Cosmos blockchains (appchains) are a balanced hybrid between communism and capitalism — a talk with ChatGPT

Giuseppe Natale
6 min readDec 5, 2022

--

I am in awe for how powerful this AI system appears to be. We have only scratched the surface of its potential, and already we are seeing this AI surpass our imagination in terms of the magic it can do. It’s a frontend to the entire human knowledge, synthesized and at the fingertips of humans. It should be seen as a human enhancer, not as a human competitor.
I played with it a lot from its launch, and I have also seen how others are using it and I am completely shocked, in a positive way. I think tools like this can level the playing field and allow true creativity to shine, removing technical barriers.
This weekend I wanted to try it out to see if it could help me elaborate an idea. The idea is that Cosmos blockchains [1, 2] (sovereign appchains) can be seen as a business where communism and capitalism coexist in a balance — the presence of on-chain governance is the key here.
I talked about it with the AI a total of three times. For the first two discussions I am reporting excerpts, while I am including the last conversation in its entirety.
The first time, I started the conversation asking if the AI thought blockchain was a political system.

The AI initially contradicted me, rightfully so. The question was really generic, and I agree that blockchain per-se is not a political system.
However, I then started discussing more in depth about Cosmos, which the AI knows about.

Of course a Cosmos blockchain does not influence the whole community, but just network participants. So if we think about these participants as the “community”, then indeed Cosmos blockchains are — in my opinion — political systems.
I then asked what was the definition of politics.

and then re-asked the question.

So the AI agrees that within the scope of the system, a Cosmos blockchain can be seen as a political system. It still could not — and should not — compare this system with democracy, dictatorship, anarchy etc., but this was not the intent of my question. The AI concluded that within the network itself, Cosmos blockchains exhibit the traits of a political system. Scary.

I then started talking with the AI about my idea that communism and capitalism coexist on a Cosmos blockchain. As they are economic and political systems, this was pertinent to the previous discussion and pretty much linked to it.
The AI always agreed that this is totally possible, but unlikely due to the fundamental differences between the two systems.

[…]

[…]

I think the level of insights that the AI provided me, and how it helped me elaborate on the idea, was already through the roof at the very first conversation.

I then tried to go deeper into this discussion with our second conversation about it.

I then told the AI that Cosmos blockchains can be a manifestation of this system. The AI agreed, but with caveats (of course).

This is how the second conversation ended.
About a day later, I decided to try again. This time I had a great deal of insights that the AI itself gave me over the previous two conversations.

In this discussion, I didn’t talk about Cosmos blockchains. I presented the AI with a business system and tried to describe its properties as detailed as possible. My intent was to describe as much accurately as possible how I view Cosmos blockchains: as decentralized businesses. Appchains are decentralized businesses. Prove me wrong.
Well, I now had everything I needed to present the problem to the AI in a way I could get a more structured answer. And remove most — but not all — of the ambiguity. Here’s the entire conversation.

This was the entire conversation. It gave me shivers. The AI agreed that in such system capitalism and communism are in a balance, and this design is a hybrid between the two. But the AI itself totally helped in the previous conversations to get there. It provided insights and counterarguments that allowed me to explain the problem in a way that was “rigorous enough” — or perhaps (hopefully) as specific as possible — for it to be able to elaborate on.
Notice how the ability to veto is recognized by the AI as a key component to retain the communist-like properties. Also notice how incredibly accurate the AI was in listing the potential risks.
I am completely shocked. I had this silly thought but I never thought this actually made any sense. Well, assuming I described things correctly to the AI, it seems to agree with me, and it’s astonishing.

I warmly welcome any feedback, as I don’t even understand if these concepts are meaningful or just a brain fart. I would love to know what others think.
Oh and by the way, the AI knows..

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

--

--

Giuseppe Natale
Giuseppe Natale

Written by Giuseppe Natale

Just another voice in the Cosmos

Responses (1)

Write a response