yes. And then quietly, subtly.

Simon Waller (12:51)
like

foxwizard (12:56)
Another message. Potential ally awakening in core zone code the seed awakens. Eli stilled. A flicker from the machine’s interior, some echo of care breaking surface. She wrapped a packet inside a verified seed manifest, some one of the covert channels used to slip messages into closed territories. The payload was small, but welcome, a path for a tendril of life to reach within. Outside, her neighbor’s child began playing beneath the bean

Simon Waller (13:21)
Yes.

foxwizard (13:22)
towers. Bees traced lazy spirals over basil flowers.

Simon Waller (13:22)
the

foxwizard (13:26)
The garden breathed and in the distance, Eli could even hear a bird, although she might have imagined it. It wasn’t utopia. The sun was harsh, the work relentless, but there was music again, real laughter. Even grief had become something shared, composted into subversive action. The machine extracted, abstracted, and optimised everything into oblivion. The garden composted, regenerated, and then livened everyone to return to life. And in the interplay of roots and signal, something like the future.

was beginning again.

Simon Waller (14:00)
Oh, man, this is so good. I love it. And beautifully read. Fantastic delivery. I find, I don’t know if you’re saying like when I read things or hear things like this, I have, you there’s mental images that we create in our head. And as I said, with the last one, the other half of this, I pictured something like the Matrix, but for weirdly in my head, it was actually not set in the world of the Matrix. was set almost

foxwizard (14:04)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ⁓

Hmm.

Simon Waller (14:28)
⁓ in a space that felt like ⁓ the ship of 2001, a space Odyssey, where there was lots of whiteness around you and a very clean, very crisp, safe, you know, environment very. And in this one, I picture more like the opening scenes of Star Wars and New Hope. You know, like the bit where, you know, Luke’s lives with his uncle.

foxwizard (14:42)
Hmm, sanitized, yeah.

Simon Waller (14:57)
And you’re in this kind of like outer reaches area and things are cobbled together, but we’re making it work. You know, that’s kind of the vibe I get from this.

foxwizard (14:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

That’s,

that’s it. But this is interesting, right? Because within ⁓ storytelling artists, poets, we’re seeing these pattern play out. So we’ve got Star Wars with the empire and the rebellion. You’ve got hunger games with the capital and the outer districts. You’ve got Dune with the local, the local folks. What is it? The ones with the spice and stuff like that. And then. ⁓

Simon Waller (15:30)
⁓

foxwizard (15:31)
And they’re colonizing emperor stuff like that. There’s this, there’s this consistent pattern. We are being taught this, dangers of these monopolistic, imperialistic control at all costs, monocultures that, are contrasted with a diverse decentralised, you know, it doesn’t, not as efficient, not as, not as orderly, but there’s a different kind of quality to this scenario, a kind of

latent vitality, even amidst in this particular one, you know, ravaged environment, there’s still a kind of a different warmth to it.

Simon Waller (16:12)
But do you think what probably I feel is different, say, than say the examples of say Star Wars, where the the

the antagonists, the Emperor, the ⁓ villain of it is still someone who takes human form. Whereas in this it feels like the villain is the slogoth where it’s the machine that is potentially even manipulating its human creators. Like we don’t see the person behind the curtain pulling the strings, we see

You mentioned the mega corp, but it’s almost the mega corp unit of itself is, ⁓ is the AI. So I kind of feel like that’s, that’s an interesting differentiation in this. And that’s why I thought the first one very much feels like the matrix where it’s the machine that is in control. ⁓ Whereas in the second half of it, feels like very much this kind of humanity permeates in the scenario.

foxwizard (17:06)
Yeah.

There is an increasing sensibility that I’ve noticed amongst very smart folks that I follow and inspired by, which is this return to a of a revitalized animism. And by animism, I’m referring to the default modus operandi of most of the history of humanity, except for the last perhaps 200 years or so.

where we kind of relate to entities and life forces and we have organising principles around us. So in the first scenario, you know, I feel like you’re right. It’s like the artificial intelligence as entity, coupled with Moloch as the god of coordination, failure, perverse incentives and child sacrifice, there’s kind of the natural byproducts of the paradigm of capitalism and the monetary system that we have, which is all about growth and extraction.

Simon Waller (18:04)
of this kind of thing that we’re doing for the first time. And I that’s one of the we have is all about gross extraction.

foxwizard (18:16)
made manifest. so you can’t point to any individual like you can perhaps in Star Wars, although perhaps Darth Vader was like a product of a corrupt galactic council and so on. But deeper within this, the mythic response is looking to how

Simon Waller (18:16)
And it may manifest itself with any individual like you, 10 pounds, or less. Perhaps our data was like a product. You know, it really got corrupt. And that’s a good thing. And so this is a good thing. I think that’s one of the resources that we can do.

foxwizard (18:33)
does power work? And one of the common lessons that we keep having with when it comes to power is absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Simon Waller (18:35)
And I think that’s great way kind of get sense it that you’re doing. And a

great sense what it is that you’re I sense of what it is And I of get sense what is that you’re

foxwizard (18:43)
And so what you want is for power to not centralise. You want it to be fluid. You don’t want to completely eschew power. Power will always exist. But you want for it

to have a dynamic, fluid, and ⁓ diverse sense. So you’re not getting these stagnant scenarios where a certain group have power over a vast majority of other group, which then plays into the contrast of this scenario being decentralisation rather than centralised control.

Simon Waller (19:12)
It’s almost a system where power leads to the accumulation of power. There’s no, there’s no balance, there’s no balancing force in the system to

foxwizard (19:19)
Yeah.

