I think the comparison with Shannon + information theory is apt. Hardness feels like an extension of the Shannon-Weaver model, except the receiver/destination is also the future (and past) and the noise is time (https://blog.simondlr.com/posts/time-as-platform).
We can more effectively communicate with the future and past if we reduce the optionality (possible entropy) at a specific layer. A legal contract for example defines desired behaviour of the participants in the future such that breaking the agreement would be at cost to the participants. This means that some future becomes more possible as a result.
Hardness makes it easier to communicate through time. A harder protocol reduces the noise of time.
Love this, yet after reflecting on the notion of “hardness” I would suggest that “promises” as described by Promise Theory (http://markburgess.org/promises.html) is a better descriptor. As he describes it:
“Promise Theory bridges the worlds of semantics and dynamics to describe interactions between autonomous agencies within a system. It provides a semi-formal language for modelling intent and its outcome, which results in a chemistry for cooperative behaviour.”
Money, law and government all depend on the efficacy of promises, and Burgess’ treatment of this topic is one I and many others have found fruitful in many domains.
Interesting thought but sounds much too narrow and anthropocentric. Diamonds have hardness but only in the context of De Beers marketing in America do they acquire the semantics of promises, and they’re culturally specific too. If a diamond were to signify say an identifier as in a signet ring, that would be hardness cashed out for authentication. I’d say promises are to hardness as Boolean logic propositions are to information. In bith cases the former supervenes on the latter. But information and hardness seem like lower level constructs, close to physics. They don’t even need a subjective observer to be well defined, let alone the semantics of an instrumental context.
Fair enough. I would still recommend reviewing Burgess’ thoughts on this as I have found it useful for solving coordination problems at scale that have been resistant to other approaches.
I can't say I'm a big fan of the term "hardness". "Robustness" or "stability" seems better. Hardness has connotations of brittleness, and the protocols that persist through time do so not because they are hard, but because they are adaptable. That's the opposite of hard, something that can change while retaining its essence.
Take the US Constitution, an institution that has had pretty remarkable staying power. It did so not because of hardness but because it was adaptable, both by design (the amendment process) and because people were willing and able to radically reinterpret it as historical conditions changed. It may be nearing the end of its useful life, and its weak points are being attacked, but it had a good run.
Feels like you’re misunderstanding the idea in a category error way. Adaptability and robustness are either orthogonal to hardness. A diamond is hard, not adaptable. Hardness at one level is part of creating robustness and adaptability at higher levels. Axioms are hard, the process of rejecting and adding axioms is one kind of adaptation process. DNA is highly evolvabke, but ATCG constitute a hard vocabulary underneath.
Stability is especially off as a comparison. It’s a property of a dynamic system. Hardness is a property of materials. A hard billiard ball in a bowl exhibits stability. So does soft water in the same bowl. And both are unstable atop the inverted bowl.
The point about protocols (well, my point) is that they are stable structures made out of SOFT materials. Human minds are soft, institutions and rituals are harder, that is what make them interesting. Building hard structures out of hard materials, well, that's easy.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, but for protocols it seems like robustness is the more salient and interesting quality.
I haven't been following all the protocol discourse that closely, so I suppose my thoughts are askew from the group. I suspect there's more blockchain influence here than I like. Blockchains allow you to make protocols with axiomatic hardness, and maybe that is a good and cool thing, but the world got on for millenia without blockchain, so most protocols exist without that kind of hardness.
Building hardness out of softness is definitely a powerful idea and one that showed up in many of the projects, so we agree on the power of that, but I don’t really get what you’re harping on tbf. Hardness is just an interesting lens that resembles objective physics lenses. It yields insights at lower levels of abstraction than more teleological concepts like robustness and adaptability. I see no reason to choose. Use all concepts that enlighten.
nice description of what "summer of protocols" is __actually__ about. am i to understand hardness as being like "rock suitable to drive a pinion into so we can use it for climbing"? "hardness" brings to my mind connotations of "difficulty" and i see you do not mean that at all, quite the opposite - by leaning on the right "hard" things" we make difficult things less so. right?
I think hardness as in difficulty also applies. Cryptography is hard to crack, diamond is hard to cut, good laws are hard to circumvent. The difficulty in some directions is what creates the ease in others. Physical hardness is the source of difficulty hardness in these cases. Not all difficulty is due to hardness though.
you mean that some things are difficult because they relate in general to "hard" things or that when you try to move hard things, it becomes difficult? i do not see why "hard" things should make ones work more difficult, if you respect them. like train-tracks - as long as you move along them, all is well, and they are "hard", no?
i understood protocols to be resting on "hard" things.
Yes protocols rest on hard things, but they can do so in part because hardness (material-figurative property) creates hardness (difficult) in certain behaviors, creating enforceable commitment structures. “Burning bridges” creates a hard boundary in space by making crossing it difficult. Hard (difficult) to renege on a commitment structures rest on hard material-figurative (property) of some environmental physical attribute. In the burning bridges case you lower the porosity of the boundary so it resembles a hard boundary like glass rather than a porous one like sponge. Often hardness works by creating a sharp and impervious boundary somewhere where it was fuzzy and leaky before.
Awesome read!
I think the comparison with Shannon + information theory is apt. Hardness feels like an extension of the Shannon-Weaver model, except the receiver/destination is also the future (and past) and the noise is time (https://blog.simondlr.com/posts/time-as-platform).
