Many thanks to the SeeDAO friends for organizing this conversation, which helped me revisit the core ideas of Huawen DAO (Huawendao) in a new context. I hope it can generate even greater influence.
Guest Introduction
丨Speaker: Hu Yilin
Hu Yilin is an associate professor in the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University. He received his PhD in philosophy from Peking University. His research focuses on the history of technology, philosophy of technology, and media ecology. He is the author of A Strong Program for Media History, What Is Technology, Introduction to the Philosophy of Technology, and others.
丨Host: baiyu
Prelude
When Nietzsche cried out “God is dead, the overman survives”, it seemed to herald that we—human beings—had fallen into a long exploration of a void of meaning, and that both in the West and in the East, people have continually sought remedies for humanity’s possible “transcendence.”
And recently in Zuzalu, Montenegro, people have been eagerly discussing “transhumanism,” exploring the possibilities brought by technological ascent—trying to respond to the predicament of “God is dead.” So, what is the predicament of “God is dead”? Does “transhumanism,” as a response, harbor any dangers? Does China also face the same problem? Can we make use of Chinese cultural traditions, combined with blockchain technology, to respond to this predicament? For this conversation, we were fortunate to invite Associate Professor Hu Yilin of the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University to discuss these questions together with baiyu.
baiyu：
Today happens to be May Fourth, and Teacher Hu’s background was mainly studying philosophy at Peking University, so the two of us may talk today about May Fourth, about blockchain—something a bit more interesting. One is how Teacher Hu himself entered the blockchain industry; the second is some of the crises after the West’s question of God is dead, and then extending to some of the solutions of transhumanism today; and finally, how should we treat Chinese cultural traditions of our own, and what can we do in this new era of blockchain? That is the main thread we’ll be discussing later today. Please give us a self-introduction, Teacher Hu.
Hu Yilin： I’m a PhD from Peking University. I entered Peking University as an undergraduate in 2004, and did my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral studies there, all in philosophy of science and technology. In high school I was actually a science student, then I switched to philosophy, and so I went on to study philosophy of science and technology. I’m now in the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua, where I teach the history of technology and philosophy of technology; that’s my main academic background. As for the blockchain circle, I got into it in 2013, when I started paying attention to Bitcoin, and I’ve kept up with it ever since, doing some research. I came to NFT and DAO relatively later, only beginning to pay relatively deep attention to these matters toward the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022.
01 The Use of Philosophy—Thales Buys Oil and Acquires Bitcoin
baiyu：
A while ago the two of us happened to meet in Beijing, and I remember that right off the bat you talked to me about the story of Thales buying olive oil. How about today you introduce that story to everyone, and also how you went about buying Bitcoin in 2013?
Hu Yilin：In 2013, I happened to be working on my doctoral dissertation. I was doing philosophy of technology, studying Heidegger, McLuhan, and so on. At that time I also saw some news reports saying Bitcoin had crashed again, so I looked into it a bit. At first I wasn’t interested in investments or anything like that, because I was an academic. But while I was learning about it, I saw a lot of opposition, everyone saying this Bitcoin thing was somehow unreliable. At that moment I also happened to be free, with nothing else to do, thinking about my dissertation on one hand and thinking about this matter on the other. Then I remember very clearly that one day, while riding my bicycle, I thought of a story about Thales. There is a legend about Thales: someone asked him, what use is philosophy? You can’t make a living with philosophy. Thales replied that philosophy is useful; it is said that by observing the heavens, he predicted a bumper olive harvest the following year, so he stocked up early on olive presses and made a huge profit. After he got rich, he said, I’m not doing this anymore; I’d rather go back to philosophy. Thales meant: I buy olive oil—that is, to prove philosophy is useful, but we don’t deign to use it, right? Normally we just do scholarship.
At the time, I actually had that same mindset. I felt that this was something that could embody my own philosophical insight; that is, a lot of people didn’t understand Bitcoin, but I could understand it. I really understood, through the philosophy of technology, what money was all about. Money itself is a medium; it is not a physical entity in itself, but essentially a medium. So I tentatively bought a little. And so now I can speak very confidently: if you ask me again what use philosophy is, I’ll tell you philosophy is very useful; if I hadn’t studied philosophy, I wouldn’t have bought Bitcoin. In fact, now my focus has shifted toward the history of technology and philosophy of technology, and I also want to prove that the discipline of history of science and history of technology is useful. Now that I’m getting involved in DAO, including things like NFT, I feel that this is a new moment for demonstrating the usefulness of scholarship. Of course, that hasn’t really been proven especially clearly yet, because I’ve also lost quite a bit on what I bought. The reason this is worth gossiping about right at the beginning is that it is actually related to why I now often like joining conversations and discussions like this. I still am motivated by an intellectual concern for it, rather than simply wanting to make money or invest. If it were only about investing, I would really not be interested. The key is that I truly see that what I’ve learned—including what I’ve learned about Chinese culture, about the history of science, and about the philosophy of technology—seems to be useful again, so now I’m especially enthusiastic about participating in such things.
02 God Is Dead—The Predicament of Modernity and the Pursuit of Transcendence
baiyu：
The timing of today’s conversation is very special. On the one hand, it is the May Fourth Movement, and also Peking University’s 125th anniversary. On the other hand, if everyone is in the Web 3 circle, you will more or less see a bunch of people in Zuzalu, Montenegro—some people from the core Ethereum circle, and some DAO organizations, Vita DAO, discussing longevity, immortality, network state, digital enclaves, and some transhumanist issues. This is a very special moment in time. So today we want first to return to a fundamental question, namely: where exactly did the trend of transhumanism come from, and what is it responding to? Teacher Hu earlier traced this back to answering the question of the path forward after Nietzsche proposed that God is dead. So I’d like to ask Teacher Hu, from a philosophical perspective, to first give Web 3 friends a simple introduction: what exactly is Nietzsche’s problem of God is dead, and why is transhumanism, as an answer, as a response, following that line?
