how many of you want to change the world
for good so I was a 10 year old growing
up in India and you would see poverty
inequality at close quarters while I
grew up in a middle-class family and had
the basics there
I wasn’t fed in any silver spoons but I
used to struggle I was I would dream at
night and think about maybe there would
be a magic warrant that I would use and
take away the inequality poverty and
suffering in the world I could not
understand that people who had enough
why couldn’t they just give the stuff
that they did not want those who did not
have it I was lacking the mental tools
as a ten-year-old I was lacking a
paradigm to look at the world in the way
it operates I was considered a gifted
artist and my family my friends everyone
who knew me thought I will go to Fine
Arts in art school but I decided to go
study economics
I understood that early on that the
world goes round on money and that the
understanding of the economy and the way
that world works is fundamental to a
subject like economics and that’s began
a quest in order to change the world and
find out those tools and that
information that’s necessary in order to
understand it and hence effect change I
found out that our very understanding of
reality of the world around is
essentially fragmented so David Bohm is
one of the best-known modern
philosophers on reality existence and
its intersection with consciousness
and there’s this beautiful code for boom
he talks about how the way thoughts are
pervaded for differences as well as
distinctions leads us to the way we
perceive the world right which then
seems to have these divisions and so the
way we see and the way we experience
this world is actually broken up in
fragments and turns out it’s not just a
problem with our worldview it’s a
problem with the very very science is
done it’s it’s a problem with the
waverace kids and so on and so forth now
let me ask you a quick question
what is this similarity or what are some
of the similarities between a school of
fish
that’s swimming together and something
like a financial crisis turns out these
two are a lot more similar than we
realize both are actually good examples
of complex systems systems that are
characterized by autonomous agents that
largely operate without a central
controller whether biological physical
or social we live in a networked world
where different parts and interactions
between these agents cause what we know
as emergent properties of the system
properties that qaddafi forcing and this
is the beauty of complexity I learned
about complex science in Italy from a
professor on innovation economics called
Kusano Antonelli and he opened this
world of a new science and new paradigm
to us and I would sit at the front row
and have totally fascinated Wow this is
a completely different way to look at
the world this is not a world where
there is a bucket of physics a bucket of
biology a bucket of economics and so on
and so forth but an integrated way to
look at all of these together and this
is where I had this life-changing moment
and has changed my personal life has
changed my professional life and ever
since I worked on complex science in one
way or the other so here’s the powerful
idea and that is of networks we all live
in a networked world a hyper networked
wall if you may this is a partial map of
the Internet and you can see how
important it is to have networks as a
fundamental basic tool and compare that
to the general equilibrium models where
we have a linear understanding of the
way economies work in traditional
economics to something like this now you
may ask what is the difference well
there are different nodes of the network
they might be largely independent but
the problem with traditional economics
is the following it does not account for
the interactions between these nodes and
the interactions between these nodes are
not a property of any one system and
that’s why you see systems which are
larger than the sum of its parts where
small perturbations in the system causes
a larger impact the so called butterfly
impact at the system level and turns out
things like financial crisis which are
seen as Black Swan events well turns out
it’s very property of the system it is
nothing but expected now we would have
occasions like this where these long
tail events would occur so I stumble
upon blockchain two years ago and come
to think of it if I look at the larger
arc of my professional life it was
actually not a coincidence for the first
time ever we have a technology that is
just a butyl and actually mirrors the
way the natural world works this is the
way we have fractal patterns in in the
natural world the way we see patterns in
on on a zebra in leaves and turns out
all social sciences and all of society
financial systems so on and so forth
make the same patterns
but the problem with our current
structures our current economic
institutions is that they are centrally
controlled right so there are few
parties that collect all the economic
rent for the contribution that an entire
network is making so in my capacity as a
head of economic research and as a
fellow at MIT what we’re trying to do is
build this next generation of
institutions that would mimic the
natural world more than an artificially
imposed centralized world and here’s the
take away if you’re looking to do
innovation and if you’re looking to
change the world this is a much better place to start thank you
