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wtf is DeSci?
Recorded: Jan. 8, 2025 Duration: 1:41:52Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. Hello, hello, hello.
Testing, testing.
Can I get a couple reactions if anyone can hear me?
Yes, welcome.
Super excited for this episode of the D-Sign mic.
I think it should be a really great combo this week, just answering the question of WTF is Desai. I feel like I've been seeing this question circulated all over crypto Twitter, so we might as well talk about it here. Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
I'm going to introduce myself.
Hello.
My name is Thane Douglas.
I'm currently a Muse Matrix fellow under Cohort 2.
I'm also a rising junior computer science major, Spanish minor, studying at Howard University.
And we're just here today again to talk about what the fuck is DSI.
I bet a lot of you guys have been hearing about the DSI market cap, hearing about new communities within DSI, learning about new projects from Astratis DAO to Cerebrum DAO to PsyDAO.
We got a lot, a lot of exciting projects coming up. Erin, I heard, I heard something about Deci
London. Is Deci London coming up? Yes, DeI London will be mid-April.
And if you've been prior years, you know, it's such an incredible gathering of traditional scientists,
people really deep in DSI leading the way, and then other innovative folks,
like connected to other aspects of science or the open science movement and it's
really just such an incredible uh gathering of all of those people sharing what's happening at
those latest edges I think it's April 13th let me double check real quick um but I believe it's around that time for this coming year. And
definitely go check out the DCI London account. We might be able to pin an announcement for that
right up here. If you haven't been yet, best DCI conference going on. Yeah, it's April 12th and 13th for the third year of DCI London.
So let's get this pinned up above. Awesome. Yeah, you know, the likes of ConsenSys, ETH Denver, NFT, NYC, or any other big crypto conference, whether domestically in the U.S. or across the globe,
of interdisciplinary collaboration within science.
We have the founders and core team members from
SciNFT, HairDAO, London Futurist, CerebrumDAO,
ChimiaDAO, TalentDAO, VitaDAO, all coming together
for this amazing event.
I also heard that G-Mania will be hosting a month-long hackathon. So there's a
lot of exciting updates to be in the loop for in DSi. You don't want to miss it. This is your year
to get involved and learn more. I think what I love the most about DSi is that these communities come together
to disseminate the foundation of science while also innovating the processes behind how we go
about conducting the scientific method. You know, at DSi London, we have speakers, workshops,
activations covering fundamentals, not only in the producibility
crisis, not only in new ways of funding research in science, but also in the likes of biotech
and the likes of machine learning, decentralized AI, AI governance, AI safety, AI policy infrastructure.
governance, AI safety, AI policy infrastructure. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of research being done
in so many domains within just a few topics I spoke on. And that's what I personally really
love about DSI. The sky isn't even the limit. The limit for DSI is honestly unfathomable.
We live in a world where science is often put on a pedestal.
You know, science-backed medication, science-backed solutions, science-backed technology.
It's often put on a pedestal.
And DSI puts that power back into the communities.
We get to choose what kind of research we want to reproduce.
We get to choose what kind of ethical considerations and methodologies are
actually sustainable and accepted within this space. As a computer scientist, DSI has honestly allowed me to upskill in industries that actually excite me.
That being biotech, I'm really excited to hopefully attend DSi London this year,
where I get to learn more about Srebrenica Dow,
learn more about work that's being done in neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, neuroprosthetics, and biotech.
It's something I personally don't want to miss out, especially with the network that is DSI London. There's so many, so many amazing organizations from Desai Mexico, Muse Matrix, Desai World, Input and Output, Athena DAO, Research Hub.
If you're looking to expand your network and expand the connections in the industry of decentralized science, this is a conference that you do not want to miss, guys.
April 12th to 13th is our third round, third time's a charm.
You guys definitely do not want to miss it,
and I hope to catch all you guys at DSi London.
But again, this space is just open space.
If anybody has any questions about what the fuck is DSi,
I've had the privilege to be in a DSi fellowship
for almost what is to be four to five months. I applied to Muse Matrix last year in the summer
of 2024. I applied as an undergraduate researcher and undergraduate developer. Under Muse Matrix,
I've been able to do a lot more than just develop user interfaces
and develop wireframes. We have multiple projects from multiple cohorts that are in building
phases as well as prototyping phases and user testing phases. If anyone has any questions
about what the fuck is DCI, we're here to answer them.
Amazing.
Yeah, for anyone listening in, definitely feel free to request the mic or leave a comment down below.
We have one so far.
In summary, what is really
DSi? Thane, would love for you to take a stab at this or if it's helpful to set up, you can also
kind of frame it from how you've come into DSi. I'm happy to also share how I think about it or kind of cluster
kind of the different organizations in DSi.
All right, I think we got like micro rug pulled. Let me see if I can get Muse Matrix back up here.
One moment.
In the meantime, I can share how I think about
the D-Site ecosystem overall.
Usually I kind of mentally classify it
into two different categories.
One category are different bio DAOs.
So those are things such as like tree broom DAO or valley DAO, hair DAO,
some of which Thane was just mentioning.
Quantum bio DAO launched recently.
Long COVID Labs launches tomorrow. We'll actually have a space with them. So those are all kind of examples of those different
BioDAOs. And originally they really started out as investment organizations that invested in specific research verticals, and each of the
tokens would fund that treasury to then make those different investment decisions and different
types of research. Usually, they were pretty focused on one specific kind of niche-down
research area where a little bit of funding and also more of that
community approach could really have a larger impact. All right not sure if this invite is
going through properly. Cool and then the other cluster within DSI is more on the technical side technical infrastructure
tooling these might be things like research hub like causality network which is down below
DSI labs so focus more on the data element of it often or the publication element or on that
knowledge sharing side of things and really allowing for more of that interoperability,
transparency, or just access in also a privacyerving way to different scientific knowledge and data.
So those are kind of the two different structures I usually think about the D-Site ecosystem in,
which one does it fall under.
But now we're starting to see kind of more of an expansion of each of these different kind of broader clusters.
There's also kind of a third category,
which is more focused on community initiatives awareness.
And those might be different regional groups such as DSi London or DSi Mexico.
Thane, if you're back up here now, definitely feel free to chime in.
Awesome, yes. DSI really revolutionizes the research life cycle grants and proposals all the way to the publication
of your research. DSI really is just the abstraction of blockchain technology and the
use of producing and disseminating science and research. I come from originally a traditional research background,
researching at the Institute of Human-Centered
Artificial Intelligence at Howard University.
Under here, I work under the PI of Dr. Gloria Washington,
Dr. J. Hayes.
Under Brave Ideas Labs, I was introduced to research
in a traditional sense first, and I was introduced to research in a traditional sense first.
And then being introduced to research from a non-traditional sense in D-side, the differences are big but very, very, very minute at the end of the day. They're big differences, changes of processing, what technology is used to leverage the research cycle.
However, it's the same research cycle being conducted.
For example, as Aaron was mentioning, data governance and the reproducibility crisis of data is a very important issue to be solved in the industry of science. And putting that power back
into the user's hands, as well as the scientists hands. Scientists no longer have to apply to an
NSF grant or a Department of Energy grant or leverage the funds of government to produce
their science. That's the beauty of DAOs like VitaDAO, SrebrenDAO,
HairDAO. All these communities are then able to use the work they're doing to raise their own
capital, raise their own funds, and continue producing real data-backed, validated science.
data-backed, validated science. And that hasn't been done before in a non-traditional sense.