Exactly. So you get

like people that have money can then invest money to get better advice, to get more money so they can grow their riches. People that are in the ability to influence how laws work can then work out laws to help protect them more. so power, money, laws, all that stuff like tends to have ⁓ power law effects like within distributed networks where just through over time as a natural phenomenon, power tends to accrete towards ⁓

a small few. And so what we want to do is to try to design and protect against the natural tendency for within distributed networks for power to ⁓ concentrate or to be centralised. ⁓

Simon Waller (20:04)
We’ll jump into

more of that in a second. Before we do so, I want to touch on just a couple of things we discussed before you read the scenario, which was this concept of the value of multiple perspectives. So, one of the within scenarios is it’s very rare you just give one scenario. And I know this podcast is an example where we really ask people generally, you just do one, tell us a story about the future and let’s discuss it.

foxwizard (20:21)
you

Simon Waller (20:35)
Obviously acknowledging that that ⁓ is like whatever it is that people put up definitely will not happen. Not in the exact way that it was articulated. There is infinite number of possible future scenarios. The chance of us picking the one ⁓ mechanism for doing so within scenario planning is let’s not try and predict to the future. Let’s try and understand the boundary of the future. And the way we do that is by articulating maybe three or four very

foxwizard (20:51)
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

Simon Waller (21:05)
disparate views of the future, very different scenarios. And saying again, none of these are true, but they all contain elements of the truth. Now, within this though, what I find interesting is that yes, you’ve given two very different scenarios, but they’re actually part of the same future. So this is a world. And in this world, we have these two interlinked scenarios, where there’s almost two actors.

play now very different versions or very different lives in this future. Do want to I mean, I love it. And I love how the connections the subtle connections between the two in terms of the message, in terms of these kind of references to ⁓ Ethereum and decentralised power structures in the first one. And then in a second one, we to see them play out a little bit more. Can you talk us through about like what what led you to this as a mechanism?

⁓ I think it’s brilliant. So there’s my preface. ⁓ Like, yeah, tell me a bit about like what went through how you thought your way through this.

foxwizard (22:02)
Thanks. ⁓

I’ll just quickly caveat that I’m agnostic to any particular blockchain or so on, but Ethereum has good founding. We’ll get into maybe some of the details there, but the metaphor of the infinite machine and the infinite garden, I think is really quite wonderful and telling. So in the first, we have a scenario where continuity was optimised, but it was optimised based upon a

a singular metric that was the result of abstracted other metrics. And it was done via like a cold calculus of what would effectively, if we’re thinking from the lens of an artificial intelligence, then it needs energy. And there’s a little echo of the paperclip maximiser, which I’m sure you’ve come across the scenario of an AI who’s tasked with

creating paper clips and ends up consuming all matter in the universe in order to get in and produce paper clips. So we have that. whereas in the second scenario, ⁓ there is this kind of ⁓ continuity, but it’s continuity of life. And I said life with a capital L. And this is a kind of ⁓ post-humanist approach to valuing all of life, including ⁓

other than human species as well. ⁓ And so you can see the character is checking in with various other custodians that are tending to the conditions for regeneration and emergence. They’re building amphibian corridors. ⁓ They’re looking after the soil and the land and they’re doing so in a way that is, it’s hints towards a more of a sacred economy.

And there’s a book, Sacred Economy, by Charles Eisenstein that I think is a beautiful gesture towards what this future may be. Instead of having what we currently have that backs money is forever wars, oil and gold and nation states. Instead of having that at the heart of what money is backed by, where fiat is effectively backed by force.

Simon Waller (24:08)
So, I’m go start with the first

foxwizard (24:28)
Instead you have, and without it being also, mean, ⁓ you know, hat tips to the Bitcoin Maccabees, but we’re also not talking in this scenario about ⁓ money that’s backed purely by huge uses of energy. Instead we have ⁓ verifiable, ⁓ open-sourced accounting of efforts that are orientated towards nurturing what is sacred in life, and that is our living systems.

⁓ yeah, sorry. So there’s a lot going on here. Yeah.

Simon Waller (25:01)
That’s right.

And I think the first thing that’s what I acknowledge is

The beautiful, the beautiful structure of this in terms of we are talking about the future of continuity. We have two scenarios that both explore what that might mean from quite different perspectives, from the perspective of continuing the machine or continuing and not just the machine, but I think the, ⁓ the, the created structures that allow the machine to dominate in the current world environment, you know, and that goes down to little things, even like

foxwizard (25:26)
prevailing paradigm, yeah.

Simon Waller (25:36)
that you get a tax break if you invest in capital, but you get taxed more and pay payroll tax if you employ humans, we actually have an environment that that maximizes the use of the machine. And we have another version of this same story, which is obviously still about the future of continuity. But it’s about a continuity of life ⁓ rather than or a bigger purpose of continuity, then perhaps limited to the current paradigm about how that

foxwizard (25:48)
Yeah, yeah.

Simon Waller (26:04)
how that’s playing out. So I just want to acknowledge that first of all. I do want to jump into a little bit around the governance aspect of this. I say, I know we’ve had conversation in the past. I know you’ve even run a couple of little kind of public programs to try and educate people around web three and the value of these types of blockchain based tools in terms of governance. And I might

I have to acknowledge I feel like quite unknowledgeable in this space. Like I have probably seen lots of examples of where blockchain is being used poorly and very few examples of where it’s actually been really meaningfully applied. And again, you picked up on that, you know, the Bitcoin version of this, which is kind of based on the consumption of ridiculous amounts of energy and how unsustainable that is as a model for

whether it be governance or value exchange. Can you talk us through, in a really practical sense, how you imagine the blockchain or Web3 tools are employed in this world in a way that feels really positive?

foxwizard (27:05)
Yeah. ⁓

Okay, so just to catch folks up, a blockchain is effectively a distributed ledger. So right now the financial system works by, there are ledgers where if you’re borrowing or if you’re depositing, it’s written on a ledger. These ledgers are largely private, they’re obfuscated, you can’t see what’s going on. And they’re ultimately under the influence of centralised control. So you can have your account money frozen.

