How to hunt a Mammoth
Also available on Mirror
A Problem of Coordination
You are a hunter, and part of an ancient tribe. We’ll call you Ragnar. You don’t have anything against rabbits, but it’s tough out in the wild, and a neanderthal’s gotta eat. A rabbit only makes about one meal, though, and you’d like to hunt something bigger. Mammoths could make for many, many meals, and they don’t taste as bland as rabbits do. The only issue is they’re hard to catch, have giant tusks, and are super intimidating. In order to hunt a mammoth, you’d need to get some of your neanderthal buddies to help out. Splitting the meat evenly, you would all get far more meat than you would from puny rabbits. Only problem with that is, well, they’re all neanderthals. They’re not always the best at coordination, and many times just wind up hunting rabbits all on their own. All of you would rather get that sweet mammoth meat, but no one wants to be the poor caveman stuck hunting a mammoth solo, while everyone else is off hunting rabbits. That happened to Gorg last week… he will be missed. You’d love to set up some way of coordinating who is interested in hunting a mammoth, but don’t know where to begin. You sigh, putting down your spear. Guess it’s going to be rabbit stew for dinner, again.
This, in Game Theory, is known as the Stag Hunt (or, in our case, Mammoth Hunt). In it, the case people default to is the second-worst possible outcome [1]. That is to say, without coordination with other hunters, the rational decision is to just hunt rabbits, because no one wants to be stuck hunting a mammoth alone. This is not the ideal outcome. The most desirable outcome, for all parties involved, is to join together to hunt something bigger.
From thought experiments like this, to real-world situations like Climate Change and Nuclear Proliferation, to just trying to get enough people to volunteer at a soup kitchen, our lives are filled with failures in coordination. You may have a dream project, or company, or idea, which many are also interested in helping with. But no one knows how many people are interested. They don’t know who has the skills it will need. And no one wants to be the first to shoulder the cost of agreeing to work on it, in case it turns out to just be them putting in all the effort. What we’re doing could change that.
A Better Way to Hunt
Let’s go back to our neanderthal friends. If only the cavemen had some kind of stone, to act as a sort of ledger, that could help them figure out how many hunters were down to go mammoth hunting, and if that number was high-enough for the hunt to work. Ragnar could have etched out a list of hunters needed, and what roles were required. He’d need five hunters in total, including himself. Three of them would have to be good with a spear. One would need some ropes to keep the mammoth from escaping. And some brave sole would need to act as bait, to lure the mammoth out. He also knows neanderthals get hungry fast, and have short attention spans, so the hunt would have to happen soon if he wanted to keep his team together. So he declared that if the roles were not filled by the time of the full moon, the mammoth hunt would fail, and no one would be committed to doing anything. Ragnar and two brothers are good with spears, so they agree to join you as the three spear hunters. Wooglin has ropes, but is hesitant. Wooglin has been mammoth-hunting before, and ended up being stuck doing it alone: that arm will never grow back. “Ah! Wooglin no worry.” Ragnar assures him, “Mammoth hunt only happen if we get enough hunters, and fill all roles. If not, Wooglin do no work.” This sounded good to Wooglin, so he etched his name on the stone. That just left the role of “bait” to be filled. Bob wanted in on the mammoth action too, but wasn’t too keen on the whole “bait” thing, saying he would only do it if he got twice as much meat as everyone else. Ragnar rolled his eyes, but accepted this. After all, they would all still be getting much more meat than with rabbits. Now the mammoth hunt is ready, and with plenty of time before the full moon. No more rabbit stew!
As you can guess from this example, our network would enable something similar. People could post an idea for a project, or some other plan, that requires a certain number of collaborators. This can be as big as a new app, or as simple as a needed number of volunteers to cleanup the streets on Saturday. You can designate specific skills needed for the project or task and the amount of time expected. And if these requirements are not met, no one is committed to anything. This removes the risk many contributors would face by joining a project that doesn’t have enough people to actually be implemented. There is a set amount of time for the requirements to be filled, reducing the risk of “flaking” caused by various members dropping off of the project while waiting for all the needed contributors to join. While crowdfunding enables group contribution of financing, this will enable group contribution of skills and work.