Hu Yilin：Of course, this is only my own view, because transhumanism itself is a fairly broad category, and it has many schools. Moreover, transhumanism only really began to become popular in the second half of the twentieth century, and became especially popular in the twenty-first century. As for its connection to Nietzsche’s concept, I can only say a little offhand: on the one hand, there is a conceptual connection, because we know Nietzsche has a concept called the “overman,” which of course is a German word; sometimes it is translated as Super man, sometimes as Overman, and in fact it could also be translated as Transhuman, or even as transhuman. So the concept of the overman comes from Nietzsche, and Nietzsche represents a rupture with the situation of a philosophical tradition. Of course, whether Nietzsche’s overman has any direct relation to the transhumanism we discuss today is controversial. That is because Nietzsche’s overman is more of a humanistic thing; it does not rely on technological ascent. It is about the concept of the overman through things like individual moral reevaluation and the reevaluation of values. By contrast, the transhumanism that is popular today is actually a form of technological ascent: relying on all kinds of technologies—whether digitalization, mind uploading, genetic modification, or what have you—cyborgs, cyberpunk, human-machine symbiosis, and so on. When people talk about transhumanism now, they may be talking more about these aims of using technology to change human nature, using technology to make human beings into different things, different species. I think that in terms of aspirations and spiritual orientation, there is in fact a continuous line of connection. In a sense, transhumanism is actually playing the role of religion in our secular age. In the ancient world, there was no such concept of the transhuman. That was not only because ancient people lacked developed technology; it was also because ancient people, especially ancient Western people, had another place to place their hopes for human sublimation and transcendence—namely, in the otherworldly realm, the religious world—so they did not seek ascent through technology. What they pursued was the ascent of the soul, accepting God’s judgment and then ascending to the heavenly kingdom after judgment. In societies of the ancient theological faith, this was generally how one sustained the meaning of one’s finite life. The key issue is simply: life is finite, and this world is awful, so what is human meaning? What should human beings become? If in the end we are to turn into a handful of yellow earth, then where is the meaning, right? Ancient people answered the question of meaning through the soul’s ascent promised by theological faith, whereas Nietzsche said one thing: God is dead—this is the condition of us modern people. God is dead; the hope of the otherworld can no longer bear the meaning of life. In other words, the question “How, in the end, does a human being transcend his or her finite life?” can no longer be answered by religion, so what replaces it? Religion was driven out by whom? By technology. Well then, if technology has driven out religion, we can only rely on technology to answer this question of transcendence—how human beings can transcend their finite lives and obtain meaning, obtain these eternal and imperishable meanings. So at this point I think transhumanism is playing such a role, filling such a blank, the blank left by God’s death. If the otherworld can no longer provide transcendence, who can provide transcendence? Technology can provide transcendence. And how does technology provide it? That is precisely the various aspirations and directions of transhumanism. That is my own view.
03 Transcendence Toward Where—The Traps and Dangers of Transhumanism
baiyu：
How do you yourself view such a transhumanist solution? Of course, there are many schools, and I can’t neatly summarize them very clearly, but we know they share certain common features. For example, they are very superstitious about technology being able to prolong human lifespan, and even hope for immortality; and they use AI tools and wealth to do more things, to make human beings into gods. If there is no otherworld, then I myself become that otherworld. This doesn’t seem very related to our cultural traditions, or to the way we think. Could you first give us your evaluation or thoughts?
Hu Yilin：First of all, I also don’t particularly want to belittle the demands of transhumanism. Of course it’s not a problem; human beings are just this kind of animal, and humans must seek transcendence. Human beings are never satisfied with merely existing as animal life — your meaning lies in metabolism and reproduction. Human beings always want to transcend their finite lives, and this is a direction that people of different cultures and different eras, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign alike, will certainly pursue. So transhumanism represents, in the technological age, the Western cultural way of seeking transcendence beyond finite life, and I think that in itself is beyond reproach. Of course, it does have some problems. First, even if it had no problems, I think it is not the only direction, right? We can have Eastern wisdom, other ways of transcending finite life; we should also have diversity, that is one aspect. On the other hand, let me offer some criticism: mainstream transhumanist demands, in a certain sense, are a devaluation of the real life of human beings. Because they feel that your real, ordinary human life is itself not worth living, has no meaning, or lacks meaning, so it must be transformed. In fact, whatever direction the various transhumanist camps take, the common point is the transformation of the human being: either a total transformation, throwing away the flesh altogether; or the mechanization of the flesh; or genetic recombination, and so on — all of these are different ways of transforming oneself. What is implied by that? It is to say: when you have not yet been transformed, is there still anything interesting about your life? If you are not transformed, not transhuman, a normal human being, a subhuman, a real human being, can you really not find salvation in this technological age? We all know that real people die, right? So transhumanism represents this kind of despair, right? It cannot find, within the category of a real, embodied, ordinary human being, a proper direction for pursuit — what exactly are you pursuing? You can only pursue the negation of yourself, transform yourself, and pursue such a direction in order to realize value and the meaning of life. I think this is actually a kind of evasion.
On the other hand, the ideal direction of transhumanism has two possibilities. One is that it is a game for a minority, and only a very small number of exceptionally rich people can realize it — for example, through body modification or something like that — and even their transformation can hardly be an actual “long live, long live, long live” kind of thing; it is impossible to live that long. At most, it would involve the use of countless resources — perhaps the resources of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people — in order to extend one person’s life by 20 or 30 years. That may be the best-case scenario, and for society that is actually very unfair. Another possibility is that it is fair, that perhaps everyone can afford it, and everyone can transform, but then problems will still arise: it will still cause a loss of meaning, a loss of value. For example, after everyone can transform, we old humans will of course have no value, but what is the value of the new humans? It seems that you still have no direction. The direction of transformation may not be your direction; it may be a direction of assimilation. For example, in South Korea, everyone can now have cosmetic surgery; there is technology to alter your facial features, and that is actually a kind of body modification too. You will find that when everyone has the ability to alter their appearance, people become convergent. That is to say, the diversity of human culture, the diversity of human faces, the more they are transformed, the more alike they become; everyone is transforming toward the same “internet celebrity face,” and that in fact is a destruction of diversity. If, besides the face, our intelligence, our personalities, everything can be transformed, then the future we will certainly face is one of convergence, like Korean faces — everyone is an internet celebrity personality, everyone has the best intelligence. Such a future is also terrifying. So if I were to criticize transhumanism, I think these are the kinds of dangers it would involve. Of course, you can say that these dangers do not mean this direction is wrong; precisely because there are dangers, some efforts, some transhumanist activities, may be meaningful. So my focus is not on criticism. The focus is on whether we are worth having a non-technological方案 — that is, in the technological age, a way to respond to humanity’s eternal demand for transcendence, for sustenance, for meaning. And in this respect, can we provide some other alternative paths based on Eastern wisdom?
