Summary

The website content discusses the concept of eustress and its application in social systems design and blockchain tokenization, suggesting that optimal stress levels can enhance coordination and system performance.

Abstract

The article explores the psychological and biochemical concept of eustress, which posits that a certain level of stress can lead to beneficial outcomes, including improved health and stress tolerance. It draws parallels between hormesis in biochemistry, where low doses of toxins can have beneficial effects, and the Yerkes-Dodson law, which describes the relationship between arousal levels and task performance. The author extends this idea to the design of social systems and blockchain tokenization, proposing that the right amount of cost or complexity introduced into a system can increase coordination among its participants, up to a point where additional complexity becomes detrimental. This concept is likened to the idea of anti-fragility and is applied to the context of blockchain and social coordination mechanisms, such as ticket prices for events and the origins of money as a coordination tool. The author suggests that by understanding and applying the principles of eustress, we can design more efficient and scalable social systems that foster coordination through optimal stressors.

Opinions

The author believes that tokenization around an interest group or protocol can lead to increased coordination by adding a cost to coordinate, which mirrors the effects of eustress.
They argue that there is an optimal level of complexity and cost for coordination, beyond which further increases can be counterproductive, similar to the bell curve observed in the Yerkes-Dodson model.
The author suggests that the concept of eustress has not been fully explored in social systems and systems design thinking, despite its potential for enhancing coordination and system resilience.
They compare the idea of eustress in social systems to Nassim Taleb's concept of anti-fragility, where systems can benefit from stressors up to a certain threshold.
The author posits that money and ticket prices are examples of eustress that facilitate social coordination by creating a shared context and investment among participants.
They reflect on the possibility of creating an algorithm to optimize coordination by introducing stressors at the right times, which could revolutionize how we coordinate around global shared goals.
The author acknowledges the need for further research and cross-disciplinary understanding of eustress in the context of social systems design and blockchain technology.
They express gratitude for insights gained from the work of others, such as Maciej Olpinksi's development of continuous token models, which inspired the author's exploration of hormesis and its application to blockchain and social coordination.

Eustress, Complexity, Social Systems Design & Blockchain Tokenization

Eustress is “beneficial stress”. It is mainly used in the psychological/physical/biochemical disciplines to describe scenarios where introducing some stress results in beneficial outcomes, up to a point where it becomes detrimental.

In biochemistry, hormesis refers to: “a beneficial effect (improved health, stress tolerance, growth or longevity) that results from exposure to low doses of an agent that is otherwise toxic or lethal when given at higher doses.”

A classic example of this is the claim to drink some alcohol every day as it has various benefits (#sunsetwhiskey baby!).

Me, enjoying a #sunsetwhiskey with one of my favourite views in the world: Signal Hill, Cape Town. Got always work in sunsets into a post. ;)

It also occurs in toxicology with mithridatism, which is the willful exposure to toxins in order to develop an immunity to it.

Yerkes-Dodson found similar patterns when researching states of arousal and resultant performance of tasks.

Now, the interesting thing here is, is that 2 months back, I wrote about whether your “dapp needs a token”.

Does your dapp need a token?

Is it required for the systemic functioning of the system, that without it, it would not work? Like ETH to pay for code…

medium.com

In it, I posit that the value of tokenization around an interest group or protocol results in increased coordination because the act of adding a cost to coordinate, increases coordination (like equity).

I quote:

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Thus, there’s increasingly marginal return at which point, introducing *more* fees (and complexity) would reduce coordination. Additionally, having extremely low fees might not produce enough incentive to bother going through the paces of the additional complexity. It is thus likely to look like some bell curve.

X = Cost to coordinate. Y = Stronger coordination.

The cost to coordinate increases coordination, until a point where it starts to reduce coordination (this is a weird sentence, isn’t it?).

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I didn’t know about eustress and the work of Yerkes-Dodson, but intuitively it seems there’s definitely a correlation. I tried Googling to see if this has been used social systems thinking or systems design thinking, but haven’t really yet found something. I feel there *should* be. I’ve often found that there is likely research on this, it’s just goes under different names in different disciplines. Or worse, there hasn’t been cross-pollination yet (like the example of a medical researcher discovering integration).

The closest comparison would be to Nassim Taleb’s anti-fragility and generically one could say:

A system generally responds favourably to specific stressors up to a certain point (depending on its design), after which the stressors negatively affects it.

Now, when you think about eustress in social systems, and systems of coordination, the patterns are similarly there.

A simple example is the entry price to an event. By having a ticket price, there’s a cost to get in. But because that ticket price is a barrier to entry, it increases social liquidity *inside* the event, because everyone “paid the price” to be in the same context. ie, I’m pretty sure I can strike a conversation with someone next to me about the DJ that’s playing vs asking someone in the street about that DJ.

Money itself is also a classic example of eustress that fosters coordination. Nick Szabo wrote about the origins of money, and why early collectibles fostered coordination. In a similar curve, the increasing cost to produce a collectible results in more coordination, until it’s not worth it anymore. It’s likely that depending on the desire for the scale of coordination that the optimal cost to coordinate increases: the curve changes.

It’s like the requirement of a stronger foundation when building a higher skryscraper. I’ve written previously on scaling social systems as a result of blockchain. Nick Szabo, in a lot more detail recently wrote a similar article. He describes it well ->

One important strategy for doing so was demonstrated by Satoshi — sacrifice computational efficiency and scalability — consume more cheap computational resources — in order to reduce and better leverage the great expense in human resources needed to maintain the relationships between strangers involved modern institutions such as markets, large firms, and governments.

Butler’s Model of Sustainable Social Structures

Depending on the type of coordination we want and depending on the design of the coordination tool, it’s likely we can invent an algorithm that optimally fosters that coordination through introducing stressors at the optimal times.

This has been what a lot of my thinking on meme markets & continuous token models have recently been about. What is the optimal eustress and design we need to build to rapidly roll out opt-in coordination around global shared goals? We can suddenly scaffold millions of collectibles with a proven difficulty to produce (“known” requirement of stressors) around common goals. Strangers could coordinate on scales we haven’t seen before.

More thinking:

It’s clear I’m stumbling through all this. If this triggers anything relevant that you think I should research/know, please send it to me!

Thanks:

I was busy with thinking about a new continuous token model design in the direction that Maciej Olpinksi is developing with Userfeeds (design: mint tokens according to an algorithm and then use that new token as a bond to information in order to signal/curate that information with a specific hashtag).

I stumbled upon his mention of hormesis in his recent article and realised the curve looked quite familiar, causing me to stumble down a very interesting rabbit hole. Cheers!