We can more effectively communicate with the future and past if we reduce the optionality (possible entropy) at a specific layer. A legal contract for example defines desired behaviour of the participants in the future such that breaking the agreement would be at cost to the participants. This means that some future becomes more possible as a result.
Hardness makes it easier to communicate through time. A harder protocol reduces the noise of time.
Love this, yet after reflecting on the notion of “hardness” I would suggest that “promises” as described by Promise Theory (http://markburgess.org/promises.html) is a better descriptor. As he describes it:
“Promise Theory bridges the worlds of semantics and dynamics to describe interactions between autonomous agencies within a system. It provides a semi-formal language for modelling intent and its outcome, which results in a chemistry for cooperative behaviour.”
Money, law and government all depend on the efficacy of promises, and Burgess’ treatment of this topic is one I and many others have found fruitful in many domains.
Interesting thought but sounds much too narrow and anthropocentric. Diamonds have hardness but only in the context of De Beers marketing in America do they acquire the semantics of promises, and they’re culturally specific too. If a diamond were to signify say an identifier as in a signet ring, that would be hardness cashed out for authentication. I’d say promises are to hardness as Boolean logic propositions are to information. In bith cases the former supervenes on the latter. But information and hardness seem like lower level constructs, close to physics. They don’t even need a subjective observer to be well defined, let alone the semantics of an instrumental context.
Fair enough. I would still recommend reviewing Burgess’ thoughts on this as I have found it useful for solving coordination problems at scale that have been resistant to other approaches.
BTW, this is great work overall and I don't want to let that thought get lost while quibbling over the fine details of terminology.
I can't say I'm a big fan of the term "hardness". "Robustness" or "stability" seems better. Hardness has connotations of brittleness, and the protocols that persist through time do so not because they are hard, but because they are adaptable. That's the opposite of hard, something that can change while retaining its essence.
Take the US Constitution, an institution that has had pretty remarkable staying power. It did so not because of hardness but because it was adaptable, both by design (the amendment process) and because people were willing and able to radically reinterpret it as historical conditions changed. It may be nearing the end of its useful life, and its weak points are being attacked, but it had a good run.
Feels like you’re misunderstanding the idea in a category error way. Adaptability and robustness are either orthogonal to hardness. A diamond is hard, not adaptable. Hardness at one level is part of creating robustness and adaptability at higher levels. Axioms are hard, the process of rejecting and adding axioms is one kind of adaptation process. DNA is highly evolvabke, but ATCG constitute a hard vocabulary underneath.
Stability is especially off as a comparison. It’s a property of a dynamic system. Hardness is a property of materials. A hard billiard ball in a bowl exhibits stability. So does soft water in the same bowl. And both are unstable atop the inverted bowl.
The point about protocols (well, my point) is that they are stable structures made out of SOFT materials. Human minds are soft, institutions and rituals are harder, that is what make them interesting. Building hard structures out of hard materials, well, that's easy.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, but for protocols it seems like robustness is the more salient and interesting quality.
I haven't been following all the protocol discourse that closely, so I suppose my thoughts are askew from the group. I suspect there's more blockchain influence here than I like. Blockchains allow you to make protocols with axiomatic hardness, and maybe that is a good and cool thing, but the world got on for millenia without blockchain, so most protocols exist without that kind of hardness.
Re DNA code, I don't think "hard" Is a good metaphor for its existential state. It is conventionalized, standardized, near-universalized, but it isn't hard, there are natural and artificial variants. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-020-00307-7 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8629427/
Building hardness out of softness is definitely a powerful idea and one that showed up in many of the projects, so we agree on the power of that, but I don’t really get what you’re harping on tbf. Hardness is just an interesting lens that resembles objective physics lenses. It yields insights at lower levels of abstraction than more teleological concepts like robustness and adaptability. I see no reason to choose. Use all concepts that enlighten.
For sure. Harping and carping are how I engage with things, that's my protocol and I only do it with people/ideas I am 95% in agreement with.
🤣
nice description of what "summer of protocols" is __actually__ about. am i to understand hardness as being like "rock suitable to drive a pinion into so we can use it for climbing"? "hardness" brings to my mind connotations of "difficulty" and i see you do not mean that at all, quite the opposite - by leaning on the right "hard" things" we make difficult things less so. right?
I think hardness as in difficulty also applies. Cryptography is hard to crack, diamond is hard to cut, good laws are hard to circumvent. The difficulty in some directions is what creates the ease in others. Physical hardness is the source of difficulty hardness in these cases. Not all difficulty is due to hardness though.
you mean that some things are difficult because they relate in general to "hard" things or that when you try to move hard things, it becomes difficult? i do not see why "hard" things should make ones work more difficult, if you respect them. like train-tracks - as long as you move along them, all is well, and they are "hard", no?
i understood protocols to be resting on "hard" things.
Yes protocols rest on hard things, but they can do so in part because hardness (material-figurative property) creates hardness (difficult) in certain behaviors, creating enforceable commitment structures. “Burning bridges” creates a hard boundary in space by making crossing it difficult. Hard (difficult) to renege on a commitment structures rest on hard material-figurative (property) of some environmental physical attribute. In the burning bridges case you lower the porosity of the boundary so it resembles a hard boundary like glass rather than a porous one like sponge. Often hardness works by creating a sharp and impervious boundary somewhere where it was fuzzy and leaky before.
that's awesome!