baiyu：
Thank you, Professor Hu, that was brilliant. In today’s era, we often enjoy the conveniences brought by technological development, but in fact many more problems are precisely caused by the rapid development of technology. That is to say, our institutions, our thinking about a new civilization, or rather its supporting structures, have not kept up. I feel that if we continue along the path of technology — the path of technological ascent, of transhumanism — it feels like we’re accelerating, and there’s just no end to it. I think the example you just gave of South Korea was especially good. Just recently, we also had a discussion in Silicon Valley about AI, and after talking it through, everyone felt very desperate. But actually I know that in the philosophy world, people generally think that the AI represented by ChatGPT does not in fact possess human intelligence; it is just a kind of association, a kind of statistics over big data. But there is one danger, and after talking with some friends, everyone agreed on it: the greater danger of AI is not AI’s enslavement of human beings, but war between human beings. That is, we use AI as a weapon, and then some countries and some companies bully other people. So in the final analysis, it is still a problem between human beings; it is politics, it is non-technological factors.
04 The Puzzlement of May Fourth——The Rupture of Tradition and the Crisis of Meaning
baiyu：
Today is May Fourth, and the May Fourth Movement is already more than 100 years old. So let’s just talk about this: if the spiritual crisis of Westerners is something it needs to transcend, the problem of “God is dead,” then what do you think the spiritual crisis of China, in our process of modernization up to today, is? What is the fundamental problem we face?
Hu Yilin：Actually, many of the problems we are facing now were already discussed by many predecessors during the May Fourth period, including the entire New Culture Movement. We may all have heard of the so-called Debate on Science and Metaphysics back then, with the scientism camp and the metaphysics camp fighting tooth and nail. In fact, I think many current discussions basically haven’t gone beyond the scope of those debates. Looking back now, the Debate on Science and Metaphysics was of course comprehensively won by the science camp. But some of the claims and viewpoints of the metaphysics camp were in fact also worthy of attention. If you look at those so-called metaphysicians, they all spoke about science, believed in science, and all thought science was important, technology was important, and that we must learn Western science and technology. But what they wanted to emphasize was that science and technology in themselves cannot provide a humanistic answer, or rather an answer concerning human meaning and value. So the so-called metaphysics camp actually emphasized that in addition to the science that provides sturdy ships and powerful cannons, we also need a metaphysical tradition, or rather a tradition concerning meaning and value; we need to preserve it or carry it forward. But the result at the time was that this kind of tradition was in fact not carried forward. Why? Because science was still too strong then, and the general trend was that saving the nation overwhelmed enlightenment; in a certain sense, that was also right, and the science camp’s victory was right too. That is to say, if you had not yet learned Western science well, then of course there was no need to talk about anything else yet. But the problem was that the reason the metaphysics camp lost was that this issue had not been resolved in the West either: how are traditions of value and meaning to be shaped, how are they to be cultivated? This thing was also broken in the West. In Western tradition, such sustenance was provided by Christianity and metaphysics. In the West, in antiquity and including the early modern period, when they spoke of liberty, equality, and fraternity, science, theology, and other social and ethical dimensions were actually on parallel tracks in education, developing and advancing together. But by around the 20th century, the West likewise encountered the problem of “God is dead” that I mentioned earlier, meaning that the level of value and the level of meaning became empty; the so-called idea of nihilism — the West also failed to resolve it at the time, so it was hard to expect China to resolve this matter either. But looking back now, what China faced was in fact the rupture of its own tradition, and that is still rather regrettable. That is to say, China actually could originally have resolved the West’s crisis of meaning and emptiness of value. Why? Because if you look, the West’s problem is that God is dead; it is moving into a secular world. At that point, how can human beings’ transcendental demands be borne? Human beings always have transcendental demands; the problem is how to transcend. If theology and religion cannot provide it, who will? In the West this created a vacuum of faith and led to the spread of nihilism.
But the problem is that China originally had no God, originally had no religion; “religion” is actually a Western concept. China’s so-called religion does not solve the problem of transcendence; it solves the problem of utility. In China you can worship Guanyin, you can worship Daoism, worship Taishang Laojun; you can worship any deity you like, and whoever gives you benefits, you worship. In China, people pray for many sons and much happiness, pray for wealth, pray for official success — the gods worshipped in China are for seeking these things. You see, these things are actually not transcendence; they are not about going beyond your finite bodily life and seeking a kind of sustenance of meaning beyond this world. In China, transcendence has never been provided by religion, not by Buddhism, Daoism, or Christianity, or things like that. So China has long already been, within a relatively secular mainstream cultural atmosphere of revering the spirits and keeping a respectful distance from them, in no need of religion to solve the problem of transcendence; gods and Buddhas only needed to solve everyday secular problems. Under such a cultural tradition, Chinese people in the past also did not have the so-called problem of meaning collapse; only in modern times did they, like Westerners, also fall into various collapses of meaning or the problem of nihilism. So China’s problem is different from the West’s: the West’s problem is because God is dead, because science and religion are in conflict. In China, there was no such thing as God dying; it was tradition that was lost. Chinese tradition was originally able to resolve this dimension of transcendental sustenance, but it was lost in modern times, and this is my important view. And this dimension, at the time of May Fourth, still had the possibility that we could continue it, but it was not continued, and then it was severed. So now, what we can only do is figure out how to revive tradition; this tradition has been lost. So the problem in China is not that God is dead, but that tradition is lost. Then in simple terms, what tradition? Which Chinese tradition is the dimension that sustains meaning beyond this world, beyond the finite, brief life of the individual? I actually, and I often like to call it “historioculture” (史文化). Chinese history actually has many aspects: for emperors and generals, it is the compilation and revision of historical records that “explore the relations between Heaven and humanity and fathom the changes of antiquity and the present”; for ordinary people, it is the so-called ancestral incense inheritance. This ancestral incense inheritance actually means that you always want your descendants to remember you, that there is always a spirit tablet, a record, a genealogy, and that your deeds and your name are written down. So China has actually always sustained transcendence through this dimension: after I die, there is still meaning; meaning surpasses my brief life. Where is this sustenance anchored? China anchors it in the faith in history, in the tradition of ancestors and descendants. So in ancient China, you could worship the immortals however you liked; after worshipping Guanyin, you could go worship Taishang Laojun, after worshipping Taishang Laojun you could go worship Confucius, but your ancestors cannot be worshipped however you like. You have only one set of ancestors; you can’t say which ancestor is efficacious or responsive, so you go worship that ancestor.
