Today we are publicly launching the White Marble Syndicate. This is a testbed for concepts we have explored throughout The Extellıgencer's run, and we have high hopes for its continued success.
How does a cooperative DAO fit into our institutional theory? We have learned that an optimal organization is like a crab: it may have differentiated internal hierarchies and associations, but its security lies in its immune function.
Common attack surfaces include the bureaucratic and legal interface (regulatory pressure), the payment processor interface, porous membership and requirements, and the quality of epistemic hygiene. (Which isn't to say to ignore the law or the regulations, only that regulatory pressures have commonly been applied to organizations in an attempt to control their behavior.)
The White Marble Syndicate is thus a coordinated effort to test our theory of a crab. A curated library serves as the perfect bedrock truth to avoid poison pills and memetic or technical injection attacks. Private sessions with private servers avoid leaking query information and research, and further prevents adversaries from training themselves on your behavior.
More concretely, WMS takes as its mandate to collect the knowledge of the ancient world and prepare it as finely as possible for utilization by AI tools. The mandate is specific and finite, which should help prevent mission drift. We will begin with classical Greek and Latin texts in translation and intend to move to other aspects of the classical Western tradition. There are two prongs to this effort:
- Curate a pristine library of original texts, translations, and scholarly commentary and analysis.
- Facilitate the use of this curated library for members of the White Marble Syndicate for primary research, AI-enhanced inquiry, or simply as a secure repository.
Rather than operate as a clearweb service or open-source project, the White Marble Syndicate will function as a library for members. White Marble will collect and curate resources from primary and secondary sources, and develop "tertiary" sources (fine-tuned and trained LLMs, for instance). Members will be able to nominate and submit acquisitions of all three kinds in the library.
At its inception, White Marble Syndicate will simply be run as a benevolent stewardship. Eventually it will be fully handed off to the community of token-bearing members for self-governance.
This material has been cross-posted from community participant ~lagrev-nocfep writing at The Extellıgencer.