Most research laboratories owned and operated by universities or by national laboratories,
such as HAMI, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, or the Argonne Laboratory, or other big
universities, they're not being funded through cryptocurrencies.
They're not being funded through digital assets and digital currencies.
However, when scientists then use their power to call in large sums of funds
and large sums of currencies to continue doing their work
and continue researching whatever it is that they're
passionate about. The results have proven to be very, very successful. When you're doing what it
is your love from the research proposal stage to the research paper stage, DSI has really allowed me to fall in love with the entire cycle of research.
And I'm really excited to see moving forward more DSI research symposiums.
There are so many amazing DAOs and amazing research being conducted in DSI right now.
And often, a lot of us aren't able to hear about it or not able to stay up to date on what breakthroughs are being made by Cerebrum Dow or what breakthroughs are being discovered and investigated by a lot of the DSI initiatives that are currently going on. like DCI London, for pop-up cities like Castilla, for interactions and physical meetups, as well as virtual meetups.
Places where we get to give the stage, including like the space, spaces where we get to hand the open mic to researchers and to scientists who are doing the hard work.
who are doing the hard work. One thing that this fellowship has taught me is I love research.
Research is an amazing opportunity, but research is not easy. It's not easy from the ground up.
It takes a lot of detail orientation, a lot of co-development, co-working, reiteration,
a lot of redefining the scope of your research method, redefining the
scope of your abstract, re-evaluating what your research questions are, and re-evaluating your
approach. That's the beauty of research. You get to try and test and hypothesize so many different
approaches to finding and investigating the same issue. For example, for me,
I want to move into brain-computer interfaces and really investigate how we can increase the
mobility and livelihood of veterans or amputee armed service workers who are now prosthetic born and have to leverage the use of neuroprosthetics
to retain the natural cognition and mobility us as humans are born with.
And that's something that I get to continue pursuing along my research path.
But I've learned just with getting clarity more on what my research goals are
and what my research values are, it's not easy defining, defining one, what it is you want to
research and two, how it is you go about researching that. But that's why I'm a huge fan of DSI. It
really empowers the scientists to take a chance on their genes.
It empowers the scientists to take a chance on what they believe in. And I encourage anyone,
if you're interested in research, I encourage everyone to go explore that. Explore that
curiosity. Explore why it is you want to research this topic, why it is you want to research animals or the
human body or metacognition or artificial touch.
There's so many amazing research interests.
I could go on and on about neuroscience and computer science and the intersection and
use cases on that.
But what I'm really trying to get to is that DSi is a platform.
It's a platform for anyone who's interested in science,
anyone who's interested in research, to explore, to explore without bounds. You can explore your
gifts. You can explore your intellectualism. You can explore your curiosity and not feel
constricted to a single area of study, not feel confined to one major or one minor. The research experiences
and opportunities within DSI are quite limitless. Erin has been in this space for years, and I'm
sure she could speak to more on how DSI has evolved as an industry just in the past five years.
And that's only five years.
Think about what DSI is going to evolve into in five decades.
Right now, the DSI market cap is at 1.2 billion.
And we just started 2025.
There are only more DSI research labs, only more DSI DAOs,
and only more DSI communities popping up across the globe.
I'm talking DSI Mexico.
I'm talking DSI Africa.
I'm talking DSI Miami.
There are so many amazing DSI pop-ups and communities that are already existing.
that are already existing. And my goal as a scientist, as a researcher, I want to show a path
to my community and to students now in high school and middle school that it is okay to follow what
it is you're obsessed with. It's okay to be a nerd. It's okay to care so deeply about science or any
topic of research. That is your superpower. It is your
superpower following your curiosity. It is your superpower using all your skills to create and
produce new knowledge. And that's what really Desai is at the core. It's the co-production
and co-development of new knowledge. And I encourage everyone, join. Join in now, join in now, join in
now. It is not too late. Find what projects resonate with you. Find what communities actually
touch your heart. Find what research groups are researching towards something you genuinely care
about and genuinely feel connected to. It's honestly such a treat and it's such a reward
seeing your research bear fruits of your labor, bear new findings. And for me, I really,
really, really love presenting my research. I really love being able to present my poster
and present at the symposium and submit my abstract and speak to it. It's really fun.
And you get to find more people who are like you and like-minded with you
and also want to explore the same areas in science as you.
But again, I think I'll pass it back on to Erin
and let her just kind of scope out the growth of DSI
just in the last five years because DSI is headed to
a level it just has not been at yet. 2025 is a very integral year for DSI. The industry has not
been at this market cap before. It has not seen this much new talent and emerging projects, but it's a very exciting time, and I hope to see everyone in this space play a role in it.
Such a great kind of overarching kind of vibe and definition of what DSci is and can be for so many different people coming into the space and being able to combine different aspects of their interests, their knowledge set to be able to keep pushing science forward.
And as DSci has evolved over the past few years. We've definitely been able to see different organizations
popping up or serving different needs in that evolution.
And I think we'll keep seeing more and more of that
moving forward.
Pamela, would love to hear from you and Ed as well,
since you both have been in the space for a while
and have seen and been part of this growth and evolution,
as well as tying back to the original question, what is DSI?
Hi, Irene. Hi, everyone. A pleasure to be participating in the question of the Meromole, as we will say in Mexico.
So, I'm Amelia, and I will resume what is design in the works, scientific progress for me.
And well, I'm going to start with a history because I hear about Ed's work in the field of agriculture.
And two days ago, the UNAM published a gassette when they talk about the map of the soil biodiversity in Mexico.
So when I start with this story, oh sorry, my kids are running here.
So, but basically, they're so excited about D-Sci, that's what's happening.
Yeah, and because I relate what is D-Sci, support the transform the transformative ideas in the scientific field.
So when,
Abre la puerta.
When I was three years ago
in a soil microbiology laboratory,
I remember proposing a microbiological mapping
of soils in Puebla.
And the answer of the doctor was,
it has already been done.
There is no point.
And now we have the the dr garibai's work that is about
this this um this research so this side lets you to to create a new project from zero
so if you have the knowledge and experience so for me this i changed my life because it's another way to do research without barriers.
And yeah, so Ed, please talk about your project.
And thank you, everyone.
Thank you, Erin, for this amazing space, as always.
And well, Ed, welcome and good to hear you.
you. Yeah, thanks so much for sharing. I think one point that you brought up of how you might
Yeah, thanks so much for sharing.
have had some background in one aspect of science and how that can keep expanding through DSI or
maybe shift into other areas that might not have been as supported by the traditional academic institutional scientific
space is a really exciting opportunity of DSI. And I think that's a really core part of what it is.
It's this flexibility in continuing to experiment and explore science and discover in the world. And that to me is also a very core
piece of what is DSI. Ed, welcome. Thanks for having me up. Yeah, I see DSI as it really gives
an opportunity to empower paradigm shifts, you know, because the status quo,
so much controls change,
and especially in the economics of change,
whether it be through academics or through industry.
And so people don't know I come from agriculture,
and agriculture was all about chemistry and physics for many years,
and for good reason, because that's all we could measure. Same with our food and same
tracking to our health. And many years ago, we said, what about microbiology? Because
we couldn't really identify it very well or study it very well, but then we started to do the practices.
