In an ironic twist, Prabhakar suggest that Bruce's formal specialty at Apple -- creating technical documentation -- might actually be the key to saving civilization!

We have been wrestling with how to bootstrap scalable pro-social behavior (aka positive-sum status games) in the absence of a top-down authority to set and enforce standards (which often starts out well, but always ends up corrupted by self-interest, even if unconscious).

Prabhakar experienced the pain of this first hand when his 7/28 pitch to The Great Reset devolved into unproductive arguments over the term "system." On the one hand, he was elated that everyone was taking ownership of the meeting instead of deferring to him as an authority figure.  On the other hand, many of them expressed frustration that they weren't making any concrete progress.

The breakthrough came from replacing "system" with the more organic term "relational practices." Instead of setting up rules and authorities to enforce them, the objective is for the group as a whole to help each other identify and adapt practices that help them achieve their common mission.  In a very real sense, the goal is to make culture into 'hackable open source' where everyone has a fair shot and understanding and improving how we relate to each other.

This is not a panacea.  The best-case outcome is also the worst-case failure mode: where this process works so well that people end up trusting it too much, and stop being vigilant.  The most we can do is create a transparent enough ecosystem that a single well-meaning individual of average ability can rally others to stop a skillful player with malicious intent (but not vice versa).  But in the end, nothing can stop the heat death of the universe.

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