"The Parallel Society Revolution Starts Here" -Václav Pavlín from Logos

Hey, I'm Watsw. [music] Um, I'm part of Logos project. Um, I like to hack on things and I am here to [music] try to explain to people how they can build truly decentralized applications and help them build them.

So, hi Mas. Hey, Peter. Thanks for coming. Uh for people yeah for people who don't know you well can you just say a few words like what do you do?

Um my name is and I I'm a chaos agent. That's what I say uh at at Logos. Um no um privacy enthusiast software engineer. I like bleeding edge technology. I was always playing around with stuff that other people around me didn't understand.

Um I guess that's how I got to blockchain a couple years ago and uh and but free in general. Um, I'm mostly a software developer, I guess. Um, I like to hack on things. I I don't I don't write production code. I hate production code.

So, I I would rather I would rather do some PC's and then give it to someone that actually is uh um can think about things for long enough time to actually make it uh secure and usable. Um but yeah I work on a project called Logos um where there are bunch of sub projects all wex um geek card and probably seen them around um trying to be active in the privacy instant focused communities. So I do talks for the free privacy now and and and at conferences and recording demos and things like that. So let's let's

Yeah. Yeah. Can you like just tell a bit about Logos and Lore and maybe other as a project like the Cape Pertever you feel like fits here in like privacy?

Sure. Um so Logos itself is basically kind of can be view viewed from two angles. One angle is the technical stack and that's like if we ever want to build a network state which probably want to build a network state or cyber state or a blockchain community depends on how you want to call it. What do we need to be able to build it? And so original white paper of Ethereum comes up with the three pillars the trifecta um the messaging storage and um and the consensus and so that's kind of what we are building as well as a messaging codex as a storage and nomos as a consensus and uh then you can flip the angle a bit more and like maybe I don't care about the technology too much maybe I care more about the the ideology the activism and so logos is looking into that as or working in that space as well um trying to rally people up for peaceful protest kind of or for for building parallel societies or building parallel systems that can help them improve their own life without reliance on these centralized powers uh that try to surveil and quers right so they're running meetups local circles around the world in various cities um we're working with internet archive we're working with with with other um kind of um activist groups in sense um and trying to find the ways to build these parallel societies um and to build the network of people that are aligned towards privacy, towards censorship resistance, towards decentralization.

Yeah, thanks for expanding on that beautiful mission I adore personally. uh but the question is um like me you I think many people who will watch that are eager to get to this network state state of things but question is like how do we get there because there are so many obstacles like do you see any road map that making it really possible possible

yes

actually I whenever I heard about network states whenever I heard our founder Jared talk I was like but what now Yeah, I mean I see that there is something wrong but like what now?

Yeah. Yeah. Network privac network privacy state now. [laughter]

But I think the the actual way to get that running is through the people. So we have this sticker which says exit through the network and I never understood what that means until we started building these hyper localal communities local circles um where actually the circle community comes together and tries to do something. about something. So they find a winnable issue, local issue and they actually fix it. So we went to Zanzibar for Zanzalu and we talked to local people and we found a guy that is running a community school and we're like what do you need?

And he's like well we would like to teach people teach the kids computers like so you need computers. We need computers. Well that's expensive. Maybe we can get you like 10 Raspberry Pies and then you set it up and kids can start. And so last last week we got a video of of 10 kids typing something in Libra office on those Raspberry Pies that we we got and that that's the mission, right?

So like find the people around you that want to change something and then change it and don't rely on the government. Don't rely on big corpse to help you. Just just do it. Figure out a way. Talk to us.

Talk to Privacy now. Talk to whoever you can find that has some outreach and and and get them work with you, get them helping, right? And I think that's how we get to network state. We built parallel societ in Czech Czechoslovakia in communist era. There was this uh essay written by Vasa Benda called parallel police and there is a building in Prague that had parallel police pol name on it for a long time.

Um and so the parl police pol essay talks about how you cannot go against a government that is full of propaganda full of control and and and is is authored but you can build a pearl society uh in the kind of gaps where it doesn't solve issues. So you can build a parallel economy where you exchange things with people or you exchange favors right you can build a parallel education system if you don't think the education is good enough and so by building the parallel society you are not infringing on the system so the system doesn't come after you too much but you are already solving issues and building things and now we have the tools for global parallel societies I would say or building the tools which preserve privacy which cannot be censored which uh give you the way to have peer-to-peer access to other around the world without relying on the on the centralized system. Right? So I think that's the path to network states through the people doing something locally fixing things helping each other connecting with other

circles cells groups whatever you want to call it and then building the network of people. So if you need help on the other side of the planet you already have that network of people that that can do something there. Yeah, it's a great start. 100% agree. But my personal concern is like for me this network state thing it seems a bit more topping just because of the monopoly of violence that governments have and the question is do you feel that there is there any way that like network state can I don't know play with it and like disperse this monopoly on violence.