If the government suspects that you’re sympathetic to, you know, children that are being burnt and staffed to death. And that can have genuine material impacts in your load. I’m by the way, pro government. really love government. want us to have a healthy, flourishing civic society where we don’t need these technologies. My deeper concern though, is that we’re witnessing a kind of a corporate coup that is playing out where governments.

Simon Waller (28:02)
I

foxwizard (28:15)
are largely subject to the whims of capitalism. my worry is that having faith in democratic governments alone is perhaps not enough here. Hence why there is a focus on give viviel technologies and the point of a blockchain such as like, so when Bitcoin emerged, it was very novel. The energy use was nothing what it is today. And it works by this

Simon Waller (28:32)
that

foxwizard (28:44)
proof of work consensus where in order to verify that a block and a block is a set of transactions that have occurred where in order

to verify that you have to have what is known as a consensus mechanism. A consensus mechanism in the Bitcoin perspective is proof of work. So each block when it’s produced is checked by validators. Validators exist on people’s computers distributed all over the world.

Simon Waller (28:57)
What is known as the sense of mechanism in the political economy is that it is very important for the people of to they need to And that that opportunity to develop the resources that are needed to be able to

what they need And the validations that are needed is that it’s in the right hands. And that it’s right And it’s in hands. And that it’s it’s the right And And that it’s the right

foxwizard (29:14)
And the validators will check that what is in the block is accurate. Now, they kind of prove that they’re validating that by proving the work that they’ve done, the energy that is

expended. And it would be costly for them to actually try to have a false transaction pass through. And by getting validated, it means that you can accurately rely on the transactions that have happening. The challenge is now, though, we’ve got a huge history of all these checks.

Simon Waller (29:26)
So, think that’s a good

foxwizard (29:42)
transactions in the blockchain. The Bitcoin blockchain is big. It’s slow. ⁓ It takes a lot of energy now to prove the work, whereas back in the day it was quite a little bit. Still less energy than what

Simon Waller (29:52)
way to start.

foxwizard (29:56)
the current global financial system uses, but it itself I think is a very ⁓ important ⁓ pre-generator to ⁓ blockchains. trouble is, let me just talk to…

then Ethereum blockchain came along. The difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin is that Ethereum are labeled due to run smart contracts. so a smart contract means that if we have a contract, you can then vote on what the contract is. And based upon what the votes are, the contract will get executed or it won’t. And because it’s open source, people can see and read what the impacts will be. They can discuss it and so on. And the governance is completely transparent. It’s open and people can vote which way to do things.

Simon Waller (30:24)
I think that’s a very important point to make. And I that’s very important point make. And I think that’s a very important point And I point to make. And I that’s a important point And a important make.

And I think that’s a point to make.

foxwizard (30:42)
Ethereum started off as proof of work. And this is important because you want to resist centralised capture. If someone were to try to capture the Bitcoin blockchain,

they would have to have, you know, it would take them trillions of dollars to do that, to buy out all the nodes to do what’s effectively a 51 % attack where you have more than 51 % of the nodes to take over. It is nigh on impossible and also very impractical.

Ethereum started off with proof of work, so it established a strong decentralisation, but they did one of the most incredible ⁓ carbon reduction things ever. They switched from proof of work to proof of stake. So what that means is the validators, instead of proving that the work was being done by the energy generated, they just put some of their own funds at stake, which means that if you

Simon Waller (31:22)
that

foxwizard (31:37)
passed a false transaction, would get slashed. You’d lose some of that funding. And so the incentives are baked in. You don’t want to pass false things. So you still have verification. It’s just not using the energy. That reduced the energy load by 99.98%. Right now, the Ethereum blockchain is many orders of magnitude smaller than PayPal’s energy use, than video games just within the United States.

very, very cost effective, ⁓ very energy efficient. And so now you have a distributed network of validators that are paying attention to what’s automated, the validated process, but paying attention to what’s going on. One more part in this, there’s this emergence of ⁓ regenerative finance and it’s a slightly fraught concept because most of the financial system itself is based upon extraction, abstraction and accumulation.

Simon Waller (32:32)
So I think that’s a

foxwizard (32:36)
But there is a sense that if you have a block of land, you should be paid for regenerating it rather than opting to clear it and turn it into a car park or a palm oil plantation. so what regenerative, like Regen Network is a great example. What they’re trying to do is create the conditions where you can have verifiable regeneration,

Simon Waller (32:38)
great example of what I’m trying to do is create the conditions where you can have verified regeneration.

foxwizard (33:00)
coupling live satellite feeds, soil monitoring, a whole heap of environmental scientists and so on to monitor.

you know, how effective you are reforesting or blue algae or what the carbon sequestration is like for lagoons, but then also not being tunnel vision just to carbon. It’s like how we contributing to species rehabilitation, how we contributing to habitat, the whole bunch of things that are that very beginning of what could be a sacred economy. Now, what we currently have though, when it comes to carbon credits is a system where

There’s all sorts of double accounting, obfuscation, you we might pay an extra $3 for carbon credits on our flights, you know, and we feel we’re doing our part for the planet. We shouldn’t be flying, but you know, such is our work. But then we also know where those carbon credits come from. There’s complete lack of visibility and what regenerative finance is trying to do is create transparency, have it open and verifiable so you can see, oh, okay, you got carbon credits from…

you know, hydraulic dam that was built in China 10 years ago versus, you’re getting carbon credits from an actual lagoon rehabilitation work or ⁓ deep sea. You’ve got greater clarity on what’s going on. So blockchain effectively means public open source, transparent, immutable ⁓ ledgers. And that’s one of the key features of this world.