And eventually the technology caught up so we could look at things like the metagenomics and the metabolomics and all these sort of things.
And, you know, even though we were told for decades that, you know, if anything, the microbiology of the soil in a plant is more harmful than it is
helpful. We now have proven otherwise. And now it's sort of catching on and we're tying it to
human health now because we realized that, you know, our microbiome is actually important it was never considered much more than maybe 10 years ago
so it really allows for for change and it also allows to get science out of silos and the
ivory towers you know i've i've watched in academics as grad students and stuff are more
and more put into silos and they can't really understand the big picture.
And it's for good reason, because industry wants these young people
to just be focused on one thing, and that kind of helps control the system
so they don't really see the big picture.
So they don't really see, well, maybe there's other factors involved here.
So I really see it as a way to get really, you know, paradigm shifts, grassroots efforts that, you know, do threaten, you know, existing institutions, which need to be. Our health is so bad and we know our food is so bad. And yet we have learned in by doing the science through literally the regenerative ag movement and food movement has been started by farmers and they have become the scientists. scientists from institutions and from labs that realize also that they're kind of trapped in a
system where they're really not able to do the good for the people it's all about the money and
the economics and the control of the systems and so that's what i really see desai is empowering
that we can holistically get together and across everything from a farmer that's looking at what's happening at the root level to somebody in the medical community who's trying to do the research on how do we make people healthy again?
How do we, you know, not just focus on drugs and pills, but what is health?
You know, what is the roots of health?
How can we have people be healthy?
Because that's what we're learning in agriculture.
We now have, we're able to, by bringing just nutrition and biome, no drugs, no chemicals,
we're able to make plants and animals so healthy that they're resistant to all the pests and
all the pathogens that chemistry has been trying to solve for decades.
But of course, if you've got institutions
that only have PhDs that understand chemistry
and understand the physics,
then you've got a problem.
And so, and that's why they've been so resistant.
So it's opening up science
so that it really looks holistic like things.
And I'll just land it there. Definitely. I think a lot more people are also at a point now to have
some of these conversations, especially about our food supply or even what is health and what some of these different metrics
or variables might look like. And DSI can really help with answering some of these questions as
well and allowing more people to either contribute data into the overall knowledge domain or ask questions that haven't been asked on some type of a stage before for
them to actually then get answered. I know that even if just looking at some of the conversations
that are now sparked by different people like RFK coming into a bit more of the limelight like he's been a big proponent
of crypto for quite a few years has been a big questioner of our food supply and
some different medical approaches and I think really getting into the root of
okay let's ask these questions and then find different answers or evaluate some of the nuance
of what different data might come from asking those questions is really one superpower or one
thing that's possible in DCI that's way harder to achieve without this type of approach, without
this type of way of incentivizing different people to participate on kind of all sides of that equation.
And we're seeing this across really exciting fields as well.
Everything from quantum biology to long COVID, which is much more kind of front and center, present in different people's lives,
as well as what the future might
look like. And then from an agriculture perspective, or even the plants all around us,
just an ongoing kind of ever-present aspect of our entire lives. Thayne, yes?
Yes, I just wanted to piggy off back on what Ed said.
Thank you, Aaron.
I really appreciated the point that was brought up about challenging institutions who are
pretty single-minded and actively promote graduate and undergraduate scholars to become
experts in one domain. For me, I'm on a
pathway to my PhD. I'm in a scholars program at my university called the Karsten Scholars Program.
We're committed to increasing the diversity of PhD candidates across all institutions.
And as a freshman coming in as a computer science major, for example,
I have research interests in blockchain. I was onboarded into this space back in 2020,
and I came in as a computer science major thinking I wanted to research blockchain solutions,
and I wanted to research those applications, just in new use cases. And then after my first year,
just in new use cases. And then after my first year, I got introduced into human-computer
interaction and AI research and machine learning operations. And so my research interest kind of
pivoted. I wanted to then put all my energy in becoming an AI analyst, a machine learning
researcher, and engineer. Then after my fellowship with MuseMatrix, I was introduced into neuroscience
and all the crazy intersections between blockchain, putting data on chain, and blockchain-enabled
brain-computer interfaces. To Ed's point, education is changing. Industries are changing.
Everything intersects with everything. AI is intersecting with everything.
Research is backing so many industries, and it's really important for me as an emerging scholar
to not limit myself. As much as I'm interested in quantum security, I'm also interested in AI policy
and AI safety, yet my research interests are also in brain-computer interfaces and
neuroscience. Again, that's what I love and that's what I truly love about DSi. It really allows you
to abstract all of your skills, abstract all of your interests, and channel that into something that genuinely means the world to you,
something that genuinely leaves an impact and legacy on the whole globe.
And I just, I'm really grateful for all of you guys, promoters and supporters of DSi.
It's a movement that has, honestly, a longstanding legacy that I haven't really seen
before. Love that. Yeah, I think we'll continue to see more and more people coming into the
ecosystem from different types of backgrounds and now being introduced to, oh, hey, here's this other domain that
might have some level of overlap with maybe someone's current focus, whether that's from
a more technological background or scientific or from more of a business marketing type of
perspective, as well as community and all of these different elements intersecting to really be able
to discover new things and then push those discoveries out to people who might really
value from having access to them. For anyone new that has joined over the past few minutes,
we've really been diving into the question. WTF is Desai. I have
seen this circulating all over crypto Twitter and also just into the question, like, what really is
Desai? If you have any other questions or perspectives on this, feel free to comment
down below or request to speak. Would love to dive into kind of
any adjacent questions or comments on this topic. If you're newer to DSi, welcome. Super excited to
have you be curious about what's all happening in this space. If you've been in Desai for a while, great to see you again. This is Erin behind the account
and right now up on stage we have some leaders in the Desai ecosystem who have really been building
for a while or doing some really incredible work pushing the whole movement forward.
the whole movement forward. Cool. Yeah, so if anyone's listening in, feel free to raise your
hand and come join up front. Awesome. For anyone who's up here on stage right now. Are there any other questions you might be frequently asked about
DSI that might be helpful to just answer kind of in this broader conversation as well?
Also, Eric, welcome. You've been a great leader in the DSI space for anyone that
hasn't met him yet as well.
Thanks, Aaron. I appreciate it.
And it's good to see so many other folks up here.
A lot of great people in the space as a whole.
I mean, it's definitely an interesting space
and I can't tell you how many attempts there have been made
at trying to define what is dsci and it's a very
simple question with about as many different answers as you can possibly think of i mean
there's it means something different to everyone to me the focus is mostly on using blockchain technologies to help solve the replication crisis.
I view it more so from the publishing and open access angle than from the, I guess, biotech angle.
And I'm starting to see a lot of really interesting things happening around the incorporation of emerging technology
and with product market fit for some of the products and companies that have been out here
for a while. So that would be at least an overview to my answer to this, but
I'm really curious to hear what others have to say.
Ed, definitely. universities. And in publishing, it was really interesting at the time because every one of
these land-grant universities had to publish a book back in the 1800s and up until about 1930s
when they sort of lost their focus. They had to publish a book of all the work they did,
all the research, all the experiments. And they needed to share it with all the other land-grant universities, state universities.
And that was incredibly powerful and efficient because I see so much replication,
which isn't really an experiment. It becomes just a demonstration
just because you're not aware of what somebody else is doing.
And, you know, it's just amazing, you know, considering we have blockchain, we have the internet to connect now. Back then, they had to publish these books that were well over a thousand
pages of fine print. And that was so effective. And yet, you know, they let that go away because slowly but surely industry and control took over.
And so now we have a publishing system in science that just doesn't work.
And it especially doesn't work at the clinical or practical level.
You know, anybody that's in the lower actually practicing the science doesn't really have, can't afford the
access to, doesn't have access to. So, so much research just gets done and sits on a publication
and nobody ever uses it. And so, and that just cuts down on the effectiveness and the efficiency of it all. But again, yields to that power of control of status quo.
And it just works against everything that science really should be about.
And I really agree that, you know, especially in the publishing and journal area, it's just
ridiculous what's happened.
The cost to do it, the time.
Science happens so fast now. I mean, even in agriculture and our scientists, we keep getting asked, when are you going to
write a book? And people are like, well, books really don't work anymore because by the time
you write the thing and get it published and get it out there, we've already advanced so far.
In just a few months, we have massive changes. And so that's why we go to things like podcasts
and what we call YouTube University, where we can just do a new podcast or a new talk and say,
do a new podcast or a new talk and say, this is what we just discovered this last month.
And two months later, we can do another one.
In other words, we can revise a book very regularly, which you can't really do in the
old system.
Books are valuable for, you know, understanding history and the progression of science.
But as far as staying up on the cutting edge of things, you know, needs to be a different approach.
And the one other area I think that's really suffered is that I've seen over the years is when social media kicked in.
Because before social media, we used to have basically independent forum platforms
where if you had an interest and you got a group of people together you could get on one of these
forums and they were designed to have different topics around a specific interest and you could
have long discussions we'd come up i created a algorithm for coffee roasting and it
was a group of people all over the world and i had a concept with new hardware to the rate of
rise of when we roast and we got a bunch of people together and it took about a year or so
of discussions and working out the hardware and the software. And after that time, all of a sudden,
we had a new product that revolutionized coffee roasting around the world.
And it all happened just on a little independent forum platform.
But social media is a single thread now.
And everything comes and goes and disappears.
And it's all about social.
It's not about being creative it's not about you know
building on ideas really focusing on ideas so i just think the whole area around information
needs to change and how we communicate and we need to think about platforms again that's what
i'm trying to do because we need to educate farmers around the world about how does microbiology fit in with the way they grow food and the way we think about food.
And because we don't have that in academia, how are you going to get that to the individuals?
They have the ability to be online.
they have the ability to be online.
They, you know, we just need the platforms,
We just need the platforms.
but a lot of the side platforms, whether it be Discord or, you know,
many of those, they just, you know, they're not designed very well.
They're designed by, you know, Discord was designed by gamers,
and that's not your average sort of user.
And so I think that's going to be really important so that, you know, because we have events, but you go to an event and then everybody goes home.
And we talk about that in agriculture.
You know, we bring a bunch of farmers together.
We give talks about how they could change their system and then they go home and they don't have anybody to communicate to keep those discussions going.
We need mentorships in this.
You know, we need to work together three 365 every day, every night, all times.
We can do that online.
But if we're working in systems that control us through single threads.
So a week, a day, a month later, it's just buried.
We don't get these long discussions that really create things together in that decentralized format that we desire and we see the value of.
So I'll land it there.
And I know, Muse Matrix, I see you have your hand up.
I'm going to try and make this really quick. Ed, it's good to hear from you again. I remember
maybe two years ago, as you were in the labs discord, telling us the story about bringing
PhD students out to the farm and then seeing the hares on roots for the first time ever,
out to the farm and then seeing the hairs on roots
for the first time ever, where you tell the story better,
but just a quick summary of it.
It does a ton of work bringing people out
to try and understand what sustainable agriculture looks like.
Did a lot of work trying to bring PhDs out to the farm
to just get more experience with plants in the wild
as opposed to in the lab.
They had, I believe it was a research study that was funded by Monsanto, which was kind
of designed to, shall we say, test whether or not a specific product from Monsanto was
safe.
And they were brought out to the farm and realized the roots that we have in the lab don't look like the roots that we see on these plants just growing naturally.
The roots there had hairs, whereas the roots in the lab were completely barren.
And instead of changing anything about the study itself, the PhDs, the grad students, were asked not to go out to the farm anymore, and the paper itself
was published. And to me, that has been an impactful story that has stayed with me for
quite some time. So, Ed, I just want to say thank you for sharing that. But to go on some of the
points that you're building there, I mean, you think about it, we still call it a scientific paper.
It's literally called a paper, despite the fact that the majority of academic research is not in the paper, in the narrative that's being told.
It's the code, it's the data, it's the tweets, it's the conference proposals and the videos.
There's so much more to any piece of knowledge than the narrative that's
been written, which is so often tuned to be accepted by an individual editor at a specific
journal. I mean, thinking about how we can encapsulate more of the scientific record,
how we can provide provenance and context in terms of, you know, allowing people to see
that work has been put in by a person over a period of time, that something is honest and
valuable as opposed to slop generated by artificial intelligence. And don't get me wrong,
I don't have a problem with artificial intelligence. I don't have a problem with a single
thread conversation on social media, but it's to say we need ways to distinguish. We need ways
to try and help discern what has and hasn't been put forward by individuals. We need strong signs
of value that help us say, yes, this is science that a researcher has poured time and effort into.
While we can't trust it entirely, as that's kind of the basis for everything within academia,
we are more likely to be able to trust that the conclusions being drawn are true.
So I would love to see continued discussions around signs of trust, around provenance and
context being brought back into academic research,
and around the larger incentive structures coming out of the DSI space. And Muse Matrix,
that was the fastest I could do. Thank you for being patient. I'm sorry to have cut you off.
Eric, no worries. Thank you so much. And thank you so much, Ed. I actually wanted to kind of piggyback on some points both of you guys made about the publishing system of academic science. At Howard University,
I'm actually the editor-in-chief for the undergraduate research journal there. And it is
some, all the problems you guys spoke to are exactly what it is we're dealing with. Like what you said, Ed, I mean, Eric,
the science is not just in the paper. There's so much more. There's the code, there's the data,
there's the tweets, there's so many more pre-processing that goes into it. And at the
undergraduate research journal, we've kind of contemplated that, like like why are we only accepting written manuscripts when we know we
know the research process consists of so much more for us as well we have an interdisciplinary journal
so we publish um undergraduate authors and the likes of social sciences humanities um econ as
well as computer science biology chemistry um and And we've upped our submissions, including other paper submissions,
such as policy memorandums and other research papers
that also include the code and include the technical architecture behind their research.
And I just think it's really important and it's something
that has a lot of considerations, like what you said, the legitimacy behind it, Eric.
How can we then ensure quality control while accepting other forms of literature and other
forms of scholarly papers? That's kind of something we've been struggling, not struggling with, but just something we've had to take time working through with our editors,
because like you said, science moves by so quick, and oftentimes a lot of the undergraduate
researchers build upon the work that is submitted, and by the time we publish in the spring, we have a hard printing date, like well before May.
A lot of the time, the researchers are still building upon that work, and they have more to share and more to include.
And we've explored different modalities, such as using like Mirror and other Web3 publishing to host their research work also online.
to host their research work also online.