So what in Chinese faith corresponds to Western monotheism, and what actually solves this demand for transcendence, is this thing called “historioculture,” which you could say has existed from the oracle bones all the way to the Qing dynasty (by the Qing dynasty it was already nearly broken), and all the way to the Ming dynasty (the Twenty-Four Histories up to the History of Ming); historioculture has long been continuous and far-reaching, and China relied on this to resolve its own transcendental demands for meaning. In modern times, because of all kinds of reasons, various continuous Westernizations, and so on, this Chinese tradition was beaten down, so now we are also facing similar problems. Of course, next we may be able to discuss whether Chinese traditional wisdom, this kind of solution to the demand for transcendence, or rather this kind of dimension, can and has the possibility of being revived in a new era, in a new guise?
baiyu：
Just now Professor Hu briefly mentioned the early history of the May Fourth Movement. Here I can give everyone a reference: the keywords just mentioned, such as “saving the nation overwhelmed enlightenment,” and some of the debates in academic and social circles at the time, the “Mr. De” and “Mr. Sai,” as well as how to treat Confucianism. I remember that Professor Ding Yun of Fudan University has a book called Confucianism and Enlightenment, which in fact discusses this issue.
I actually want to add a little response. You just mentioned that at the time the pressure of saving the nation was greater, so science had to be developed, capitalism’s industrial system had to be developed, and so on. Last year I made a tour overseas, went to the Middle East, to Dubai, and to Southeast Asia, and I felt: different regions of the world are taking turns staging the same story. First the US and Western Europe develop, then Beijing and Shanghai, and we also have to develop. Saving the nation may have caused us to lose some of our traditions, and then you find that in the end you go to Dubai, to Istanbul; Turkey has its own traditions, and they too are now developing, developing, developing. Bangkok is the same — Bangkok is developing, developing, developing, as if it is endlessly repeating the same stories, as if they too are saving the nation and trying to develop. But do we know that even if you develop into something like the United States, so what? We’ve already talked about some of the crises of Westerners. In the real world, such things are constantly being staged.
05 Why Is It Possible——The Revival of “Historioculture” and the Application of Blockchain Technology
baiyu：
Let’s keep talking about what Teacher Hu just mentioned: if the meaning of being Chinese lies in this world, in the present world, and not in the other shore. For example, the elite pursuit of “let a loyal heart shine upon the annals of history”; ordinary people, by contrast, are meant to enter the ancestral hall and be written into the history of the clan—I must acknowledge my ancestors, that sort of meaning. When we say we want to revive tradition, it certainly does not mean doing so wholesale, taking up all the cultures in history, including some of the dross; and there is another dimension, namely that you have to combine it with new technological conditions. The biggest feature of the conditions today is certainly information technology. So in today’s context, of course, what we mean is under conditions like blockchain: do you think that in such an era, how should we revive it? Or more specifically, what aspects of it are very compatible with blockchain technology, and what can actually be done?
胡翌霖：It’s like this: although I have been emphasizing revival, I have never said that we should go against the tide, knowingly do what cannot be done, and definitely return to antiquity, extol the ancient, and denigrate the development of technology. I absolutely do not mean that. The development of technology is of course a good thing, but you must always take it as a means, not an end. The development of technology is not an end in itself; your end is always human beings themselves. Put more selfishly, it is for yourself; put more selflessly, it is for humankind. You are not developing technology for technology’s sake; you are developing technology for the sake of human beings. So first of all, you still have to think clearly about what human beings are actually seeking. Because, as you can imagine, no matter how far technology develops, at most it just lets people live 20 years longer, 30 years longer. You can’t say it will let you live tens of thousands of years, immortally and undying. Even if you were immortal and undying, you would still have to solve the problem of the meaning of life. Otherwise, wouldn’t it be like Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, or that eternal recurrence in Buddhism—forever unable to transcend? If you yourself have not found the meaning of life, have not found the meaning of human beings, then no matter how much technology develops, it is actually destructive to the human search for meaning. Because technological development is always urgent, and that urgent pursuit will always overwhelm the so-called metaphysical pursuit. So you can never finish saving the nation, because if you fall a little behind, you have a survival crisis. Therefore, you cannot wait until after you have finished saving the nation before you begin to think about enlightenment, or about the meaning of life; rather, you have to think about it from the very beginning, otherwise you will never have the time or the opportunity to think about this problem. So I am not saying we should oppose Westernization or oppose technology. Whether it is Beijing, Shanghai, or Dubai, all must modernize, all must develop technology; I think there is nothing wrong with that. But what I want to emphasize is that while developing technology, or even earlier than that, we need to discuss the question of where meaning and value ultimately reside. This is my supplement to what you said earlier. I have been talking about the May Fourth era; the victory of the science camp was understandable, because at the time Westernization and the force of science and technology were the general historical trend. And now, in a sense, there is once again a new technological trend. Those who pay attention to our conversation will first focus on so-called Web 3, or blockchain, or DAO, and these kinds of new technological trends. Of course, we will feel that these technological trends may represent a new direction, or a trend in the development of the times. Then is it possible, by following this new trend, to do some value-first work? I have been stressing all along that you cannot wait until technological development is finished before discussing value, because you will never be able to wait it out, right? Technological development never ends, so looking at this trend, we should first discuss the issue of reviving values. That is why I think now is precisely such a moment. And what has history given us? History has not given us some guidelines or methods that can be directly taken up and used as references; certainly not that. What it gives us are some inspirations, or rather, what the larger line of thought is. So essentially speaking, rather than trying to emphasize certain traditional spirits of ancient China, I would rather emphasize a basic spirit inherent in blockchain technology itself, and I think this spirit happens to match the spirit of Chinese tradition.