User Examples
Let’s see how this would play out for a real project:
“I’m Moby the Mobile Developer. I have an idea for an app, but I need a backend engineer and UI/UX designer for it to work. I created a project on this awesome new app I found, explaining my idea, adding the needed roles for a backend engineer and UI/UX designer. I got various offers, and accepted the ones that suited the roles best. I was able to find enough people for it to work! Now we’re all set to start developing! No more rabbit stew!”
“I’m Becky the Backend Engineer. I was searching through projects and found a couple that interested me. I went for the one that seemed most likely to succeed, offering my services for the project, which the project founder quickly accepted. After a week, I got a notification our team was filled, so now we’re ready to go! No more rabbit stew!”
“I’m Uni the UI designer. I hate my name, because no one in the workplace takes me seriously, so I decided to look for work online. I saw a project on the App that interested me, and agreed to work on it if the team got filled. Since I don’t know much about UX, the developer split that off to another role, so that I could focus just on UI. Now we’ve got a team and are ready to go! No more rabbit stew!”
“I’m Xavier the UX Designer. I saw a project I liked, but it required someone know UI design. I didn’t, so I sent a message to the project creator, and the role got split into two, so now I’m the final member of the team and we’re ready to begin! I actually like rabbit stew, but this is better!”
The Progress Already Made
The groundwork has already been set. There has been a growing social desire to collaborate for the betterment of society, looking instead to work with each other, rather than expect these problems to be solved by current institutions. There is a growing interest in mammoths. An economic change has been demonstrated with such companies as Kickstarter, which have capitalized on what can be accomplished with crowdfunding [2]. Politically, crowd investing now has more legal options than it did in the past, with Regulation D [3]. The biggest change is with blockchain. Decentralized blockchains are kind of like the stone ledger our cavemen used, except everyone gets their own version, so there’s no risk of Ragnar changing the rules without the other hunters agreeing to it. This is discussed in more detail in Part II of this article.
Who else is working on it?
Since no product like this exists at the time, there are two different markets to examine. One is the market for crowdsourced projects, in which users will “pledge” an amount of money to go toward a project they wish to see implemented. The most famous of these is Kickstarter. What Kickstarter has as an advantage over its competitors, is its model of make or sink: if a project is not funded, no one will pay anything [2]. This removes the problem of someone wasting money on a project that will never be funded. It also forces those starting projects to be more mindful of how much money they really need: aim too low, and you’re underfunded; aim too high, and you may not get any funding at all. IndieGoGo is another challenger, which does not require acceptance the way Kickstarter does, enabling a much larger pool of different ideas, albeit perhaps at lower quality [4]. Both of these use a time-sensitive model, where projects must be funded before a certain date. While all of these involve contributing money to boost a project or idea, none of them involve contributing time and skills. They’re all about funding mammoth hunting, we’re about setting up a mammoth-hunting team.
The other market that must be examined is the one for volunteer networks. Among these, there are many different kinds, some serving niches, while others are extremely broad, such as Vulunteer.gov [5]. The two that most closely resemble what we’re trying to do is SmartVolunteer and CatchAFire [5]. Both involve dedicating your skills toward a cause, rather than mere time or labor. Among the two, SmartVolunteer seems a bit closer to us, since there is an online option to help out remotely. However, these websites connect people to already existing companies and organizations. They do not enable the creation of something new, or something that can only exist if enough people agree to work on it. They are for tribes that already have mammoth-hunting setup. We are not. What we’re doing looks something like this:
Conclusion
So there we are. We make it easy to go on the hunts we choose, with the team we want, using the ideas we have. Obviously we’re still just at the concept stage, but it’s being built. The stone ledger is being etched out. It’s almost time to look for some mammoths.
Now, some of you might be wondering what happens after the hunt. How do the cavemen ensure the meat is distributed as it should be? What stops one of them from changing the ledger, so that they can get more? We answer this in great detail in Part II.
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