But that opens up a whole other topic of discussion
because already at so many universities,
there's so much scientific literature
that has already been published.
And it opens up a whole use case
to archiving literature on chain,
archiving research on chain.
And yeah, that's kind of something we've been exploring at Howard, but I hope to see other universities also try that.
What is your name? By the way, I see Muse Matrix, but I never caught your first name.
Sorry, I'll give a quick intro. Hello, everyone. My name is Stane Douglas. I'm a rising junior
computer science major, Spanish minor, and undergraduate researcher at Howard University.
And correct me if I'm wrong, Howard's Atlanta, right?
Oh, no.
No? Okay, I thought it was.
Washington, D.C. Okay, got that one totally off. Holy cow. Okay, I thought it was. Washington, D.C.
Okay, got that one totally off.
Holy cow.
Yeah, everything you just said is spot on.
But even to just expand on that, it's ridiculous because we live in a digital medium at this point where things evolve so fast, where we have the capacity to convey information on a rolling basis.
I hesitate to draw the comparison because I find often when it gets drawn, it's drawn in the wrong
way. But we look at how GitHub has changed software development. So early on, people would use snail mail, like the U.S. Postal Service,
to send each other floppy disks. They could go back and forth between developers if they needed
to collaborate. I write my portion of the code, I save it, I put it in my little envelope, and I
send it off to you. You write your portion of the code.
And then when we were done, we made as many copies of it as we wanted.
We talked to our friends.
We picked out pre-orders.
And we mailed floppy disks.
And eventually, that continued to grow over time,
where it wasn't just trying to send a floppy disk.
Now all of a sudden, let's say, skip forward a few decades, we have to get primitive.
We have the idea that people can
collaborate independently on the Internet in
a way that can be versioned,
that can be tracked, that can be transparent.
That idea in and of itself
has just revolutionized software development.
There are differences between science and tech, quite frankly.
This is one of the things that I've been struggling so much with within
the DSi space for years is the differences between
mindset across science and technology.
I was raised more in the tech space with a love and an appreciation for academia.
I was always taught that I should move fast and break things.
It's a very common phrase within tech, which, I mean, essentially what it means is keep trying.
Keep moving. Keep moving fast. Don't be afraid about what you're going to do wrong.
The only thing that's actually wrong is to stagnate.
And part of what's been so shocking to me
on a journey to DSI as a technologist
is the precision, the almost perfection
required of academic research.
Where if someone wants to be an academic research,
a project itself is going to take years.
It's going to take time.
The moment that you put that manuscript out to the wider community,
people are going to scrutinize it as closely as humanly possible
to make sure that it is accurate.
Because once something is put onto the scientific record,
taking it back down isn't really a thing,
or taking it back down is a career a thing, or taking it back down
is a career-ending move if it ends up as a retraction.
So trying to think about the difference between move fast and break stuff versus the perfection
of academia, it's a very hard mental bridge to gap.
And that's part of why I hate it whenever people say the get
primitive for science, because it makes so many assumptions about, you know, the nature of academia
itself. But there is some truth there, where if we were to move towards more incremental publishing,
a continuous flow of information, modular validation systems,
we could work to break the file drawer problem.
We could work to establish provenance.
We could do so many incredible things that currently are broken in the current system.
But that's going to take time because as I said at the beginning of this rant, we still
call it a paper.
We still call it a paper. We still call it a paper.
So I would be curious to hear your thoughts on that one. Anyone else who's a speaker at the moment?
Yeah, hi. Can I just jump in quickly on that?
Yes, welcome.
Okay. So first of all, thank you for organizing the space, Desai, Mike,
and everyone who's here. I think I say this for many other people who may not even be here in
this space, but may listen later, that it's just great to see science back on the agenda.
And science gets some representation in the crypto space.
That's fairly refreshing. It's a nice break from NFT animals and all the rest of it from previous
cycles. I just want to pick up on Eric's point and I think earlier Muse expressed it and Ed expressed it as well about this, about the limitations of a paper
and a book. And I think I do agree with it to a large extent that that whole model was built on
starting from books and then to papers and so on. It's built on this assumption of,
to a certain extent of a commodification where and the researchers are
not to blame for that the institutions the publishing industry and and so on presented
like that and we are we are somehow stuck in that cycle and so one of the projects that
I'm currently working on is a research so my background is as a legal researcher and
I was facing the same sort of problem because as with any other domain of knowledge, legal knowledge also develops very quickly.
And by the time you're done with a paper or a blog or a book, the law has moved on.
And therefore, you know, someone has to comment on it and someone has to revise it and so on.
it and someone has to revise it and so on.
And therefore, one of the ways in which I tried to solve that problem was, and I'm not
a developer, so nothing's on a GitHub repository, etc.
I'm just thinking aloud.
One of the ways in which I tried to think about solving this was to think in terms of
atomic labor.
And in legal research, most of the work is semantic.
It's not necessarily data-driven in that natural science empirical way, but it's mostly about interpretation
of the law. And so the point about atomic labor there is that it's more asynchronous
and anyone, as every researcher knows, we build on other people's work and then somebody builds on our
work and so on. What the finality of a paper or a book does is that it creates some sort of a
copyright and a finality and commodifies it and allows the author to say, look, this is mine and
therefore I deserve the recognition or I deserve the money or whatever else might be driving the
researcher.
But honest researchers know that what is driving them is just the thirst for knowledge.
And therefore, I think what blockchain is allowing us to do, going back to one of the points that
was raised about provenance, is that if we can build systems which recognize this atomic labor,
let's say someone collects just a small parcel of data from their own,
whichever environment they might be working in.
And then someone else builds on top of it and then interprets it.
And then someone else verifies it.
And then someone else curates it and so on.
So with, and this process in that sense, it's is dynamic, it's organic.
There's no end to it.
So there's no finality where someone can say
it's people can if they want you know curate it in a particular way and write a paper on it if they
want but i think blockchain is allowing um scientific knowledge to um be free of that
finality and to be organic and dynamic in in in that sense um so that i So I just wanted to say that I'm thankful for this space.
And I'm also struggling with some of the problems that are being raised here.
It's wonderful to find a community of researchers and scientists in Web3.
And the final thing I'll say is that the label that I've been using till now for this kind of model is research to earn,
where every atomic labor that you submit
to a common pool, which is then verifying it and so on,
then can be tokenized and then you get something back
from the pool and then someone else can use it and so on.
So I'm curious to hear from everyone
what they think of research to earn as a moniker.
Do you think it has legs? And yeah, I'll stop there. Thank you.
It's a fascinating idea. And I love this concept of kind of small modular units of knowledge,
of value, of whatever they are. I mean, that has in a huge way dominated the digital world.
As we think about curation and validation,
ultimately, if I'm on a social media site,
there are fact checkers and that is nice and that is helpful
and I do appreciate them.
But ultimately, the first signal of value that I see
is 1,000 individual likes or 200 comments.
And then from there, I can continue diving further and further down.
Okay, well, there's 600 comments. Let me see what the comments say.
And I open up the post and it's, oh, this post is garbage.
Oh, this person doesn't know what they're talking about.
Or it's, oh, this is brilliant brilliant i had never thought of it so continuing to have that transparency
through modular units is it's the only effective curation and moderation mechanism that i've been
able to find in the digital world which has proved itself at scale i think there's a reason why we
see so many social media companies moving towards that.
The hard part, to me at least, is with the ambiguity of this knowledge and with bad actors in a given system.
So, I mean, let's say we use vectorized embeddings.
Excuse me. excuse me to um excuse me uh let's say we use embeddings to try and decide what an atomic unit
of knowledge is what's to keep me from just sitting out here and churning embeddings as
long as i possibly can to try and essentially land grab before anyone else can get there
that's one of the hardest ones that
i haven't necessarily been able to find so i'd be curious to see your thoughts on that one
um yeah just a quick sort of response um that that is of course um the the key problem and i
don't necessarily i don't think i can say that i have a solution for it but i do have a cop-out
I don't think I can say that I have a solution for it, but I do have a cop out, which is that
in legal research, of course, ambiguity is everything. And we often find that judgments
or opinions that were considered outmoded, let's say two decades back, will become the law,
let's say, five decades later. So ambiguity sort of built into the architecture. And therefore, my cop out was
to not think of ambiguity as a problem, but to think of it as in terms of plural interpretive
richness, and to preserve everybody's opinion. But that's something that, as you're pointing out,
it's something to something that legal researchers can do easily. i'm not sure it translates into every um
into every scientific domain necessarily but that is i completely agree that that is a hard problem I'm also curious to know what your thoughts are on research to one. Does that label work?
I'm asking everyone generally.
I think, or Pamela, you can speak.
It's okay.
No, can you repeat the question, please?
Yeah, maybe if you can quickly just clarify exactly what you mean by research to earn.
That would be helpful for me.
I didn't have anything specific in mind, but simply based on, you know,
this discussion that we were having around modular contributions and atomic contributions.
So if, let's say, a researcher makes a modular contribution, of course, not
withstanding the problems with verification, etc., assuming that all of that is solved,
which is a difficult assumption to make, but if we keep that aside for a moment, assuming
that that contribution has some merit, has some value, then does it make sense? Because
ultimately we're on the intersection of blockchain and
research. Would it be too far-fetched to say, okay, here is a token, thank you for your
contribution, and this goes into a common pool, and then someone else can then build off of that?
That could definitely be a thing. And certain frameworks have already been built, I don't think exactly what you're describing, but some of theera Institute and the larger nanopublication movement.
So their idea is to create a format for information that is easily consumable by humans and machines in the smallest atomic unit possible that anyone can really use for any reason.
So happy to point you in the direction of that.
Feel free to send me a DM if you want to know more.
But yeah, I mean, a lot of people have been working towards this topic.
I don't think anyone's officially figured out how to make it work, but you're definitely
on to something here.
Pamela, jump in.
Yeah, and also Planetos, talking from my experience because I'm founder of Design Mexico, we try
to ask to the people for their ability so it's like how much you will earn for this job in the normal life.
So we try to help to the contributors in the manner of their experience.
So yeah, if you have the knowledge, if you are an expert in an area, you can tell I was
working in this and I have this experience and I think
I can earn this. So like a community with this cost. Well, I think this is my opinion.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity to really kind of play around with what incentive mechanisms look like.
And I think as different waves of people might participate in different systems, it might also change or it might look different for each of those sub-communities.
So the idea of research to earn, I think that could really resonate with certain people. Other people it may not, but they might not be your people. So I think there's opportunity there.
saying that definitely resonated. For example, a research to earn incentive requires a few
different personas and backgrounds. The people you need to do peer reviews or the people you
need as editors is not necessarily the same. It's not the same as an emerging researcher
who would be publishing or trying to share their research for an incentive.
And I think that makes it a little bit difficult
to establish one overarching tokenomic use case
or one overarching extensive.
It really takes a multimodal approach
because what a reviewer
may be looking for versus what an emerging undergraduate scholar may be looking for
are not always aligned and not always the exact same thing.
So when creating a learn to earn or research to earn protocol, as you were mentioning earlier,
you were mentioning earlier, it takes a fleshed out approach. And especially just with launching
another DSI token, it's like, okay, cool. I'm earning some token, right? But what can I actually
do with this token? Is this token giving me credibility? Maybe. Maybe it's giving me credibility in science,
but is that really what reviewers are looking for?
Or are they looking for money?
It's kind of something that I feel like more user research has to be done
to really understand, okay, this is a viable way to launch a research protocol.
Yeah, absolutely.
But also it depends on the values of the person.
It's like, for example, I was working in Design Mexico one year and a half,
and I didn't have any money from that.
I was working because I love the science I love it
the science and how to how to teach other things that you know then we have
the money and we start to do events and pay for the contributors to write
contributors to write some articles in science, or these articles, you know, but about the token,
for example, for the BODOs, it's important
because it's the power of the decision
of funds and research, isn't it?
So, yeah.
And the other thing that I would quickly add to that,
sorry to cut you off, I agree with all of this. There's
a lot of folks have tried something similar to research to earn in the DSci space.
I know DSci is just kind of now popping into the mainstream now, but it's been going on for
half a decade at this point. So one of the things that I would really encourage
is a little bit of study beforehand
to figure out what projects have tried something similar,
what different approaches have been there,
what successes they found, what failures they found.
You'll find it to be a very accommodating space
where if you reach out to one of these projects,
chances are they'll have someone sit down for 30 minutes and
give you an honest opinion so would really encourage that if that's something that you
want to pursue and then i guess the other thing around this don't let perfection be the enemy of
progress this is a very very difficult nut to crack research to earn as i said a lot of people
have also tried it but the ones who are the most successful are the ones who've just kind of jumped in, tried
to figure it out, and have focused on what's happening behind the scenes, have focused
on the underlying protocol as opposed to just the token.
So hopefully all of that is at least helpful in some way.
I think that is helpful, but I think to your point, Eric,
how you said that this research to earn kind of application has been developed and ideated on for
almost half a decade now. And I think that highlights a bigger concern for the entire
industry is like, what are we all actually pursuing science for?
Is it to earn money?
If so, is that really the right mindset to go into DSi for?
Which I get we all need a way to live and an allowance to take care of our families and put a roof over our head. But if money is the driving factor behind expanding DSi, how is DSi any different from traditional institutions then?
If traditional institutions are also just businesses trying to make money off of publications, even with the incentive prioritizing the user and researcher, at the end of the day day the organizations who are developing these protocols
are also being funded by those coins as well and to me i feel like one of the the biggest
the biggest developments i want to see in dsai is bringing dsai in the spaces of traditional research and converging the two networks of DSI and traditional research,
especially with so many PhD recipients becoming leaders in DSI. I feel like we all should be
using our network more to put DSI in front of traditional just research bodies and challenging the infrastructure that
is already present in this day. I feel like that avenue would bud more growth than an established
research to earn protocol. I'd be keen to hear other people's thoughts on that. Is research to earn really
the priority of DSiT? Is that really the end goal of this industry?
I feel bad for continuing to respond to every single question, but it's a great question.
I see where you're coming from on that. And ultimately, to a certain extent,
money definitely can corrupt incentives. It's a tricky problem as we think about the current life
of a PhD student, where if you're in, let's say, a major city in the US, you can't afford to live.
You're below the poverty line. I mean, in many instances, if you don't come from
some kind of family generational wealth, you know, rent can be hard to come by. So there's,
there's a balance between, um, I think the ethical fulfillment and the financial stability.