So um I I think I'm not the right person to ask because I don't know. Uh I think if you talk to Jared, he will have answers.

He has also they've published the book with Petlo the farewell to Westfailia where they talk about all these things.

Um I think that more and more people are noticing that the nation states are failing like in various ways. Some services, more taxes, less services, worse services, right? And even ordinary people like I follow some some vet two coders on X or something and they start posting things that are it sound like if they took it from Jared's book I don't know like that means that not even just us focusing on these small issues small cracks there are already people out there seeing the cracks as well and so I think that it will kind of break itself down

and we just need to be ready with the tools for people to like help them build something up again, right? So like I don't know how you can break the monopoly of violence other than having another violence. Uh I would like to avoid that. Um

so I I don't have answer. Yeah, that's totally fine. It's not an easier question like and there is no answer for that but it's like I'm just trying to approach it from maybe different perspective because it's my personal like question as well. I don't have an answer for that. But like I I I always these days I just always go to back to the parallel policies, right?

Because the communists in Czechoslovakia in like 70s, they also had the the the violence was there and they had the monopoly on that and they were very violent, right? But the people were still able to even without the technology build peer-to-peer networks, peer-to-peer human networks and distribute educational materials, distribute goods, distribute things that they needed, right? Um, and so the the violence was there, but the the idea of the parallel society is that you do not necessarily go against

to receive back the violence. you go kind of alongside and if that part society is good enough and influential enough it will potentially it can potentially flip the the other society the the first culture like now in some parts of the world it's called second culture at first right so the second culture can flip the first culture if it's powerful enough and the and the current kind of the mainstream is is corrupted enough or or broken enough right so I I think that is really the way like you cannot go against it because then you get squashed. Um and you cannot probably easily rally enough people unless you are in the palm. Um to overthrow the government um but that needs like a lot of uh disappointment to actually be able to do something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

Uh but the question is okay imagine we are some years from now and we have this beautiful wonderful future that we dream of right with network state with privacy with security uh without wars whatever like how how the web of this like ideal web of the future looks like and how the life looks like in this like perfect circumstances when we won let's say

I think I think the perfect circumstances is uh voluntary cooperation or collaboration, right? So hopefully I think the utilized to do things that you don't want to do and you willingly sacrifice some value um to collaborate with other people. So you pay them for their services and they pay you for your services and and then just willingly collaborate on things and there will be bad actors but there has to be some some way in that new form of governance to get kick the kick the bad actors out um or or punish them that that is not going away. Um but I think the big big part of this is that if you are I think the big problem with the nation states and that's also I mean I I'm not the deep thinker right like that's that's Jared in the company right I'm just I'm just the guy that likes to hack on things so I come I basically whenever I you ask me questions like that I have to go back to like think about oh what's written in his book because that's what I can paraphrase right

so like it's also in the book that you can you can fork the network state And you can exit the network state. You can build a new network state right so like if you disagree if I disagree with what is happening here I can go and I can organize another cipher primary tree which I can do now but that's mainly because you don't have that monopoly right on on that but this nation state does but with network state there shouldn't be no monopoly so if I disagree with how you are running things then I can go and I can kind of fork the the thing and some people may go with me or I will be there alone and like oh maybe I need to think about it more. Um yeah, but also honestly lately I've been thinking more about how we uh approach the the spirituality but not in the esoteric way but more of like we have lost our need kind of our approach to building tribes

right building communities. So I think vet three privacy now is a tribe. People congregate regularly. People talk about things. People share ideas and they elaborate on these things and I think that's what a network state and cyber state narrative or thinking goes towards is that kind of a spirituality because people want to be there.

People want to collaborate on things. They have a common goal. They may disagree. It's okay. People disagree and will always disagree.

But as long as you can have a conversation and you can resolve the disagreement peacefully, I think we are in a better spot. And so this like building local again back to the like local communities, building local tribes where people are actually willing to risk something, risk their comfort, risk their money, risk their uh not their life hopefully, but like their life as in like I may lose some comfort if I need to do all of that other things to help other people. um that is I think the path towards um towards building something something better. Um it's not just that like there is a monetary incentive to be to be in a network state. It's more of a like there is a higher level kind of transpersonal unconscious connection between people that that that brings them together.