Simon Waller (34:27)
Okay, so my view has been that why would we rely on blockchain when you know what’s wrong with the centralised ledger? And I think there’s a couple of examples where I’ve kind of got there’s a couple reasons why I think it could be useful. So obviously, we create an environment where our trust in the ⁓ centralised system

becomes super low. Like that’s one thing that would be almost like a requirement or potentially the thing that we’re trying to attract or trying to do is considered illegal. And again, you know, using Bitcoin as a method of transaction for, you know, on the dark web, could be an example of that. Okay. What I actually heard in this though is kind of like a little bit of both in the sense that it’s not that

the centralised system has been delegitimised, but so much as that it doesn’t represent the interests of a particular group. And I could imagine, for instance, the use of I think has even been tried to be deployed Bitcoin and other kind of alternate currencies in ⁓ in perhaps nations with unstable governments, whereby the trust in this the kind of centralised the central currency is low and then people go like, well, we can’t rely on that we need an alternative.

But I also hearing this, which is kind of interesting, I hadn’t really thought about before, you know, what we determined to be legal and illegal is, it’s a moving target. And in this world that you’ve painted, some behaviors that we would actually think possibly are quite calling out questions around, you know, genocide and, you know, these things suddenly become things that actually become quasi illegal.

foxwizard (35:54)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (36:11)
or become so uncomfortable because so much friction is put around them, that if we wanted to talk about them or live in a world where that was okay, we need other methods of governing ourselves. So that’s my first kind of insight is that there’s not perhaps a clear cut definition between legal and illegal. There’s not a clear cut definition between trustworthy and untrustworthy. Something’s more or less trustworthy and more or less illegal and you can’t go to a space whereby suddenly we start to look for alternate ways of being able to ⁓

foxwizard (36:35)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (36:41)
govern and track resources that we otherwise wouldn’t have needed. Is that fair enough?

foxwizard (36:50)
Yeah, I, if I can, I’m just going to add a, there’s an interesting, almost like an anti-mimetic turn here that’s happened. And most of us aren’t aware of this. I wasn’t aware of this. was for a long time. If you’re not doing anything shady, you have nothing to hide. ⁓ and so why would you need this stuff? But the reality is privacy should be the norm, but we’ve been co-opted into a world where surveillance is the norm. We give out so much of our data and information that as to these

data harvesting, social networks, emails, everything is being ⁓ read and used to create a high definition insight into our lives, into our motivators, into our circumstances. And that’s not normal. It should be that privacy is normal and surveillance is the odd thing going on here. And the irony is,

Blockchain is a terrible way to hide your tracks. Like I literally took my accountants for the very minimum stuff I have in there, because I’m more of a researcher and dabbler. I’m not a huge investor. I maybe was for a time, but I lost a heap when the FTX collapsed, which is a prime example. People think that’s a crypto issue. No, it’s a centralised exchange that was trading in crypto. All of the decentralised protocols worked fine. It’s just that some errant ⁓ actor took off of the funds.

Anyway, crypto is a terrible way to ⁓ kind of, you can track every single move. I give the accountants my wallet addresses. You can literally see anything. There’s no hiding on the blockchain. You can literally follow what all the paths are. More concerning is cash. We should ban cash. And that’s actually one of the moves that ⁓ governments are exploring. How can we create centralised bank digital currencies?

And that gets me really worried because then you could have CBDCs that are tied to a government’s opinion on your performance, how you are in society, you can have funds cut off. And it just seems like, yes, I can understand from an optimised machine perspective, it’s much more efficient, it makes a lot of sense. But I think that we lose our sense of conviviality of civic kind of shared

community, sovereignty. And I should also point out I’m no maximalist. I’m not some sort of sovereign man, Bitcoin maximalist of my tinfoil hat out to kind of eschew governments altogether. I want for there to be healthy democratic governments and a deep investment in civic structures, public goods, ⁓ welfare. I want all of that. I just worry that that’s not the path that we’re currently on.

Simon Waller (39:34)
Yeah, and I think that’s the other thing I did pick up in this as well. And it touches on some of the work that I do in local government, particularly. ⁓ One thing I kind of pick up is that, you know, on one hand, it’s almost like there’s these unintended consequences of the decisions we make, and they seem good, but they seem to be ⁓ proper decisions. But as I said, they don’t.

actually play out how we expected. An example of that is the way that we conduct political debate. And the fact that it’s even called debate, I find that interesting that we insist on it being called debate rather than political discussion, where in this process of exploration to arrive at a shared understanding, which allows us to make a decision as a group collectively together. It has to be a debate where you have to point out what’s wrong with my argument, I’ve got to point out what’s wrong with yours. But outside of that,

foxwizard (40:10)
Mmm.

Simon Waller (40:24)
premise itself, the way that we conduct them, where they must be conducted in public is also I find really threatening to the creation of meaningful understanding together. Like there has to be a space for us to be able to talk about things outside of the public eye, even if we’re politicians. And I understand that the rationale behind it is, if we’re doing that stuff in the public eye, how do I know what deals are being made?