Um, so while it's, while it's nice to be able to say, yes, research should not be about the money, and I do agree with you, we also see flocks and flocks of people who are starting to leave academia because they realize that, hey, it's too hard for me to get money as a professor.
the bureaucracy of funding agencies means that I don't get to do research anymore.
Hey, why does it make sense for me to go get my PhD whenever I'm going to have to spend
seven years making zero dollars?
And on the other side, you know, if someone's a STEM major, they could probably get a $120,000
salary straight out of college.
I mean, is a million dollars worth the opportunity cost?
So whether we like it or not, we do have to view a certain financial aspect to the larger space.
It can't be entirely altruistic. I do agree with you that money can definitely shift incentives in a way that's not about objective research
in the same way that we've seen with the traditional publishing system.
And part of what I've found interesting is how publishers have actually made an alternative currency, citations.
I mean, if you really think about it, citations are just as much of a currency within academia as money is, if not more so.
If you were to offer an academic a nature publication versus a large grant, like just flat off without having to do any work, I will publish your next paper in nature.
They're going to take that all day, every single day.
they're going to take that all day, every single day.
So it's not to say that the current system doesn't necessarily use some kind of incentive structure,
which can get perverse.
It's more to say that they've shifted said incentive structure to be a proxy for money,
which is an interesting thing to observe.
Ed, did you want to follow up on some points made by Eric?
Yeah.
I think there's a little bit of a factor.
Are we investing in a product or are we investing in a person?
Because to me, there needs to be some personalness to all this that because we know
people in science like I do in my area that I really appreciate their dedication to it their
hard work they're learning about it they're advancing science and it usually goes hand in
hand with their productivity.
But so much it seems like people are just like a machine or a product.
And they've just got to do output.
And it's not really personal at all.
So you don't really get the, you know, we just see them, as we said before, in a particular name on a paper or something. We don't even know who they are.
And, you know, it's when you really get to know scientists that you really, you know,
and how they look at science and how they are devoted to it and how they learn and how they advance and how they research and everything.
that's where the value really comes out. And, you know, and even ones that try different things,
That's where the value really comes out.
you know, but fail. We learn from those failures because you have to do that. You have to try
things and you have to fail. So there's even value to that. But if it's always just about a product and that value of that product it really
takes the the humanness the humanity out of science and i i find that's where a lot of
people in academics are really frustrated because it's it's just their name on a paper and how many
times their name appears and who took up that or whatever.
It's not, you know, it's, there's no humanity to it. And I think that's really hurt science. And
that's why scientists don't communicate with the public like they used to.
They can't really talk practical. And yet that's where the real appreciation comes and the real support from
the public because we've as somebody mentioned earlier in agriculture you know and we started
bringing people out and we started talking to people in the community and the scientists
Did y'all just lose Ed?
Yeah.
Yep.
It's always so hard to tell.
That's all good.
He was making some really good points, though.
I feel like X knows when someone's making good points and they're like, this is just too good. We got to tame it in.
Cut it off. You're done, Ed. If you come back and try again, they're just going to remove your account.
of the comments definitely echoing the nano publishing and some of the work that Ronin is
doing leading those efforts at the sense making network or Common Sense Makers. Do you recall
the exact name? It's Common Sense Makers. Let me see if I can figure it out real quick.
Cool.
Planitifs, feel free to chime in.
Yeah, I was just wondering, given that we're all coming from various disciplines, from the natural sciences and the social sciences,
sciences and the social sciences.
Would perhaps one point of convergence might be philosophy of science, if that is of interest
to everyone, then perhaps could we have like a reading group around that, that may allow
different ideas to converge and some interesting, you know, cross-pollination of ideas.
Just sort of spitballing.
Definitely. There might be interest within the Muse Matrix ecosystem in particular
on that note. So definitely reach out to that account there and get some of that combo going.
Ed, if you're back, welcome welcome uh sorry we lost you for a
little bit yeah it happens um got crashed maybe science could really help elon out with this
these spaces i actually heard from somebody that's a retired person that works in sort of how all these platforms work,
who mentioned that for some reason Twitter uses an old, they described it as X11 type structure in the platform.
And that's why we have a lot of glitches.
YouTube and other networks, other platforms use a much more updated system so maybe
we need elon needs a better rocket ship here to make this system work but anyway yeah i don't know
where i i got crushed but um well i i remember part of what you were saying was about the humanity of science, just names on a paper, and how that, to a certain extent, is dehumanizing both to the individual and to the larger enterprise.
But while you were gone, someone chimed in about maybe having a conversation on the philosophy of science.
So I'll leave it to you as to kind of which direction, but that's the summary of the combo since you left.
So I'll leave it to you as to kind of which direction, but that's the summary of the combo since you left.
Yeah, I mean, I think it does have something to do with it because, again, I mean, we talk about why are you doing it for the money?
Well, you know, of course, money has to be part of it.
But, you know, when I think about all the scientists and the farmers that have, you know, that we think of as the legacy people, the real pioneers in it all, you know, that's where the value really, I really see like, well, where did you get these ideas?
Because it's, you know, it's rare.
It's always a collection.
It's always part of a journey.
And it might be that they visited some certain farm and the farmer asked some question that lit that light bulb.
And there's value to that person, too.
And if you want, we want a system that kind
of works at all levels, that really is decentralized science, we have to try to figure out, you know,
how that system really works and how do we give the right value to where it really needs to go.
Because I think presently in the system we have scientists
that make tons of money and yet are they really doing good for the people i mean we've seen a lot
of it that just becomes a real problem and we're like well you're not really being honest about
things and you know you're just doing it for the money and i think we can the more we humanize science
the more we can sort that out because we can really see that when we get to actually know
scientists and they have to actually speak to us and to the public um and to all the people in the
system then you sort of flush out the real from the people that have the interests that
maybe aren't really the interests of advancing science.
And Ed, I've got a question for you on that one.
And I would love to hear the take of others as well.
What is the purpose of science?
Before we can figure out where it makes the most sense to allocate funds, is the purpose of science to alleviate suffering for people? Is it to advance the human race? Is it the pursuit of new knowledge? Why in the first place?
To me, that's a very foundational question.
I think it's part of evolution.
I mean, it's like in science now in agriculture, you know, we're not so, the focus often was
on DNA, you know, it's the DNA.
Then we started realizing, no, really, it's the epigenetics.
It's how does that, how does that transform generation from generation?
And so when we start thinking that way, all of a sudden, everything around health changes.
Like something as fundamental as seeds, you know, we are completely changing the concept
of seeds.
We thought it was all about the DNA and the variety.
Didn't matter how you grew it.
Didn't matter the nutrition in that seed or the microbiome in that seed and the variety. Didn't matter how you grew it. Didn't matter the nutrition in that seed or the
microbiome in that seed and the epigenetics in that seed and how it connects to the environment
and how it connects to our human health. And without science, we would just be a mystery.
I mean, that's what everything about the microbiome and the soil was always a
mystery. Indigenous people sensed it, but they couldn't really deeply understand it. And so
that's where science is able to deeply understand. And it's a journey. I mean, life is a journey.
Everything's a journey. We're here to enjoy to enjoy it you know we get so many years
to enjoy it and and to advance the betterment you know for our kids for our planet for the kids of
the trees for the kids of the animals for the kids of everything um to me that's the value you know
it's not just and that's where we get our pleasure.
That's where we get our satisfaction.