So let’s return to blockchain: what exactly is blockchain? The technology of blockchain itself has some basic features. What does blockchain provide? Two things: one is decentralization, that is, its basic feature in terms of power; the other is its implementation, providing a public and tamper-proof historical record. And this is both something very new and something that no technology has ever been able to do before. In the era before, we often said history is written by the victors; history is the little girl who can be dressed up however one likes… people used to love saying that. After encountering blockchain, we are finally able to firmly carve history onto the blockchain, carve it into the public world of human beings. Blockchain is not a thing, but it is a public space. Recording history is one of the basic application tendencies of blockchain. So I think we are following the development of technology; we are not trying to go against the tide, not trying to be anti-technology. And what are we following? The basic characteristics of blockchain are decentralization and respect for history. I think that sums it up in these two points. And respect for history happens to match the cultural core spirit of Chinese tradition, which is what we said earlier: the spiritual sustenance of China lies in history, lies in what baiyu just mentioned, “let a loyal heart shine upon the annals of history”; the previous line is “From ancient times, who has not died?” I often like to talk about these two lines. “From ancient times, who has not died?” means this tragic reality: everyone must die, everyone must face the finitude of their own life and cannot escape it. And then the next line is the solution: how do we transcend finite life? We inscribe our loyal heart, our personality, our character, onto the annals of history, onto what is called the historical record. This was the demand of ancient Chinese people. Of course, historical records are the demand of high culture, but there is also such a demand in low culture. Ordinary people all say: you must not fail to keep your good name in old age. What does failing to keep one’s good name in old age mean? That “integrity” is also history. You did good deeds your whole life and originally could have left a good reputation, but then you did one bad thing in old age, and that’s it—you’re finished. When the coffin is closed and the judgment made, you won’t get a good name anymore. And there are also manifestations in some dross, such as chastity arches, and so on. This is also a kind of pursuit, a kind of record. Even if you are dead, your reputation must still be recorded and passed down; people are pursuing these things. In tradition, in fact, this relied on clan society, on being preserved and realized through some social mechanisms. But in our modern era, such mechanisms for preserving historical records were once eliminated, or rather once dismantled, and now, as we follow the new trend of blockchain, we may be able to revive something: that is to say, we have new technical means to provide a cultural atmosphere that respects history, and within this cultural atmosphere, it may be possible to rebuild, in a Chinese way, certain folk beliefs or attitudes—to face life and death squarely, because my life itself is brief, but my deeds, my achievements, what I have done, what I have said and done, can be recognized anew and preserved in the world. I think that’s how it is. So I am not only speaking of Chinese wisdom; what I am mainly speaking about is still the possibility inherent in blockchain technology.
baiyu：
Yes. In the industrial era, technological change ultimately brought about the enlightenment of the whole way of thinking, and the key words were freedom, equality, and fraternity. So in the blockchain era, this technology, in your words, promises decentralization and immutability, that is, an emphasis on history. Would you feel that these two key words may be very foundational, very crucial words of the future era, right? And then, as a ledger, it constitutes the history of the entire society, and history in turn constitutes our meaning, and then becomes a very important support of value—is that right?
胡翌霖：First of all, we need to find this kind of foundational value. Foundational values are often supposed to be very simple; the so-called freedom and equality are a very simple slogan. It says nothing, and yet it says everything. So in the Enlightenment era, the core view was nothing more than freedom and equality, and this freedom and equality was brought about by printing. In that technological environment, printing decentralized knowledge. What actually happened then was this: traditionally, books were extremely expensive, and interpretive power and the right to explain the classics were all in the hands of aristocratic families and high officials. Once everyone could have books, the monopoly on knowledge was dissolved. Printing contains a foundational value; printing was actually very important for freedom and equality. You know, among all the commodities in the world, only books—only printed books—require the price to be printed on the product itself, rather than put on with a label afterward. Why was this done? It was a demand of the Enlightenment era. That is to say, in the face of knowledge, everyone should be equal; there should be no bargaining, no hoarding and driving up prices, right? That was a basic demand. So in a sense, when we look again at the Enlightenment era and the Enlightenment movement, it was a spirit core that followed this new technology of printing. So now if we are in the midst of a new social transformation, one that can rival the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment era, then we too are following the logic of a new technology, and the logic I just mentioned is very simple: decentralization and immutability, that’s all. Of course, the problem is that actual practice is not so simple, because slogans are simple, but practice has many forms. For example, American-style democracy is also practicing freedom and equality; Soviet communism and China’s core socialist values are also about realizing freedom and equality—all these concepts, but with completely different, very different, practical forms. So what I mean is, once we have grasped some of the core logic of blockchain technology, there is still a very large space for us to work with—namely, how to actualize that logic. Through different forms of social organization, different technological styles, and different communities, one can carry this thing through. So this is what I mean: can we ride the tide and bring in Chinese culture and Chinese wisdom, and interpret the new logic of blockchain technology, the logic of this era, in our own way?
baiyu：
Here I think we can go a little deeper, following what you just said. You bring up decentralization and immutability—that is, respect for history—as the most basic idea, and then, combining blockchain as a ledger, it can become history as the foundation of society, but on top of that there can be different practical routes. Perhaps some people go down the path of transhumanist solutions, while we can go down the route of restoring our historiographical tradition. If we imagine concrete practice, what kinds of things can be advanced? Because I know you previously wrote a white paper called “Huawendao,” and that plan was quite interesting too. Could you introduce it a bit?
