I affirm my commitment to our Guiding Principles and the Code of Conduct
After reviewing what @BigSky7 suggests for adding to the Code of Conduct I have mixed feelings. I like the vast majority of the suggestions, but think we risk being too prescriptive with further expansion. And think we’re wading into especially dangerous territory to suggest we want to “adjudicate and help correct behavior.” We can have important conversations about what’s acceptable and what’s not without codifying prohibited behavior beyond the existing Code of Conduct.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about empathy and positive-sum thinking. One thing I forget is that they’re both very hard work because they’re not our natural, default setting.
On empathy, I’m typically not operating at my best at all times or in all situations. Definitionally, no one is doing that. I expect to be able to RECEIVE empathy for an explanation like, “hey, I snapped a post that’s probably not particularly kind towards the FT contributors because I had 5 minutes before I wanted to pick up my kids and I knew if I said nothing then, I might forget to, and this point go underappreciated by the community and I probably didn’t take the time to say it in the right way or consider whether I should learn more privately before snapping off in a public forum.” It’s much harder work for me to GIVE empathy and think “Hm, feels like @jdcook is coming at me a bit. I guess he has his reasons, let’s go find out what those are.” Nobody naturally thinks that way in the middle of a disagreement. But that kind of empathy is something to aspire to (which makes it a good guiding principle but bad thing to codify) To me, a pillar of empathy is to extend the grace you expect. And one of the acknowledgements you have to make is that no one you communicate with is a monolith. But if you do the hard work to find shared goals and find ways to work on them together, then you’re getting more out of this than you put in. Which brings me to…
I’ve found that I (and a lot ofTradFi converts) are often thinking “who’s getting the better end of the deal?” whenever there’s any change/proposal/structure that comes about. It’s beaten into you to view the world as zero-sum. And I actually don’t think that’s wrong. Incentives and motivation should be evaluated thoroughly. But one of the hardest things to do is to say “this person might be getting a better deal, maybe even unfairly so proportionate to what I’m doing, but I should work with them anyway because we’re better off coordinating.” And I think we’re going to have to do a lot of this. To @verto0912’s point, we have to make decisions in a fast-paced environment. Fair compensation/governance allocation will likely be something to consider for the life of the protocol. Knowing that fact, means you also know we will never get it exactly right.
To tie this back to empathy, this means that literally every proposal for how we fairly distribute ownership or govern ourselves will get it “wrong” somehow. But we can only engage with each other on the topic if we carry empathy about that and we’re only ok with it if our collective orientation is towards positive-sum goals. In other words, I can disagree with the how if I trust that your why is positive-sum.