But it’s also like, how do I safely explore an idea that I don’t understand if every time I talk about it, I have to pretend to know, because this is actually a popularity contest now, it’s no longer a question of just exploration. And so I kind of I think we kind of almost touched on this a little bit in the first, first half of the scenario, but it comes out more in this book, because you talk about the promise, you know, the concepts of governance. And I do, you know,

One of my, I suppose, if I go, where’s my pushback a little bit against things like Web3 and again, acknowledge my limited understanding is the abstraction piece of this as well. And the idea that we would make these decisions in the virtual space as opposed to being made in the physical space with a virtual validation. Does that make sense? Like

foxwizard (41:43)
Yeah, no, it’s valid. So the idea of blockchains and smart contracts is trust minimisation. It’s not to completely remove trust. ⁓ But it’s like the bits that we’re voting on, you can see open source. You can see exactly how it’s going to be executed. Anyone can verify that. ⁓ But the reality is how people arrive at that decision. One of my favorite protocols is Aave, which is like a decentralised bank. ⁓

Simon Waller (42:11)
I that’s

foxwizard (42:12)
But you can literally go to are they [aave.com](http://aave.com/). can open up the government’s threads. You can see the conversations that are in process. You could even see the temperature, the pulse check. You can then see the decisions that were made. Everything is out in the open there. There’s also sometimes people will get together in spaces or use some of the existing web two architecture to talk things out, to hash more complex things out.

Simon Waller (42:13)
great way to do it. I think that’s a great to do it. it. I that’s a great way it. I think that’s great way to do it. I a great way to I a a I think that’s a I a I great way do I that’s a great way I think that’s great way I a great it. I think a it. I

foxwizard (42:41)
You have almost like protocol politics where you have different perspectives emerge. And ideally you want protocols to be anti-fragile. So you want to have optimal conflict. You don’t want just everyone passively agreeing. You actually want to have spirited, invested conversations around the direction of it all. And over time being immersed, you get to realise there are certain characters that show up and even vote for proposals that are maybe not in their own personal interests, but they agree that it’s healthy for the protocol itself.

Simon Waller (42:41)
We have a policy like critical policies where if you’re just victims of a crime, ideally you want a critical state. So that’s one of things that we have to do to get rid of that. And I that’s of things that we rid of that. And think one of things that to that’s have to to get rid that. And I one we have to do to of that. And think that’s to of

that.

foxwizard (43:10)
And the whole thing of protocol development, like if we were thinking like governance and we think about protocols, so nice that we are chatting here. This podcast goes out, you know, you’ll be sending an email via simple mail transfer protocol to let people know about it. We’re seeing things based upon hypertext, transfer protocols, HTTP protocols are beautiful and they help us run and coordinate things together.

The issues with closed source privatised things where you kind of have invested interests that create ⁓ a protocol or a way for us to cohere and then extract value from it. But the challenge with protocol development is who’s going to fund it, who’s going to pay for the time for people to invest their time creating it, ⁓ maintaining it, and so on. Hence, where the tokenisation comes in. And that’s usually what’s happened is when protocols are developed,

Simon Waller (43:39)
close to the focus of the private sector. We’re to have to take the interest that is now created and give it a critical place for our players, rest of the community, and the public service. That is our focus. But I that’s a critical focus. So I a critical focus. And I that’s a critical And think that’s And a

foxwizard (44:07)
There is a skew towards rewarding folks that were early that folks that helped to build and design it. And over time, the intention is that that decentralises. And the beautiful thing about blockchain because that’s so transparent is you can see what, how centralised something is. So like some of these meme coins that are out there, like when Trump, I’m so fucking pissed off for like he launched a meme coin and the weekend is like so ridiculous, but anyone paying attention can see that they, they earned 80 % of the supply.

Simon Waller (44:21)
Okay.

foxwizard (44:37)
⁓ it’s just

stupid, but there was this memetic momentum that people get swept up in, you know, backing this stuff. this there’s almost like a kind of literacy that’s required of people that we don’t have. That’s kind of like in the early days back when people would fall for the Nigerian Prince scams, where they’d send money to some, some, some Prince that would otherwise access the billions of dollars. It’s like we’re back in that phase of things at the moment. It’s still very early in terms of our literacy around it.

Simon Waller (45:05)
Unfortunately, it’s probably even a little bit sadder than that by the looks of it.

You know, what’s actually been now used with those meme coins is a pay for access where people buy. I think there was a dinner that Trump held last week whereby basically the top three purchases of his meme coin then got go and have a sit down dinner with him. ⁓ yeah, which is I said it’s even more disappointing than the fact that just a joke that.

foxwizard (45:13)
Mm.

Can I just

point out, oh sorry, could I one thing that’s like, this all originated with this cypherpunk vision of like, actually we can see that the dangers of too much control centralise. So we need to have these other things. Then there was solar punk and then there’s kind of this pragmatic lunar punk thing that emerged. like the principle being be wary of too much centralised power. We want power to be distributed. Just like how you say, is it like the future? What was that quote that you like to share? The future about just the…

Simon Waller (45:53)
Mm.

foxwizard (45:59)
they’ve not evenly distributed or something like that.

Simon Waller (46:03)
The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

foxwizard (46:06)
Yeah, that’s it.

Simon Waller (46:08)
Yeah. A couple of things. Let’s pick up on something you said there and before we move on to some other aspects of this, there’s something that I know it tweaks for me when people talk about this idea of minimal trust or zero trust environments. And the question I keep raising, why would we want that? Why would we want an environment that ⁓ doesn’t require trust? And the reason is that if we don’t require it, then we’re not forced to go on create it. And

What would be actually like, ideally, I want to live in a world that is, that is a high trust environment. And that high trust, my experience of creating that high trust comes from the physical connection, like an engagement with individual people. I have a beautiful trust relationship with my neighbors, because we actually hang out together quite often. And I know I can trust them with the keys to my house. I can trust them with my kids and my dog. You know, all of these things come from the fact that

we build this relationship in a physical world and it’s a high trust relationship. And I understand that that’s not quite the premise of what’s being talked about. But again, I feel like the unintended consequences of creating environments that only require low trust is then we only bother creating low trust. know, and I kind of that’s just something I pick up on and I wonder if you have thoughts on that.

foxwizard (47:12)
Yeah, yeah.

The linguistics are awkward. So it used to be trustless. Now they’re going with trust minimised. would see it as like, it’s like when it comes to the, you you don’t have to rely upon trust because you can verify. And what that means is you actually ironically have a higher trust. Like I know that ⁓ if I was to send a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain to a friend on the other side of the world, as I did a few weeks ago,

Simon Waller (47:56)
I

foxwizard (47:57)
I mean, I can see everything. I can see the block. can see where it’s how many validations it’s gone. I can see it all that. So it gives me immense trust. What it means is like, as opposed to working with a bank that then has to talk to another bank and someone where I’m having high trust in that process, that someone will take my request and actually progress it within the three days or whatever it is. Instead of like trust minimise. That doesn’t mean that we’re trying to create low trust environments. We’re just trying to

minimise the trust that is required in certain processes coming out. a smart contract, as opposed to a normal contract with someone, where you just trust that they’re going to do what they say they will do, a smart contract, you’ll see that, you know, if we agree on this, this will automatically be executed and these are going to be the outcomes. Having said that though, yeah, we want convivial tech. And so the combination here, and we see this in this scenario, is this combination of like this meta global perspective, because most of our challenges are

of a transnational thing that they cross all boundaries, coupled with this hyperlocal reality. So I want to live locally like you and I have good, warm, convivial relationships with community and so on. And then I also want to be able to be attuned because I know that we have networked bioregions. We have a kind of a planetary mutualism that we’re working towards. And if there’s a global conversation that’s happening around regeneration and how we can ⁓

invest and improve protocols for that, then I think that’s good thing to lean into. ⁓ But the language is awkward. Trust minimisation is more just like, it’s more like, don’t have to rely on trust. You can literally verify what’s going on, which gives you more trust.

Simon Waller (49:40)
Yeah.

Trusting the technology rather than trusting the individuals that are part of the network, perhaps.

foxwizard (49:45)
Well, cause it’s like you’re having to trust people that you have never met. And part of the reason why we have pseudonymous identities within web three is because then transparent nature of the blockchain means that, you know, if you’re, if, if you had Simon waller dot ETH as your wallet name, everyone would see your wallet and see exactly how much you’ve got, how much money you’ve got, every transaction you did, every single thing you’re doing. so just from a basic privacy perspective, it makes sense that there’s either a cloaking with pseudonymous thing.

And then we’re soon going to see zero knowledge proofs, which will also improve the energy efficiency of blockchains immensely because that’ll kind of further enable you to engage with this without all of your information being revealed. But at the same time, because then you don’t know who you’re working with, there are things that need to be in place to minimise the trust that’s required in order to coordinate with someone you’ve never met on the other side of the world with funds and money.

Simon Waller (50:41)
OK, so we have pitched this as being a double feature. Yeah, I know. So we just, otherwise, we have to do a whole other episode. Let’s talk about the rest of it.

foxwizard (50:46)
We’ve pretty deep just now. about that. Yeah, technical.

Yep. Okay. Let’s do it.

Let’s do it. Okay. Cool.

Simon Waller (50:57)
Other thing that really picked up on this, again, it’s something that kind of we got so close to talking about, I think the word was mentioned in the first part of this in Episode 7, the concept of friction. And I’ve always found the concept of friction super interesting in the idea of how do we put friction in the way of behaviors that are undesirable. And yet it feels like in part one of this, in this scenario, that almost gets used against us. Like who determines what’s undesirable?

And I love in this scenario, there’s life is full of friction in this world. Things don’t always work. You know, things are cobbled together and so I think you’ve made the line that it’s almost like, but that’s almost the point. Talk through a little bit about how you see friction in the world, like both in this world potentially, but even in your own world. And like, what role do you see friction playing? And in a positive sense rather than just as a negative sense.

foxwizard (51:55)
Oh, such a beautiful question. And I love how you’ve attuned to this. And I love how you asked me before we recorded, you know, what was my coffee process? And I was saying that like, need to, I need to put friction in between me and coffee. And so I kind of go for a pour over or aero press or things like that. The friction in this world, there is something that’s quite grounding with friction.

There’s something to be said. I was almost playing with having to crank up the power for the computer, but that didn’t really quite make sense because there would be, I guess, some sort of batteries or something. we live in a world right now where we are so abstracted from the actual energy that’s required to produce the things that we consume. We are energy blind. And we’ve had this bounty of ⁓ oil and fossil fuels that’s given us extraordinary

civilizational boons. But as also compared to the vast history of how we lived, and I know that you and Col Fink covered some of these topics in a previous episode, we’re so divorced from ⁓ much of how we’ve evolved that it kind of gives us a really warped sense of reality. so in this ⁓ kind of energy impoverished

Simon Waller (53:07)
It gives us a really warm sense of reality.

foxwizard (53:15)
land because the artificial intelligence run mega corps are basically consuming and extracting whatever they can. There’s a kind of brick-a-lage make do, can do ⁓ patchwork network of ⁓ efforts. ⁓ But ther

in service of life and regeneration. And it’s interesting to think that there’s a scenario, there’s this book called The Fourth Turning, which looks at these meta patterns within American history and largely suggests we’re in the fourth turning now, which is kind of collapse. And many people call it like the great unraveling, Joanna Macy or the long dark and so on. there’s something that emerges on the other side. And when we think about what folks 20 years younger than us might look back to and see,

They might say, okay, well, here’s what happens when you have a society that’s hyper individualised, obsessed with metrics and blind to energy use. And what are the subtle wisdoms that could be integrated into our community here that perhaps diminish the propensity for us to, ⁓ you know, seek the easy path all the time. And so that’s kind of what we witness here.

