Meeting Minutes – Plural Event @ MIND Foundation Berlin_2Dec2025

General
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Event Theme: Network State or Network Society?
Host: MIND Foundation, Berlin
Format: In-person dialogue as part of global Plural Events network

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1. Context

1.1 About MIND Foundation

The MIND Foundation (Berlin) is a European non-profit focused on psychedelic research, therapy, and education. Key activities include:

  • Promoting evidence-based psychedelic science to improve mental health and human development

  • Working toward making legal, safe, evidence-based psychedelic therapies (e.g., psilocybin-assisted therapy) part of public healthcare

  • Activities:

    • Clinical research (e.g., EPIsoDE trial for treatment-resistant depression, DiMension trial)
    • Partner clinic: OVID Clinic Berlin, offering psychedelic treatments within a therapeutic framework
    • Training programs: e.g., Augmented Psychotherapy Training (APT) for therapists
    • Science communication & community: INSIGHT conference, uniMIND journal clubs

More info: https://www.mind-foundation.org/de

1.2 Event Theme: Network State or Network Society?

Guiding questions:

  • How do we organize, govern, and collaborate in a hyperconnected world?
  • What is emerging as we experiment with new societal and governance models?
  • What’s at stake as we design network-native institutions?

Background materials shared:

The Berlin hub at MIND hosted an open, participatory dialogue, feeding into a global conversation via open-source participation tools (Pol.is, Context Engine) to map diverse perspectives on our collective future.

1.3 Plural Events Framework (Context)

Plural Events are a lightweight framework for semi-synchronous, multi-location deliberation:

  • Local, in-person gatherings in different hubs
  • Connected via shared digital tools to surface and compare perspectives on one broad topic within a 24–72 hour window
  • Designed to operationalize plurality: local autonomy in format and subtopics, combined with global comparison and synthesis

Key features & origins:

  • Emerged from experiments by Hubs Network, RadicalxChange chapters, and community knowledge practitioners
  • Pilots included coordinated watch parties and discussions (e.g., Audrey Tang documentary, Yarvin vs Weyl debate)
  • Outputs fed into tools like Pol.is and Context Engine to generate shared statements and co-written content

Method and tools:

  • Each edition centers on one broad theme (here: Network State or Network Society?)

  • Hubs choose their own formats (watch parties, discussions, artistic interventions, hackathons, role-plays, etc.)

  • Use “plural tech” tools:

    • Pol.is
    • AgoraCitizen
    • Context Engine
    • (Envisioned) AI transcription and statement extraction

  • Aim: cluster opinions, map narratives, and support cross-location sense-making

Benefits & sponsorship:

  • Acts as distributed ethnography, revealing how different cultures interpret the same themes

  • Strengthens community empowerment and organizer efficiency

  • “Plural sponsorship” model:

    • Sponsor pool approved by local organizers
    • Avoids concentration of influence, especially on controversial topics
    • Compatible with platforms like Giveth and funds like Pensieve.ecf

Conference integration:

  • Framework can plug into major conferences (pre-inputs, indirect representation, post-conference follow-ups)
  • December 2025 edition spans hubs in Barcelona, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, Vienna, etc.

2. Purpose & Why Join

Participants were invited to:

  • Engage in an in-person discussion on one of today’s most thought-provoking topics
  • Connect with local changemakers and global thinkers
  • Contribute insights to a worldwide collective dialogue via shared tools
  • Enjoy a relaxed environment with light snacks and meaningful conversation

Tagline: Come for the ideas, stay for the connections.

3. Speaker 1 – Bastin (RadicalxChange Foundation)

Topic: Governance and collaboration in a hyperconnected world

3.1 Background & References

  • Affiliation: RadicalxChange Foundation – https://www.radicalxchange.org/

  • Intellectual backdrop:

    • Radical Markets by Glen Weyl
    • Supported by figures such as Vitalik Buterin and Audrey Tang

  • Related initiatives:

3.2 Tensions Between Tech and Democracy

  • Growing tension between:

    • Centralized tech platforms & capital
    • Democratic legitimacy and citizen empowerment

  • Concern: concentration of power and decision-making in a few platforms and actors

3.3 Competing Ideologies in the Digital Era

Bastin outlined three broad ideological currents:

  1. Libertarianism

    • Key motifs: Bitcoiners, anarchists, cypherpunks, individual sovereignty
    • Associated with figures like Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel
    • Emphasis on exit, private enclaves, and self-sovereign structures

  2. Synthetic Technocracy

    • AI maximalism and belief in an AI-driven singularity
    • Proposals like universal basic income as a response to automation
    • Associated with Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman
    • Emphasis on expert- or AI-led governance

  3. Digital Democracy / Plurality

    • “Fork & merge government”, “wiki government”
    • Open, participatory political processes, enabling experimentation and recombination
    • Emphasis on pluralistic governance and citizen co-creation

Key proposal: A meaningful “compromise” path is plurality – not a single model, but many interoperable, overlapping governance systems.