胡翌霖：That would be a bit of stealing the limelight, because we are now in SeeDAO’s home field. Of course, this is also one feature of our Web 3 era: we can run many DAOs at the same time; you can do DAO within DAO, and one person can run multiple experiments. In the past, if you wanted to carry out a social revolution, you really had to risk your life and shed your blood; it would have been impossible for you to join the guerrillas on this side and the revolutionary party on that side at the same time. But now we can say there are multiple ways of probing, and each DAO can have its own mode of organization, its own program; there are channels between them, and also subtle differences. So that is also an advantage. The “Huawendao” I had envisioned before never really got off the ground. Let’s see whether, in the future, we can find some people with stronger initiative, people who are more capable of action, or cooperate with other DAOs like SeeDAO, and try running it again. In simple terms, that’s how it is: we take Chinese culture as our point of departure, and in the era of DAO, in the era of Web 3, we explore a form of governance. The good thing about DAO is that we can have countless explorations. Explore what? Explore a form of governance suited to the new era. And the governance model I imagine exploring is actually the revival of historiographical culture. Because history is not merely about recording everything in exhaustive detail: I sneezed today, I fell down tomorrow, and everything in between is recorded in endless detail. That does not really make history. To truly respect history, on the one hand there is a basic layer, namely that we can inscribe things, that we can use blockchain to record the ledger. But another very important question is how to distinguish what is important: which events are important, which events deserve more ink, which events are secondary, and which events are irrelevant. Respect for history also has this dimension, and this dimension actually needs to be addressed through community governance. Respect for history is not actually something uniquely Chinese; Westerners respect it too. Western scientists also fight tooth and nail over priority, over who gets to have their name attached to a symbol. They too fight tooth and nail over it. All cultures have respect for history, respect for recognition of achievements. The advantage of ancient China is that it institutionalized respect for history, through an entire system of court historians, specialized scribes, and institutionalized procedures for writing history. An important part of writing history is that one must make evaluations. So Chinese history was never simply, purely a record of events; it was meant to evaluate. That is why we say “once the coffin is closed, the judgment is made.” What does “once the coffin is closed, the judgment is made” mean? It means that the evaluation of a person can only be finalized after they die; only then can one settle on a commentary and determine what kind of person you were. Because if you do not die, you may at any time fail to keep your good name in old age. After the coffin is closed, there is an entire set of procedures for making the judgment. The emperor’s procedures are the most numerous; ordinary people also have their own mechanisms, to have it recorded and compiled.
So my idea was that I wanted to set up a DAO, and it would be built on this basis: on the one hand, of course, to promote Chinese culture. What I imagined at the time was that the membership-token NFT issued by our DAO would be the Thousand Character Classic—very beautiful, “Heaven and Earth are dark and yellow, the universe is vast and primordial” (“天地玄黄、宇宙洪荒”)—which comes from the Thousand Character Classic, one character per person. Then, if you form an organization, you can make words out of the characters. Characters are a distinctive feature of Chinese culture, and a character can carry a name; how do you leave a name? Using characters to carry your reputation—that is a basic unit. In other words, your community participants take a character or a word as a marker of identity. So what does this community do? The core activity of this community is to revise history. What history? Of course, one part is the history of the community itself. When was the community founded, when did it develop, what things did it do? We record all these things, and not only record them, but also compile them. What does compiling mean? It means weighing achievements. How much credit does this person actually deserve? How much of what this person did can actually be recorded? For example, record it through SBTs and the like. But this is through community discussion, rather than a final verdict delivered by a few individuals or a handful of people. Of course, the final compilation always has to be done by a few people, but the evaluation of value and such can be a community task—that is the first aspect. Of course, the second aspect is recording and writing the history of things outside the community. The ideal category would be: we are the chroniclers of the new era. We should also record and compile in a decentralized way things including Chinese tradition, the history of the Republic of China, the history of the May Fourth Movement, and so on. This is the greatest ideal: to continue the Twenty-Four Histories, to continue the history of the Qing and the history of the Republic. At a smaller level, our Web 3 world also needs history, right? Now when we talk about the image of all Chinese people, or the entire Chinese-speaking community, in this Web 3 world, it is very poor. Because whenever people mention you, it is all about cutting leeks, being short-sighted and profit-driven, not doing anything good. But in fact we know that Chinese people have made quite a few contributions; there are also many very positive and very important works. I think all these things should have a systematic record, be compiled, and also translated into English for foreigners to see, and translated into Chinese for our own people to see. Don’t let many of us Chinese people actually know very little ourselves; once they enter this circle, they first look for where to squeeze out a little benefit, where to cut leeks, right? They don’t know that we have made some very positive and very important contributions, very good achievements. Of course, some things have failed, but they are also deeds worth remembering. I think these things need an organization to sort them out, record them, and also make an evaluation. This also includes foreign projects—for example, the NFT projects and DAO projects we talk about now: what black marks do they actually have? How did they actually become popular? What things did they do? Why did some projects decline while some can still be very lively? These things are also worth recording. So I think what the world lacks now is a batch of recorders, and this recording should have a set of culture, a set of norms, and a set of institutions to carry it out; in line with the basic characteristics of blockchain—decentralization and respect for history—to record with this basic attitude. So at the time I wanted to create such a DAO, but I haven’t managed to get it going yet. Of course, it’s still slowly fermenting; who knows, maybe it can be done later. Of course I also hope that even if we ourselves don’t get Huawendao off the ground, other DAOs, including SeeDAO, can hear me out and take this part of the construction seriously, or perhaps do some cooperation, or do some independent innovation—basically, to make this matter of community-based and institutionalized historiography happen.
baiyu：
I think what you just said here responds to what we were talking about at the beginning, when you said recently you also wanted to prove that the history of technology is useful. After the two of us finished talking in Beijing, I kept thinking about these things. In fact, SeeDAO had some hints before. For instance, our SeeDAO has a chronicler, and we call her the chronicler; she is an independent documentary filmmaker. We invited her to record some of SeeDAO’s more important turning points. For example, in our history there was a time when the community was very turbulent, and in the end everyone discussed the community’s meta-rules, something like a DAO constitution; there was a transition period like that, and we have records of it. We also have records of some major meetings in ordinary times. Second, in SeeDAO’s history there was once an attempt to launch a project called the Pillar of Shame, which is a bit like what you said about recording the bad things. But we have never elevated this in thought to such a level—namely, that it is one of the value foundations of a new era, and that history can play such a significant role in society as a whole, and in the meaning of human life. We really haven’t thought about it at that dimension. At most, what did we think? That transparency is very important to a community, and transparency, as you told me last time, I think makes a lot of sense: transparency is actually a deduction from the two basic principles of decentralization and immutability; basically, it is a by-product. What we had always believed before was that a transparent ledger is extremely important for an organization. If you have a transparent ledger, then you can let information flow fully and disclose information, and then many governance difficulties are naturally resolved, and coordination difficulties are resolved too. But I must respond to this: philosophy is useful, and the history of technology is useful.