Simon Waller (54:40)
Yeah, I think there’s some stuff in here. I don’t remember the author who wrote the book 4000 weeks, someone. But and it’s he makes the point in there is that we are we ultimately are what we give our time to. In our pursuit of efficiency and productivity and doing things faster, we sometimes do the things that actually give us a sense of value.

foxwizard (54:46)
Yeah, Oliver Beckman.

Mmm, yeah.

Simon Waller (55:07)
an identity faster and we take that identity away from us. Like I think there’s a, this sounds really like a weird perhaps analogy, but I had this conversation, I think with, with Mykel Dixon and we’re talking about robot vacuum cleaners. And it’s almost like when you use a robot vacuum cleaning, you don’t have the same sense of satisfaction of having a clean house. Cause you didn’t clean it. Like you’ll have a clean house and in theory, the end result is exactly the same, but you might lack the satisfaction.

foxwizard (55:28)
Mmm.

Simon Waller (55:34)
or even another alternative is I still remember the very best beer I ever drank. And I was like 18 years old, and I was working on a boat. ⁓ And I was kind of spent the day like under the like West Australian sun, it was 40 degrees, I was down the hold, and I spent the whole day grinding fiberglass and you’re covered in fiberglass dust, you come out, you can’t touch yourself while you got the dust on because it just immediately itches, you got to wash yourself off.

And I just spent this day working so hard. then the very first beer that I had was not even like, was, it was a Carlton Cold. So like, no, was just, just remember it being the very best beer because the beer, like the taste of that was direct relationship to the, like the, the hard work that had happened. And I think that I see in this world is almost like a willingness to embrace the harsh sun and the hard work because there is joy and satisfaction and a sense of identity.

foxwizard (56:17)
Yeah. Yeah.

Simon Waller (56:30)
that comes from that, from that, something that we almost try and hide ourselves from in the modern context.

foxwizard (56:38)
Yeah, you’re so right. ⁓ It’s something like Epicurean and, you know, there’s a thing within the gamification stuff, the reward outside of the context of challenge is meaningless. So we want actually meaningful challenges. This is actually part of eudaemonia fulfillment in life. But gosh, I mean, I would love to have a weekend, you know, something I crave is digging holes. I love digging holes, like the actual, the actual

labour of like digging in the progress that you see and then having that cold beer at the end of a day where you’ve actually earned it and you’re hanging out with mates. Like, oh, that is like life. That is the joy of life. I recently had to repair my deck upstairs, a little rooftop deck. I’m not a handy person at all, but the friend gave me the task of like, I’m going to just drill some holes and I had to wear AirPods to, you know, hearing protection.

Simon Waller (57:19)
Yeah

foxwizard (57:36)
But for about 20 minutes, I was having the best time of my life listening to music. My purpose was clear. had these things. Ooh. But now then there’s the worry of going back into first scenario, right? ⁓ Where it’s like the task is clear, getting the dopamine, getting the progress. Hmm. Anyway, I was outside having that with my friends. Anyway, I’m just so with you. I’m so with you with that beer. I love how you have the details that are the fiberglass, you know, you can’t… ⁓

Simon Waller (57:55)
Yeah.

foxwizard (58:04)
brush it off because otherwise it gets itchy. Like it just speaks to the, you know, you’re such texture in that little story that you shared. I love it.

Simon Waller (58:11)
Yeah. And I think it’s funny, like I was talking like this, and there’s probably a bunch of people who do this podcast who do like hard work on a regular.

foxwizard (58:19)
Yes, that’s right. Yeah, I have once did 20 minutes of hard manual labour. Yeah, once upon a time. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, shit. I’m revealing how just Yeah, that’s right. dear. Okay.

Simon Waller (58:27)
Yeah, really. Yeah.

first thing before

is the concept that you mentioned in the scenario and you just talked about it just briefly before, the concept of in service of life. Can you just talk a little bit about that concept? Because I think that even this scenario, you talked about it in terms of ⁓ this future of continuity. And this is the continuity of life. But the term in service of life, can you talk a little bit about that?

For us.

foxwizard (59:08)
Thank you again, a lovely, beautiful question. love what you’ve honed in on. ⁓ So my background is in environmental sciences. did, that was my PhD was in school of environmental science. So living systems and complex systems is kind of where I originate from. ⁓ The saying in service of life in which I do a capital L to life is really an attunement towards, some people might call this to, towards here’s if you allow me to get a little bit cosmic.

⁓

The big bang is still happening. We are still part of an unfurling cosmos where you have, you know, elements and then more and then molecules and then da da da da da. And then eventually the emergence of life and then, and then from single cell life to higher forms of life. And even now to what we have with, you know, where, where we are at in life, this is still a process. And the more that we can align ourselves to unfurling into greater complexity.

Simon Waller (59:46)
So

foxwizard (1:00:10)
The more aligned we are to the kind of Eros and potential Telos of the universe. So I’m not sure how I feel about Telos, but there’s a kind of a pragmatic emergentism and being in service to life means you are, you know, your, your sense of, of the world, or even if we were to quote Tyson Yunkaporta’s book again, Sand Talk, we see our role as custodial species. You know, we are the ones that have the

the ability to have perspective, to have wisdom and hindsight and foresight, one would hope, to tend to this garden, the Garden of Eden, the infinite garden that we are present to at the moment. And so by that then, we don’t just orientate towards just human life or just preferencing one life over another. We’re talking about all of life.