for good so I was a 10 year old growing
up in India and you would see poverty
inequality at close quarters while I
grew up in a middle-class family and had
the basics there
I wasn’t fed in any silver spoons but I
used to struggle I was I would dream at
night and think about maybe there would
be a magic warrant that I would use and
take away the inequality poverty and
suffering in the world I could not
understand that people who had enough
why couldn’t they just give the stuff
that they did not want those who did not
have it I was lacking the mental tools
as a ten-year-old I was lacking a
paradigm to look at the world in the way
it operates I was considered a gifted
artist and my family my friends everyone
who knew me thought I will go to Fine
Arts in art school but I decided to go
study economics
I understood that early on that the
world goes round on money and that the
understanding of the economy and the way
that world works is fundamental to a
subject like economics and that’s began
a quest in order to change the world and
find out those tools and that
information that’s necessary in order to
understand it and hence effect change I
found out that our very understanding of
reality of the world around is
essentially fragmented so David Bohm is
one of the best-known modern
philosophers on reality existence and
its intersection with consciousness
and there’s this beautiful code for boom
he talks about how the way thoughts are
pervaded for differences as well as
distinctions leads us to the way we
perceive the world right which then
seems to have these divisions and so the
way we see and the way we experience
this world is actually broken up in
fragments and turns out it’s not just a
problem with our worldview it’s a
problem with the very very science is
done it’s it’s a problem with the
waverace kids and so on and so forth now
let me ask you a quick question
what is this similarity or what are some
of the similarities between a school of
fish
that’s swimming together and something
like a financial crisis turns out these
two are a lot more similar than we
realize both are actually good examples
of complex systems systems that are
characterized by autonomous agents that
largely operate without a central
controller whether biological physical
or social we live in a networked world
where different parts and interactions
between these agents cause what we know
as emergent properties of the system
properties that qaddafi forcing and this
is the beauty of complexity I learned
about complex science in Italy from a
professor on innovation economics called
Kusano Antonelli and he opened this
world of a new science and new paradigm
to us and I would sit at the front row
and have totally fascinated Wow this is
a completely different way to look at
the world this is not a world where
there is a bucket of physics a bucket of
biology a bucket of economics and so on
and so forth but an integrated way to
look at all of these together and this
is where I had this life-changing moment
and has changed my personal life has
changed my professional life and ever
since I worked on complex science in one
way or the other so here’s the powerful
idea and that is of networks we all live
in a networked world a hyper networked
wall if you may this is a partial map of
the Internet and you can see how
important it is to have networks as a
fundamental basic tool and compare that
to the general equilibrium models where
we have a linear understanding of the
way economies work in traditional
economics to something like this now you
may ask what is the difference well
there are different nodes of the network
they might be largely independent but
the problem with traditional economics
is the following it does not account for
the interactions between these nodes and
the interactions between these nodes are
not a property of any one system and
that’s why you see systems which are
larger than the sum of its parts where
small perturbations in the system causes
a larger impact the so called butterfly
impact at the system level and turns out
things like financial crisis which are
seen as Black Swan events well turns out
it’s very property of the system it is
nothing but expected now we would have
occasions like this where these long
tail events would occur so I stumble
upon blockchain two years ago and come
to think of it if I look at the larger
arc of my professional life it was
actually not a coincidence for the first
time ever we have a technology that is
just a butyl and actually mirrors the
way the natural world works this is the
way we have fractal patterns in in the
natural world the way we see patterns in
on on a zebra in leaves and turns out
all social sciences and all of society
financial systems so on and so forth
make the same patterns
but the problem with our current
structures our current economic
institutions is that they are centrally
controlled right so there are few
parties that collect all the economic
rent for the contribution that an entire
network is making so in my capacity as a
head of economic research and as a
fellow at MIT what we’re trying to do is
build this next generation of
institutions that would mimic the
natural world more than an artificially
imposed centralized world and here’s the
take away if you’re looking to do
innovation and if you’re looking to
change the world this is a much better place to start thank you
Please follow and like us: