# Criticism as a Public Good: The Intellectual Commons

One of the most impactfull memeories that tranformed the way I think is participating in a philosophy conference in Athens during my sophomore year. The keynote speaker's lecture centered around the theme of the value of "useless ideas", "intantgibles" and things with no apparent utility. Needless to say this was a fiery defense of philosophical studies against criticisms coming from practically and technically oriented fields. What stuck to me the most was a certain example that the speaker gave which I will incorrectly paraphrase:
> *If I give you an apple, I have lost an apple while you have gained one. You are better off, while I am not. But if I share with you an interesting idea or life advice, you will now have gained something without me losing anything. We are both better off!*

This realization has slipped into the backend of my mind for years powering my fascination with the dynamics of memetic contagion of ideas as well as piracy, music sampling and free software. But it is only lately that all the pieces have come together to integrate under the notions of the "commons."

The Commons are resources that are held collectively without ownership being delegated to a single point of authority which singlehandedly decided about who and how they will be used. Under a modernist/industrial mode of thinking inspired by the Hobessian asssumptions that life in societies without the surveillance mechanisms of modern states was "brutish and horrible", the commons are not a mode of societal organization but a fundmental paradox, a problem, a tragedy. This thinking has inspired 20th century economic theory whose basic axioms include that of scarcity of resources. Ostrom's original formulation of the elements of sustainability of commons had to do with material and scarce resources that required constant and effortful maintainance.

But when we speak about open-source software, scientific data, cultural products and of course theories, ideas and memes, the scarcity assumption hits against a wall. Intellectual goods require a different approach than materially tangible goods in that they are governed not by a logic of scarcity but of abundance. The sharing of ideas, happens in the same way that the copy-paste function or bacterial replication does. The content of an idea is not merely tranfered but replicated anew. The dynamics of tranmission are memetic and the transactional exchange of ideas is always a positive sum game. But in order for this process to happen it must operate under the condition that the peer with which one shares ideas with is not withholding ideas for personal gain. It is only by withholding information that one is playing the game of scarcity and creating value out of scarcity. For example, in Austrian Economics and especially in Friedrich Hayek's coneptualization of markets, when it comes to production, underlying goods are scarce and producing more is costly but when it comes to the communication layer where prices are set, information about prices is assumed to be freely available to everyone flows symmetrically and every economic agent is assumed to be equally informed. But as is the case with physical commons, information can be distributed unevenly and in the worst case, captured and used as an asset/tool or a commodity to be sold. There is a theoretical tension when dealing with artifacts that can be quickly replicated rather than merely tranferred that results from approaching abundance from a lens of scarcity.

The behaviour of seizing resources has been a staple in human civilization. Expansion or resources wars have always been part of human history and colonization intensified and instituionalized behaviours of capture and enclosure of natural resources and physical artifacts. But an aggressive and hyper-competitive behaviour of enclosure in the realm of intellectual artifacts did not take hold until modernity had firmly set its roots in Europe. What modernity brought to the table that was quite new was that ideas and culture could be seen as products and that individuals could extract value from them. The mercantile mindset which was originally applied to the trade of material goods somehow seeped into the minds of intellectuals. However, in a pre-industrial age monetary capital was not the primary medium of value extraction from intellectual property. Reputation, prestige, recognition and social status where much more important motives.

The best example of this behaviour can be seen in the infamous “math duels” in 16th century Italy. Mathematicians, mostly in Venice, would challenge each other in order to prove their intellectuall superiority and gain fame and reputation. The usual process was that a mathematician would provoke and an opponent to a duel and when accepeted, they would give their opponent a problem to be solved in a certain amount of time. From a perspetive of incentive design and game theory it is quite obvious how such a tradition leads to hyper-competitive behaviour which can lead to increasing secrecy and witholding valuable mathematical breakthroughs. The player in such conditions are always incetivized to not publish the solution either out of fear of being challenged, either for the desire to monopolize the solution and become unbeatable. The greatest controversy centers around the solution to the cubic equation which is a polyonymic equation that involves a variable raised to the cubic power (x^3). It is assumed that the solution has been known for almost a century by various individual mathematicians but the soltuions got burried with them.


The most interesting story comes from a young mathematician Tartaglia.

>... He had found a method to solve all cubics, not just the depressed cubics. He decided that with his new method, we would challenge the most prominent mathematician of the time to a math duel and gain national fame. Since Ferro, the leading mathematician of the time, had just died, Tartaglia chose to challenge his understudy Fiore to a math duel. Tartaglia with his new method won handily and rose to the spotlight of the mathematical world.
>
> In the midst of Tartaglia’s success, he was contacted by a man known as Gerolamo Cardano. Cardano was a publisher, and he wished to publish Tartaglia’s secret in his textbooks and make millions. Tartaglia, also wishing to make millions, was extremely hesitant with giving his secret away. He also might have been challenged to another math duel, to which his secret was his protection. Tartaglia decided that he would publish his own work in a paper of his own and receive credit for what he had done before allowing Cardano to publish his work.
>
> Cardano gave Tartaglia a deal. Cardano would agree not to publish Tartaglia’s work until Tartaglia’s paper was out, so long as Tartaglia agreed not to go to any other publishers. They agreed, and Tartaglia told Cardano his method and Cardano promised not to publish Tartaglia’s work without his consent.
>
> Cardano, however, still wishing to make millions, went on a quest of his own. He searched through all of the available mathematical literature and found several unpublished works by the mathematician we talked about earlier, Scipione del Ferro. He found that in Ferro’s work was the foundation for Tartaglia’s method. Ferro had all of the pieces he needed in order to find a solution, but never put them together in the right way. Cardano, having seen the solution Tartaglia had, was able to fix Ferro’s work into the solution for the general cubic. And he did it without ever once directly using Tartaglia’s work, thereby keeping to his deal! Now Cardano could publish Tartaglia’s work and reap all of the benefits.
>
> So he did. And Tartaglia was pissed.
>
> Tartaglia, in retaliation, challenged Cardano to (what else?) a math duel. Cardano deflected the duel to his student, Lodovico Ferrari. Ferrari, an aspiring young mathematician, had discovered a solution to the quartic (even more difficult than the cubic). He beat Tartaglia in the duel. Tartaglia lost his job and his fame. He died penniless.
>
> Cardano became rich off of his publications. Ferrari became rich and got a prestigious teaching job at Bolonga (he would eventually, sadly, be murdered by his sister over monetary issues).
>
> [askaninjask](https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/askaninjask.30284/), [Feb 23, 2012](https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/16th-century-italian-mathematics-its-more-interesting-than-you-think.3462672/post-4120302)

It is difficult to argue for how such a tradition could be beneficial to mathematics, history and society as a whole even for individuals with competitive tendecies. If intellectual history is to progress intellectual goods ought to be shared no matter what and hyper-competitive behaviours such as venetian math duels can be regressive on the whole. It is the best example of the optimization of a very constrainted local maximum of value creation (the individual and its reputation) to the detriment of the whole world. It could even be argued that from a historical perspective, even the reputation of the individual who withheld the breakthrough is damaged, leading to a net loss.

The above story shows the perils of hyper-competition and intellectual property in two very different forms. Fero and Tartaglia not publishing the solution for personal gain is one of them. But Cardano openly publishing the solution for his own benefit and completely discrediting Tartaglia who ended up agreeing to publish is the other. If only Tartaglia could secure credit for his work while also being able to publish… woudln’t that be ideal.But the technology to make this happen already exists.

## Restructuring the incentive landscape

IP NFTs are blockchain contracts that can be stored on-chain. One can thus both publish a work out in the open will also being able to claim ownership of it. There is no need to withold and single-handedly capture all the value.

But the real question is whether solutions such as these solve the problem. Web3 innovation has brought to the fore the need for wise incentive design but the products and tools that are being produced are themselves media that have scertain effects to the users.

Non-tranferable NFTs (SBTs) are a great tool but are still immersed in a 17th century logic of value capture. They address a social symptom more than the cause and are thus like a pharmacological remedy to a social ill.

### Resources:
[Toscano, F., (2020). A Mathematical Duel in 16th Century Venice (Excerpt). Columbian College of Arts and Sciences](https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/175506)