胡翌霖：History of technology has two kinds of usefulness. The first is, for example, the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, including the analogy I mentioned earlier between the printing press’s role in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and our present technological age—from the perspective of the history of technology. On the other hand, from the perspective of history as a discipline, one conclusion I can draw is that what you just said about transparency is important, but it is not enough. The problem now is that it can be transparent, but it can also drown you out: everything gets recorded, but no one takes care of it, and no one compiles it. Isn’t what historians do precisely to take from the messy, vast, oceanic mass of historical records and compile a line of inquiry, or compile some important things? So this matter of compilation is a layer just as important as recording itself. And only with this layer can we say that history can bear value. Because if you merely place it there transparently, but then drown people in it—if you drown people in a huge amount of garbage information, then you will feel that nothing matters, and it would even be better to chase an idol group; chasing rankings would be more important. So such a thing also needs someone to make a special effort to do it, rather than simply letting process records automatically form a repository of value in history.
baiyu：
Just raw material alone is not enough—the vast, oceanic mass of historical records—and now we also have AR and infrastructure like decentralized storage; Ethereum can actually store things too. But compilation, organizing it into a line of thought, turning it into readable history, that is also extremely important. If we want to record history, it certainly can’t be a complete return to Grand Historian Sima Qian recording it all by himself, or a few individual historians recording it. Rather, there has to be a mechanism, a decentralized mechanism, or a DAO mechanism—anyway, there are core creators, but there are also community opinions, and everyone can participate together. It’s a bit like the process of putting things on-chain: before we bundle things and put them on-chain, there is actually a consensus mechanism. We need to establish a consensus mechanism to revise this history.
胡翌霖：
Yes, exactly—you should be completely like the blockchain mechanism, where someone has to package things. That packager is, after all, still a minority; you can’t have everyone writing with a pen—one sentence from you, one sentence from me—that would certainly turn into a mess. The main author of a history may only be a few people, but the value orientations and basic judgments reflected by this main author are things that require consensus. In fact, when the ancient Chinese Grand Historian and others compiled histories, they also relied on consensus; it was not the work of just one person. But overall it was still a small group, a specialized body of historians, or even the emperors and generals themselves, who made the decisions. That is not decentralized enough. True decentralization means that we still need to turn this mechanism into a bottom-up mechanism capable of writing history. In fact, this mechanism can directly use the blockchain mechanism: everyone competes to package blocks; after a block is packaged, if you are not satisfied, you can fork, go back to the previous block and continue writing from there, right? In fact, this can be done entirely according to the spirit of blockchain. Of course, this cannot completely rely on computational competition; it may still need a community mechanism. For example, if we set up a DAO, then within this DAO there is a certain voting power, and that voting power is related to your identity, your contribution, and so on; then you vote to decide the orientation of the historical compilation, and so forth. That way you can balance decentralization with the kind of history that blockchain’s immutability makes possible.
06商业探索——区块链作为底层账本与上层NFT引用
baiyu：
Then let’s talk about one final question. We’ve just discussed a lot of conceptual things. Something more practical came to my mind: if we had such a mechanism that could record this history, how would it be commercially sustainable? But this question may not be the most appropriate one to ask you; we’re just chatting casually. For example, when I talk to SeeDAO’s chronicler, or to the independent documentary filmmaker, how can history be recorded sustainably? In fact, the problem independent documentaries face is that they need to raise money and find donations; they may be hard to distribute like commercial films. Then for SeeDAO, naturally it would only be SeeDAO’s treasury and public resources that could record SeeDAO’s history. It’s somewhat equivalent to relying on a large cycle: the record can only depend on the collective itself to be recorded. For example, a country’s history has to rely on the state’s fiscal budget, and an organization may have to rely on the organization’s budget. Do you think this matter can be detached from an organization, a framework, a boundary, and still be revised, or can it become a standalone thing like a public chain?
胡翌霖：That’s a very good question. Of course, that was also one of my original intentions when I said I wanted to set up a DAO to do this. That is, what is the difference between a DAO and a traditional organization, such as Wikipedia or an NGO? The difference is that a DAO makes it easier to achieve an economic feedback loop. My rough thinking is this: first of all, of course, we can have at least people who do not pursue short-term profits drive this matter forward, like Wikipedia. It doesn’t make much money—do you make money by contributing articles? Many people simply don’t want money; they are not doing it for the money. Wikipedia is so important, so influential to us, such a great thing—what is its market value? It doesn’t have much money; it doesn’t need too much money. On the contrary, if everyone were pursuing money, Wikipedia might be compiled poorly. Because if too many interests are involved, then there may be gaming of the metrics, right? If I earn a bit of money for writing an article or an entry, then a lot of trash entries may end up going up there, and all kinds of conflicts of interest may arise, and it may actually turn out badly. A great record, a co-created work, may not need too much money. Rather, many times we need to mobilize people’s spontaneity, because many people are indeed spontaneously willing to do this. In a certain sense, this is a ultimate pursuit. In the final analysis, what use is money? Look at those tycoons—after they make their money, don’t they still pursue doing great things, things that change the world, things that go down in history? If the community can be made well and the project can become big, then I actually think many people would be willing to put in their own money to invest and to do this, rather than because I need a lot of economic return. That is one aspect. On the other hand, I think there will be returns, there will be bread, but what I hope for is a kind of long-term feedback mechanism—meaning that it is not the case that the moment I write an article, I immediately get paid. Of course, you can get a small reward, but what you truly desire is long-term recognition. When your work is recognized over the long term, then you may continuously derive some economic benefits from it. This happens to be a possibility that our NFT technology can bring us. NFT technology, of course, now seems to have been nearly ruined by overuse; the NFT market has also become all about gaming metrics and speculating on floor prices, and then it becomes a market of liquidity. If we return to the original meaning of a collectible—as a collectible—then the value of this collectible, in a certain sense, first of all, is historical. For example, the reason CryptoPunks were valuable before was precisely because they had historical significance. Or, for instance, when Twitter’s founder took a screenshot of his first tweet and auctioned it, it sold for a very high price. Why would someone recognize that as valuable? Isn’t that just recognizing that history, right? The first tweet has historical significance and historical value. Even if it is just a screenshot I take, I can still auction it for such an extremely high price. But the problem is that this type of NFT is actually lacking. Right now there are only a very few cases, like the Twitter boss selling one tweet, but other important historical events, other things of historical significance, have not been turned into NFTs and issued for sale. If there could be a good mechanism that turns history into NFTs and then sells them, wouldn’t there be market space for that? We have an authentic history, and our historical compilation is relatively well done; then the more important a historical event is, the greater its value may be. And the importance of that event may not have been that great at the time, but ten years later, when you look back, you realize it was a very important event. Then conversely, ten years later, the NFT’s value may be driven up, because it is a collectible, a keepsake. And the NFT mechanism can ensure that when the value of your NFT is driven up, the issuer of the NFT can in turn receive an economic return; that is how the traditional NFT market works, right? NFTs can guarantee that in the long run, if this thing is valuable, then you can also receive a long-term, continuous economic feedback return.