3.4 Network States vs Network Societies

  • Network States:

  • Network Societies:

    • Interconnected communities leveraging decentralized social structures

    • Less about sovereignty, more about interdependence and shared infrastructure

    • Referenced material: The Network Society docuseries

3.5 Institutions, Power & Decentralization

  • We should look beyond “surface” narratives and focus on underlying institutions:

    • Who allocates resources?
    • Who sets rules and incentives?

  • Current situation:

    • Monopoly of power often hinders the creation of alternative systems

  • Desired shift:

    • Reinvent governance globally, especially allocation of resources
    • Bring power back to people via interconnection without central control
    • Remove unnecessary intermediaries where possible

3.6 Lessons from Nature

  • Nature (e.g., networks of trees) works in decentralized, resilient systems

  • Decentralized structures:

    • Often more agile and innovative
    • Can better adapt to local conditions and shocks

3.7 Governance Quality & Prosperity

  • Observation: nations that are “rich” typically have effective governance systems

  • Implication:

    • Democratic tools and experimental governance mechanisms are essential for:

      • Fair resource allocation
      • Long-term societal flourishing

4. Speaker 2 – Matteo Tambussi

Role: Researcher @ European Cultural Foundation (ECF), Co-founder @ SpaghettETH

4.1 Identity Systems & Risks

  • Identity providers (especially centralized ones):

    • Can easily become surveillance tools
    • Create single points of failure (technical and political)

  • Biometric IDs:

    • Also prone to single points of failure and abuse

Preferred approach: Intersectional Social ID

  • Use your social network as a basis for:

    • Verification
    • Trust
    • Authorization

  • Based on social vouching, not a single central database

Advantages:

  • Redundancy: no single point of failure
  • Privacy-preserving: information can be fragmented and contextual
  • Corruption resistance: harder to capture than a single central registry

4.2 Community Currencies

  • Community currencies can be powered by novel economic mechanisms, such as:

    • Harberger Tax: continuous self-assessed value with periodic payments, enabling dynamic allocation of resources
    • Quadratic Funding: amplifies smaller, widespread contributions to support projects with broad support

4.3 Voting & Collective Decision-Making

  • Voting mechanisms discussed:

    • Degressive proportionality + pairwise voting – balancing representation and comparison of options
    • Quadratic Voting – allowing participants to express intensity of preference rather than one-person-one-vote only

Use cases:

  • Grant programs
  • Civic platforms
  • Participatory budgeting
  • Community governance

4.4 Knowledge Bases & Collective Facts

  • Goal: ensure that “facts” emerge from collective agreement and transparent processes

  • Example: Pensieve – a decentralized “Wikipedia-like” knowledge base

  • Ensuring:

    • Traceable contributions
    • Community-driven curation
    • Robustness against capture or censorship

4.5 Decentralized Media & Cultural Production

  • Vision: a decentralized media stack, where:

    • Content is community-curated, not purely algorithm-driven
    • Media is censorship-resistant
    • Local narratives and authentic voices are empowered

Technical & ecosystem examples:

  • Livepeer Protocol – decentralized transcoding infrastructure:

  • web3radio.it – exploring new participation and ownership models in media

    • Ownership and participation via tokens:

      • Transforming passive audiences into active co-owners
      • Aligning incentives between creators, curators, and communities

5. Group Exercises & Participation Tools

Participants contributed to shared digital spaces to map perspectives and proposals.

Tools used:

Outputs from these tools will feed into broader Plural Events synthesis and may contribute to shared statements or co-written articles across hubs.

6. Possible Follow-Ups / Next Steps

  • Continue contributions to Pol.is and AgoraCitizen spaces as they remain open post-event.

  • Explore collaborations between:

    • MIND Foundation communities
    • RadicalxChange, ECF, SpaghettETH and other networks involved in plural governance experiments.

  • Identify local experiments in:

    • Community currencies
    • Deliberative processes using plural tech tools
    • Decentralized media projects that can be piloted in Berlin.

  • Logos connection:

    • Sev introduced the Logos Berlin Circle and briefly presented the Logos initiative during the event.
    • Sev will share Logos-related Telegram links in the group, highlighting the synergies between Logos and the MIND/Plural Events initiatives.
    • It was proposed that both communities join forces for the next Logos event in Berlin, encouraging cross-pollination between the two ecosystems.

7. Reference Links (Collected)

4 Likes
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Ich liebe es Mann; in Berlin ist einiges los :ok_hand:t4:

Grüße aus Los Angeles.

2 Likes
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Wow, this is super cool! Thanks for a detailed write up!