Tribewell is a values-based business.
Hi, I’m Jasper.
Over the last decade, philosophy has pushed me toward a simple conclusion: if we want a better world, we should make it easier for people to help each other. Tribewell is my attempt to turn that conviction into infrastructure. What follows is a compressed statement of the ethical theory that guides the company.
Attention spans are short and it is 20 thoughts long. It is thus not written for customers, but for us:
to keep us honest about what we’re building and why.
Jasper Burns
Founder
01
The good can derive only from conscious experience.
A physically thriving universe that is empty of experience has no being to judge good from bad.
02
Conscious experience generates subjective value.
Thoughts and feelings that arise in consciousness contain a positive (good) or negative (bad) valence.
03
Subjective value is bounded by objective truth.
The value one generates for some experience is subjective, but is objectively evaluable.
Whether, in this moment, you find this philosophy good or not is subjective—but it is objectively true or false that you feel this way.
04
Objective truth likewise bounds aggregate value.
If there is objective truth about you, and objective truth about me, then there is objective truth about us.
05
Therefore, there is objective truth about what is good.
If morality grounds in subjectivity, and there is objective truth about subjectivity, then there is objective truth about morality (i.e., what is “good” or “bad”).
06
A good world creates aggregate subjective value.
A positive net experiential valence of billions of conscious creatures defines goodness.
07
Knowing what is good is hard.
Measuring and aggregating subjective value is impossible. Our experiences are ordinal, not cardinal.
08
Heuristics can approximate the good.
Terms like “Friendship,” “Courage,” and “Honor,” are not value in themselves, but are useful reductions that point towards flourishing, positive value.
09
Individuals know best their heuristic values.
How you value friendship, family, work, leisure, and other principles is best known to you.
10
Therefore, empowering people practically mitigates against moral uncertainty.
Society should default to expanding agency to those best situated to approximate what is good.
While individuals may pull against each other, centralized decision makers may pull against their tribes—scaling the problem.
11
Coordination empowers people.
Agency scales when individuals can align, plane, trade, cooperate, and build together.
12
People self-organize into communities. Tribes.
Whether corporate, religious, academic, or otherwise, people find others to share life with.
13
Tribes tend to share values and create trust.
Similar values tend to attract; opposite values tend to repel.
Even intentionally diverse communities unify around a common value of diversity.
14
Shared values and trust enable coordination.
When people agree on their ends, they can cooperate with less negotiation and enforcement costs.
15
Therefore, enabling tribes enables flourishing.
Local judgment plus community coordination produces goods neither can achieve alone.
16
Modern communities struggle to coordinate.
Even when classmates, colleagues, neighbors, or more share complementary goals they often fail to connect at the right moment.
17
The failure stems from poor discovery and high noise.
It’s hard to know who in your community can help. Messaging everyone is noisy and costly.
18
Modern social tools barely address these problems.
People search is hard. Community-sized group chats and listservs are loud, even with channels.
19
Coordination needs a new communication primitive.
Current failures result from intrinsic properties of 1:1 DMs and 1:Many broadcast messages.
20
Coordination needs Tribewell.
One startup is seeking to change the future of human coordination.