I think that NFT plus DAO plus historical records can indeed produce a series of products like this—our product is a bundled book of history. We said earlier that a history book is a package; a history book is also a block, not loose odds and ends sentence by sentence. We need a dedicated person to be responsible for packaging a history book, and this history book could be packaged into what, exactly? It could be made to look like an NFT and sold, and what you buy is a souvenir. The content of this history book is transparent and public, but the ownership of this history book, the ownership of its collection value, is personal—it is something you can buy, something collectors will collect, just like collecting the first tweet. If everyone can recognize the historical significance of this, then people will collect it. Look at the current NFT market: there isn’t yet such a category. Although there is that unique item like the first tweet, there is no category—namely, historical commemorative NFT. So if we can make such a category of historical records, if we can rely on DAO and on this whole set of reliable, well-developed production mechanisms to produce this entire NFT category, then we can enable historical records, including the people who are recorded in them, to obtain a long-term benefit from this kind of thing. In the short term the gains may not be very large, but in the long run there can be positive feedback, a positive return. That is roughly my conception.
baiyu：
I basically agree with what you said. In the area of content creation or reputation maintenance, it may be difficult to directly quantify things in terms of short-term benefits; in fact, we can see that some content-tokenization communities out there do indeed have serious problems if they are run too short-term.
What you just discussed inspired me. Besides directly treating historical fragments as NFTs and then selling them, because some time ago I talked with a project called likecoin, and they built their own chain on Cosmos back in 2019. This chain is specifically for publishing, for decentralized publishing—that is, I can publish my own books. And even cooler, they have written the whole ISBN system into the underlying layer. They built their own ISCN, and every book issued through it in the world has a unique number. Secondly, it provides a whole set of underlying infrastructure; at the chain level it provides facilities so that everyone can create their own on-chain library. We know that the information systems of libraries are actually quite complex; normally one person can’t do it alone.
What am I trying to say? Actually, listening to you just now, I realized that our history is in blocks, one by one, and it is transaction information one by one. So I think we can completely treat it as the underlying infrastructure of society. Look, when we write history books, or when you scholars write research articles, you often have to cite sources—you are citing that history, in the sense that I then fan it out further. This process is completely somewhat like building an application on a public chain: you are citing it, calling the underlying SDK, calling the underlying interfaces. In NFT derivative creation, people often talk about a logic like this: namely, I can change the original authorization model. The old way of IP authorization was that you first give me a sum of money, and then I authorize the IP to you, and you go make an NFT derivative. But this process can be completely reversed, meaning that you authorize him, and only when he sells something—for example, he writes a very good book, the book sells, he gains revenue, and he cites someone and who authorized him—then he in turn gives that money back. Actually, in that case, the underlying layer can also make money.
Thinking it through, it seems to make a fair amount of sense. The underlying layer is all history, a fragment of history, and then above it, you people writing articles, or people making films, or anyone who merely cites it, is effectively producing an NFT work, and your NFT work will certainly have consumers. Perhaps the underlying direct history is a little hard to sell, but the things above it can be sold. If they sell, then a portion of the income will certainly have to go to the underlying material, and in that way the underlying layer can also continue sustainably.
胡翌霖：I think what you said here goes even bigger. I think this conception is an even more important one, namely that it is not only about history. In a certain sense, it is a library, but in a certain sense you can also say that what a library preserves is history—every book, regardless of what kind of book it is, is essentially a record. So this also involves the question I mentioned earlier: scattered, loose historical records by themselves are not enough; they need layers, to be distilled and compiled layer by layer. Academic work is like this as well; there still needs to be a selection mechanism, and libraries are like this too. A library is not about the more books the better; rather, books need a selection mechanism. You need to choose good books and organize them in a way that is categorized and easy to index. So I actually think this direction has great potential: it is not merely compiling history, but rather doing the selection and compilation work for literature, materials, data, and so on. So what we are imagining is that this work cannot initially rely entirely on loose, spontaneous efforts from scattered individuals; rather, there should be some socialized, community-based mechanism, or use DAO mechanisms to undertake such work. On the other hand, it should allow these efforts to receive long-term economic feedback. For example, the kinds of work traditionally analogous to library operations—how to choose books, how to arrange them, how to organize them, things like that. Including academic work: how you cite, how you conduct literature reviews, and so on. If you turn these into products, then perhaps you can create a more mechanism-based system that can persist forever, sustain itself over the long term, and keep developing and growing, rather than just something you do casually and I do casually. Perhaps in this respect, this is something we can do while bringing our Chinese wisdom and our distinctive forms of organization to bear.
baiyu：
Today we talked about a lot of keywords: the Western question of where the way out lies after God is dead, the Chinese tradition of historiography, and then Teacher Hu brought up blockchain as a historical ledger, with the two core concepts of decentralization and immutability. Then there are the things we can do, like Huawendao: Huawendao is currently lacking a principal organizer. Teacher Hu and a few of his friends have already written the white paper, and the ideas are all there; what is missing now is a principal organizer who can take the lead in coordinating and executing. If anyone among the listeners is interested in this, you can also contact SeeDAO, or directly contact Teacher Hu’s side, and everyone can try it out. And on a larger scale, we later talked about how blockchain can even serve as the underlying ledger, where history can be recorded block by block. Then, after that history is cited by NFTs on the upper layer, perhaps even the economy could circulate in a cycle. Teacher Hu also gave his own proposal. These are the main points we discussed today.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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