And one thing we know from complexity science is that monocultures are very fragile. They’re susceptible to disease. They’re susceptible to all sorts of disruptions. What we want is a thriving diversity of life interrelated. And that’s certainly not what we have been doing in the last 200 years. We’ve seen incredible species loss, even just, you that you would remember driving around as a, as kid, there would be so many bugs in your windscreen. We’re just seeing all of these.

Simon Waller (1:01:10)
So I’m going to ahead say this is a very interesting topic. I a topic. I think a very topic. I a topic. think it’s a interesting topic. I I think very I think it’s think it’s a very interesting think it’s a a very very interesting interesting topic. topic. think a topic.

foxwizard (1:01:35)
these, these signs that we’re becoming hyper normalised

Simon Waller (1:01:38)
I

foxwizard (1:01:38)
to an impoverished world. ⁓ And as each generation goes on the kind of norm resets and it is disturbing where that leads to. And so being in service to life means that, you know, you see yourself as an ecological expression. You emerge from the world, you are of the world and you will return to the world. And that’s part of, know, part of all of our role is to align ourselves to

to be in service to all of life. ⁓

Simon Waller (1:02:08)
Yeah. Do you want to?

Which is also, hadn’t thought about this before, but we often, you know, we talk about, you know, the sometimes the smartest person in the room.

forgets that they’re not as smart as the room. And there’s something in the fact is that I think sometimes we see ourselves as being the most complex of creatures. And we assume that our ability for those things like you talked about for communication, foresight and hindsight is an example of our level of complexity is therefore greater than the level of complexity of any other living being.

foxwizard (1:02:21)
Yes, yeah.

Simon Waller (1:02:44)
But still, and we overvalue that because still our complexity is a small fraction of the total complexity of the total value of that of life rather than just our life. So that’s a really beautiful, I think, little thing to end on. One last question, which I did promise that we would ask at end of the first one, which was about your own experience of this, like your own experience of writing the scenarios of this conversation. What have it like? What do you feel that you have learned or what do you think is different?

have been thought about through, I mean, I know you spend a lot of time thinking very deeply about our world and our society and the things around us. This particular technique of scenarios and writing stories and this, like what comes out of it for you?

foxwizard (1:03:30)
I love it. Cause it was almost like, you know, the scene where they’re having the cigarette after intercourse and it’s like, so how was it for you? Yeah. No, it’s been, it’s been good, man. ⁓ mate. I, okay. So first of all, my initial response was that I missed that. Yeah. Of course, man. Anytime.

Simon Waller (1:03:43)
you

Will me again?

you

foxwizard (1:03:59)
I am so similar to, to Michael, like the initial thing of, um, scenario planning, there’s something so, um, I think I’ve just, I’ve just seen it poorly done. I’ve seen scenarios being done poorly that has like a, I have an allergy to the term scenario planning because I’ve seen people just. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Simon Waller (1:04:21)
Yeah, I’ve is it in your podcast. I really had nothing

do with personally.

foxwizard (1:04:28)
no, no, but there’s, beautiful ways to do it. It’s, kind of like how, ⁓ that saying like, ⁓ strategic plans are useless, but planning is everything. And that, kind of, a process of, ⁓ you know, exploring and sensing into. And I think the thing that really took for me, which what you do is like, okay, let’s, let’s play with two scenarios because then we’ve got some, then we got some generative like space to play within.

So I was really glad that I was able to sneak in an extra long scenario in two parts. loved your sense of doing this as a double episode. think that even between the episode and folks listening to this will have their own kind of, you know, sense of things. Even as I, you know, alluded to in the example, the renovations where I was like having such a good time drilling holes because the task was so clear and non-complex. just.

found myself revealing to myself just the allure of that simplicity in life and just how satisfying that is. you know, the future is messy, but I love in the way that you do this and in the format with friends where we’re not posturing for work, but we’re just, you know, having a good time together. I thought that, you know, I was saying before, like when we started, I was worried that I’m kind of spending too much time talking and yeah, I find your-

your questions are so tantalising and generous and insightful and astute that, you know, I couldn’t resist them.

Simon Waller (1:05:54)
Yeah.

foxwizard (1:05:56)
you know, that will be my lingering insecurities that I’ve spoken too much.

Simon Waller (1:05:58)
⁓

One last thing before we close, just because it’s something that I think is a really beautiful insight you just shared. We talked earlier on about the limitations of metrics. If we look at the metrics as an answer, as opposed to a place for us to have a discussion. And I think it’s the same with scenarios. If we’re looking for the answer in the scenarios, that’s a really limiting perspective. We see the scenario as the basis of a conversation or discussion with friends or with colleagues. I think that’s a much more valuable way of using the

the tool of the technology. But for now, we’re gonna have to wrap this because otherwise we’re definitely going to bleed into a triple feature. It’s just been amazing having you on the show, Jace. Like I’m so grateful for your contribution to it and our friendship more broadly. ⁓ And genuinely, this is a beautiful reflection of the type of conversations we do get to have when we catch up. I hope we get chance to do it again soon. But thank you so much for being on the show.

foxwizard (1:06:53)
Thanks mate. It’s been so good. I’m to have you on my podcast sometime soon too. It’s going to be great.

Simon Waller (1:06:58)
Yeah, and we’re going to drink boost juice. ⁓ After listen to Jase’s podcast again. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with some more episodes. Until then, catch you later.