We contribute to the evolution of this planet and to all life on this planet.
And the only way we can really do that, it was science.
So I hope that answers somewhat.
Yeah, so it's essentially to improve the human condition for future generations.
That's the purpose of science. Well, not just the human, but for all life, because we're all,
I mean, Lynn Margulis back in the 50s, who was married to Carl Sagan, you know, she brought into
the fact that we're not alone. You know, we have a biome.
We're not just I, it's our biome.
And everything is connected.
Symbiotic relationships.
You know, not that many years ago, she was laughed out of science for that.
And now we understand how important that this is.
important that this is that everything is connected and that's where the silos of science
Everything is connected.
and the silos of departments and academics and all that sort of stuff i mean it reminds
me of back in 1900 when universities started where colleges were more specific and they
became universities and in like i was saying earlier, the state universities that started out with a focus of agriculture and engineering,
and they branched out into universities.
Kenyon Butterfield, who created Cooperative Extension and was a president of one of these state universities in 1900,
said we need to tie threads through these universities
so it connects knowledge all the symbiotic relationships of everything we have in a
university need to be connected because that's what life is so that's sort of my thoughts on it
That's sort of my thoughts on it.
For me personally, just to answer the question, why science? Why do this? It is honestly kind of what Ed already outlined. offerings and to give back my intellectualism, my intellectual power, and a way for me to use my
knowledge to then give back and co-create new knowledge. And like what Ed said, the impact of
that is honestly greater than just impacting human life. It's like if you're doing research in the
deep sea, if you're doing research for invasive species, if you're doing research in the deep sea, if you're doing research for
invasive species, if you're doing research on any kind of animal or just planetary research,
whatever, the findings you create honestly just lead to more development of more knowledge.
And to me, I see that as an offering. You're offering your talents. You're offering your skills. You're offering your intellectual capacity to contribute to something greater than yourself. And to Ed's point, it's like we are all connected. We all learn from each other. We all breathe in the same air. We are all home to the same planet. And with that being said, we're all home to the same universe. And with that being
said, what we put out is what we receive. And that's honestly why I continue to pursue and give
back through science and through research. And it's honestly the reciprocity of science. The
more you pour into science, I believe, the more you pour into science, science equally pours back into you.
And that's a blessing for me.
But I'd love to hear other people's why.
Why do you guys pursue science?
I think quickly what you just said, it's the question why.
why why has kind of left science and the curiosity of why is been missing i think it's all about just
Why has kind of left science?
coming up something and you know proving that people need to believe it it's more about belief
making people believe instead of really tracking the why it's's coming up with drugs. You know, it's the sick care system.
You know, it's all about treatment of sickness.
But the question is, why are we sick?
Why is our planet sick?
Why does Elon think that the only answer is for us to develop Mars?
Because this planet is going to be destroyed, which is insane to think.
You know, to me, I mean, he wants to go
play on Mars fine, but we now know we can make a thriving, beautiful planet. We've learned why it
isn't, you know, but you got to ask why is it though? And it's certain people, I think, are drawn through curiosity to wondering why.
Some people just like to do.
Some people like to be part of the system where they take the whys and they produce something out of it.
And that's not really their interest.
I mean, that's why we're all different.
We all have a different DNA.
We all are.
That's the marvelous thing about
nature is nobody. We're not the same. Not two people are the same. And, but to me that the word
why in science is something that I cherish, you know, that's the whole fun of science. It's coming
up with an idea theory, and then not just proving
it's right and convincing people it's right. It's proving that it's working as hard as you can to
prove it's wrong and realizing then maybe it is right. And now I can feel confident about it.
And other people can feel confident about it. You know, it's, and not looking negative
at somebody's, you know, questioning why.
No, that's positive.
That's the power of being human.
We can actually ask why, which so much in nature,
of course, we're starting to learn.
Nature is really actually good at that.
There's so much we can learn from nature.
If we could ever tie into the fungal web and how that communicates, we would learn so much about how science evolves,
what nature and science is really all about. And so I'll end it there.
I love these answers. And real quick, you got to stop shitting on Elon while we're on Elon's platform. You're going to get all of us flagged. No, in all seriousness, these are beautiful answers. It's about trying to find harmony with the world. It's a means of offering up services and talent before we get off of it, I just wanted to see, because Ed, you, Muse, and I have kind of been monopolizing the conversation,
would love to give the chance for anyone else who's on stage or for anyone who's not on stage but wants to come join to speak.
Yes, 100%. Again, this is a DSi open mic. Please drop your questions in the comments and request to be
a speaker, and we'll have you up here as soon as possible. Well, this has been an amazing
conversation this week. Usually, we keep it to about an hour, but we've gone for an hour 38
minutes. So, so much to talk about in Desai, so much more to come. And we'll be back here next
week at the same time, 5 p.m. UTC, whatever that is in your time zone. Would love to have you come back then. If you have specific questions or themes or ideas
that you would like covered in these discussions,
feel free to reach out to the Desai Mike account,
to myself, Erin, down below.
Or if you resonated with anything
any of the speakers said today,
definitely reach out there.
Or if you have further questions or maybe a differing perspective, that's all needed to
really push DSI forward and make it what it might be able to be, really impacting all of us and the
future of the world moving forward. If you're working on a project or have
an idea for a project and want to partner on different collaborations, find talented people
to support you in bringing that forward. Definitely reach out to Me's Matrix. If you're interested in the front of more focused on the science creator economy and verifying scientific data,
maybe you have a device or research in that space, reach out to Causality Network.
If you're doing anything remotely close to agriculture, Ed is your guy on that front.
Ed is your guy on that front. Eric's been an amazing leader in the space for quite a few years
now, especially focused on more of the publication side of things, but that really touches into all
these other kind of corners of part of the discussion as well, from everything of politics
to knowledge sharing data and how all of that's connected together.
If you're in Latin America or have ties throughout Latin America, Pamela runs Desai Mexico,
and she also ran Castalia, which was a Desai pop-up city back in the fall. She's also working on some really cool projects related to plants and has some
cool background in microbiology. Planetos, I am not quite as one-on-one familiar with you,
but has a whole bunch of really cool ideas, and I would love to have you come back in future weeks
as well. So many cool people up here.
Definitely give them all a follow if you haven't yet. Take a look through the people listening in
too. I know we have a few Muse Matrix fellows down there, Yael, Omar, so definitely give them
a follow as well. So much more to come in Desai. If you're looking for something in the very near
future or to really dive into, okay, what does this actually look like? Tomorrow afternoon,
if you're in the Americas, it will be at 4 p.m. Central Time, which would be too much math for me to do right now for other time zones.
But the space will be posted very soon and we'll have Rohan from Long COVID Labs on tomorrow and
we'll be really diving into what's on their roadmap. I'm super pumped for what's coming in Long COVID Labs' future, and their
token will be live as well, so you'll get to hear all the details there. Those are some of the kind
of main kind of housekeeping to wrap up this space. I would also say give Causality a follow. There might be some really exciting things popping up there.
Check out the website and get on the wait list for some upcoming announcements.
Yeah, there's so much happening in Desai.
So much to stay updated on.
So we'd love to see you back here at this same time next week and in the meantime
keep making dsai awesome keep pushing the world forward and have a great week thanks so much
everyone thanks aaron thank you thanks everybody thanks bye Thanks. Bye.