I don't know. I'm not good at describing these things but I I'm trying to research more into that to to be able to

yeah it's just I don't know we resolve around values right so we just share more or less common values and then we come to like cyer punk right

so like what do you think cypher punk is now and like what does it mean to be a cypher punk and how to become one

interesting um so as someone who first I first started thinking about privacy roughly half a year after I joined Wacom which was around this was basically when I got asked to prepare a presentation for Ephrame for the first Ephrame

and so I was like so okay so what can I say about privacy what do I know about privacy and I was one of the people before that uh that would be saying well I have nothing to hide I had nothing to worry about so I create I prepared a presentation called you have nothing to hide where I told people that they all have something to hide uh and that it's Okay. Um, so I think that if you want to be a cypher pint, you need to think about that that everybody has something to hide and it's okay. And if you think if you if you agree with this statement, then you're already is are on the way to be be a cyber. And then the next step is how do I make sure that everybody has a way to hide things and decide how and when and where they are disclosed and how do I how can I help other people and myself to be able to do that. And that will lead you to using tools or building tools for privacy and censorship resistance and that makes you the true cyber punk in that in that all common sense like cyber bunks write code and and all these things right even just using the application.

But I think that just the realization that privacy is normal. Uh privacy is a human right. Uh everybody has something to hide is making you different from the mainstream and and making a cyber one.

Yeah. 100%. Um so we'll have to round up soon. Like quick question here more like practical let's say. Um, what would you recommend for a builder who wants to build or is building like I don't know censorship resistance tool or like just a privacy thing like from your personal experience like what did you learn that can be

useful for someone who is like going this more or less similar path? Okay. Um, so I would basically say two things. One thing is local first because that solves a lot of issues of like okay so where do I run the server that has the data and how do I protect it from others right so if it's local first then it's kind of a natively peer-to-peer you can start thinking about how do I sync data where with whom and so local first researching local first and how what are the tools what are the approaches there and the second thing is people often talk about decentralized applications and I I hate the term because I don't know what it means. So what I say is that for me the centralized application has a bunch of properties.

It is private so it doesn't leak data. It doesn't leak information about users. It is censorship resistant. It cannot be taken down ideally ever by anyone which is hard but maybe. Um it's permissionless so anybody can use it.

I I don't have a subscription plan for for the application that you have to go through so that you can use my platform. So it it has to be permissionless. Um, it has to be accessible. So, I have to be able to run it on my phone or on my laptop or on a massive massive server somewhere. Um, it has to use end to end encryption for every single thing that it does over the network.

And I think there was a few more. I always make a list and then I forget what what is there. But these properties like if you think about these properties when you are building things maybe you need to compromise on some. But if you're just like I'm going to pick censorship resistant and I will ignore everything else then you don't have a decentralized application. If you want to build a decentralizedation I think thinking about these properties is what I would recommend.

Just your last hot take on privacy hot take on privacy.

Yeah.

Um okay I have a hot take on privacy. I've realized that people don't care about privacy. It's very hard to sell and it's like whenever you start talking about your tool having like being privacy preserving and they're like

it's just a

so doesn't exist.

I talk about censorship resistance instead because people care about that way more and the reason why they care is that the example I give is that okay so you post on Facebook and you post this amazing meme and everybody should laugh or a joke or something and nobody laughs. What does it mean? Why is nobody laughing? Is it a bad joke? No, it's just Facebook censoring you, not showing it to other people.

So, they let you use the platform, they let you post, but they don't show it to any anyone else. And that's a form of censorship. So, I think for people it is important to understand that censorship can happen on many levels in many ways. And I think censorship resistance is a way easier way to selling the privacy narrative to people because to be censorship resistant, you also need privacy. It just doesn't work without it.

If I if I know exactly who you are, where you are, what you are doing and why are you doing that, regardless of what is that and how uncensorable is my platform, I can still come after you physically, right? Or I can come after you in other ways, other means. Um, so having censorship resistant demands having privacy and I think that's that's easier to to explain to people than just like what is privacy. 100% agree. That's a really good example with memes.

It's something practical. But we actually for us personal we don't aim like like general public. We understand that like first we need to explain that it's a problem and then we will need a budget of a country to do that to like explain to everyone. That's why we focus more on developers or people that are more like privacy aware

and then they just build tools that are privacy by default.

Yeah. Because like users that don't care about what's under the hood.

100%. 100%. But if you I mean ideally we build tools that

we don't have to talk about that they are private. It just works and it has amazing UX and we see that in some tools like Filever and other things. Um but sometimes there are cases like with developers or with some some specific groups of people like journalists that you need to emphasize it and then the then the distinction between privacy and censorship resistance may may help um for people to understand or grasp the idea better or be able to buy into it without a lot of like too many examples and too much too much struggle.

Yeah, that's a beautiful example and reference. Thanks for that. So, thanks for joining us for 2D. Thanks for watching. Ciao.

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